Donations, Appraisals, and Tax Write-Offs: Trying to Keep Collections Off of the Antiquities Market

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Every year, museums, repositories, archives, and campuses receive requests by private citizens to accept donations of artifacts and archives. Putting aside some of the difficulties that can arise in confirming the provenience and the legality of non-research collections, some donors request that certain conditions be met for them to consider donating their collection to a facility. Among these requests is that the collection be appraised so that the donation can be used as a tax write-off. While there are some older regulations in place that suggest how to appraise sites and collections (“The commercial or archaeological value of the archaeological resources involved and the cost of restoration and repair”; ARPA) or how to handle IRS forms, the specifics of how to do this in a manner in keeping with relatively rapidly changing archaeological codes of ethics are often vague, sometimes intentionally so, and vary institution by institution. This talk describes how the University of Wyoming Archaeological Repository and the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist are attempting to navigate this issue and some of the interesting quandaries we’ve encountered along the way.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 30943