Dr. Robert Abbe became interested in archaeology in the 1920s. He decided to begin his own museum to preserve artifacts from the Mount Desert Island region. He acquired collections from archaeologists working in Maine and from interested local residents. These early artifacts include stone tools, bone tools and pottery from the mid-coast region of Maine around Mount Desert Island.
In 1928, the same year that the museum opened, it became the first museum in Maine to sponsor a professional archaeological excavation. Over the next six decades, Abbe archaeologists excavated sites throughout the mid-coast region. These collections include approximately 20,000 stone and bone tools, pottery and food bone collections. The collections are important for understanding how people made a living in the past. The collections date from 6,000 years ago to the Contact Period (ca. AD 1600). The collections are also important because many of the sites are now either badly damaged or completely gone, due to coastal erosion and development.
The collections are important for researchers because professional archaeologists carefully excavated most of them. There are field notes, photographs and other records that help to document their historical context. Some of these early collections are being reexamined, using new techniques. We have also returned to some of these sites to excavate within them. Field school projects at some of these sites have provided new evidence that links the old collections with current understandings of the past.
Today, the Abbe continues to accept archaeological collections for permanent storage. Collections have come to the museum from projects where archaeological excavations were done in advance of development. This is called cultural resource management archaeology (CRM). The Abbe Museum is one of a few federally approved repositories for CRM collections in Maine. This means that the museum’s collections care policies and facility meet federal guidelines for The care of collections.