So Much Stuff

Display Case at Chaco Museum Showing Various Types of Artifacts

One of the major issues in archaeology these days is what to do with the artifacts.  Even small excavations tend to result in rather large collections, and major projects such as large-scale CRM salvage excavations inevitably produce vast and unwieldy amounts of stuff.  Adding to the difficulty is the relatively recent realization that you can’t just toss the stuff anywhere; many types of artifacts, especially those of perishable materials, require careful curation, and all artifacts need to at least be adequately labeled and identified with information on context so they can be used for future research.  This has led to the recognition of a “curation crisis” in archaeology: the number of museums with appropriate facilities for keeping artifacts is much too small to handle the number of artifacts in need of curation.  There have been various attempts to deal with this, including bringing smaller museums up to a higher standard, but it’s an ongoing problem.

Sandals at Chaco Museum

It becomes even more of a problem when dealing with illegally excavated artifacts seized in law enforcement operations.  Here there are additional complications, including the general lack of detailed information on the provenience of looted artifacts and the requirements under NAGPRA for the determination of cultural affiliation and the return of certain kinds of artifacts to tribes.  In the case of legitimate excavations these matters are dealt with through agreements at the beginning, so there are at least guidelines for what to do if NAGPRA issues crop up in the course of excavation, but with seized artifacts it all has to be determined ex post facto.

Back of Edge of the Cedars Museum, Blanding, Utah

This becomes a particular headache when seizures reach the level we’re seeing with the Blanding pothunting indictments.  Given the scale of the investigation, the number of artifacts involved is enormous.  Literal truckloads have been seized from the houses of some suspects.  In most cases the final disposition of the artifacts must await trial, since in the event of an acquittal the items will be returned to the suspect, while in the case of a conviction they will have to be dealt with by the authorities through a mixture of curation and repatriation.  Guilty pleas like those of the Redds, however, involve immediate forfeiture of the items, and that means the process of determining where they go starts now.

Eastern California Museum, Independence, California

I admit that I’m a little ambivalent about the role of museums in all this.  Historically museums have been major players in southwestern archaeology, and not always in a positive way.  The vast majority of the artifacts from the early excavations at Chaco, for example, are locked away in the back rooms of various museums, where very few people ever get to see or study them, and there’s not really much anyone can do about it.  The American Museum of Natural History in New York is a particular offender here.  On the other hand, the museums are really the only places out there with the facilities to adequately curate artifacts, and they certainly have the capability to make them more accessible than they are in the “living rooms, basements, and garages” of pothunters and collectors, as the BLM‘s national curator puts it in the article linked above.  So while museums aren’t totally unproblematic as locations for looted artifacts, unless we want to go in a very different direction such as total repatriation they’re the best we’ve got.

Welcome Mat at Anasazi Heritage Center, Dolores, Colorado