The Archaeology Catalogs Part II: A Great Deal of Careful Work

Mills continued to use the ledgers for the first few years of his career with the Society, and he led the Society’s Committee on the Museum and Library in a “desire to have full, complete and reliable ‘data’ with each specimen” in the museum (Brinkerhoff and Randall 1899, 287). He was dissatisfied with the data in the ledgers and sought to establish a new system to catalog the museum’s collections. From 1899-1901, he visited institutions including the Field Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Institution to study their cataloging systems (Brinkerhoff and Randall 1900, 370). At the 1901 annual meeting of the Society, he declared his “intention during the coming year to make a new catalogue of the entire collection and this, as you are well aware, will require a great deal of careful work” (Mills, quoted in Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society [OSAHS] 1901, 87).

A great deal of careful work, indeed!

Mills and his team established an entirely new system for cataloging at the Society. Rather than assigning long numbers from a ledger string, objects were separated into collections. These collections grouped artifacts from the same place or assembled by the same donor. Mills gave each collection the prefix “A” – this prefix originally stood for “accession” – followed by a number. For example, the first collection cataloged this way is collection A 1 (usually written today as A 0001, the leading zeroes making it easier to sort numerically in a digital database). This collection distinguished the material that Mills removed from the Late Pre-contact Baum Village Site (33 RO 4) in the early 20^th century.

Museum staff assigned identification numbers to objects within each collection. The combination of a collection number and object number would represent a catalog number for an object. For example, the catalog number A 1/226 represented the 226^th recorded set (or “lot”) of objects within the Baum Village Site collection (you can find this entry by searching A 1/000226 in our online catalog).

In this system, much of the site or collection information could be associated with objects using the collection number, and more precise information about each object could be associated with the catalog number. The pottery cataloged as A 1/226 is automatically associated with Mills’ work at Baum through the collection number, linking it to the Late Pre-contact village, other material from the same place, and Mills’ excavation techniques and notes. Specific information with the 226^th record quantifies material by type and locates it within the archaeological excavation, which archaeologists call provenience data. The provenience is essential to understanding why and how archaeological material was deposited within the context of an archaeological site. A catalog documenting the provenience of all the types of material excavated pulls together a larger picture about the people who lived there.

The information for each catalog record was documented in a new ledger and a card catalog. In 1903, Mills described his plan for recording his catalog system, stating: “each specimen of importance will be labeled as well as drawings made and placed upon the card. An historical file is also being made in which the history of each collection of specimens is carefully preserved” (Mills, quoted in OSAHS 1903, 218). By 1906, he reported that in “we now have recorded upon our accession book, and a card catalogue made of 20,177 specimens, all secured from the explorations of the Baum Village Site, Gartner Mound and Village Site, and the Harness Mound” (Mills, Quoted in OSAHS 1906, 366). These collections were cataloged as A 1, A 2, A 3, and A 7.

With this new system in place, Mills hoped that staff, researchers, and visitors could inventory, research, and access the collections with ease. Although the card catalog was eventually abandoned, Mills’ accession book and its digital successors have documented nearly every archaeological collection in the care of the Ohio History Connection. The information recorded in this system remains the foundation of the Ohio History Connection’s catalog today. Incoming archaeological collections continue to be numbered in the system established over a century ago.

Brinkerhoff, R. and E. O. Randall. 1899. Fourteenth Annual Report of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society for the year February 24, 1898, to February 1, 1899. Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 7:275-295.

Brinkerhoff, R. and E. O. Randall. 1900. Fifteenth Annual Report of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society for the year February 1, 1899 to February 1, 1900. Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 8:345-372.

Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society (OSAHS). 1901. Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 10:72-97.

OSAHS. 1903. Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 12:187-218.

OSAHS. 1906. Twenty-First Annual Meeting of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 15:354-375.