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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