Brick

I am a conservator and normally work with archaeological and
ethnographic objects. Some months ago I moved to Argentina, to San
Rafael,in the province of Mendoza. Just last week I got to know
about this big project that is going to start this year at a site.

It is the ruins of a fort from the l9th century made of earthen
bricks and with mosaic floors. The site was excavated in the
seventies and a part of the fort was found (the rest got destroyed
by the river in 1909). In the eighties the ruins were partly
restored and protected by a roof (I will not go in to details) and
declared a National Monument. The plan for now is to reconstruct the
walls with new earthen bricks, sticks, straw and some reinforcement
with cement, and the mosaics will be restored, not conserved.

As much as I know about conservation of mosaics (experience from
Greece) these are not good solutions, and I will give my advice to
the team of the project, but for the earthen brick construction I
don't have any experience. This is why I am writing to the list.
Please send me some guidelines, because I fear for the future of
this site.

I will probably not be working in this project, but I'll make all
the information get to those responsible. They do not have any
knowledge of international norms and conservation. I hope for a fast
answer, since the work is soon starting at the site.

Irene Delaveris


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 14:2
                  Distributed: Thursday, June 29, 2000
                        Message Id: cdl-14-2-022
                                  ***