W&M professor awarded NEH grant to manage Yorktown archaeological collections

Every artifact tells a story, but without careful preservation, those stories can fade with time. In W&M anthropology department, assistant teaching professor Kimberley Connor is cataloging and and digitizing archaeological collections from Yorktown and their associates, preserving their stories and making them more accessible for generations to come.

After joining William & Mary last year, Connor was given a unique task: managing W&M's anthropological collections. She founded William & Mary Anthropology Collections (WMAC), which she plans to grow into an accessible resource to make Virginia's history available for teaching and research. Describing WMAC, Connor said, “we’re not a museum nor an archaeological repository, we’re something in between.” 

Connor’s project is funded through a highly competitive grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The $271,527 grant supports rehabilitation of collections from 17 sites around Yorktown, including the Yorktown battlefields, the site of the last major battle of the American Revolution. Her proposal was one of 33 projects funded out of 103 applications.  

From broken pottery and ammunition to pipes and animal bones from soldiers’ meals, tens of thousands of artifacts await preservation. “It’s really important to take care of these artifacts. Seeing this recognized on a national scale is really exciting,” Connor said. She aims to have these collections prepared by the Battle of Yorktown’s 250th anniversary in 2031. 

A goal of Connor’s project is to make the artifacts at Yorktown, a significant part of the nation’s history, accessible to everyone, including scholars, researchers, students and the general public. Connor is developing a database where these tangible pieces of history will be cataloged, with photographs of the artifacts taken as part of the process. Associated paperwork will be digitized through scanning or photography. Other types of media, such as slides, negatives and films will be digitized as well, with large format maps being digitized with the aid of Swem Library’s Digitization Lab. Among the most urgent materials to digitize is rare motion picture film of the Yorktown excavations conducted in the 1970s, with few copies remaining. It is critical to preserve the documents now before they deteriorate beyond recovery. “These artifacts are at risk. If they go, we won’t get it at all,” Connor said.  

Despite the urgency to preserve some of the relics, Connor also emphasized how tedious the task of sorting through the collections will be. “Someone has to go through every piece in the boxes. That is very slow and it takes time,” Connor said. Because of the sheer scale of the collection — almost 45 boxes out of WMAC’s larger collection of almost 600 — Connor said the work depends on collaboration to make meaningful progress.

Connor is partnering with the National Park Service, who will train historic interpreters based on her findings. She is also involving W&M students in the project. Last semester, Connor taught a course training both undergraduates and graduate students on the management of archaeological collections. She is offering the course again in the fall, and student volunteers can help catalog WMAC’s collections. 

For Connor, the project is more than organizing artifacts: it is ensuring Virginia’s history remains accessible for future generations. “Part of the story is recognizing the importance and the value of the collections that we have,” she said. By preserving these collections, Connor hopes to ensure that the stories they hold remain available to be studied, understood and shared for generations to come.