Are we finding too much???

[garybrun]

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?i...gy#g1272.3

quote:Robert Key (Salisbury, Conservative) Link to this | Hansard source

The renaissance programme is welcome, but of course the more people who go to our museums and the more television programmes that are made, the greater the profile of archaeology and the bigger the problem of storage, especially of archaeological finds. I would be grateful if the Minister would make an assessment of that problem in the coming months, as many museums and county archaeology services are completely at their wits' end about what to do with all the finds that have to be dug up because of planning permissions and so on. It is becoming a serious financial burden on local authorities and independent regional museums.

quoteavid Lammy (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport) Link to this | Hansard source

It is right that the hon. Gentleman acknowledges the huge success of the portable antiquities scheme, which has meant that many local finds go to our local museums, but it is probably also right to say that for most museums only between 10 and 20 per cent. of their collections are exhibited. A lot can never be exhibited because our museums plays a key role in the academic study of artefacts and contribute to our knowledge base for those artefacts and their history. We are exploring with the MLA how we can increase touring, especially, in dialogue with our colleagues in Europe, to eastern Europe. I hope that that, in particular, will increase people's access to all that wonderful treasure.

Now this will set the cat among the pigeons... but I do think it is a valid point of discussion. Why not return some of the foreign collections to make way for more of our own???

http://www.ukdfd.co.uk
Recording OUR heritage for future generations.

[Curator Kid]

I think that all this exchange shows is that the minister is either very badly briefed before answering parliamentary questions, or that he has very little real grasp of the issues he is asked to comment on.

[beamo]

Gary - as CK says the minister was badly briefed and gave the answer to an entirely different question.

The issue is one of storage rather than display space - most museum services do not hold very much 'foreign' material anyway, but all museums and museum services do store considerable amounts of material from archaeological investigations. This is in order to make the material available for future research.

The problem lies in whether or not adequate storage is available, and if not, where the material can be stored until the museums can accept it - we have debated this before on BAJR.


Beamo