SITE PRESENTATION \ 78ov
1: G. Buccellati, October 2007

In-house collections – An overview

Goals

The objects with any museographic value are transferred at the end of each season to the pertinent museum (more than 3,000 item at present). But the vast majority of movable items collected and recorded, including sherds and samples, remain in the Expedition House. Over the years, I have made a special effort at providing adequate local storage and to develop recording mechanisms that would allow:

for an integration of the catalog in the digital publication (this website, under UGR);
for adequate access to interested scholars.

The collections are thus another aspect of the extensive publishing goals I have in mind for our site:

first, the integration of the catalog within the Urkesh Global Record gives a full stratigraphic documentation of each item, and a preliminary typological classification. (The stratigraphic information is also only preliminary for all the units that are not as yet available in UGR format.)
second, the direct availability of the items as such, organized and labeled as they are in our store rooms, is another aspect of a publication program lato sensu, i.e., in the sense that access to the original provides the best form of intellectual control on the data such as is normally associated with the concept of publication.

Types of collections

There are two basic types of collections:

the display collections present select examples of objects and samples to showcase specific details of the material culture that is of interest to visitors as well as first timers on the expedition staff;
the study collections contain everything else, i.e., the total assemblage of all movable items that have ever been recorded and not sent to the museum.

Site Museum

The display facilities we have available at the moment take the place of a proper Site Museum. This would entail a greater commitment of resources and the availability of specialized technical know-how, and we will be able to envisage it only at some later time. The important point that I am stressing at the moment is that, with a minimum of expenditure and with the application of simple common sense, one can from the beginning achieve goals that are substantively those of more elaborate facilities, and one can adequately absolve our responsibility towards the education aspect of our work.