[Nhcoll-l] no-data archaeological material

[Harding, Deborah]

The Section of Anthropology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, is in the last 3 months of a 3-year NEH grant to rehouse its 1.5 million archaeological specimens. As we get down to the last few boxes to go into our wonderful new cabinets, we've run into the problem of what should be done with artifacts having no data. Most of them are ground stone tools, and most come from early 20th century donations. Ethically, we can't just rebury them, and we can't sell them. Past curators didn't want to deal with them, but now we have to.

We've already got educational loan kits using no-data material, and the system will handle maybe one or two more kits. That's maybe 40 items off the list. Have other institutions come up with solutions to the problem? Any suggestions would be appreciated. [We've already rejected paving our driveways or building patios.]

Thanks.

Deborah G Harding
Collection Manager
Section of Anthropology
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
412-665-2608
hardingd at carnegiemnh.org<mailto:hardingd at carnegiemnh.org>

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"The day you stop learning is the day you start to die". The Rev. Thomas L. Small




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