An Unusual Conservation Problem...

It's all change at work.  The field team's back from their recent excavations, and the office is full of new people and rather old things. 

For a little while, we find ourselves the custodians of all manner of objects.  They're dug up, cleaned and stablised, then they stay on the shelves until all the rigmarole with Treasure Trove is resolved, and the objects are assigned to an appropriate museum.  Often in the rush to get the site published, the finds get neglected - I've had numerous complaints from museum curators who've found themselves taking custody of grotty, manky finds that are still in more or less the same state they were in when they were dug out of the ground in the first place.

Naturally, we don't want to be associated with that sort of shoddy workmanship.  We want our finds to be clean, stable, marked up as required, and nicely packaged.  To make life more complicated, the assemblages grow to accomodate new finds recovered during the environmental processing works.  Then there may be years of delay before the assemblages move on to their new homes.  This of course causes a crisis of space management.

With massive amounts of finds coming in from the 19th century pottery site, I'm having to rationalise space in order to try and make room for the new arrivals.  Thankfully, there's extra staff around to help facilitate this.  So all those silly little jobs that have been hanging around for months can now get done, and there's new bits and bobs to poke through and play with!!

Some of the new arrivals are causing trouble already.  You wouldn't expect conservation issues from a 19th century pottery site, but my friends in the field team have created a nice thorny little problem for me by bringing me some rather unusual finds.  They found a pit filled with dumped debris from the pottery, and recovered a nice selection of pot lids for posterity.  The only problem is that they'd been dumped before firing.  They're raw clay -- they haven't even been fired into their 'biscuit' state. 

They've been unpacked and set out on trays to air-dry over the weekend.  Hopefully they'll be a little less slippery on Monday, and after a few weeks I'm hoping it'll be possible to clean them up a bit.  It's certainly presents an unusual challenge - but then, that's probably why I enjoy the job so much!
 

An Unusual Conservation Problem...

It's all change at work.  The field team's back from their recent excavations, and the office is full of new people and rather old things. 

For a little while, we find ourselves the custodians of all manner of objects.  They're dug up, cleaned and stablised, then they stay on the shelves until all the rigmarole with Treasure Trove is resolved, and the objects are assigned to an appropriate museum.  Often in the rush to get the site published, the finds get neglected - I've had numerous complaints from museum curators who've found themselves taking custody of grotty, manky finds that are still in more or less the same state they were in when they were dug out of the ground in the first place.

Naturally, we don't want to be associated with that sort of shoddy workmanship.  We want our finds to be clean, stable, marked up as required, and nicely packaged.  To make life more complicated, the assemblages grow to accomodate new finds recovered during the environmental processing works.  Then there may be years of delay before the assemblages move on to their new homes.  This of course causes a crisis of space management.

With massive amounts of finds coming in from the 19th century pottery site, I'm having to rationalise space in order to try and make room for the new arrivals.  Thankfully, there's extra staff around to help facilitate this.  So all those silly little jobs that have been hanging around for months can now get done, and there's new bits and bobs to poke through and play with!!

Some of the new arrivals are causing trouble already.  You wouldn't expect conservation issues from a 19th century pottery site, but my friends in the field team have created a nice thorny little problem for me by bringing me some rather unusual finds.  They found a pit filled with dumped debris from the pottery, and recovered a nice selection of pot lids for posterity.  The only problem is that they'd been dumped before firing.  They're raw clay -- they haven't even been fired into their 'biscuit' state. 

They've been unpacked and set out on trays to air-dry over the weekend.  Hopefully they'll be a little less slippery on Monday, and after a few weeks I'm hoping it'll be possible to clean them up a bit.  It's certainly presents an unusual challenge - but then, that's probably why I enjoy the job so much!