I'm at university right now, studying classics(ancient rome and greece), and this
reminds me of something my prof told me. He was participating in one dig where they ended
up uncovering a grand total of about ten *tons* of potsherds. That's about nine
thousand kilograms for the metric inclined.
The problem is that most of them had no real diagnostic value - no markings, nothing
unusual. Not really much to be learned from them. Of course, you couldn't put them in
a museum. All the museums in the world put together don't have space for ten tons of
random, unmarked potsherds. I had thought they should see about selling them, lots of
people would love to have a piece of ancient greece - but, no, my prof pointed out that
they would then become fodder for forgers. So, what to do? Fortunately, at the time,
Athens Airport was building a new runway - and needed fill. Those potsherds are buried
under the runway.
Sometimes, there's just too much *stuff*.
On 2012-08-07, at 5:16 PM, Jules Richardson <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com>
wrote:
On 08/07/2012 11:37 AM, Richard wrote:
Speaking for myself, I have entered a phase
familiar to anyone who has
started one of these computer museums: I am starting to actively
refuse or ignore certain kinds of items. You can't collect everything
and you have to focus on your core mission. Strictly speaking, I have
probably already gone too far away from my core mission (computer
graphics) in a few instances.
Do you do anything for the items that you turn down? I've been there myself, and was
always worried about things ending up in landfill - some people will make very little
effort to find a home for things (as is their right, of course). I sometimes ended up with
something I really didn't want, but thankfully I've been lucky and never had much
of a problem passing things on to other homes.
The CHM commonly refuses items these days
Now I'm curious what their policy is, too.
cheers
Jules