Research & Collections

Harriet Alonso began working with embroidery in 1974. Influenced by the imagery of political posters, she soon used the medium to express her ideas about the causes she was passionate about, including women’s rights, educational equality, and peac...

Archaeologists can glean a tremendous amount of information from soil sediments collected at archaeological sites. Pollen grains, phytoliths, seeds, and other remnant plant material can survive for thousands of years below ground under the right c...

Inspired by the path-breaking beadwork artistry of Gahano (Caroline Parker Mt. Pleasant, Tonawanda Seneca), Ken Williams Jr.’s hand stitched silk and beaded bag pays tribute to the artistry of Seneca and Haudenosaunee beadwork in every detail. Fro...

Over the years, the NYSM has received donations of some very large archaeological collections numbering hundreds of thousands of specimens, but small collections can also be important accessions. Born in 1909, Roger McVaugh grew up on his parents’...

Over the years, the NYSM has received donations of some very large archaeological collections numbering hundreds of thousands of specimens, but small collections can also be important accessions. Born in 1909, Roger McVaugh grew up on his parents’...

The State Archives, State Museum, and State Library are among the largest repositories of documents, artifacts, furniture, and decorative arts from the 17th century colonial Dutch settlements in what became New York. Join Dr. Charles Geh...

Challenges in science often require solutions from across various disciplines and involve collaborations between diverse agencies. A recent agreement between the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) and Arconic to prote...

Ann Lee founded the first communal settlement of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, commonly known as the Shakers, in Watervliet New York in 1776. Lee died in 1784 but the community she established continued until 1915. ...

The NYSM Historical Archaeology Collections now includes artifacts from the 2014, 2015 and 2016 excavations at the Lake George Battlefield Park in Lake George, New York. David Starbuck, who conducted the first professional archaeology in the park&...

NYSM Ethnology Collections featured artist, Karen Ann Hoffman, is a recipient of a 2020 NEA National Heritage Fellowship! (National Endowment for the Arts press release) Karen Ann Hoffman, enrolled member of the Oneida Nation (Wisconsin) is an ...

One sub-discipline within cultural anthropology is the medical anthropology, or the focus on how humans think of medicine, illness and practice health and well-being. Today's artwork from NYSM Ethnology collections recognizes Indigenous medicinal ...

The New York State Museum, in collaboration with the Open Space Institute and Stockbridge Munsee Mohican Tribal Preservation Office, recently completed a controlled surface artifact collection and a magnetic susceptibility survey (MS) at the locat...

In July and September 2019, NYSM archaeologists and volunteers conducted their fifth season of excavations at the OPS Paleoindian site in Madison County. Discovered in 2015, the OPS site has yielded stone fluted points of the Crowfield "style," in...

When a historic unmarked cemetery was found during construction in Lake George, New York last winter, it was presumed to date to the mid-18th century French and Indian War. The discovery of a regimental button from the First Pennsylvania Battalion...

Archaeologists from the New York State Museum and the University of Albany completed two collaborative field schools in Historical Archaeology at the Ten Broeck Mansion, located in Albany, NY's Arbor Hill neighborhood during the summers of 2017 an...

In June 2015, avocational archaeologists Mike Beardsley and Mark Clymer were surveying for Native American archaeological sites on farm property owned by Tom and Joyce Bush in central New York. Walking across their fields, Mike spied a large scrap...

This fall State Museum scientists will join staff from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and Cornell University to conduct fieldwork into the Ice Age landscape of the Ithaca, NY area. The scientists will...

The museum's curator of historical archaeology, Michael Lucas, and project manager of The Archaeology of Slavery in the Hudson Valley, is featured in the Winter 2018-19 issue of American Archaeology in an article entitled, The End of Slavery in Ne...

Historical archaeology is a multidisciplinary field combining written historical records with archaeological data to study places, objects and issues of the past. In North America, historical archaeology begins with European colonization. One of t...

 “Community and Continuity: Native American Art of New York,” an exhibition at The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, featuring selections from the New York State Museum’s collections of contemporary Native American Art and archeo...