Describing corrosion of archaeological iron objects

Our laboratory, Institut de restauration et de recherches en
archeologie et paleometallurgie (I.R.R.A.P.), from Compiegne, France
is specialized in conservation and restoration of metal objects,
specially archaeological objects. For 1999, in collaboration with
other French laboratories and the Ministry of Culture, we begin a
new project of research based on the evaluation of the alkaline
sulfite method for the stabilisation of iron objects. In our
laboratory, we use this method since 1987 and want to see after all
this years its efficiency on objects that we have stabilised this
way.

In the first part of this project, we want to elaborate a
description of corrosion state of an iron archaeological object for
the evaluation of its conservability. The objective would be the
categorization of stability of an iron object and the redaction of a
user-manual for this categorization. In the second part, we would
apply this standardized user-manual on objects treated with alkaline
sulfite to try to evaluate the efficiency of this method. If you
have any suggestion or idea, I would be very happy to receive them.

Marie-Anne Loeper-Attia for Andre Rapin

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 12:61
                Distributed: Wednesday, January 27, 1999
                       Message Id: cdl-12-61-012
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