Tulsa District Wister Lake NAGPRA Collection Rehabilitation Report

The Tulsa District tasked the St. Louis District with identifying NAGPRA-related materials within the Wister Lake collections and separating these from the general, non-burial materials. Through consultation between the St. Louis and the Tulsa Districts, it was determined that the best course of action would be to transfer the Wister Lake NAGPRA collection of artifacts to the St. Louis District’s archaeological rehabilitation laboratory for this process. This is an arbitrary collection of materials removed from Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (SNOMNH) during a time when all NAGPRA materials were being consolidated by the Tulsa District.
It has since been determined that a majority of the artifacts in this collection are not NAGPRA related. In addition to the NAGPRA work, the entire collection was to be rehoused in order to meet 36 CFR Part 79, Curation of Federally-Owned and Administered Archeological Collections. Procedures employed by the St. Louis District to rehouse archaeological materials from Wister Lake are discussed below. Upon completion of this report, all materials will be transferred to SNOMNH for permanent curation or final disposition, in the case of the materials subject to NAGPRA.