A Decade of Study into Repository Fees for Archeological Curation

Many repositories, particularly those associated with university and state museums, have a long history of providing curatorial services at no cost to the collection owners to manage, store, and care for archeological collections created during projects on federal, state, local, and private lands. At least two factors were involved in the development of this relationship. One was the enactment of the Antiquities Act in 1906. It required that “the gatherings” from an archeological investigation on federal land be placed “…for permanent preservation in public museums (16 USC 432),” such as university and state museums. The second factor was that university faculty and students were often involved in the archeological projects that created the collections of artifacts, ecofacts, and associated records. The resulting collections were then stored in their affiliated university museums, and the ensuing curatorial services were often provided to the federal or state agency collection owners in an informal
exchange for access to and use of the collections in university research and education. This worked out well for both the museums and government, especially federal agencies that did not have repositories or adequate staff to catalog, store, and manage these collections. At the state level, some state-funded repositories, especially museums, existed and curated archeological collections from state lands.