Fall Semester Intern Projects

Intern Abigale Fischer retrieves artifacts from object storage.

The Division of Cultural Resources would like to welcome our newest interns, Abigale Fischer, Bruce Spadaccini, and Peter Blasevick.

Fischer, a Drew University Anthropology major, is working with the Native American artifacts within the Lloyd W. Smith Collection. Her project entails a collection wide inventory/analysis of the Native American collection.--a first for this collection. This project will help give the park a more comprehensive understanding of the collection, provide cataloging information, and give insight into the NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) issues involved. Items in this collection include utensils, arrowheads, tools, funerary objects, and pipes among other things.

Bruce Spadaccini and Peter Blasevick, History majors from William Paterson University, are conducting a joint research project pertaining to non-serving Continental Congress electees. The team will work to digest the 90 individuals elected who did not serve in the two Continental Congresses, and those papers housed in the Lloyd W. Smith Collection which pertain to the non-serving individuals. Their digesting project entails summarizing an extensive number of manuscripts and annotating them with relevant historical context.