Abstract

The development of artifact processing and research laboratories for the National Historic Sites Service, Ottawa, began with a policy of self-developed expertise based on the apparent shortage of qualified personnel for dealing with much of the portable material recovered from sites dating primarily from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Such a self-developmental approach requires a great deal of time and is thereby in conflict with the extant backlog of unanalyzed material. Nevertheless it would now appear to be meeting with some success in setting manageable standards of description and in supporting the Service's archaeologists. The future of this work lies with increasingly sophisticated analytical techniques coupled with much-needed field and documentary research.