SOU awarded grant to create historic plastics database
(Ashland, Ore.) — The Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology has been awarded a Preserving Oregon Grant from Oregon Heritage, the state historic preservation office, to create a digital, archaeological database of historic plastics – from buttons to knick-knacks to kitchenware.
The $13,000 grant will help pay for new camera equipment that will be used to create a new digital database in the Southern Oregon Digital Archives at SOU’s Hannon Library. It will also be used to help bring experts to SOU to assist in building the collection, and student workers who will produce digital content for the collection – including photography, research and short videos or animations that demonstrate how to identify historic plastics.
The new website and database are expected to be used by archaeologists and historians nationwide.
“The grant provides funding to upgrade the photography system that Hannon Library has been using for the last 15 years to digitize objects for the Southern Oregon Digital Archives,” said Shana Sandor, the SOU archivist and digital projects specialist who has worked with SOULA on previous collections. “This will benefit not only the plastics collection that the grant was awarded for, but also any future digital collections, creating higher quality images to improve the research value of the collections.”
The SOU Laboratory of Anthropology (SOULA) regularly collaborates with various individuals, agencies and organizations to promote public archaeology and heritage stewardship. SOULA has previously completed three Preserving Oregon Grant projects, one other Oregon Heritage project and has worked with the SOU Hannon Library on two previous online research resources – the Jim Rock Historic Can Collection in about 2015 and the Chinese Material Culture Collection in 2018.
The Jim Rock collection had more than 80,000 views this year, and the CMCC had more than 6,000 views. Both are important resources for professional researchers in Oregon and beyond, and provide open-source scholarly content for the public.
The Historic Plastics Database will take advantage of the existing platform and audience to serve a growing interest in the study of historic plastics.
Outside experts expected to contribute to the project include Kimberly Wooten, a California-based archaeologist who teaches workshops and classes on historic plastics. Wooten said the new digital database will give researchers the opportunity to “tackle an archaeological issue in real time.”
“The interest in the history and archaeology of plastics never stops surprising me, and with each class we teach, demand only continues to grow,” Wooten said.
“Plastic really is the artifact of the modern era – people can see their own archaeological footprint in plastic artifacts – and at the same time it’s a reflection of the shape of things that have come before us. I can’t wait to share the online historic plastic database at my next workshop.”
The new archive will help archaeologists and researchers to identify and interpret plastic artifacts, to date sites more accurately and to explore more nuanced questions about how the growing commercialization of plastic items changed daily life with cheap, mass-produced consumer products.
Early celluloid, for instance, mimicked expensive natural materials. Later, when the versatility of synthetic materials was fully embraced, there was an explosion of colorful and creatively-shaped Bakelite jewelry that is now highly sought-after.
The SOULA project was awarded one of 20 grants totaling $300,000 that were announced this week by Oregon Heritage, a division of Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. Six of the grants were awarded in the “Diamonds in the Rough” category to help restore the historic character of properties. The other 14 grants were in the “Preserving Oregon” category for properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places and for archaeology projects.
More information about the grant program is available on the Oregon Heritage website.
-SOU-