It is an interesting time in museum archaeology. My colleague at the Society for Museum Archaeology (SMA), Kat Baxter, reported last May on the storage issues for archives from development-led archaeological projects, the Future of Archaeological Archives Programme (FAAP) and the potential creation of a national archaeological collection and store.
Over the past 18 months, the SMA has been working on a project to better understand who uses archaeological collections, how often these collections are being accessed and for what reasons. The main data collection from this has now been completed and the results are to be published in early spring.
The full report will be on the SMA website but initial results highlight the diverse range of uses and audiences for these collections, which are often considered quite specialist.
These users included school groups, and those involved in wellbeing outreach projects, along with the traditional academic and local researchers. The results also emphasised the high workloads curators now face. We can now use this data to ensure that the any developments with FAAP will consider public access and museum capacity.
Ben Donnelly-Symes is the chair of the SMA and archaeological curator at the Northamptonshire Archaeological Resource Centre