DISCARDING THE PAST? A Case Study for Reducing Curated Materials, Argosy Casino Project

JoAnn Wilson and Trina C. Maples

Paper presented at the 16th Annual Symposium on Ohio Valley
Urban and Historic Archaeology Special Session
Curation Issues in Historical Archaeology

The lack of curatorial space has been a topic of discussion for several years. The Industrial Revolution caused a marked increase in the number of artifacts collected from post 1870 sites. The Argosy Casino Project has served as a case study for reducing the amount of material to be curated from these sites. By eliminating those artifacts thought to be of little or no current or future analytical value, a 38% decrease in storage space and cost was affected. This reduction in curated material not only saves the CRM client money, but more importantly, saves precious storage space for the future.

For years there has been an ongoing discussion about the lack of curatorial space. What is rarely discussed is what are we going to do about it? Really. What are our options as keepers of the past? What are our obligations to the future? Are we being responsible managers by keeping everything? Or are we saddling future generations with the cost of caring for artifacts that have little or no analytical value now, just because they may have value in some unknown distant future?

This paper is not an attempt to answer these very difficult questions that face archaeologists who deal with historic material. It does, however, try to address the real world problems associated with the material recovered from turn-of -the-century (post 1870) and early 20th century sites. We use the Argosy Casino project, in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, near Cincinnati, as a case in point.

The Argosy project entailed almost three years of fieldwork and resulted in the investigation of 18 sites. Of these 18 sites, 9 were historic that produced 96 features, including many privys. To date, 6 sites have been cataloged with a total artifact count in excess of 60,000. Even though we are only about half way through the cataloguing, the number of artifacts is already astounding.

It is because of the Argosy project that we at Cultural Resource Analysts felt it necessary to take a long, hard look at what artifacts were really necessary to keep and what artifacts could be discarded without compromising our ethics. Those of us involved in CRM work face a unique set of circumstances. To quote South, "archaeologists have two masters, the sponsor of their research, and their scientific responsibility" (South 1977:317). We have an obligation to our client to provide the best work possible at a reasonable price. Our livelihood depends on this. As scientists, we are committed to obtaining the most information possible from our excavations and resulting analysis. Through curation we should attempt to consider future research questions and preserve those artifacts that will adequately answer such questions.

While preparing a final budget for the Argosy project, the lab director was asked to provide an estimate of curation costs. Based on the number of flats that contained artifacts, it was determined we would probably have at least 225 boxes of material to curate. Assuming a cost of $100 per cubic foot for curation, we were looking at a total curation cost of $22,500. How do you go to your client, in good conscience, and tell them it is going to cost over $22,000 to store in perpetuity such things as broken window glass, plastic, bottle caps, aluminum foil, and other 20th century debris? At this point, we knew it was time to take a look at our cataloguing methodology and find a way to save our client money, maintain our professional obligation to future researchers, and take into consideration how our decisions would affect the curational facility.

When we contacted the facility that would eventually curate the Argosy artifacts for their guidelines, we found that they were grappling with similar problems. Thus, it was decided that we would have to develop our own plan of action. No one person made the difficult decision about what was worth retaining and what was not. We based our decision on a consensus of opinions, blending each particular point of view. This way we hoped to address various concerns and come to an unbiased decision. Our merry band of culprits included the principal investigator, staff historical archaeologist, lab director, and the lab assistant in charge of historical materials analysis.

As a result, we started to catalogue Argosy with the intent to record and discard specific artifacts. The first 18 items listed (Table 1) were included in our initial "discard" group. The remaining items were added to the list after we had catalogued a couple of sites and realized there were still items that could be discarded without adversely affecting future research. Discarded artifacts were catalogued the same as those artifacts being retained. After the appropriate information was recorded, artifacts from the "D" list were thrown out. Our computer catalogue program includes a "discard" field that allows us to track items that are not kept. As a result we know exactly what was discarded from each site. Although we do not believe it is necessary to keep certain artifacts, we do realize it is important to record pertinent data, such as, for example, dimensions, weight, material type, and to retain in some permanent form a record of what has been discarded. While computer diskettes are an easy form of data storage, recent evidence reported in the February 1998 U.S. News & World Report has brought to light our folly in using them as our only means of storing data, as the life of a diskette is only 5-10 years. Thus, we encourage colleagues to keep a hard copy of their databases to be stored with the other related paperwork.

Although we don't, as a profession, tend to talk about it, many of the artifacts on our discard list are ones that have been regularly thrown away for years. Items like 20th century plastic, coal, cinder, concrete, and fragmented bricks seem to be generally accepted as items of no real analytical value to the future (Table 1).

On the other hand, container glass and ceramics seem to be held as some type of "sacred cow" and should NEVER be discarded. This is probably where we start to raise some eyebrows. From most sites, kitchen related artifacts (i.e., container glass and ceramics) constitute the vast majority of the collection. If we are to reduce the amount of curatorial space each site consumes, then we must start to seriously examine what glass and ceramics give us the most useful information and what really needs to be retained in collections.

Retention of specific artifacts has been based on prior usefulness in site interpretation. If it can be shown that a specific artifact could be used to interpret a site (i.e., maker's marks, embossing, technological or morphological information, etc.), then it was kept. Nevertheless, we do not feel it is necessary to retain redundant material, such as undecorated whiteware, ironstone, stoneware and undiagnostic container glass. Undiagnostic body sherds from glass containers are discarded after color and weight is noted. Lips, rims, bases, and any body fragments with embossing or other decoration are retained. Undecorated ceramics are handled similarly, retaining rims, footrings, makers (Table 1) marks, and anything else that may be of a morphological nature. If there is nothing we would normally retain as a sample of a particular type of ceramic, then we keep a sample of the body for each provenience unit.

It is more difficult to make on the spot decisions about what to retain in features, especially privys, cisterns and wells. In order to gain the most information, it is usually necessary to keep all ceramics and container glass until crossmending is completed. After crossmending a decision can be made as to what material is redundant, including rebuilt wares. How many chamberpots of the same style or plates from the same set do we need to retain? We argue that only a sample needs to be kept as long as a complete analytical catalogue of discarded items is recorded.   

Although window glass is a subject of constant scrutiny and research, we do not feel the actual glass needs to be retained as long as the thickness is recorded. Early research by Ball (1983) suggests color might have some temporal significance. But other studies, among them Roenke (1978) and Sara Rivers (1998), seem to eliminate that as a significant factor. Color is caused by impurities in the "metal" (liquid glass). Even modern glass has a slight green tint. Also, past experience in attempting to record color led us to believe it was purely subjective. So, taking into consideration these factors, we decided that recording the thickness of window glass to the hundredth of a millimeter with digital calipers was sufficient before discarding this material.

Other items that are discarded, such as washers and smooth wire have pertinent measurements taken before being thrown away. Much thought and care was put into what attributes are recorded for future research, but as South stated, "We cannot possibly list all the attributes conceivably of use of someone someday..." (South 1977:326). As a result, some information will inevitably be lost. These are realities we must accept if we are to be responsible curators.

Now that we have listed what artifacts are thrown out and why, how does this discard action affect the bottom line? Figure 1 shows, by site, the total number of artifacts catalogued. Figure 2 illustrates the percentage of artifacts represented by Architecture and Domestic groups (the groups from which the majority of discards are made) as well as the Unidentified group (repository of metal lumps and melted glass). In addition, this graph shows the percentage of artifacts from those 3 groups that were discarded. For example, Site 12D502 has a total of 6,223 catalogued artifacts. Of that amount, 55% are from the Architecture group and of that 55%, 21% were discarded. In other words, almost one quarter of the artifacts representing the Architecture group at this site was eliminated from permanent curation. Domestic artifacts (i.e., ceramics and glass) comprised 25% of the total collection and 8% were discarded. The Unidentified group is consistently a small percentage of total artifacts from a site, in this case 3%. As the graph indicates, however, the majority of those items are consistently thrown out. These discards have had a dramatic effect on the total curation cost. Our initial estimate of $22,500 has been reduced to $13,800; a savings to our client of over $8,000 and a reduction of 800 cubic feet of storage space for the curational facility.

As you can see, we have quit talking about this problem and started to do something about it. Have we considered all the possible problems associated with discarding artifacts - we think so. Have we kept those artifacts that will allow for future research - we hope so. Have we saved our client money by being selective about what (Figure1, Figure 2) artifacts we curate - we know we have. Have we saved the curational facility much needed space - of course we have. And finally, have our decisions given the historical archaeological community something to think about?

References Cited

Ball, Donald B.
1983    Approaches Toward the Dating of 19th Century Ohio Valley Flat Glass. Proceedings of the Symposium on Ohio Valley Urban and Historic Archaeology, Vol. 1, Louisville, KY.

Rivers, Sara
1998 Window Glass at the Gower House 915Lv178): An Application of Donald Ball's Dating formula. Paper presented at Fifteenth Annual Kentucky Heritage Council Archaeological Conference, Murray State University, Murray, KY.

Roenke, Karl G.
1978    Flat Glass: Its Use as a Dating Tool for Nineteenth Century Archaeological Sites in the Pacific Northwest and Elsewhere. Northwest Anthropological Research Notes, Memoir No. 4.

South, Stanley
1977    Method and Theory in Historical Archaeology. Academic Press, New York.

Tangley, Laura
1998    Whoops, there goes another CD-ROM. U.S. News & World Report, February 16.