Lucy,
Thank you so much for your insight. I feel the same way. I have posted this same plea to the Registrar's list.
Marybeth
Marybeth S. F. Tomka, M.A., PS Cert CM
Head of Collections
TARL
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station R7500
Austin, Texas 78712
512-475-6853 direct line
512-232-6563 fax
512-471-5960 TARL main phone
www.utexas.edu/cola/tarl/
www.texasbeyondhistory.net
State Certified Repository
-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of MUSEUM-L automatic digest system
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2016 11:03 PM
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Subject: MUSEUM-L Digest - 8 Nov 2016 to 9 Nov 2016 (#2016-278)
There are 2 messages totaling 441 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. A Call for Gender Equity in the Museum Workplace
2. Criteria for acceptance of donations beyond scope of collections documents
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Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2016 17:16:19 -0800
From: Lucy Sperlin <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Criteria for acceptance of donations beyond scope of collections documents
Marybeth,
Since I see no other answers to your question yet, I'll weigh in with some of my thoughts, though I'm not sure this is what you are looking for.
There has long been a "no provenience = no acceptance" rule in the field.
One rationale was that it encouraged or rewarded 'pot hunters.'
That said, my personal experience and observation is that often these collections are offered by people who had no ill intent, and often they are able to be quite precise about the location the items came from. (I have one fellow who, for each artifact, gave me a photocopy of a portion of a USGS map with the spot pinpointed and other information about the location as well. (These surface collections - items picked up on his family's farm and he wanted to do the right thing.)
My inclination is that we should preserve these kinds of collections, even if we don't have exact vertical or horizontal locations for individual items. If someone comes along later to study the same site, the material may well be useful to them, even with gaps in exact provenience.
So I think that a document for accepting such collections (sorry, I don't have one) would be based on the potential for future researchers to learn anything from them, and certainly, while at least some provenience would be the norm, there might be exceptions even to that for some items. What comes to mind are, the more rare items or items that you can at least pin-point to a general location or tribal area. It's just a gut level feeling of mine that we preserve what we can, if it can be of any reasonably predicted to future scholarship. No use making matters worse and losing any more than we need to when so much is already lost in spite of our efforts.
That brings up another thought as well, that if it was material from an entire site for which provenience wasn't recorded, there might be portions of the collection that truly are not worth the effort to process and preserve because critical to their value would have been in knowing their association with other things or features on the site (I'm thinking waste flakes, charcoal frags, shell debris, etc.) OR you might wish to preserve the materials, but at a lower level of detail in processing.
Said as a trained archeologist who turned to museum work, particularly collection policy and management.
It's an interesting question...
Lucy Sperlin
Chico, California
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Marybeth S Tomka
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2016 10:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] Criteria for acceptance of donations beyond scope of collections documents
Afternoon all,
TARL is an archaeological repository with 70 odd years of taking donations of archaeological materials, and accepting cultural resource management projects. Our scope of collections is fairly broad and at the first look appears to really give criteria for acceptance based on those characteristics common to CRM projects and not donations. With this as background, do any of you have or are willing to share in-house criteria documents for accepting donations that may be lacking in provenience (site specific locational information), requiring repacking and needing full inventory work to accession? We already have fairly well detailed criteria
for records and collections from CRM projects. I need to provide a solid
grounding for why we accept or reject donated collections.
Appreciate any help I can get either on-list or off.
Cheers,
Marybeth
Marybeth S. F. Tomka, M.A., PS Cert CM
Head of Collections
TARL
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station R7500
Austin, Texas 78712
512-475-6853 direct line
512-232-6563 fax
512-471-5960 TARL main phone
<http://www.utexas.edu/cola/tarl/%0b> www.utexas.edu/cola/tarl/ <http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/> www.texasbeyondhistory.net
State Certified Repository
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End of MUSEUM-L Digest - 8 Nov 2016 to 9 Nov 2016 (#2016-278)
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