What the *FUCK*!!!

[elanya]

is up with

Dear colleagues,


I have the great misfortunate of having to relate to you some very bad
news. It has recently come to the attention of the OAS that on or
about the date of 1 May 2003, a disposal crew was directed, to knock
down the walls of the secure, locked storage cages which housed the
inactive artifact collections at the University of Toronto at
Scarborough. The contents of those cages were loaded into dump trucks
and disposed with the Toronto garbage in Michigan. All of this was
carried out without the knowledge or permission of the steward of
those collections, Dr. Marti Latta.


You must be feeling the same profound sense of loss and "this can't be
happening" that I felt when Marti first told me. The scope of the
loss is staggering. Its full extent is still being determined.


The current inventory: some or all artifacts from 23 sites, of which
21 are aboriginal and two are colonial. The lost material - 289 boxes
of various sizes - included field records, analysis data, lithic raw
material, and personal books and papers as well as artifacts, faunal
bone, and botanical remains. An estimated total of 433,000 artifacts
(not all diagnostics), have been destroyed.


Most of the sites excavated by members of the OAS in our early years
are utterly gone.


We will be posting more details on this tragedy as they become
available. In the meantime, let me go on record as stating that the
OAS does not hold Dr. Latta responsible for this disaster in any way.
Indeed, if anything, she is a victim. We support Dr. Latta
wholeheartedly and trust that the rest of our community does as well.



Sincerely,
Christine Caroppo
OAS President

I just got that e-mail from the OAS (Ontario Archaeological Society) mailing list. SHocked... I am shocked. What the *hell*?!?

Comments

Holy fuck!

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Hey, apparently there's no need to invade the country anymore for priceless artifacts to be destroyed. :P

*incoherently enraged sputtering follows*

[skjaere.livejournal.com]

How does something like that even happen?! Have you considered posting this in the archaeology community?

[forthright.livejournal.com]

I am staggered and incredibly confused as to how such a thing could ever happen. I am going to talk to my supervisor tomorrow. He was a bigwig in the OAS for many years, and knows all the people involved, so he may have new information on this situation.

[elanya.livejournal.com]

Groovy. I'll post here if *I* learn anything new via the list :o

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I'd suspect the disposal crew would at least know who'd given them their orders. An answer can't be that far off.

Have any excavations taken place at the dump, yet?

This certainly is a WTF event. Jesus.

[astatine210.livejournal.com]

Not only is that fucked-up beyond belief... I can't help wondering why Toronto's waste is being dumped in Michigan.

(Cue jingoistic jibes about nobody noticing another pile of garbage in Michigan, the 60% beer can content of Canadian garbage being economically viable in Milwaukee, ad nauseam)

[forthright.livejournal.com]

I talked to my supervisor today, and haven't really learned much other than what is in the message above and in the Globe and Mail story. It does indeed appear that the material in question got dumped in Michigan at the behest of some U of T bureaucrat and that the people responsible for the material were not informed.

As for the question of a salvage effort, presuming that it hasn't been compacted into a tiny cube of trash, such an effort might be possible, in which case the absolute most important thing to retrieve is NOT the artifacts themselves, but the papers, reports, and field notes. Even if all the items were retrieved, it wouldn't much good, archaeologically speaking, with out artifact provenances (where they dug it up from) and other such material. The vast majority of artifacts lost are faunal and botanical, and simply are of no use on their own.