Subj: De-Accessioning, Not
Date: 98-05-10 17:48:47 EDT
From: mkodack@icon-stl.net (Marc Kodack)
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Federal archaeological collections are not going to be de-accessioned despite what Ned Heite may think. First, there is no legal way to de-accession either archaeological resources or the associated documentation recovered from federal fee-title lands or generated as a result of federally funded work. In 1990, the National Park Service, the agency given the responsibility to write 36 CFR 79, proposed a rule in the Federal Register for de-accessioning bulk materials. The rule never has been revised and been re-published in final form. Unless the NPS rewrites the rule, federal agencies must properly curate the archaeological materials and associated documents in repositories that can properly care for those collections. In addition to the legal requirements, federal agencies are also supposed to preserve their collections for the benefit of the American public. They can do this by using the collections in educational programs. The only parts of federal archaeological collections that are potentially being removed from federal ownership are those human skeletal remains and objects covered by NAGPRA.

De-accessioning of non-federal archaeological collections are dependent on the specific policies of each institution. There is no national repository de-accessioning policy so that the end result is the mass disposal of non-federal archaeological collections. Each repository would have to make its own decisions on what or what not to deaccession. Why is de-accessioning the only alternative to address the continue increase in the quantity of archaeological collectiosn that are being generated?

Several states, including Maryland (the MAC lab in St. Leonard) and Virginia (Department of Historic Resources in partnership with the Virginia Histroical Society), have managed to raise funds, both public and private, to create new curation spaces, part of which are used to house archaeological collections. While these two states are in the minority with repect to actually finishing their bricks and mortar projects, almost every repository my office has visited in the last two years (57 mostly in the west, but also in Georgia, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia) as part of a project to identify at least one partner to curate Department of Defense archaeological collections in each state, has presented plans for additions or new repositories. If any of these plans will result in actual constuction is unknown, but at least people are thinking about non-disposal solutions to the curation crisis.

There is no data to support the wholesale and evitable disposal of archaeolgoical collections based on the data we collected and are collecting. Where is your data Ned? What institutions have you spoken to that have said that they will dispose of their non-federal archaeological collections when space runs out?

Marc Kodack
mkodack@icon-stl.net

Subj: Re: De-Accessioning, Not
Date: 98-05-10 19:47:34 EDT
From: hathaway@sover.net (Allen Hathaway)
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I should probably stay out of this, being an undergrad student in archaeology, but I can support Ned's position on two counts.

First, in my home state, Vermont, there are no state or federal facilities for accessioning collections to start with, which probably prompted Giovanna Peebles' recent "survey" of curation facilities and fees in this list. The closest we come is a privately owned and funded university, The University of Vermont (UVM) which accessions collections through their Consulting Acrhaeology Program (CAP). Interestingly enough, CAP just presented a new video they have produced on flint knapping at the spring Vermont Archaeological Society (VAS) meeting a few weeks ago. At that presentation, they stated their intent to distribute unprovenienced artifacts with the video to selected schools. I'm no expert, but that sounds suspiciously like de-accessioning to me. Second, there may be legitimate reasons for de-accessioning certain portions of collections. I recently worked on an excavation of a 19th century blacksmith shop where we dug up several hundred pounds of slag, rusty iron fragments, and brick fragments. Again, I'm no expert, but I can't see where more than a sample of that collection is going to provide any less information than several hundred pounds would (providing the several hundred pounds was documented). The same would go for a Native American quarry site I recently worked on. We excavated several hundred pounds of primary and secondary reduction flakes, along with some tools and other materials. How many hundreds of pounds of flakes does it take to say, "Yup, it's a quarry with primary and secondary reduction areas"?

I would say, as an unquaified undergrad student who doesn't know better, that the issue of de-accessioning is a real and debateable matter. It would seem that some repositories, intentionally or accidentally, de-accession material by losing proveniences or otherwise dispositioning the material for other uses (trading or selling collections, using them for tests or educational purposes, etc.) Other repositories could probably de-accession a lot of "junk" that provides no real information to the archaeological record, other than that it exists. I think the problem of de-accessioning needs to be looked at and discussed in much better depth than to simply dismiss it as a non-issue.

Otherwise, what will have become of the collections, and the cost of curating them, when I become a grad student and need them for my thesis?

Subj: Re: De-Accessioning, Not
Date: 98-05-10 21:31:57 EDT
From: mkodack@icon-stl.net (Marc Kodack)
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Allen Hathaway brings up a crucial point; do we need redundant kinds of information derived from the archaeological records such as "slag, rusty iron fragments, and brick fragments." I would argue that is not up to the repository to decide what to de-accession, but the burden should be on the archaeologist to justify why they are collecting so much of these materials in the first place. In order to minimize the archaeological data that is presented to a repository for long-term curation, we should (1) spend considerably more time doing land use research prior to ever stepping out into the field to try to identify areas where fieldwork in a project makes little sense; (2) incorporate into the research design probability sampling supplemented by intuitive sampling when it makes sense to do so that sampling errors can be calculated with confidence; and (3) get the NPS to issue in final form the de-accession regulation so that bulk samples in existing federal collections can be sampled then discarded.