Excavated more than 50 years ago, the Grissom site (45KT301) has yielded a collection of tens of thousands of artifacts housed in 60 archival boxes. Pieced together across several field seasons by dozens of students, the Grissom collection contains many uncertainties. Though many of these were addressed through a rehabilitation of the collection in the mid-2000s and a thesis exploring the history of the investigation, students wishing to complete research on this collection still face a variety of unique challenges, including unclear labels, misfiled artifacts, and compounding transcription errors. Through the work of six students totaling over 300 hours of lab time, many of these issues were identified, articulated, and addressed. This poster summarizes some of the specific concerns one might face when conducting research on collections such as Grissom and discusses how problems were anticipated and addressed, where errors occurred, and how to better prevent such mistakes in the future. The practices discussed here will be useful to any researcher tackling a collection of a similar scale and history and provide a better understanding of how to make the most of a collection and protect it for future use
