Mesilla Collection

This is a page about the Mesilla collection.

NC Notes

In November, 2023 Jenks moved the Mesilla collections from Wells Hall to the Historic Archaeology Lab in Breland Hall. It is Craig’s understanding that two of the boxes Jenks moved to the Historic Archaeology Lab in Breland came from KH 206. According to Jenks verbal description on 2023-11-28, these two boxes were temporarily housed in KH 206 because specific artifacts were borrowed from those boxes by a researcher. Those borrowed materials were returned recently, and Jenks wanted to put all of the Mesilla material together in one place. Craig has not identified documentation describing the materials coming into the museum, nor leaving Kent Hall recently.

According to Jenks, much of the material for the Mesilla collections were generated by James Boone who was a visiting investigator, I believe in 1982-82. Boone’s work was not on federal land, and the collections were accessioned by the University Museum.

WHAT ACCESSION NUMBER.

There is apparently a spreadsheet with accession numbers. Tess Drake is the one who made the spreadsheets, the formatting is not tidy. The files that Drake created are housed at <SP-HOME>\Collections\Inventory\Wells Hall

According to Jenks, Hartell apparently found records in the museum near the registration corner. According to Jenks, those paper records are in a red binder. Hartell left no written record of this, and Craig has yet to find the red binder.

As of Spring 2024, Jenks has a graduate student named Julie Nasser who is working on the Mesilla collections. Nasser contacted Boone who replied and supplied her with his field notes and maps. Those documents are now with the boxes in Jenk’s Historic Archaeology Lab.