pdurdin Wrote:There is, of course, a fundamental problem with this: nobody can know what might turn up tomorrow/next week/next year/next decade and prove that Thing X, which Mr. Chartered Archaeologist decided wasn't worth keeping, actually would've been really handy to keep...
Reminds me of a that cupboard full of empty jam jars that might come in handy one day, ignoring the usefulness of the cupboard space taken up by empty jam jars for the past ten years. This type of behaviour is called hoarding and in its extreme form leaves people with rubbish dumps in their houses. If there is a reason to keep something for the possibility of future research then by all means put forward a cohesive argument for it but saying that something unknown may well happen in the future is no reason to keep everything, it just can't be done, museums are already stopping deposits because they are too full. Despite this I had one museum advise me to keep flowerpot because the report would apparently not make sense without all the finds. This went against there own guidelines on disposal.