Damage during field archaeology

I'm interested in researching artifact damage that occurs during the
course of excavating and processing artifacts in underwater and
land-based field archaeology.

I have recently returned from a successful field excavation but was
surprised when I critically reviewed my records at the level of
minor damage that was sustained. It occurred to me that I'm not
familiar with publications that attempted to quantify what might be
considered as normal attrition during field work. Most of our
literature on dealing with perishability recommends conservation
procedures without addressing the question of what exactly is
"acceptable loss" in fieldwork.

But some amount of damage, defined here as including minor cracking,
spalling, abrasion, distortion or surface loss as well as outright
breakage, is accepted with regret by conservators and archaeologists
alike due to resource limitations, field conditions and artifact
perishability.

My first interest is to see to what extent one can characterize
field damage with respect to the standard processing flow of:
excavation, retrieval, cataloging, cleaning and triage,
interpretation, packing and transit.

Also more ambitiously I would like to see if one can meaningfully
estimate the damage rates that commonly occur within normal practice
by archaeologists and field conservators at different types of
sites.

I realize these are difficult questions to ask in part because they
require the collaborating archaeologist and conservator to
critically examine and discuss the standards of their field
practice.

Adding to this sensitivity we also bridge two venues in our work:
the museum and the field site. From the museum perspective, one that
enjoys post-excavation hindsight, any artifact damage appears
avoidable. While in the field much is accepted and assigned to the
rigors of that venue, the intensity of physical activity around each
artifact and the spirit of doing the best one can.

By museum standards the physical activity that a find experiences is
unusually intense. Each recovered artifact goes through the
concentrated cycle of critical events described above. Each stage of
processing presents unique as well as common risks.

The goals of this research are far off. On a personal level I'm
looking at how it is that conservators accept or accommodate damage
to the artifacts in their care and when they decide their
ministrations were successful or failed.

On a practical level I would like to see if one can develop
pre-expedition conservation planning by introducing basic risk
management principles to predict and reduce the common field risks
and lower the artifact damage rates. My sense is that predicted
artifact volume studies, predicted artifact frequency studies,
predicted artifact type studies and more detailed artifact process
planning can make the best of difficult environments.

But my first interest is in any personal insights or reactions the
Cons DistList'ers have with this topic. While I would like to
promote general discussion in the 'List, I would also appreciate
private correspondence should that be more comfortable. All private
correspondence will of course be confidential.

Dennis Piechota
Conservator
Object and Textile Conservation
16 Central Street
Arlington, MA 02174
617-648-3199

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 11:9
                  Distributed: Tuesday, July 15, 1997
                        Message Id: cdl-11-9-001
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