Abstract

Artifacts are more than a storage problem, and the motivation for the establishment of local repositories for archaeological collections should be greater than the alleviation of storage problems for commercial archaeologists. Over the past 125 years, hundreds of thousands of archaeological objects have been removed from Bruce County by relic hunters and archaeologists – today, only a fraction of recovered archaeological material remains within the county. With collections scattered across North America, an awareness of Bruce County's First Nations' heritage will remain severely diminished until their current whereabouts become known and, ideally, the collections repatriated to a local facility that can afford them appropriate curation, public visibility, and ready access to researchers.