elanya

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.