Sitting at Heathrow on my way to Albuquerque...
 
On the deaccessioning issue: while keeping my own thoughts on the issue to myself, I thought it worth sharing that Ilka Schacht, a PhD candidate at Deakin University in Australia, and one of the archaeology curators at the Museum of Archaeology in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), is in the final stages of completing her PhD on assessing the significance of historical archaeology artefact collections held by storage facilities in Australia.  By the very nature of Australian historical archaeology, these collections are almost entirely 19th and 20th century.
 
Assessing significance is, of course, not quite the same thing as deaccessioning, but the two issues are closely related, and I imagine that many people dealing with the curation of more recent archaeological collections - no matter which country they live in - will be interested in Ilka's research.
 
I'd be happy to supply her UAE contact details to anyone interested, but please contact me off-list.
 
Alasdair Brooks