• What attributes characterise a significant collection worthy of retention? Examples may include
• How important is it that sites are from well excavated, secure contexts?
• How important is site documentation?
• Should collections with unusual elements (e.g. rare species, unusual imports) be given special weight?
• Are type sites (e.g. production, dating) more significant than other collections?
• Is size an important criteria?
• Are collections from areas in which few archaeological remains have been recovered more important than those of equivalent size and date from areas of more intensive activity?
• Is it preferable to keep samples from many collections, or retain whole collections at the expense of others?
• What safeguards should be put in place prior to discard to minimise the loss of information (e.g. additional study, publication)?
• How are collections currently used and how can the retention policy account for the future needs of researchers and enquirers?
• If discard takes place, what should happen to the discard (university, handling collections etc)?

I will attempt to incorporate the points that have been raised on zooarch as I believe this is an issue we urgently need to engage with as a community. My general take on the matter is that in an ideal world all archaeology material should be keep in well funded, accessible, museum resource centres. But we don't live in an ideal world. Therefore if decisions on retention are going to be made, and it looks they have to be, its better that we help inform those decisions rather than have them made without our input. 

I will be writing up the notes from the sessions and I will be happy to post them on zooarch.

All the best

Jim

Dr James Morris MIFA

Lecturer in Archaeology

School of Forensic and Investigative Sciences

University of Central Lancashire

Preston

PR1 2HE

( 01772 894150

8 www.uclan.ac.uk/archaeology

   http://www.facebook.com/uclanarchaeology

   http://uclan.academia.edu/JamesMorris

Dear All,

I think we can all agree that complete retention is the ideal, but also that circumstances beyond our control will sometimes prevent it being attained. Even where storage is not currently a problem, it inevitably will become one at some point. For that reason the original question is extremely pertinent and I'm glad it's being discussed. I should mention that I've never been in the position of having to make decisions about storage - for which I'm extremely grateful - but that I have spent a lot of time working with museum collections in several countries, both for conventional zooarchaeology and when sampling for various biomolecular analyses, and hence have a few thoughts on the matter.

There are, of course, an infinite number of strategies that might be adopted when it comes to selecting which bones to hang onto with all the tenacity one can muster, and which regretfully to let go. As I see it though, there are two broad approaches - both of which have already been touched upon in this debate.

Firstly, there is the view that contextual integrity is sacred. Most of us would probably agree that unstratified bones and mixed or unsecure contexts would be the first to go, when pressed, but a context-based approach would go beyond this to argue for the retention of all bones from certain contexts and (only if absolutely necessary, of course) the wholesale discard of others. Perhaps one would retain material from the contexts deemed most secure or useful - pits, house floors, etc. - or alternatively one might attempt a stratified sample across different types of deposit. But in either case, the idea is that throwing away any of the bones from a given context renders the remaining material compromised. In my view this is clearly the correct strategy for unstudied assemblages, but I'm not so sure once detailed study has been conducted. In an ideal world we would obviously want to retain the possibility of re-analysis by future zooarchaeologists, which would surely rely upon uncompromised context-level assemblages, but this has to be weighed against the (perhaps more likely) scenario that future study will involve selective sampling of particular species and elements for biomolecular and/or morphometric analysis, rather than replication of the basic zooarchaeology.

This brings me on to the second, specimen-focused approach: retention of a sample of the bones most likely to be useful for specialist analyses. This might imply discard of unidentified specimens, or in a more extreme case selective retention of specimens based on a stratified sample of taxa, elements, and contexts/phases. The downside is obviously that the assemblage loses any value for conventional zooarchaeology; the upside is that the potential for things like aDNA, dental microwear, GMM, and stable isotopic analysis is maintained as much as possible - although our ability to predict which samples will be useful in future is of course limited. Good specimens for 14C dating (e.g. well preserved, articulated specimens of ruminants from secure contexts) might also be selectively retained. One can imagine a researcher's frustration when discovering that that one key specimen of an exotic species, mentioned in the report as coming from unit 18943, has in fact been thrown away because 18943 wasn't considered a particularly important unit. As Alice has pointed out, poor recovery in the field will in any case already have undermined the statistical reliability of many zooarchaeological assemblages. In such cases, a strong argument could be made for cutting one's loses and focusing a sampling strategy at the specimen rather than context level.

There are various other considerations that complicate this dilemma. Firstly, we must obviously acknowledge that 'studied' is not an absolute term, potentially implying anything from a quick once-over and diagnostic zone count to an intensive and wide-ranging analysis over many years (perhaps as someone's PhD, for example). Taphonomy, in particular, is an area of huge variation in terms of just what is recorded - there is always scope for a future analyst to revisit a collection in order to try out some additional taphonomic indicators. Indeed this fairly frequently occurs, and unlike most other forms of after-the-fact specialist analysis it often relies upon the integrity of the bone collection from each context studied, favouring the context-focused approach to retention.
A second complication is perhaps a minor issue at present, but likely to become more important quite rapidly: the use of proteomics-based identification techniques such as ZooMS. The existence of this technology suddenly means that 'unidentified' specimens are not necessarily unidentifiable, and thus also rather undermines the specimen-focused approach. Indeed, the prospect has been raised of obtaining a faunal spectrum from a mass of unidentified specimens - particularly things like fish rays - and for this to be of any statistical value, context-level integrity of the assemblage would be crucial.

Personally, I would argue that while every case is obviously different, the ideal strategy in a given situation (short of complete retention, obviously) is likely to entail a combination of these approaches: retention of everything from a sample of contexts, and of a sample of "good" specimens from the remainder. Such a strategy could get very complicated very fast, however, making it absolutely imperative that a detailed explanation be lodged in the archive (with back-ups elsewhere) where it cannot be missed by any visiting researcher. I know this should be obvious, but my experience is that past retention strategies are often anything but transparent.

Finally, the - regrettable - fact that this discussion is necessary also underlines the value of publishing one's raw data (something that I've personally been woefully remiss about, but intend to work on). Inadequate as it may be, there is a very real chance that one's database will someday represent the only record of at least part of each assemblage. If the database dies with the analyst then there will be no record at all.

Best,
David

Dear All,

     I have been fighting the destruction of the collections at my museum for 10 years. Unfortunately, now in Hungary, even that holy grail of archaeology, pottery, is being discarded after analysis. Once thing, however, gives me pause though is in all this discussion of 'sampling'. Once in the stores, the assemblages do not automatically become 'good samples' of anything if the initial retrieval from the site during excavation did not involve screening or flotation.   The so-called carefully  'hand-gathered'   materials may still faintly resemble the original bone assemblage in the ground. However, in Hungary  most rescue operations do NOT employ any of these methods. So, what really do the faunal assemblages here represent?

     The barbarians have breached the gates in Hungary (and in many other places I suspect). Simply there is no money for new facilities - there may not even be land to re-bury the finds, although I like the idea of using an engraved stone to  identify the finds in case someone wants to retrieve them. As a pragmatist facing a situation where there is an absence of a good financial background for archaeology in general - surely it is better to strive to the next to the last drop of blood  to keep bone assemblages (and all other kinds of archaeological assemblages) intact in stores but have a sensible back-up plan when the gun is placed to our heads?

 

Alice 

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 8:11 AM, Umberto Albarella <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I think that many of the comments that have been posted in response to Rob's email highlight a point that I have tried to make for many years - the concept of 'preservation by record' is  a fraud. Although I fully accept that limited storage space represents a genuine problem and that difficult decisions may have to be taken regarding the keeping of archaeological material, we should not delude ourselves by claiming that, having the material been studied, its potential has been exhausted. Not only new techniques and methods emerge all the time but, even if we consider a more or less standard zooarchaeological analysis, the concept that different researchers will provide the same results is misguided. One of the beauties of zooarchaeology is that it is a highly creative field and our approach to the material will reflect our interests, research questions and methods. Not everything will be recorded, not all aspects will be fully explored and new avenues of investigation are left for other researchers to explore. Far from being a limitation of our work this provides endless opportunities, which are going to be suppressed by the disposal of the material.

If a museum can no longer keep an assemblage, the possibility that academic departments could inherit it - to use it for teaching purposes - should be considered. There may also be opportunities for the assemblage to be maintained in its original conditions so that is will remain available for further study.

            

Cheers,

Umberto

 

On 22 October 2013 09:55, Robert Symmons <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear All

Like much of the country, museums here in Sussex are suffering from an acute lack of storage space. In an attempt to alleviate this problem Sussex Museums Group (in consultation with the planning authority, local specialists and commercial units) is keen to limit the volume of material that is entering museum stores from developer-funded excavations. We are facing the prospect of making some very difficult decisions and I do not ask the following question lightly:

What animal bone from developer-funded excavations could justifiably be disposed of following analysis, rather than being deposited at a museum?

Of course we understand that the answer is not as simple as the question, but we hope to synthesise specialist opinion into some guidance that can be rolled out across the county. Sadly, keeping everything is not an option at this stage.

All the best
Rob

Rob Symmons
Secretary, Sussex Museums Group.

--

Umberto Albarella
Department of Archaeology
University of Sheffield
Northgate House
West Street
Sheffield S1 4ET
United Kingdom
Telephone: (+) 44 (0) 114 22 22 943
Fax: (+) 44 (0) 114  22 25 109 
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/archaeology/people/albarella

For MSc in Osteoarchaeology see:

http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/postgraduate/masters/courses-available/osteoarchaeology

For Zooarchaeology short course see:

http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/research/zooarchaeology-lab/short-course

For Archaeologists for Global Justice (AGJ) see:
http://agj.group.shef.ac.uk/

 

"only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught we will realise we cannot eat money"