Director of Research and Collections Receives Award for Collections-Based Research

Dr. John Hart, Director of Research and Collections at the New York State Museum, has received the Society for American Archaeology’s 2017 Award for Excellence in Curation, Collections Management, and Collections-based Research and Education.

The award is made only once every 4 years in the collection-based research category and Dr. Hart is the first recipient. The award is presented in special recognition of excellence by an archaeologist or group of archaeologists whose innovative work, or repeated and enduring contributions, have contributed significantly to archaeology and the preservation, documentation, and use of the collections recovered from archaeological investigations.

According to the Society for American Archaeology, Dr. Hart was presented this award for his consistently applied multidisciplinary, cutting-edge, and team-oriented analysis of archaeological collections to ask new and standing questions about the past. In particular, he has led groundbreaking research in microbotanical and absorbed residue studies to understand the origins of food production in the Eastern Woodlands.