« Return to news

Museum may gain artifacts

From Martinsville Bulletin (http://www.martinsvillebulletin.com/article.cfm?ID=46675)

Some of Sweet Briar College’s archaeological treasures likely will find a new home in Martinsville after the private women’s school near Lynchburg closes.

The Virginia Museum of Natural History (VMNH) is negotiating with Sweet Briar to acquire parts of its archaeology collection pertaining to the state.

However, it is all but certain that the museum will get them because Sweet Briar is not considering any other potential recipients, said VMNH Curator of Archaeology Elizabeth Moore.

The museum anticipates getting about 30 boxes of artifacts, such as pottery fragments, animal bones and decayed food waste excavated by students and researchers from the college at Virginia historical sites, Moore said.

Accompanying the artifacts will be researchers’ notes and other documents detailing how research was done and how artifacts relate to each other, she said.

Documentation can be more important than the artifacts themselves. If a relic is lost but the notes remain available, “you can still tell a lot about” it, Moore said, adding that an artifact without notes could be “just something pretty to look at.”
Then again, it may not be pretty. As is often the case with relic collections, Moore said, “a lot of it’s not attractive” although it is valuable to science.

Moore said she could not assess a value to the collection for two reasons. One is that a lot of the relics are “one of a kind” and irreplaceable. The other, she said, is that many of the items might not mean anything to the average person, yet researchers could find them fascinating.

A nail is a hypothetical example that she mentioned. To an average person, a nail is just a nail, but to an expert on historical structures, a nail dug up at an excavation site — based on the type of nail it is — could be valuable in determining how an ancient structure no longer on the site was built.

Sweet Briar’s interest in VMNH stems from the college seeking a repository that can keep artifacts “for the long-term,” adhere to federal standards — the highest — for maintaining them and provide space to researchers who want to examine them, according to Moore.

The museum is able to do all of that, she said.

It will not cost VMNH anything to acquire Sweet Briar’s collection, although there will be costs for maintaining the artifacts, like there are with all of the museum’s collections, Moore said.

Roughly 22 million natural history specimens are in storage at the museum on Starling Avenue, VMNH officials have said.

Due to limited exhibit space, most specimens never are seen by the public, although scientists from the museum and other institutions can access them for examination.

That probably will be the case with Sweet Briar’s relics. Moore said they will be kept in storage but as new exhibits are developed, if it is determined that certain items would be useful in an exhibit, they could be placed on display.

Moore understands that Sweet Briar’s archaeology collection temporarily will be transferred to a laboratory at Randolph College for analysis and inventory. Once that is done, the relics can be transferred to the museum, she said. She expects the transfer will occur by the fall.

All of the boxes should be able to fit into one van, Moore said. Either a crew from Sweet Briar can haul the collection to Martinsville or employees of the museum can travel to the college to get it, she said.

Right now, with the college sort of in a state of limbo, officials are trying to figure out who at Sweet Briar will have the authority to sign the paperwork necessary to transfer the collection to the museum, Moore said.

Citing “insurmountable financial challenges,” Sweet Briar in March announced plans to close this year at the end of summer session. Since then, students, faculty, alumnae and others have been trying to keep it open through efforts such as fundraising and legal action, according to media reports.

Based on “everything I’ve heard, they’re officially closing,” Moore said, noting that students are seeking to enroll in other colleges and faculty members are seeking new jobs.