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Issue 66August 2002ContentsnewsNative village that dabbled in Roman culture Roman mosaic found inches below ploughsoil Egyptian seal and a ‘cave of jewels’ at Scottish mansion The 7,700-year-old woman who ate like a wolf Rare Iron Age temple excavated near Cambridge featuresWhen Burial Begins Chemical Revolution Great Sites lettersThe West Midlands in prehistory and the closure of railways issuesGeorge Lambrick on the importance of museum collections Peter EllisbooksThe Welsh Border by Trevor Rowley Digging up the Past by John Collis The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek by Barry Cunliffe CBA updatefavourite findsVal Turner on a Pictish stone that spooked a gravedigger
ISSN 1357-4442 Editor Simon Denison |
issuesUndervalued museumsMuseums will remain underfunded as long as archaeologists continue to neglect them, writes George Lambrick. Far too little research is now conducted into existing collections Museums play a fundamental role in archaeology, transforming the process of discovery into a long-term resource for reinterpreting the past. Museum services are not just for the here-and-now, but also for posterity. But in the present political world of 'best value' public spending decisions, posterity does not get much of a hearing. This is a problem from national to local level. As we go to press, the British Museum is facing a deficit of £6.5m. While it has increased its own income generation by nearly £14m, Government support has been cut by 30 per cent. Never having charged for access, the downturn in visitor numbers due to foot-and-mouth and terrorism has not been offset by the Government's free-access scheme, and the departure of the British Library has increased costs. Cutting spendingThe BM is not alone - numerous museums up and down the country face similar problems on a smaller scale. If more income is not forthcoming, there are only so many ways that museums can cut costs - usually by abolishing or amalgamating specialist curatorial or scientific posts, dispersing collections, or closing galleries and restricting public access. As serious cuts of this kind are being contemplated for the British Museum, they are actually being applied in Northampton and elsewhere, posing serious threats to museums' expertise and the quality of their services. There is growing pressure on existing curators to become jacks-of-all-trades. For example, at Northampton the archaeological and social history curatorships are to be merged. In the last 10 years, over 30 posts for archaeological conservation in museums and other public bodies have been lost. Yet the bm is a major tourist attraction - as are many museums at local level. Often local museums form the backbone of community archaeology. If museums are damaged, we all suffer. The public interest in museums is not just in displays, but also in the fruits of research undertaken on museum collections. Collections may lack glamour, but they form the foundation of everything that museums do, both in research and in public education. Part of the crisis that museums face is the shortage of storage space for the ever-increasing quantities of archaeological material - especially from development-led excavations. In the face of budget cuts, museum curators increasingly question whether archaeologists even think about what to collect - and what can safely be discarded. Field archaeologists, themselves under pressure to minimise their sampling strategies, counter that they are already discarding the vast majority of material by never collecting it in the first place. Experience suggests that, if anything, future researchers will find that not enough was kept. But it hardly helps that little archaeology is now done using existing collections. They will remain under-resourced if archaeologists give a low priority to using them, and the demise of object-related academic research in favour of more theoretical approaches bodes ill for future curatorship. Innovation, pleaseThat said, there are plenty of examples of innovative museum projects where new archaeological research has been presented imaginatively to the public. Kilmartin House Trust in Argyll, Newcastle University's Museum of Antiquities, and the Archaeological Resource Centre in York are three excellent examples. The arc integrates an academic finds research centre with a popular education facility, and proves that, given the chance, the public are actually rather interested in hands-on archaeology. But these kinds of projects integrating research, archives and public outreach are too rare. The 'Renaissance in the Regions' initiative being promoted by Resource - the national agency responsible for museums, libraries and archives in England - may help, by creating stronger regional service 'hubs' as centres of excellence. The huge increase in funding for development-led archaeology is a great success story. But in their efforts to get the planning and contracting processes right, archaeologists have tended to take their eye off the longer term. Museums are too often seen as a final resting place for dead archives, rather than as fundamental to maintaining public interest in the past. If archaeologists were to collaborate more inventively with national and local museums to nurture this public interest in archaeology, a stronger case will be made for better Government funding of these vital services. George Lambrick is Director of the CBA |
CBA web:British ArchaeologyFebruary 2000 CBA BriefingFieldwork CBA homepage |
