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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.
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