Managing archaeological heritage: past and present 2015

Every sherd is sacred:

Compulsive Hoarding in Archaeology

Raimund Karl
Prifysgol Bangor University, UK

Abstract
Since the beginnings of our subject in German countries in the late 19th century, a mostly
unreflected, firmly positivist epistemology has been the foundation of our practice. Established
by fathers of modern archaeology like Virchow and Hoernes, we believe that ...beginning and
progress... in archaeology lie in ... the observation of plain fact, in the stringing together of
individual, of themselves unremarkable observations to incontrovertible knowledge... (Hoernes
1892: 43). Virchow (quoted in Hoernes 1892: 70) hoped that the anthropological disciplines
would progress ...by purely inductive means... in the future. One of the necessary (epistemo-)
logical preconditions for the possibility to arrive at proof positive by inductive reasoning is the
completeness of observations. And since it has become disciplinary dogma that only inductive
reasoning based on correct and complete observations of archaeology can create reliable,
i.e. true, knowledge about archaeological things (and people), a particular relationship of
the discipline with these things necessarily follows: every archaeological object is an infinitely
valuable treasure, is sacrosanct, must be conserved forever. Only this can guarantee that our
observations remain repeatable and thus allow our discipline to progress by no other than
inductive means. Industrial hoarding thus is a necessary consequence of our epistemological
approach.

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This paper demonstrates that the approach to professional archaeological collecting resulting
from this is both causing suffering within the discipline and causes damage to our subject and
the objects we pretend need to be maintained in perpetuity, and is ultimately unsustainable.
Perhaps even more significantly, the resulting professional practice exhibits virtually all diagnostic
criteria of a recently newly-defined obsessive-compulsive spectrum mental disorder, of compulsive
hoarding. It is thus argued that the discipline of archaeology as a community of like-minded
and like-educated professionals in the German countries exhibits a serious social functionality
disorder: it is, quite literally, sick and in urgent need of therapy.

Key words
German archaeology, positivism, professional archaeological collections, hoarding disorder

German Archaeology is an abstract term: it refers to an academic discipline and thus not to
a real thing, let alone a human being. It cannot have a mental disorder, since at least sensu
strictu, it lacks a mind that could be suffering from one. However, as an academic discipline,
humans are central to it: only the community of scholars makes it a discipline. And where there
are humans, social functionality disorders may arise. Should such become quite serious, we can
even consider them to be illnesses which require (psychological or sociological) treatment. In this
article, I demonstrate how such a social functionality disorder can arise at the level of a society, the
community of German-speaking archaeologists, without each or even only a significant number
of its members actually suffering from that very disorder (at least in their non-academic social
functionality). Rather, I argue that this social functionality disorder emerges as a result of social
entelechies (Elias 1997: 325) only at the level of the archaeologically disciplined community, and
that its symptoms mainly show in formalised disciplinary structures and institutions which act as
legal persons (even though the actual actions are set by individuals representing these institutions
rather than the institutions themselves).

Compulsive Hoarding
The characteristic (not only German) archaeological phenomenon of industrial collecting and the
suffering associated with it finds surprising parallels in a newly defined mental disorder, hoarding
disorder (APA 2013: 247-251). This disorder is characterised by the pathological inability or
unwillingness to discard things, to an extent that it frequently causes significant suffering, either
for the victim of the disorder himself or his relatives and friends. It is characterised by consuming
large amounts of (living) space and frequently endangers physical wellbeing. It usually causes
significant economic burdens and often leads to significant impediments of social functionality.
According to the APA (2013: 247-251), c. 2-6 % of all adults are affected by this disorder. It
frequently first manifests in childhood and tends to increasingly worsen with age, not only
because the victim has more time to hoard, but also symptom-moderating relatives and friends
tend to disappear. Since there is distinct clustering within affected families, the disorder is either
biologically inherited or acquired by social learning.

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It is typical for compulsive hoarders that they assign different values to at least some (or even
all) things than other humans. While many hoarders clutter up their whole living space in a
disorganised way, others are very well organised. Speaking from personal experience, one of my
grandfathers had an exceptionally well-organised hoard. Sufferers are at least selectively, if not
generally unable to distinguish between things which are still useful and such which are not (and
thus should be discarded); even if they comprehend the irrationality of their behaviour and realise
that they are suffering because of it. A characteristic justification is that the things they hoard are
still important and will be needed and used in the future.

Compulsive archaeological hoarding

The parallels between this mental disorder and the collecting practices of archaeological
institutions, especially such like national or regional archaeological archives and museums, are
both apparent and disturbing. To demonstrate this, I will look at two short case studies.
The Austrian National Heritage Agency Bundesdenkmalamt (BDA) started refurbishing the
Kartause Mauerbach in 2002/3 as a central archaeological (storage) facility. It was officially
opened on November 14, 20121. However, the available storage space was already full in 2011.
The objects stored are not even catalogued as individual objects, but more often as whole finds
boxes, with an accurate figure for objects held unavailable (pers. comm. Marianne Pollak, BDA).
Only minute amounts of this collection have been analysed or interpreted, and even less has been
published. A recent revision found that even restored finds in this storage facility had suffered:
It soon became apparent that already restored iron objects had partly been severely damaged2
(Marius 2011: 32).

Hardly less dramatic are the stores of the Berliner Museums fr Vor- und Frhgeschichte in
Charlottenburg Palace. While in the proper stores, most (old) objects have been individually
archived in neat order by place of origin (Figure 1), new finds cannot be accessioned and
catalogued individually due to lack of staff and are often only archived on finds box basis. In
the emergency overflow storage, however, matters are much worse (Figure 2), where even
cataloguing based on finds boxes is not possible any more, but rather, whole excavation archives
are deposited (not to say dumped) pretty much randomly in huge piles of finds boxes. Even
formerly inventoried finds which had in 1948 been recovered from rubble of the research facility
Lebus, which had been bombed out in WW II (Figure 3) are kept though the inventory number
paper stickers were destroyed by fire. Thus, the overwhelming majority of these (frequently badly
fire-damaged) finds can no longer be identified any more. Yet, they are at least partly looked
at by museum staff in regular revisions of the museums collection, since on occasion, particularly
characteristic stone axes can be re-identified and thus re-inventoried (though the original entries
are of quite variable quality).
That this hoarding causes suffering can also not be denied: young (and not so young) colleagues
complain that accessing finds is anything but easy due to staff shortages, with the curators simply
lacking the time to make finds available. This leads to some students being delayed in completing
their degrees since they cannot access the materials they need for completing dissertations. Early

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Figure 1: Neatly stacked store of the Berliner Museum fr Vor- und Frhgeschichte in Charlottenburg Palace (note the attractive
water damage with appropriate bucket in the background).

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Figure 2: Less neatly stacked uncatalogued finds in an emergency overflow store in the same building.

Figure 3: Neatly stacked piles of boxes containing finds recovered in 1948 from the rubble of the bombed research facility
Lebus of the Berliner Museums fr Vor- und Frhgeschichte mostly severely damaged by the fire caused by the bombing,
practically all no longer identifiable though

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career researchers are being damaged, too, since they cannot gain access to materials to publish
and thus perish in an increasingly cutthroat labour market. Even more senior researchers complain
about comparable problems. The suffering of the curators themselves hardly needs mentioning,
who neither have the resources nor the time to do any research (except in their holidays, perhaps),
often not even to properly manage and maintain their collections let alone that they sometimes
risk physical harm, e.g. when working in moulding stores3. And that is to say nothing of the costs
of maintaining these collections and that the public, in whose interest we allegedly keep them, are
mostly excluded from them.

So why all this industrial-scale compulsive hoarding? These objects, we claim, contain important
information! This information will be needed for and used in future archaeological research! After
all, our methods are bound to improve and we will be able to gather data we today cannot even
imagine! And for these reasons, we need to keep all these objects forever and ever, once they have
been found.

Interestingly and comparable to the selective inability of hoarders to discard we see this
necessity only if we think of objects as archaeological finds: the same Roman coin is of little
interest to us if it has been held in a collection for the last 500 years; but if recently found in the
ground, it becomes a priceless archaeological treasure. And ere you say it is all about context: if
there is to be a development on a bombed out 19th century building, every fragment of its former
content and decoration apparently (at least according to heritage legislation in most German
countries and Austria) becomes a priceless archaeological find while the dilapidated 19th century
building on the next plot is an eyesore which we would happily condemn without seeing any need
to accession anything of it into the same archaeological archive (though built heritage managers
might want to protect it as a historic building). It thus is not so much context which in the
dilapidated building is much better preserved than in the ruined one but rather that it has been
excavated which apparently makes it into a priceless archaeological treasure that must be kept
indefinitely.

As said in the introduction, an academic discipline cannot have a mental disorder. So how come
that the social behaviour of German-speaking archaeology demonstrates all symptoms of a
pathological obsessive-compulsive disorder?

Excursus: Moriz Hoernes (1852-1917) and the Vienna School

Archaeology has a disciplinary history, with fathers of the discipline, whose opinions,
epistemological and methodological premises significantly shaped the discipline (see Biehl et al.
2002; Hrke 2000; Mante 2007; Gramsch & Sommer 2011; and also Karl 2010). A start for an
explanation of the symptoms of compulsive hoarding in German archaeology may thus perhaps be
found in that disciplinary history much like with real hoarders, values assigned back then may
still be with us.

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Moriz Hoernes (1852-1917) was the first professor of prehistoric archaeology in a German-
speaking university. Following a degree in classical philology and archaeology at the University of
Vienna, he worked (starting 1885) at the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien. In 1892, he was awarded
a Habilitation at the University of Vienna for prehistoric archaeology (Hoernes 1892) and with this
became the founder of this new academic discipline in the Habsburg Empire. In 1899 he was made
extraordinary professor and in 1911 promoted to the newly established chair in this subject.

Especially his method, developed mainly in his Habilitation, is eminently important. Its
foundations are, firstly, the so-called Kulturkreislehre (Rebay-Salisbury 2011), a characteristically
culture-historical approach to archaeological material culture, and secondly epistemological
positivism, which was extremely popular at Vienna University in the late 19th century. The form
of positivism popular in the late 19th century in Vienna starts out from two fundamental premises
which, as we will see, have important logical consequences leading directly to the development
of the symptoms of industrial hoarding. These are firstly the postulate of a primacy of data in
scientific (scholarly) explanations, and secondly the assumption that inductive reasoning allows to
positively prove such explanations to create true knowledge.

Hoernes expresses these premises very clearly in his Habilitation thesis. In his general
methodological discussion, he writes that ... the origin and development ... of scholarly
explanations in prehistory lies ... in the observation of naked facts, in connecting individual, in
themselves unremarkabe, observations to irrefuteable knowledge (Hoernes 1892: 43; emphasis
RK). He is exemplarily clear about his epistemological approach when he states: The validity of
the inductive, the scientific method i.e. the patient, diligent collection of data, stripped of all
subjective, generalising influences from above was emphatically proclaimed for this new field
of knowledge (Hoernes 1892: 36; emphasis RK). Yet Hoernes is anything but alone when he
raises these methodological demands, but rather follows an equally, if not even more significant
father of German archaeology, Rudolf Virchow. Him, Hoernes quotes directly in support of his
wish to exclusively rely on the aids of observation and experiment and his hope that the
anthropological disciplines would ... from now on proceed without hypotheses, without debts
in a purely inductive way ... (Hoernes 1892: 70). And in the late 19th century, when positivism was
almost universally accepted as the method to arrive at true knowledge, this was indeed at the
cutting edge of epistemological thought.

Particularly in academia, disciples are not just subject to home schooling by their teachers, but
also are disciplined in a higher education institution run by their academic parents. Wodimierz
Rczkowski has recently expressed this in unsurpassable conciseness: ...the highly hierarchised
system of science (including archaeology) in Germany ... affects the knowledge produced ... High
in the hierarchy are scholars who have knowledge ... [which] is positivistic, they are convinced
that science (archaeology) uncovers the truth about the past. ... Positivistic truth is singular
and absolute, objective and irrefutable. ... Moreover, this group is also equipped with ... means
of evaluation (repression) of those who try to infiltrate it. Thus, what is the prescription for
a successful academic career? ... Accept the theoretical foundations, the tools and scientific

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procedures as used by your masters because they ... will be positively evaluated... In this way
the masters clone themselves (at least as far as archaeological procedures are concerned
(Rczkowski 2011: 206).

The disciplinary family history of Viennese prehistory follows the pattern of disciplining
described by Rczkowski to the letter. Hoernes successor, Oswald Menghin (1888-1973), studied
with Hoernes from 1906 to 1910, was awarded a Habilitation for Prehistory of Man in Vienna in
1913 and took up Hoernes chair after his death in 1917, which he held until 1945 (Kromer 1994).
Menghins successor, Richard Pittioni (1906-1985), studied with Menghin from 1927 until the
award of his PhD in 1929 (sic!) and was awarded a Habilitation for Prehistoric Archaeology at
Vienna University in 1932 (Urban 2006). He in turn was succeeded by Fritz Felgenhauer (*1920),
Herwig Friesinger (*1942) and later by Andreas Lippert (*1942), who had themselves studied
prehistory in Vienna with their predecessor. All later heads of the department of prehistory at
Vienna University bar the current incumbent, also read degrees in prehistory at Vienna University,
much like the majority of all other teaching staff employed there, past and present. As an analysis
of a sample of publications of members of the Vienna School since 1945 has shown (Karl
2004: 278), their academic writing is characterised by a near-complete absence of theoretical-
methodological reflection. Thus, all these Hoernes-disciples also thoroughly uncritically
continued his scholarly approach, including its epistemological and methodological premises (Karl
2004: 2010). There neither was a perceived need to revisit Hoernes method in the light of new
developments (like Poppers thorough demolition of Viennese positivism in 1935), let alone discuss
it in any greater depth, nor were such discussions taking place. Rather, the method became a
disciplinary habitus, an orthodox practice (Bourdieu 1977: 168-170) being taught and learned by
repetitive application. This not just served to streamline and severely restrict disciplinary discourse
and turn any deviation from this true knowledge into heresy, but actually made (at least for the
paragons of practice) any alternative approach positively unthinkable. Thus, Hoernes method
became a disciplinary dogma in Austrian archaeology, with much the same being true with
Virchows ideas in Germany.

That Hoernes method has indeed survived until today, and a positivist approach is not restricted to
the Vienna School, can be demonstrated by quoting from the justification of a recent decision in a
Habilitation process at the University of Vienna. The decision was written by an authors collective
(the Habilitation committee) which included several Vienna disciples and a German classical
archaeologist (with degrees from Bonn and Mnchen, Habilitation in Hamburg). This collective, in
turn, based its decision (and text) on an expert opinion provided by a German prehistorian (degrees
from Marburg and Bonn, Habilitation in Berlin). Specifically, the decision argues that a study of a
prehistoric topic based on a radical constructivist epistemology can, for this reason alone, not be
methodically sound: it ... must be said that constructivism may be of relevance in some disciplines
... however, in prehistory, which is primarily based on archaeological sources, it can hardly lead
to new scientific knowledge, but can only lead to generalising or speculative explanations. In case
such explanations are confirmed by archaeological verification, they may be of some significance.
(descicion by the University of Vienna, Zl/Habil 02/161/2006/07 dated 28.11.2008, 10; emphasis: RK).

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Statements like these clearly demonstrate all features of epistemological positivism, as introduced
by Hoernes in Austria-Hungary and Virchow and other fathers of archaeology in Germany.
Firstly, prehistory is said to be based primarily on (archaeological) sources following Hoernes
(1892: 43) claims that archaeological knowledge originates in the observation of naked facts.
Secondly, generalising and speculative explanations are rejected much like Hoernes (1892: 36)
generally rejects generalisations in his method. Thirdly, it is claimed that such explanations might
be significant after all if confirmed by archaeological verification, i.e. proof positive much like
Hoernes (1892: 36, 43) wants to arrive at irrefutable (i.e. true) knowledge by inductive reasoning.
Infinite positivism (Atzbach 1998: 4), so typical for German archaeology (cf. Narr 1966: 382;
Girtler 1976; Karl 2004: 2010; Rczkowski 2011: 206) rears its ugly head: even in the present of
the Vienna School, a non-positivist epistemological approach to an archaeological problem is
rejected as methodologically unsound because it is not positivist.

The participation of two German archaeologists in the construction of this argument demonstrates
that a positivist approach is not just characteristic for the Vienna School, but rather is a general
German phenomenon: even if taught as an archaeologist in a combination of German universities
like Bonn, Marburg, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg, one still turns out to be a staunch positivist.
The old masters do not just clone themselves in their disciples, but rather there is generally
streamlined epistemological thinking in much of German archaeology. Where these positivist
foundations result in the assignation of a specific value to objects and practical directives for
scholarly behaviour towards things, this streamlining has immediate and severe consequences,
especially at the level of the discipline and its institutions; and for institutional behaviour. The
streamlined academic behavioural directives leads to a constant reinforcement of the disciplinary
practices and thus make practices appearing irrational outside the discipline appear both rational
and natural within. This provides positive feedback, and thus worsens the symptoms.

Positivist proof positive and its consequences for things

Positivism considers verification to be the precondition for true scholarly statements, which is
achieved by providing proof positive, that is, data which confirms the statement. In proofs, there
is a primacy of data: the observation of evidence provides the proof, since positivism assumes that
one can observe essential features of things. These essential features are then explicated in the
form of descriptive statements (DS). Since a descriptive statement describes the essential features
of the thing observed, it is also considered to be true (i.e. if correct in form and content). Whether
a descriptive statement is correct can (at least in theory) be established by the re-examination of
the evidence by independent observers. If the original observation is repeatable, the descriptive
statement is considered to be positively proven. Repeated observation of our environment and the
combination of many individual observations by synthesis, then, allows creating true knowledge
in form of general statements (GS). If we assume we made an arbitrarily large number of
independent observations which are all essentially identical, e.g. DS1n: This swan is white, we can
combine all these into a general one by induction to arrive at the general statement GS: All swans
are white. Since each descriptive sentence synthesised into this is observably true, the general

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statement itself should also. Thus, it has been verified by proof positive: if all swans observed were
indeed white, it is positively proven that the statement all swans are white is true.

However, this works (as David Hume has shown as early as 1740; Hume 2000: 61-65, 89-97) only
if and when the inductive synthesis is based on all (true) observations. After all, if just one single
observation is missing, the proof remains incomplete and the truth elusive. Because after all, unless
every swan that ever existed, currently exists and will ever exist has been observed, there is always
the possibility that our next observation, e.g. of an Australian swan, will show DSn+1: This swan is
black.

Thus, the standard demand for scholarly works in German archaeology is that all relevant sources
must have been considered for the resulting study to be seen as methodically sound, despite this
being epistemologically silly: after all, a truly complete induction requires the completeness of all
theoretically possible observations, not just all practically possible ones. If only the available data
is observed, the induction is only partial and thus cannot logically prove anything (Hume 2000:
61-65, 89-98). And since archaeological data is inherently incomplete, positivism in archaeology
cannot produce proof positive. Yet, many German archaeologist, by uncritically accepting the
premises of Virchow, Hoernes and the other fathers of German archaeology, still believe that
we can arrive at true knowledge by meticulous observation of data and its synthesis by inductive
reasoning.

And that explains why German archaeology believes it must keep all finds at any costs: if one
follows (without truly understanding its theoretical premises and logical limitations) a positivist
method, which aims to achieve archaeological verifications of true archaeological knowledge
by inductive synthesis of true observations, one necessarily must consider all relevant true
observations about archaeological objects. And since these observations must remain repeatable
(e.g. Trachsel 2008: 97), no archaeological source can ever be discarded. This necessarily leads to
a particular assignation of value to archaeological objects: once defined as archaeology, an object
becomes a (potential) source of observations and thus utterly indispensable. Thus, each and every
such object is absolutely priceless: if starting from these premises, it is impossible to distinguish
between valuable and worthless archaeological things, between things one needs to keep, and those
one can, should and perhaps even must discard.

Epistemologically induced compulsive hoarding

Compulsive hoarding in German archaeology is thus a necessary consequence of the
epistemological premises of our subject; premises which incidentally are entirely unsustainable
for sound (epistemo-) logical reasons: if one rationally assesses this, it is obvious that a discipline
which has lost the majority of its data due to archaeological entropy (natural and cultural erosion
of archaeological sources) cannot arrive at proof positive of any statement by inductive reasoning
based on observation of data. It thus is entirely irrational to insist on keeping everything that
has survived: it does not provide us with privileged access to knowledge. It would be much more

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sensible to keep just a representative sample of what has survived. Of course, that sample should
be large enough to avoid the error of small numbers (Atzbach 1998: 4) for statistical analyses,
but even keeping that in mind, we dont need to keep everything. Only once one realises this, it
becomes possible to distinguish between valuable and worthless archaeology, between (still) useful
and (largely or completely) useless one.

Industrial collecting thus turns out to be a typical value assignation disorder of the community
of German archaeologists. The cause for it is a socially acquired, taught and learnt behaviour
of assigning specific values to specific types of objects. This specific valuation of things in
turn directly follows from the epistemological premises the fathers of German archaeology
enshrined in their method, which since then has thoughtlessly (Rczkowski 2011: 205-210)
been passed on by practice. The compulsive disciplinary hoarding disorder resulting from this is
positively pathological: it uses up vast amounts of space, causes economic hardship and significant
amounts of suffering (for curators, students and scholars alike), health risks (for staff working in
unhealthy stores and for the finds which cannot be properly kept due to lack of resources alike)
and last but not least defective social functionality (mostly towards the public, which we exclude
from our archives, our sites and often enough even from our research results; see e.g. Karl 2011:
2013). In other words: German archaeology is ill and in desperate need of treatment. Compulsory
disciplinary hoarding is irrational, counter-productive and damaging.

Help for self-help

So what is to be done about this? After all, it is impossible to send German archaeology to a
psychiatrist, since it also lacks a body which could take it there. Thus, German archaeology can
only help itself, which means help must come from all of us, the archaeologists.

First of all, we need to realise and accept that our hoarding is irrational and a disciplinary social
functionality disorder. I hope to have demonstrated above that it is indeed not necessary to keep all
archaeology forever. Once we have accepted that not every sherd is sacred, it becomes imaginable
to actually discard insignificant archaeological objects. This is not to say that everything should
be thrown out which we kept in the past: there are significant archaeological sources that we need
to collect and maintain in perpetuity to allow our discipline to fulfil its function. But for that, we
do not need to keep everything. Rather, we need to develop sensible strategies of selection (like
those hinted at by e.g. Duncan Brown 2007, 23-5 for the Archaeological Archives Forum or more
recently by the ARCHES project4), allowing us to distinguish the useful from the useless objects,
and then discard all those which do not pass the usefulness test. After all, it does not benefit future
scholarship nor the current or future public if allegedly preserved objects slowly corrode or rot in
inaccessible depots and will never again be looked at by anyone, let alone be properly studied.

Such an approach will require quite a lot of us: a fuller understanding why we are doing
archaeology and what we want to and can realistically achieve with it, an understanding how we
can actually achieve the achievable, and also a bit of courage to take the necessary decisions what

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we can discard, and then to actually discard what needs be. Much greater coordination, not just
between excavators and the archive the results are to be deposited (Brown 2007, 23-5), but between
different national archives and perhaps even internationally, will be required for this. And last but
not least, it will require a realistic estimation of the available resources, at least those available
in the short and medium, and even better in the long term; since it does not help if we burden us
with too much now that will only be doubly difficult to discard later on. And we will have to start
learning and teaching (especially at university) those abilities which we have not yet mastered,
which besides the disciplinary skills we already excel at include decision making and economic
planning skills.

The decision what we then do with those archaeological objects we discard will also require quite
some disciplinary courage. Whether they are thrown away and buried with the backfill after an
initial assessment in the field or given to interested members of the public, the landowner and/
or finder, there are many conceivable options. Perhaps it would seem wisest to just bury them in
storage containers, so that what survives in them can later be recovered if it is deemed necessary,
or even develop automated finds digitization systems which create electronic records and destroy
the original (even though this would only move the problem of industrial hoarding from the
physical into a virtual space). And much of the same could be done with the many millions of
unnecessary objects already stored in archaeological archives, which could either be sold (with
proper proof of provenance) on the international antiquities market (which might allow to create
additional income for the discipline to have more resources for preserving truly important
archaeology and even somewhat undermine the illicit antiquities market), or just dumped as
rubbish (which has the disadvantage that this would cost money), to name but a few possibilities.

All this, under current positivist premises, of course is serious disciplinary heresy. Yet, sooner
or later, we will have to come up with a strategy how to get rid of all those superfluous and
useless archaeological objects that we now still keep. Because if we do not come up with our
own, strategically planned solution to this problem, an unplanned and even less palatable solution
will sooner or later be forced on us, whether by politicians (and a public) no longer willing to
pay for keeping all this old rubbish, or simply because we run out of resources. And a random
selection forced upon us by external conditions is certainly worse than one where we at least can
strategically chose what to keep and what to lose based on our own, hopefully well-considered
disciplinary criteria. Even if it may hurt if we have to hand some of our priceless treasures to
someone else, or even destroy them: it is better if the choice remains ours.

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Endnotes
1 (http://www.bda.at/events/14/18670/Das-Archaeologiezentrum-Mauerbach-wurde-eroeffnet, accessed 17/6/2013).
2 All originally German direct quotes in this article were translated by the author.
3 (e.g. http://kaernten.orf.at/news/stories/ 2561582/, accessed 17/6/2013).
4 http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/arches/Wiki.jsp?page=Main, accessed 15/12/2014.

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