The problem certainly here in Britain is that the problem of storage
facilities and cost is increasingly being foisted upon us. Rational culling
is increasingly a necessity and most US archaeologists would have their
minds blown by the sheer volume of tile a Roman urban site can produce.In
the past we depended on the charity of our museum network. Increasingly our
museums are underfunded and working in political environments where they are
having to justify having collections at all. Many of our city museums are
now in arts and leisure departments where the only criteria applied is
vistor figures and museums are competing against sports etc purely on those
grounds. Many museums are now desperate to shed their historic buildings and
reduce their collections to bring their budgets down. "Disposals" is the big
growth area. My own local museum service has gone from being internationally
reknowned to a basket case within 5 years. In this scenario we are
increasingly seeing disparate criteria on a local and regional level.
Certainly in some areas already there is nowhere to deposit archaeological
finds e.g. much of Northamptonshire where the largest museum now only
collects within its borough boundary after a century of county-wide
collection. One of the arguments we need to fight is that culture is just
not about the here and now but about the future. I always remember the film
"The Train" with Burt Lancaster where a French resistance group of train
workers who have never been in an art gallery sacrifice many lives to save a
train of famous paintings. In Britain it is a battle we are in danger of
losing.


----- Original Message -----
From: "amb110" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2000 2:15 PM
Subject: Re: culling artifacts


> Both sides of the artifact-culling argument have strong cases, and to a
> certain extent, I don't think it's helpful to apply overall strict
> models; this is the sort of decision that surely should be decided on a
> case by case basis.
>
> If I can just play advocatus diaboli for a moment to the below post (and
> this is me offering a considered point for debate rather than engaging
> in one of my occasional rants)...
>
> How do we know that the standards that we apply towards deciding which
> artefacts are representative and/or interesting will be the same
> standards that future archaeologists will apply towards making the same
> decisions?  Our discipline, after all, is not static and unchanging.  Is
> there not a risk that the choices we make when discarding finds will be
> considered misguided and mistaken in the future?  Perhaps more to the
> point, since future archaeologists will almost certainly regard a goodly
> portion of our research as misguided and mistaken (that, alas, is the
> nature of the beast), is it a risk we're prepared to take?  Just because
> a piece of undecorated whiteware is uninteresting to us doesn't mean it
> will necessarily be uninteresting to someone else in the future.
>
> As noted, this is not me taking a position on one side or another, but
> simply posing a question for debate.
>
>
>
> > Some how I missed the original message on culling artefacts, but having
read
> > the last two messages I feel I have to put my come forth with my
opinion.  I
> > have worked on both sides of the Pacific and am familiar with many
curation
> > facilities in the states and now here in Australia.  All facilities now
> > require a detailed catalogued of artefacts from a archaeological
> > investigation.  Why not just submit examples or a sample of each
artefact
> > type catalogued, not the whole collection.  How many fragments of
undecorated
> > whiteware do we need?  In this manner anyone who wishes to study the
> > collection can look at the artefact types submitted and determine the
> > criteria used by the original analyst.
>
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Alasdair Brooks
> Department of Archaeology
> University of York
> King's Manor
> York
> YO1 7EP
> England, UK
> phone: 01904 433931
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> "The Buffalo tastes the same on both sides of the border"
> Sitting Bull
>