7th December 2006, 12:17 PM
I believe that the Surrey Museums Service looked into similar ideas last year. They were thinking of not actually discarding the material, but sort of "archiving" it underground (ie. reburial). The proposals were rejected fairly quickly is seem to remember. I also agree with Tile Man that nothing should be discarded without the appropriate qualified specialist input, which really should be done at the point of discovery (or during specialist post-ex analysis, obviously).
You asked for our feelings Magpie. Personally I feel this is a dangerous road to go down. I realise there are chronic storage problems across the country, but I don't think that accepting the principl of wholesale disposal is an appropriate answer. Once the precedent has been set for throwing archaeological material away, it will be used as an excuse to not address the wider problems of the under-funding of museums and lack of direction as to where the sector is going and what it exists for. It will also damage the educational remit of museums and they'd run the risk of becoming more like art galleries. Would the disposal criteria apply to pottery from the same assemblage that was equally "not worth keeping" academically, but just happened to look nice? Do we start to make judgements that no-one will want to look at things again simply because they aren't aesthetically pleasing? Etc., etc.
I think that as a profession we need to continue to heavily lobby the government for the appropriate levels of funding, strategic policy, and industry support, rather than be considering unsatisfactory alternatives in order to cover up for their inadequacies.
You asked for our feelings Magpie. Personally I feel this is a dangerous road to go down. I realise there are chronic storage problems across the country, but I don't think that accepting the principl of wholesale disposal is an appropriate answer. Once the precedent has been set for throwing archaeological material away, it will be used as an excuse to not address the wider problems of the under-funding of museums and lack of direction as to where the sector is going and what it exists for. It will also damage the educational remit of museums and they'd run the risk of becoming more like art galleries. Would the disposal criteria apply to pottery from the same assemblage that was equally "not worth keeping" academically, but just happened to look nice? Do we start to make judgements that no-one will want to look at things again simply because they aren't aesthetically pleasing? Etc., etc.
I think that as a profession we need to continue to heavily lobby the government for the appropriate levels of funding, strategic policy, and industry support, rather than be considering unsatisfactory alternatives in order to cover up for their inadequacies.