Fellow HistArchers:
I appreciate Alasdair's comment that we cannot foresee what might be
important years down the road, hence discarding any collections could,
in hindsight, prove ill-advised and possibly immensely stupid. My
argument, however, is that we already make those kinds of irreversible
decisions every time we deem a site insignificant and undeserving of
preservation or intensive study.

Discarding collections from sites lacking integrity would allow us to
focus resources on those sites and assemblages of demonstrated value, or
at least of potential value. One probably could squeeze some useful
information out of just about any artifact or collection of artifacts
and other data recovered from the field, but sites lacking integrity
probably will render most of their useful information through standard
reporting and inventorying of finds.

Jim Gibb
Annapolis, MD  USA