Good points Tanya...especially about at least noting the presence of
'modern' material...that would indicate disturbance (or perhaps rodent
nesting material).

My concern with dumping "non-diagnostic" frags like bottle body
frags...or marine shell (prehistoric sites)...or especially debitage
[sorry for including non-historic examples]...is that I have seen too
many cases (and haven't even seen 1% of all the collections found in San
Diego Co. alone) where materials have been MISS-identified!!!  So, if
these bulk items get discarded prior to curation...HOW do we know they
were correctly ID'd?  Not that anyone at the curation facility is
verifying their ID tho.  I don't know how to solve the storage problem.

Often times 'brown' bottle glass gets called "modern beer bottle" on the
field level sheets, when in fact, in the Lab...it turns out to have
characteristics indicating it is not 'modern'...

I'm not sure how to best resolve the issue, like a curation facility
wanting to only keep a representative sample of the marine shell
taxa...and discard the rest to free up shelf space. Or, how CA St. Parks
doesn't care about saving any tejas or ladrillo fragments, since these
tiles are too bulky.  I personally hate throwing out anything (well, ok,
masses of corroded ferrous blobs...I have no problem discarding), since
there might be potential...some day...to find out More about the items.

I'm definitely against discarding stone debitage...unless it is 100%
certified that it has been ID'd correctly (but Who does this?).  This
debris is often the only thing that can tell us WHAT was made at the
site, if no tools were left behind.  But, contrary to how so many Pis
think, a minimally trained "Lab monkey" isn't going to know how to
properly ID this material...so, it shouldn't be discarded as
non-diagnostic 'stuff'.

Will step off my soapbox now.  :o)

Carol Serr
Jones & Stokes
CRM Lab Director
9903 Businesspark Ave. * San Diego  CA  92131-1120
858-578-8964  *  FAX 858-578-0578
[log in to unmask]  www.jonesandstokes.com

 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On 
>Behalf Of Tanya A. Faberson
>Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2006 10:25 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: curation of hazardous materials
>
>I agree with you regarding the problems associated with 
>curating high volume artifacts such as window glass, lumps of 
>unidentifiable metal, and undiagnostic machine-made container 
>glass. However, I think we should be wary of dismissing 
>artifacts that are identified as dating to the twentieth 
>century as "less significant." They seem less significant to 
>some historical archaeologists because they are "too recent" 
>and/or are high volume "noise" that clutters the 
>archaeological record. Twentieth-century artifacts will be 
>very significant to some archaeologists in the future (think 
>of how many of us today work on "significant" nineteenth 
>century sites that were once deemed insignificant by 
>archaeologists in the early to mid-twentieth century), and 
>some of us are interested in twentieth century sites today 
>(just think.... trailer parks dating to the early 1950s are 
>now old enough for inclusion in the NRHP). 
>
>I think the focus in this debate should be on determining 
>whether curated undiagnostic machine-made container glass and 
>lumps of metal hold the potential for future researchers to 
>reinterpret or synthesize site data. I think a sample of these 
>items would be suffificient. I can say personally that if I 
>were going to use a site assemblage, for say, comparative 
>purposes, I would likely rely on the previous analysis for 
>their counts of undiagnostic container glass and 
>unidentifiable lumps of metal, and perhaps reanalyze the 
>artifacts with diagnostic traits if I was looking for 
>something in particular. I may look over some of the other 
>undiagnostic stuff to see what condition it's in, but I know I 
>wouldn't spend hours upon hours counting every piece of it. 
>Hence, I think a sample of it would be fine.
>
>I have also had to deal with encountering modern trash at 
>historic sites (Band-Aids, fast food wrappers, condom 
>wrappers, etc.), and although I don't feel that all of that 
>stuff should be curated, I definitely feel that stuff should 
>be counted and noted in the field.... AND discussed in the 
>report (i.e., "modern trash, such as a plastic twist tie and 
>bread wrapper, was observed on the ground surface, but was not 
>present in the shovel tests," or conversely, whether that 
>bread wrapper was encountered in the same shovel test pit as 
>pearlware sherds). Too many times I have seen situations where 
>the modern trash was encountered during shovel testing, but 
>for some reason did not end up being discussed in the report, 
>likely because it was "modern." Encountering modern trash 
>alongside historic materials can suggest that the integrity of 
>a site, or part of a site, has been compromised, and if 
>further work is going to be conducted on that site, I'm sure 
>any of us would want to know if there is a potential for mixed 
>deposits.
>
>Anyway, that's just my two cents on this Saturday afternoon...
>
>Cheers,
>Tanya 
>
>
>Tanya A. Faberson, Ph.D.
>Principal Investigator
>Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc.
>151 Walton Avenue
>Lexington, Kentucky 40508
>[log in to unmask]
>859-252-4737