BY BRITTANY DOLPH, Graduate Conservation Intern, UCLA/Getty Conservation Program
It may come as a surprise that sometimes conservators decide to not treat an object, after consulting with archaeologists and curators. One reason for this might be that the treatment would destroy information that’s important to scholars. This always has to be weighed against the risk that the artifact could fall apart or change irreversibly. An instance in which we might not treat an object would be the case of this figurine that has a black resin or sticky substance on it.
Though the resin might be considered an eyesore, we did not remove it in case it is actually an ancient repair. In fact, there are references to repair materials and practices in classical sources, one of which is pitch. On the other hand, a more modern mounting material, such as displayed by this figurine, was indeed removed, by placement in a vapor chamber. The solvent vapors penetrated the adhesive attaching the mounting material, allowing for quick and gentle removal.
Another way we use information is to decide which objects are in greatest need of treatment. Given a limited amount of time, objects that could just use a surface cleaning to spruce up their appearance may have to wait three months if there’s another object in danger of falling apart! One of the more major treatments undertaken for the Seleucia exhibition was the desalination of this vessel, which showed a frightening patch of salt crystals around the rim and handle.
Archaeological objects are exposed to numerous substances during burial, the source of which can be the soil, materials dissolved in liquid water moving through the site, or even the object itself, perhaps from manufacture. Salts of the water-soluble variety can be dangerous when they enter the body of a ceramic or other porous object, simply because the crystals can expand and contract with changes in the humidity of the air. Expansion, as you can imagine, places a lot of stress on something, especially if it’s expanding from the pores within. To combat the salts, conservators perform what we call desalination: in these cases where the vessels are well fired with no surface decoration, we immerse the vessel in a bath of specially purified water. The idea is to flush the salts out of the ceramic, while tracking the progress with a meter that measures the presence of the dissolved salts in the water. If the vessel had had surface decoration, the process would have been trickier; likewise, if it had been poorly fired, or even fired at a low temperature, it would have run the risk of disintegrating completely in the water. Thankfully, we determined that this vessel was good to go for the desalination bath — and by all counts, was successfully rid of its soluble salts.
As you can see, we do keep busy in the conservation lab — and the Seleucia exhibition was no exception!
