Addressing the crisis in archaeological collections
Hedley Swain, the head of policy for the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), appears to see the material arising from developer-funded archaeology - or at least a good portion of it - as tat (my term).
Such an attitude should have no place in the world of museums, let alone archaeology. It is the simplistic approach of those who have lost touch with the reasons behind this situation and misunderstand the role of museums.
In an earlier incarnation I was archaeology director for Gloucester City Council. We developed and instituted policies that predicted PPG16 (the legal guidelines covering the handling of archaeological remains on land) and took an intelligent holistic approach.
As my responsibility included planning, fieldwork and museum archaeology, I was able to think about what was best for the archaeology, not for any individual constituency.
Sadly, interpretation of PPG16 perverted the ideals of archaeology by introducing the notion that so-called curators should not also be those who "benefited" from the work arising. The concept of archaeologists who cared about their environment became the exception. Contractor archaeology, based on the assumption that the purchaser is king, destroyed local links.
Now we see the museums themselves being affected. Jobs for archaeology curators are shrinking, collections are disappearing from display, and the recommended solution from our lead body is for small museums to link with larger museums to access expertise.
I have some news for people who sing this siren song. We in the smaller museums always linked up to larger ones. I hate to think of the number of times that I asked colleagues in the national and specialist museums for advice.
Rather than crying for more "managers" or "officers" to be able to suck in expertise from bigger museums, we should fight for that expertise at a reasonably local level - and certainly the MLA should do so.
If we don't, where do the curators for the bigger museums come from? If we don't, where do all those people who are taking first degrees and postgraduate museum qualifications get work?
Archaeologists store the insignificant today because it may become significant later. Indeed, it probably will.
Museums have lost their way - or rather museum professionals have. We exist for our collections, not for other reasons, no matter how laudable they may be.
The efforts that have gone into commemorating the abolition of slavery have often been despite museum collections, when they should have been because of them. Only in a few instances will it have shed light on the collections or their origination.
We are there to protect and interpret those collections, but our first duty must be the former. We must be there to study and speak for the mute evidence of our forebears. It is time for the profession to remember this duty of care.
Malcolm Watkins, director, Heritage Matters
A complex picture
While James Morrison's article highlights problems facing museum archaeology, it does not give a complete picture of the achievements and challenges. His reference to my own county of Suffolk as having "a 30-year backlog of excavations to be catalogued" is misleading in its brevity.
I will set out the position as one who retired from the county's museum education service some years ago and has since done quite a bit of research, some published, using archaeology among other sources.
Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, which is not museum based, has been excavating since 1974. It has identified and catalogued all the resulting material and included it in databases, including the county Historic Environment Record (HER)/Sites and Monuments Record (SMR).
It holds the material in stores where it can locate items when needed. But it has not been able to hand over the material to an approved museum.
One advantage of the PPG16 system is that since its introduction in 1991 the service has been able to thoroughly record all excavations and those sufficiently important have been reported in "grey literature", available in HER/SMR back-up files.
But there remains a significant problem over finding funds to publish work done before PPG16 was introduced. Ipswich Museum, as the main depository for material excavated before 1974, has some uncatalogued material dating back much further.
Although this is securely stored, and the best items are on display, the limited documentation and lack of any location index, makes research a rather intuitive activity.
These problems have a long history and restricted local authority funding makes it difficult to find solutions. We need more funding for the "unexciting" but vital work of documenting and publishing excavated material in museums and in other stores.
The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) is another matter. It is admirable that finds, mostly by users of metal detectors, are fully recorded and entered on a database with much information accessible online.
Current threats to the funding of PAS should be resisted, as accurate identification of finds is essential and for more challenging material the support of the PAS central unit is vital.
But the PAS is largely confined to items regarded as worth retrieving by metal detector users, and provides authentication that enhances the value of "treasures", which are then sold on the open market.
If museums wish to display them they have to pay the prices set by dealers and need experienced museum archaeologists to assess their real significance. Other material disappears from public view.
The PAS creates a record of some of the fruits of "treasure hunting" but we need to find time for archaeologists to arrive at useful interpretation of the results.
John Fairclough, Ipswich
Human remains policy
Your news item titled "Human remains policy is criticised" contains several inaccuracies. First, the Manchester Museum's policy does not state that the museum will "only accession human remains in exceptional circumstances and be proactive in disposing of existing holdings".
In fact it says that because of rarity of opportunity, and local preservation conditions, "acquisition and permanent retention of human remains by the museum should be an exceptional circumstance".
In relation to disposal, the policy states, "The museum will be proactive in discussing the possible repatriation and reburial of human remains with indigenous originating communities and enter into full consultation with the appropriate claimants, named individuals and next of kin.
The museum commits itself to consideration of and consultation on all other requests which fall outside those narrow definitions." It does not say we will be proactive in disposing of all holdings.
Furthermore, in his article in British archaeology, [English Heritage's chief scientist] Sebastian Payne is writing in a personal capacity, so to say that a row has broken out between the museum and English Heritage is not the case. A full-page response to Payne's original article is published in the current British Archaeology (January/February 2008, p53).
Nick Merriman, director, Manchester Museum
Credit where it's due
I am, of course, delighted that Diane Lees has been appointed as the director-general of the Imperial War Museum. But I was rather surprised by your statement that she will be "the first woman to lead a major national museum in the UK".
Have you forgotten Margaret Weston, the director of the National Museum of Science & Industry between 1973 and 1986; Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1988 until 1995; and Anna Southall, director of the National Museums & Galleries of Wales between 1998 and 2002?
ML Faull, director, National Coal Mining Museum for England, Wakefield
Write to: the editor, Museums Journal, 24 Calvin Street, London E1 6NW
email: journal@museumsassociation.org
Hedley Swain, the head of policy for the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), appears to see the material arising from developer-funded archaeology - or at least a good portion of it - as tat (my term).
Such an attitude should have no place in the world of museums, let alone archaeology. It is the simplistic approach of those who have lost touch with the reasons behind this situation and misunderstand the role of museums.
In an earlier incarnation I was archaeology director for Gloucester City Council. We developed and instituted policies that predicted PPG16 (the legal guidelines covering the handling of archaeological remains on land) and took an intelligent holistic approach.
As my responsibility included planning, fieldwork and museum archaeology, I was able to think about what was best for the archaeology, not for any individual constituency.
Sadly, interpretation of PPG16 perverted the ideals of archaeology by introducing the notion that so-called curators should not also be those who "benefited" from the work arising. The concept of archaeologists who cared about their environment became the exception. Contractor archaeology, based on the assumption that the purchaser is king, destroyed local links.
Now we see the museums themselves being affected. Jobs for archaeology curators are shrinking, collections are disappearing from display, and the recommended solution from our lead body is for small museums to link with larger museums to access expertise.
I have some news for people who sing this siren song. We in the smaller museums always linked up to larger ones. I hate to think of the number of times that I asked colleagues in the national and specialist museums for advice.
Rather than crying for more "managers" or "officers" to be able to suck in expertise from bigger museums, we should fight for that expertise at a reasonably local level - and certainly the MLA should do so.
If we don't, where do the curators for the bigger museums come from? If we don't, where do all those people who are taking first degrees and postgraduate museum qualifications get work?
Archaeologists store the insignificant today because it may become significant later. Indeed, it probably will.
Museums have lost their way - or rather museum professionals have. We exist for our collections, not for other reasons, no matter how laudable they may be.
The efforts that have gone into commemorating the abolition of slavery have often been despite museum collections, when they should have been because of them. Only in a few instances will it have shed light on the collections or their origination.
We are there to protect and interpret those collections, but our first duty must be the former. We must be there to study and speak for the mute evidence of our forebears. It is time for the profession to remember this duty of care.
Malcolm Watkins, director, Heritage Matters
Museums Journal January 2008, p20
A complex picture
While James Morrison's article highlights problems facing museum archaeology, it does not give a complete picture of the achievements and challenges. His reference to my own county of Suffolk as having "a 30-year backlog of excavations to be catalogued" is misleading in its brevity.
I will set out the position as one who retired from the county's museum education service some years ago and has since done quite a bit of research, some published, using archaeology among other sources.
Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, which is not museum based, has been excavating since 1974. It has identified and catalogued all the resulting material and included it in databases, including the county Historic Environment Record (HER)/Sites and Monuments Record (SMR).
It holds the material in stores where it can locate items when needed. But it has not been able to hand over the material to an approved museum.
One advantage of the PPG16 system is that since its introduction in 1991 the service has been able to thoroughly record all excavations and those sufficiently important have been reported in "grey literature", available in HER/SMR back-up files.
But there remains a significant problem over finding funds to publish work done before PPG16 was introduced. Ipswich Museum, as the main depository for material excavated before 1974, has some uncatalogued material dating back much further.
Although this is securely stored, and the best items are on display, the limited documentation and lack of any location index, makes research a rather intuitive activity.
These problems have a long history and restricted local authority funding makes it difficult to find solutions. We need more funding for the "unexciting" but vital work of documenting and publishing excavated material in museums and in other stores.
The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) is another matter. It is admirable that finds, mostly by users of metal detectors, are fully recorded and entered on a database with much information accessible online.
Current threats to the funding of PAS should be resisted, as accurate identification of finds is essential and for more challenging material the support of the PAS central unit is vital.
But the PAS is largely confined to items regarded as worth retrieving by metal detector users, and provides authentication that enhances the value of "treasures", which are then sold on the open market.
If museums wish to display them they have to pay the prices set by dealers and need experienced museum archaeologists to assess their real significance. Other material disappears from public view.
The PAS creates a record of some of the fruits of "treasure hunting" but we need to find time for archaeologists to arrive at useful interpretation of the results.
John Fairclough, Ipswich
Museums Journal January 2008, p20
Human remains policy
Your news item titled "Human remains policy is criticised" contains several inaccuracies. First, the Manchester Museum's policy does not state that the museum will "only accession human remains in exceptional circumstances and be proactive in disposing of existing holdings".
In fact it says that because of rarity of opportunity, and local preservation conditions, "acquisition and permanent retention of human remains by the museum should be an exceptional circumstance".
In relation to disposal, the policy states, "The museum will be proactive in discussing the possible repatriation and reburial of human remains with indigenous originating communities and enter into full consultation with the appropriate claimants, named individuals and next of kin.
The museum commits itself to consideration of and consultation on all other requests which fall outside those narrow definitions." It does not say we will be proactive in disposing of all holdings.
Furthermore, in his article in British archaeology, [English Heritage's chief scientist] Sebastian Payne is writing in a personal capacity, so to say that a row has broken out between the museum and English Heritage is not the case. A full-page response to Payne's original article is published in the current British Archaeology (January/February 2008, p53).
Nick Merriman, director, Manchester Museum
Museums Journal January 2008, p8
Credit where it's due
I am, of course, delighted that Diane Lees has been appointed as the director-general of the Imperial War Museum. But I was rather surprised by your statement that she will be "the first woman to lead a major national museum in the UK".
Have you forgotten Margaret Weston, the director of the National Museum of Science & Industry between 1973 and 1986; Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1988 until 1995; and Anna Southall, director of the National Museums & Galleries of Wales between 1998 and 2002?
ML Faull, director, National Coal Mining Museum for England, Wakefield
Museums Journal January 2008, p8
Write to: the editor, Museums Journal, 24 Calvin Street, London E1 6NW
email: journal@museumsassociation.org
