Revitalizing Legacy Biblical Archaeology Collections The Case of the Oberlin Near East Study Collection

Biblical archaeology collections at colleges and universities are typically remnants of an earlier era of collecting and teaching. These collections nonetheless still hunker, dusty and underused, in many university closets today. What larger stories do their histories reveal, and what good are legacy teaching collections now? In this article a recent Oberlin College graduate and one of his college faculty mentors team up to address these questions and offer practical advice for revitalizing legacy biblical archaeology collections, using the Oberlin Near East Study Collection (ONESC) as a case study