The future of archaeological collecting in England is at risk, with a majority of museums that currently accept archaeological material estimating that they will run out of space within five years.
A survey commissioned by Historic England and undertaken by the Society of Museum Archaeologists (SMA) has found that 71% of its 200 respondents had 20 cubic metres or less of storage capacity remaining for archaeological deposits, and 63.5% estimated that they would run out of space within five years or less.
Funding cuts and the loss of staff were contributing to the crisis, according to the survey, which said that “real, on-the-ground reductions in resource and capacity” were having a knock-on impact on archaeological collecting.
It found that 22.5% of museums that previously collected archaeological archives have stopped collecting, a proportion that rises to 60% among local authority museums. The majority of those (91.4%) cited lack of space as the main reason they had stopped collecting, followed by a shortage of expertise and staff resource (51.4%).
One respondent to the survey wrote: “It is important that the position of all museums, especially small museums, is recognised: lack of space, expertise and communications with archaeology community. This is a crisis.”
The SMA said it had received “unprecedented numbers of requests for support from museums and museum professionals concerning service and staff cuts”.
The association’s chair Gail Boyle told Museums Journal that the survey should act as a “massive wake-up call” for the sector to look again at where archaeological material should be stored.
“We haven’t got 10 years to sort the problem out, we’re really up against it,” she said.
Boyle warned that a failure to do so risked the loss of valuable archaeological data; there were 9,000 undepositable archives held in commercial stores in 2012 and that number is likely to have risen since then, she said. “Think of all the knowledge locked inside them,” Boyle added.
She said that the upcoming HS2 rail project, which is expected to generate the biggest ever deposit of archaeological material, would represent both a challenge and an opportunity to the museum sector rethink archaeological collecting.
“Big infrastructure projects like this do have the capacity to set the trend,” she said.
The survey, which took place in November 2016, is the first of three annual reports that the SMA is planning to produce on museums collecting archaeology.
A survey commissioned by Historic England and undertaken by the Society of Museum Archaeologists (SMA) has found that 71% of its 200 respondents had 20 cubic metres or less of storage capacity remaining for archaeological deposits, and 63.5% estimated that they would run out of space within five years or less.
Funding cuts and the loss of staff were contributing to the crisis, according to the survey, which said that “real, on-the-ground reductions in resource and capacity” were having a knock-on impact on archaeological collecting.
It found that 22.5% of museums that previously collected archaeological archives have stopped collecting, a proportion that rises to 60% among local authority museums. The majority of those (91.4%) cited lack of space as the main reason they had stopped collecting, followed by a shortage of expertise and staff resource (51.4%).
One respondent to the survey wrote: “It is important that the position of all museums, especially small museums, is recognised: lack of space, expertise and communications with archaeology community. This is a crisis.”
The SMA said it had received “unprecedented numbers of requests for support from museums and museum professionals concerning service and staff cuts”.
The association’s chair Gail Boyle told Museums Journal that the survey should act as a “massive wake-up call” for the sector to look again at where archaeological material should be stored.
“We haven’t got 10 years to sort the problem out, we’re really up against it,” she said.
Boyle warned that a failure to do so risked the loss of valuable archaeological data; there were 9,000 undepositable archives held in commercial stores in 2012 and that number is likely to have risen since then, she said. “Think of all the knowledge locked inside them,” Boyle added.
She said that the upcoming HS2 rail project, which is expected to generate the biggest ever deposit of archaeological material, would represent both a challenge and an opportunity to the museum sector rethink archaeological collecting.
“Big infrastructure projects like this do have the capacity to set the trend,” she said.
The survey, which took place in November 2016, is the first of three annual reports that the SMA is planning to produce on museums collecting archaeology.
