Teaching Archaeology to Veterans: Case Studies from the Veterans Curation Program

According to 36CFR79, collections recovered with federal funds must be made accessible to the public for research and educational purposes. However, this goal is deceptively difficult to achieve. Collections can be made available to professionals and archaeology students easily enough, but is there a way that we can involve the public in the process? The Veterans Curation Program (VCP), funded by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), St. Louis District, has become well known for doing just that; employing recently separated veterans as laboratory technicians to rehabilitate USACE owned or administered collections. USACE and VCP contractors have worked to close the gap between archaeologists and non-archaeologists by developing various reference guides, training exercises, and teaching collections. In this paper, we will highlight a few examples of the aforementioned training aids and examine how they have enabled the VCP’s veteran technicians to process archaeological and archival collections with accuracy and understanding.