The question posed a couple of weeks ago about the curation of
     artifacts from historical archeological sites prompted me to ask
     Doreen Cooper, at Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, what
     they had been doing about culling their artifact collections. I had
     done quite a bit of work at Klondike in the late 1970s and early
     1980s, and had wrestled with the question myself. A few days ago, I
     posted Doreen's reply to help the original inquirer decide what to
     cull and what to keep.
 
     Apparently Doreen's reply and my sending it on has caused some alarm
     amongst archeologists who work with collections and curators in the
     National Park Service. I'd like to set the record straight.
 
     Neither Doreen nor I were talking about artifacts that had been
     catalogued into a park's collection. Once an item has been catalogued,
     the NPS curates, maintains, and cares for that item. We were
     responding only to a question about decisions made during or
     immediately after field investigations on what to cull before
     artifacts were catalogued into a collection and curated.
 
     When we in the National Park Service speak of cataloguing, we refer to
     a specific process that sets up a system of accountability and
     ownership of items in a park's collection. A park will usually have
     many types of items in its collection, only some of which come from
     archeological investigations. Because the artifacts from a historical
     archeological project can generate enormous collections, some culling
     policy is usually (rightfully) developed to make sure we keep what has
     to be kept, and dispose of those items that have very limited future
     research potential and are very difficult to curate. Undiagnostic
     "tin" can fragments come to mind immediately.
 
     In all cases, Doreen (and I as well, when I was doing field work)
     recorded salient characteristics of artifacts before they were
     disposed of. Disposal was taken care of in a way that did not
     compromise either future research at the site, or future archeological
     endeavors at the place of disposal. The descriptions were entered into
     a database that noted that the artifact had been disposed of before
     the collection was catalogued. The database is archived and curated as
     part of the documentation of the project.
 
     I hope this clarifies NPS policy on cataloguing and culling of
     artifacts. NPS does not ordinarilly cull items from catalogued
     collections.