In message <[log in to unmask]>, Automatic digest processor
<[log in to unmask]> writes
In message , chris rohe <[log in to unmask]> writes
>My name is Tammy and I am a first year graduate student at University of
>Arkansas.  I'm getting an early start on my thesis which is:  To keep or not
>to keep, the de-accession of artifacts.

Dear Tammy,

This is an acute problem here, too.  Our land and build prices are so
much higher, that it's been studied for some time - for example one of
my fellow students when I was at the Institute of Archaeology
(University of London) in the mid 80s wrote her MA Thesis on this topic.
An international comparison might highlight some key features of the US
situation - or do ethics and legalities differ between states?

Rachel Perkins, of the Natural History Museum (in London, England) has
been volunteering with Surrey Museums Consultative Committee, and is
putting together for us a literature review on non-human reburial (i.e.
not looking at the issues of reburial of people, but of the reburial of
other excavated material as a method of storage).

A major source is Hayley Bullock's MA dissertation 'Reburial: a method
of storage' (Durham, 1997).

If anyone would like access to Rachel's research, please let me know,
and I'll discuss with her the possibility of putting it up on our
website.

We hope, from this research, to develop county policy guidance on object
reburial (we already have policy guidance on the reburial of humans).
If anyone has a policy on non-human reburial which they could share with
us, I'd be delighted to receive it.

With best wishes to all,

Pat

Pat Reynolds
Surrey Museums Development Officer
(a county about to be buried under its own archaeological archives)

--
Pat Reynolds
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   "It might look a bit messy now, but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Pratchett)