The comparatively recent and rapid expansion of museum studies, accompanied by increased work in the history of collecting (Impey and Macgregor), offers a fertile ground for examining the origins of several disciplines including archaeology. Historians of anthropology not only were among the first to recognize this fact, they also gave currency to the expression "museum period" to characterize an early stage in that field's nascence (Sturtevant 1969, Stocking 1985). Of course nearly all disciplines relying on the study and interpretation of material objects have passed through their own museum periods. But the historiographers of those other disciplines are only beginning to appreciate the full import of the relations which linked museums with research and pedagogy throughout most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Scholars researching art history's emergence have started probing the role of museums in it - a project which includes the archaeology of the classical world (Smyth and Lukehart 1993). Researchers are just now extending this work to the ancient near east Despite American anthropology's kinship with Americanist archaeology, the historiography of anthropology has not given much attention to the inter-animations of museums and archaeology in the Americas. In other words, there are many opportunities for investigating the place of art, "natural" history, and other types of museums in the collecting, taxonomy, and interpretation of archaeological finds.