Stephen, Mark

About the "ECM" storage in your messages below, we actually are utilizing
them for that purpose in St. Louis.  The principal problem, however, is
humidity control.  In the high humidity of the Midwest, the concrete
"sweats" excessively, and except for the initial price being 'right', I'd
think in the long run it might be more economical to utilize a facility
designed for records stroage, rather than trying to retro-fit an ECM.

dave browman

On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Austin, Stephen P SWF wrote:

> You are correct in that the ECMs (earth covered magazines or sometimes
> "igloos) at Wingate were considered for "artifact storage."  Incorrect in
> that there was not a financial issue.  Climate control, accessibility of the
> facility, the ability to manage and retrieve material from a thousand
> separate ECMs, the cost of transferring material to Gallup, staffing costs,
> environmental cleanup costs, addition of sprinkler systems (including the
> laying of miles of water and water return lines), and ultimately - who would
> pay for all of this?  The first offer (by the law) of these facilities
> closed as part of BRAC was to other Federal agencies.  None stepped forward
> for reuse as curation facilities.  The next offer must be to a local
> redevelopment agency.  Part of Wingate is going to the redevelopment
> authority, part is (supposedly) going to BLM, and part is currently being
> used by BMDO as a test launch facility.  Wingate is not the only facility
> that was closed that the NPS could have jumped on if they really wanted to
> store material, there was the Detroit tank plant at one million square feet
> in one building, the excess Savanna (IL) Army Depot (another facility with
> ECMs), Seneca (NY) Army Depot (also ECMs), and others with just warehouses
> and other buildings such as Lexington (KY) Depot, Jefferson (IN) Proving
> Ground,  or the Indiana Ammunition Plant.  All came with a cost for
> conversion and no Federal agency would step forward with a plan for curation
> in these facilities. The facilities are typically more productive as local
> redevelopment projects for manufacturing and other uses.  Now, if some
> enterprising person (like yourself) wanted to contact the local
> redevelopment authority and propose a business development use of these
> facilities as an artifact curation facility, have the capital to do all of
> the modifications required to make the facility meet the conditions of
> 36CFR79, and get a commitment from Federal agencies to send the material to
> this repository (probably at the objection of individual states), you may
> actually be able to pull it off.
>
> Stephen P. Austin
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Henderson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 12:06 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Culling & Selling artifacts
>
>
> "Dendy, John" wrote:
> >
> > Okay, just a reminder, anything done under an ARPA permit or in lieu of an
> > ARPA permit or financerd by the federal government requires the "in
> > perpetuity" curation and compliance with 36 CFR 79. Selling, culling, etc.
> > cannot be permitted. Selective accession is about as far as anyone can go
> > legally. We can, of course, limit our collection strategies, but our
> > excavations must adhere to ARPA regs.
> >
> > John Dendy
>
> I believe there is another often used (abused?) method of culling ARPA
> materials found in 43 CFR 7.33 "Determination of loss or absence of
> archaeological interest." This process takes place routinely (although
> possibly not with strict adherence to the letter of the regulations)
> when remaining archeological resources are damaged or destroyed after
> archeological treatment has taken place.  My experience has been that
> the lithic materials, glass and metal left after "treatment" projects
> are sometimes substantial.  I have occaisionally been quizzed about this
> by development project employees who wonder why the archeologists left
> arrowheads, bottles and other "collectibles" on their completed
> projects.  This is of course different from items that were targets for
> collection, but were missed during treatment.
>         On a slightly different tangent, I think there is often a
> presumption
> that we don't have storage space, based on economics, when we have
> actually not activated ourselves on some opportunities to expand storage
> capacity.  The military in the US has surplused thousands of war
> material storage bunkers that by my reckoning have great potential for
> archeological material bulk storage.  We have not lobbied effectively
> for archeological adaptive re-use of these largely WWII and Cold War era
> facilities as part of a National Repository System.  Over 12 years ago
> for example some of us thought that Wingate Army Depot near Gallup New
> Mexico with nearly 1,000 bunkers might make an ideal regional repository
> as part of a National Archeological Repository system.  The major
> obstacle I believe was not financial but conceptual.  That is the
> established archeological interests saw this as a threat to the current
> system of research repositories.  I perhaps very naively, believe that
> there was, and maybe still is, opportunity to convert some of these
> facilities as storage repositories, if there was consensus in the
> archeological community that this was a reasonable idea.  The
> establishment didn't like it for reasons that I can expand on if this
> post promotes further discussion.  Let me say that I believe there were
> Congressmen that would have been very supportive if they had seen
> concensus. -Mark
> Mark Henderson
> Ely, Nevada
>