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American Antiquity
RESOLVING THE CRISIS IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS CURATION1982 •
Professionai archaeologists in America seem to have reached a consensus that systematic archaeological collections are vital to current and future comparative research. Current repositories are inadequately designed and insufficiently funded. Minimally, a repository must be housed in a safe, sturdy, secure building equipped to handle curation and conservation as well as special storage functions. It must include areas for collections study and have an effective information storage/retrieval system. It must have a qualified professional staff. While initial processing of materials may be accounted for in research budgets, long-term (in perpetuity) curatorial maintenance charges may be best defrayed by interest income from funds invested by the repository. We argue that there is a critical need for the acceptance of responsibility, the development of guidelines, and the realistic assessment of costs for adequate curation of archaeological collections in the United States.
Advances in Archaeological Practice
A Checklist for Sustainable Management of Archaeological Collections2017 •
All archaeological investigations, whether for cultural resources management (CRM) or academic research, result in the creation of a collection that the profession is ethically bound to preserve for future research, interpretation, and education. A collection may be both artifacts and associated records (e.g., field notes, photographs, and data) or just associated records when no artifacts are recovered. In either case, their care and long-term management require resources of time, money, and labor, which have not been broadly forthcoming since the significant influx of collections began in the United States with the ABSTRACT The discipline of archaeology has been tolerating, at best, a "curation crisis" for decades that is unsustainable. The many issues related to long-term collections care continue to worsen. To counter this trend, we advocate that planning for collections be integrated into project administration from inception such that the management of archaeological collections begins before fieldwork and continues well after recovered collections reach the repository. To conceptualize this process, we identify the Collection Management Cycle as a framework for the many stakeholders involved in archaeological projects. We also provide a checklist that identifies the responsibilities stakeholders have to the collections they generate, fund, care for, manage, and/or study. Concerted use of the checklist and other proposed solutions will lead to a new era of a more sustainable archaeological practice. Durante décadas, la disciplina de la arqueología ha tolerado, en el mejor de los casos, una "crisis de curación" que es insostenible. Los muchos problemas relacionados con el cuidado a largo plazo de las colecciones continúan empeorando. Para contrarrestar esta tendencia, proponemos que la planificación de las colecciones sea integrada en la administración del proyecto desde el comienzo, de tal forma que el manejo de las colecciones arqueológicas comience antes del trabajo de campo y continúe después de que las colecciones recuperadas lleguen al depósito. Para conceptualizar este proceso, identificamos el ciclo de administración de la colección como un marco para los muchos depositarios involucrados en los proyectos arqueológicos. Además, proveemos una lista de verificación que identifica las responsabilidades de los depositarios respecto a las colecciones que generan, financian, cuidan, gestionan y estudian. El uso conjunto de la lista de verificación y otras soluciones propuestas conducirá a una nueva era de prácticas arqueológicas más sostenibles. enactment of state and federal historic preservation laws in the 1960s and 1970s. Inadequate, unsecure storage space, shortage of professional curatorial staff, poor accessibility to collections for research and other uses, and orphaned collections 1 are some of the many problems identified as part of the curation crisis besieging the United States (e.g.,
1996 •
Lipe, William D. 1996. In Defense of Digging: Archeological Preservation as a Means, Not an End. CRM 19(7): 23-27
Heritage Management
From the Guest Editor The Dollars and Sense of Managing Archaeological Collections2010 •
Archaeological collections, including artifacts, associated records and reports , are part of the irreplaceable and nonrenewable archaeological record, yet are often threatened. Sometimes a collection is never taken out of the original field bags and either decays in those containers or the labels on the bags disappear. With the provenience information lost, the research value of the collection is greatly reduced. Sometimes a collection is properly bagged, labeled, and boxed using archival quality containers, but those containers are stored in a garage or under a stairway in a university building for "safekeep-ing. " Instead, the collection becomes lost or abandoned by the original investigator who goes out of business, changes universities, retires, or passes away. Sometimes a collection makes it to a repository in good condition, but the repository does not have the resources to maintain its upkeep through inventory , inspection, and conservation. That collection then becomes less accessible for exhibit, research, resource management, interpretation, education, and heritage uses. These are just a few of the scenarios of loss and inaccessibility that often occur due to the significant costs to recover and manage archaeological collections in perpetuity. These costs are generally poorly understood and seldom budgeted for, a chronic problem across the globe (e.g., Mabulla 1996; Perrin 2009). For years, archaeologists rarely covered the expenses of long-term curation, including cataloging, conservation, and packaging, in their field project budgets and expected museums to take on those responsibilities and related costs (Sonderman 2004; Sullivan and Childs 2003; Swain 2007). In the US, museums and repositories actually curated a large number of collections for free, especially collections owned by government agencies, up through the 1980s and 90s (e.g., Collins et al., this volume). They did so in exchange for full access to the collections for exhibit, research, and teaching. When federal and state historic preservation laws were enacted in the 1970s, the number of collections recovered began to sharply increase. Regulations for the curation of federal collections, "Curation of Federally-Owned and Administered Archeological Collections" (36 CFR 79), also were promulgated to improve standards of federal collections care. Subsequently, repositories
Advances in Archaeological Practice
A Long View of Archaeological Collections Care, Preservation, and Management2019 •
Collections care practices have become professionalized in the last 30 years, in large part because of the work of organizations such as the American Alliance of Museums, the Canadian Conservation Institute, the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, the American Institute for Conservation, and others in the museum sphere. Advances in preservation and management have benefited the discipline of archaeology in the field and laboratory. This thematic issue provides an updated perspective on the current happenings in the repository, highlighting innovative techniques and practices that collections specialists employ when managing the archaeological record. This article considers a macroview of the issues surrounding archaeological curation today and ponders what the future of collections preservation can and should look like.
Advances in Archaeological Practice
Refining Archaeological Data Collection and ManagementABSTRACTMost archaeological investigations in the United States and other countries must comply with preservation laws, especially if they are on government property or supported by government funding. Academic and cultural resource management (CRM) studies have explored various social, temporal, and environmental contexts and produce an ever-increasing volume of archaeological data. More and more data are born digital, and many legacy data are digitized. There is a building effort to synthesize and integrate data at a massive scale and create new data standards and management systems. Taxpayer dollars often fund archaeological studies that are intended, in spirit, to promote historic preservation and provide public benefits. However, the resulting data are difficult to access and interoperationalize, and they are rarely collected and managed with their long-term security, accessibility, and ethical reuse in mind. Momentum is building toward open data and open science as well as Ind...
Society for California Archaeology
Don't Keep Everything: A Historic Artifacts Discard Policy (Co-author, Julia Costello)2002 •
Do archaeologists really need to keep every object we dig up? We suggest not. This article contains the rudiments of a discard policy that may just help the curation crisis from deepening.
Archäologische Denkmalpflege
Against retention in situ. How to best preserve archaeology for 'future generations'. Archäologische Denkmalpflege 2018/02/11, 21-51.2018 •
Archaeological heritage management has long been based on a preference for the principle of preservation of archaeology in situ. While this principle is sound in theory, in practice, we frequently only achieve mere retention in situ: the archaeology is left where it is, unexcavated and unrecorded, but is not actually protected against most of the real and present dangers it faces. The situation is made worse by the fact that many of our heritage management laws, policies, and practices have made the principle of 'leaving it unexcavated' a disciplinary dogma, especially so in Austria and Germany. Instead of realistically assessing the likely future fates of archaeology merely retained in situ, any kind of archaeological fieldwork, whether invasive or non-invasive, is treated as undesirable by the national and state heritage agencies, even if conducted to professional standards. In this paper, I demonstrate that retention in situ does not lead to the best possible preservation of archaeology for future generations, but rather leads to near-total loss of most archaeology, especially archaeology in places where it is never threatened by development. I also demonstrate that the only real means of preserving archaeology as long as possible is not to retain in in situ, but to excavate as much and as rapidly as possible any archaeology which cannot actually be preserved in situ. By increasing the amount that is excavated, the likely gains in archaeological information saved from total loss is massive and would benefit the study of archaeology immensely. It is thus argued in this paper that there is an urgent need for significant change in archaeological heritage management law, policy, and practice. Since we cannot increase the amount we excavate arbitrarily due to the limited resources available to us, better preservation by professional record can only be achieved by training as many members of the interested public in archaeological skills. Once having received such training, anyone who wants to should be encouraged and given license to excavate any archaeology which cannot currently only be retained, but not actively preserved, in situ.
2023 •
İslamiyet'in Kabulünden Sonra ki Eğitim MEB by İngilizce Sefa Sezer
İslamiyet'in Kabulünden Sonra ki Eğitim MEB by İngilizce Sefa Sezer2018 •
A Proteção da Pessoa Humana: Temas Emergentes
A Proteção da Pessoa Humana: Temas Emergentes2023 •
Population Studies
A survival analysis of the last great European plagues: The case of Nonantola (Northern Italy) in 16302018 •
2022 •
Frontiers in public health
COVID-19 vaccine intercountry distribution inequality and its underlying factors: a combined concentration index analysis and multiple linear regression analysis2024 •
Indian pediatrics
Prognostic value of early vs late steroid resistance in idiopathic nephrotic syndrome2006 •
International journal of humanities & social studies
Risk Taking Attitude: Relations with Executive Functions and Sensation Seeking among a Section of Egyptian Adolescents2023 •
International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Effects of Cadmium Stress on Bacterial and Fungal Communities in the Whitefly Bemisia tabaciChild Autonomy and Child Governance in Children's Literature
Finding the Spaces Within: Picturebooks and Child Agency