2019 Kaman Conservation Symposium

This past weekend, conservators from all over Turkey traveled to the Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology to attend the 2019 Kaman Conservation Symposium. The two-day symposium began with a tour of the excavation site at Kaman-Kalehöyük led by Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Kimiyoshi Matsumura, followed by a visit to the Kaman-Kalehöyük Archaeological Museum. Conference attendees then made their way back to the Institute, pausing to appreciate the beauty of the Japanese Memorial Garden.

Visiting the North Trench at Kaman-Kalehöyük.

Stopping by the koi pond at the Japanese Memorial Garden before a day of talks and discussion.

Dr. Sachihiro Omura, Director of the JIAA delivered the welcoming remarks. He spoke of the importance of having a dedicated conservation team at Kaman, and emphasized how the JIAA’s studies of the site have been enriched by having conservators and archaeologists working together. The rest of the symposium consisted of a variety of thought-provoking talks centered around collaborative work completed by the speakers at archaeological sites and museums in Turkey. Attendees also had the chance to tour the JIAA and visit various laboratories including conservation, paleoethnobotany, zooarchaeology, and physical anthropology.

A total of 25 people attended the symposium. In addition to the invited speakers, archaeologists, anthropologists, and student interns participating in the 2019 field season at Kaman were able to attend the talks and participate in the lively discussions that followed. We owe a special thanks to archaeology student intern Zeynep Kuşdil for providing translation for speakers who gave their talks in Turkish.

Thank you to everyone who attended!

This symposium was an excellent venue for conservators working within Turkey to share their experiences and discuss solutions for issues they face at their respective workplaces, including where to locate conservation supplies and methods for stabilizing crumbling mudbrick structures.

A list of talk titles and speakers can be found below:

• A New Era in Conservation: Processual Restoration – Conservation - İlkay İvgin
• Cultures of Collaboration at Sardis - Brian Castriota and Sarah Montonchaikul
• Wall Painting Conservation in Archaeological Sites - Prof. Dr. Bekir Eskici and Arş. Gör. Dr. Berna Çağlar Eryurt
• How ‘the Evidence of Past Human Activity' was Lifted from its Context - Barcın Höyük, Bursa - Evren Kıvançer and Rana Özbal
• Architectural Remains, Conservation Problems and Solution Suggestions in the Archeological Excavations - Yaşar Selçuk Şener
• Archaeometric Analyses of Kaman Yassihöyük Adobes and Conservation Problems - Tuğba Dirican and Ali Akın Akyol
• Some Trials on Chemical Consolidation of Archaeological Mudbrick Walls - Marianne Rochebeuf (Presented by Alice Paterakis)
• Analysis, Restoration and Conservation of Lydian Metal Artifacts from Uşak Museum (The Treasury of Croesus) - Latif Özen, Abdullah Zararsiz and Mahmut Aydin
• Conservation Practices of Archaeological Metal Finds: Case Studies from Excavation, Museum and Laboratory - Uğur Genç and Bengin Bilici
• Collecting In-situ and Laboratory Data on Corroded Metal Artefacts - Ian D. MacLeod
• Oxygen Absorbers and Desiccants in the Protection of Archaeological Metals - Alice Boccia Paterakis
• Preventıve Conservation Methods for Ceramıc Objects in Exhibitions - Serkan Gedük (Presented by İlkay İvgin)

Conservation Tips and Tricks

As the excavation season progresses, it isn't uncommon for some tools and materials to become scarce as supplies are used up.  In our case, certain cleaning tools employed by the conservators were no longer available.  In a display of ingenuity, student intern, Vale Vafaei, began experimentation with the existing supplies to make her own Dremel polishing tools for the removal of light surface debris on copper alloy objects.  This was accomplished by adhering polyethylene foam to used Dremel bits and cutting them into the required shapes.  The results were both elegant and effective.  

2015 Excavation Season well under way!

This year's field conservation staff for Kaman Kalehoyuk is comprised of Nichole Doub, Ingrid Gudmestad and Vale Vafaei.  We have been hard at work over the last 4 weeks conserving the artifacts recovered from this year's excavation and diffing into the backlog from previous seasons.

Here are just a couple of the objects we've been working on so far.... 

       
















There has also been vast quantities of x-radiography taking place....

Even a couple of block lifts on site...

And there is sure to be more excitement and work in the next few weeks!

An Iron Age Painted Sherd

While we work primarily with metals in the Kaman conservation lab, we had a particularly lovely painted sherd come through the other week. This sherd was excavated from an Iron Age level at Kaman Kalehöyuk and is typical of the painted ceramics from that period. It was found broken in two and the painted design was partially obscured by soil and surface concretions.

Conservation Intern Claire D'Izarny first cleaned off the soil using cotton swabs wetted with deionized water and then removed the concretions by scalpel. While cleaning the sherds, Claire decided to make use of our Dino-lite USB microscope to show what it is like to do this delicate work under the microscope.  

Here are photos taken with the Dino-lite showing a detail of the painted design before and after removing the concretions.

Now that the painted sherd has been cleaned and re-assembled, it can be drawn, photographed, and studied!

New X-Ray Machine for the Kaman Conservation Lab!

Some exciting new equipment arrived in the Kaman Conservation lab this year- a Faxitron digital cabinet X-ray machine! Thanks to the support of the Commemorative Organization of the Japan World Exposition ('70) and the Türkiye İş Bankası, which helped fund the purchase of this equipment, we can now x-ray a wide range of objects. This will be especially useful to investigate metal finds with thick corrosion and small block lifts prior to micro-excavation.

Our x-ray machine can fit objects up to approximately 15 x 18 x 18 inches; however, the digital sensor at the bottom of the cabinet is 9 x 11.5 inches, limiting what we can x-ray at any one time to that size. Since our unit has a digital x-ray sensor, we don’t have to use x-ray film or plates- which is the reason this type of radiography is called 'direct radiography'. Our Faxitron (model 43855) goes up to 130 kV, and is semi-automatic- meaning we control the camera/sensor from the computer but we have to set the kV and turn the x-ray source on and off directly on the Faxitron cabinet.

Our new protocol is to x-ray all of our small metal finds prior to treatment. This is incredibly useful as it allows us to better understand the shape and condition of an object when bulky corrosion is present, sometimes helping us to detect an original surface. X-ray imaging also aids in the decision-making for treatment, and assists the conservator in the investigative cleaning process. For example, prior to treating this copper alloy object, identified as a stamp, conservation intern Claire D’Izarny  took an x-ray with the new Faxitron. The design on the face of the stamp showed up clearly in the x-ray and helped Claire understand where to clean away the corrosion and burial soil obscuring the design.

While we love our new tool, we are still exploring the different applications for our machine. We hope to post any exciting finds and updates here and we would love to hear about other people’s experiences with similar machines! In the meantime, here are some more x-rays for your viewing pleasure...

Changing Out the Silica Gel

Silica gel is a form of silicon dioxide (SiO₂) with an expansive microscopic pore structure that provides a large internal surface area capable of absorbing and desorbing water molecules. It has been widely used as a desiccant for food and other goods since the beginning of the 20^th century. Because art objects require a stable environment, the museum world uses silica gel to control the relative humidity (RH) in exhibition cases and in storage. At Kaman Kalehöyük silica gel is used in storage containers to stabilize the RH. The gel is most often used to create a low humidity environment (≤ 30%) for metal objects, because many of the primary deterioration reactions for metals involve water.

 

An important part of the conservation work at Kaman Kalehöyük is re-conditioning and replacing the silica gel in storage. Some of the granules are doped with a moisture indicator (cobalt(II) chloride) that  gradually changes color from blue to pink when it transitions from the anhydrous  to the hydrated  state.  Pink silica gel is removed from the storage containers and reconditioned in the oven. Once it has returned to the anhydrous (blue) state, the silica gel can be returned to the many storage containers.