The collection documents the history of anthropology and the world's peoples and cultures, and is used in indigenous language revitalization.
[1] In 1968, The NAA was formalized, incorporating the collections of the BAE, which focused on American Indians, as well as the papers of Smithsonian anthropology curators and other anthropologists who conduct research around the world.
[citation needed][3] The NAA is the only archival repository in the United States dedicated to preserving ethnographic, archaeological, and linguistic fieldnotes, physical anthropological data, photographs, sound recordings and other media created by American anthropologists.
[5] In 2010, the NAA received a Save America's Treasures grant to preserve manuscripts relating to 250 endangered languages.
[6] NAA photographs and manuscripts, including 8,200 pages of Cherokee language materials, have been scanned and are available online for research through SOVA, the Smithsonian's archival catalog.