Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The March issue of SAA's Archaeological Record is up!

Michael Shott has an interesting article in it on the curation of private collections. I'm only about halfway through it so far, but I like it. He echoes the 'Army of Davids' meme that I've harped on several times regarding the role of amateurs. There is a lot that amateurs can do as far as reporting the locations of artifacts and sites they come across in their travels, which are far more extensive that anything that can be hoped for with professionals, just by dint of numbers. Of course, the data infrastructure is needed before adequate reporting can occur.

That's an aside though; the article is more about collections of actual objects.