The ultimate historical importance of this topic must lie in the part it plays in an assessment of the role played by European technology in the British conquest of India. The results of eleven years work on the mass of military historical information and technical data in the East India Company records will appear in a forthcoming book intended as a tool in making such an assessment. This summary outlines the categories of smallarms which archaeologists might expect to find on the wreck sites of English East Indiamen, and then offers a specific example of how a smallarm has helped to identify a wreck.

Three years ago, the Section of Anthropology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to rehouse its 1.5-million-specimen archaeological collection. The entire Anthropology collection was affected by the movement of the archaeology material, and required additional attention. With a staff of two people, a conservator, and a host of wonderful volunteers and interns, the security and accessibility of the collections were greatly enhanced through the creation of custom housing for a variety of objects, including pottery, textiles, spears, bows and arrows, saddles, etc. This poster shows a sampling of the storage upgrades that resulted from this intense project.