Archaeology and Responsible Artefact Collecting

Archaeological Record (Historic Cornwall) 

Archaeology and Responsible Artefact Collecting


Paul Barford





First draft 1.1 23rd June 2020 

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3.3: Archaeological layers

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In talking about archaeological context we tend to think of it in terms of being composed of individual layers. These are discrete units of sediment, debris, rock, and other materials that form or accumulate as the result of natural processes, human activity, or both. In order to describe them and indicate their position on a site and in its sequence, these layers are generally numbered sequentially (with the lowest number being that removed first). An individual layer or deposit may be termed (following geological nomenclature) a stratum, and multiple layers are called strata. Therefore the study of their sequence is called stratigraphy (description of what we call the stratification). One of the simplest ways to depict layers is to depict them as a vertical sequence and this is frequently done in the form of a section (or 'profile') through them. Here is an explanation from Michigan State University 'Campus Archaeology' page "Archaeology 101: Reading strati
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9.4: Curation - Access to Information

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Many collectors object to archaeologists and conservation professionals criticising the notion of a "private collection", saying that the material in their own personal portable antiquities collection is available to bona fide researchers for study. While this is laudable, it should not be imagined that this is an ideal situation for any researcher. Even if an object has been recorded in a public database like the PAS, t here is no mechanism to follow the movement of objects between various ephemeral private collections after it leaves the collection of the finder. If they are not accompanied by their own documentation, even objects that had been shown to archaeologists and recorded a decade or more earlier are in effect later  totally lost to science. Even if a few decades from now a coin or brooch surfaces anonymously, it will be difficult to relate it to one of the mass of records of similar-looking objects in archived archaeological records.  Many artefacts in private
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Antiquities collection Since the archaeological record is finite and fragile, responsible artefact hunters who are removing material and information from it must replace any information destroyed by a permanent and as full as possible documentation. The objects in a responsibly-created private collection should not be held loose, but in a form that allows them easily to be linked back to the documentation of the archaeological interference that produced them. As Ian Longworth (1992, 5) puts it, if the collected objects are to be used to fulfil their potential, then their care becomes a matter of paramount importance. It should be noted that preservation, far from being a passive role, is a task that must be worked at that calls for the use of many resources to turn good intention into reality. To be effective in this task private collections must seek to reach attainable standards and these need to apply to all aspects of the problem - the environmental conditions under whic
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