Denis Gojak wrote:

>Or even judicious culling now and saving on storage space.

Best suggestion yet from Snowglojak. 

Said it before, will say it again... *careful* artifact culling is
essential before we drown in all those bottle bits and unidentifiable
scraps of iron. I made this suggestion a few years ago at an SHA roundtable
and to judge from the response you'd think I was advocating inter-species
marriage at the Vatican. 

Rant alert! Hit the delete key now.

At SSU's Archaeological Collections Facility we charge US$750 per 1.5 sq.
foot archive box to retain the materials *in perpetuity.* Almost all of the
stuff comes from CRM-related projects. This money goes into an untouchable
account and we use only the interest to pay a part-time curation manager to
take care of the stuff. As a longtime university employee and a former
museum board member I can tell you that these institutions only have an
interest in non-display quality artifacts as long as there is someone at
the institution to be an advocate for the materials. To steely-eyed
administrators, space is much more precious than bags of broken artifacts.
With the exception of those at major research institutions, I think that
archaeological collections without endowed/restricted funds behind them are
as in as much danger as a site in the path of a gravel quarry. 

I'd encourage archaeologists to ask what will happen to the money before
handing over their collections and curation fees. If the funds go to
current operating expenses, you might want to think twice about whether you
want to entrust your collections to that facility.

Ahhh. Now that feels much better!

Adrian Praetzellis
Sonoma State University