Listeros:

Speaking of archival bags:

While I was at the Mathers Museum at Indiana University, I had a
brainstorm.

We had large collection of archaeological materials, including "lots" of
similar spear and arrow points which had been catalogued together.
However, they were stored loose in drawers, and the physics of pulling the
drawer (drawing the puller?) tended to shuffle the "lots."

We also had "zip-lock bags on a roll." I don't know who made them but they
were rolls of various widths of zip-lock poly from which individual bags of
whatever length were made with a heat sealer and then cut off the roll with
scissors.

I realized that we could make multi-chambered/multi-celled bags by just not
cutting the bags apart:

  =====================  <- the zipper
  |    |    |    |    |
  |____|____|____|____|


In this way, we could keep all of a "lot" together and each artifact would
still be individually visible.

One drawback was that, depending upon the size of the points and the number
of items in the "lot," the length of the strip could became unwieldy. We
decided that 10" would be the maximum length. Associated strips within a
"lot" were held together with a binder clip.

Although each artifact was numbered, we also put a tag (cut from used acid
free file folders)with relevant catalog information in each cell, facing
backwards, so you could flip the strip over to see the relevant information
concerning each cell.

Thomas W. Kavanagh, PhD
Administrator
Seton Hall University Museum

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