A good cleaning.

In addition to collecting geophysical data from Site 298, my afternoons, evenings, and Fridays are also busy times when I can work on the material excavated during the 2023 season. Last year we found three small artifact in our surveys and excavations that were interesting enough for a good cleaning, or in more archaeological terms, for conservation.

SP 00002. Coin before conservation.

Conservation is a specialization in archaeology with the goal of preserving the artifacts once they are removed from the soil via excavation (or more rarely, found on the surface). Underground, many materials will decay or decompose when first buried but eventually they reach a stable state with their immediate surroundings (“microenvironment”). Once this stage is reached decay is so slow that artifacts can survive for thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years. Caves and bogs are good examples of environments where microenvironments form in which many organic materials survive that would normally be lost.

Conservators work to stabilize the artifact (i.e., stop the decay and physically support the artifact), clean the artifact so it can be studied, and then to preserve them through creating a new microenvironment in which the artifacts will survive. Archaeological conservators (not ‘conservationists’) undergo a rigorous training in chemistry and materials science. In Erbil, there is an excellent conservation facility at The Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage, originally funded by a US Department of State grant in 2008 and now a full-functioning facility.

An archaeology colleague of mine at the Iraqi Institute, Aram Mohammed Amin, agreed to conserve our three small artifacts and I left them with his team at the end of the last season. I just got them back from their secure storage location in the Museum of Antiquities and Heritage.

SP 00002. After cleaning. I used a raking light in this photograph to highlight the imagery on the surface. This is just a candid shot. A formal photograph with normal lighting and a scale will be made, along with a drawing of both sides of the coin. My goal here was to highlight how much can be hidden beneath a good layer of corrosion.

SP 00002 was found in the plow zone at Kharaba Tawus and, yes, this was the second artifact we found on the project. I only have one side of the coin photographed here, but you can see how the coin is now legible and can be dated by an expert in medieval numismatics. It will be stored in the Museum under archival conditions so future scholars can make a careful study of the coin for decades to come. It is made of copper and one of our archaeologists last season suggested it might date from the ‘Abassid Caliphate between AD 750 and 1258. I’m no expert on coins, so don’t quote me on that, but I’m sure we will be able to date this one now that the conservators have been able to remove the copper corrosion and stabilize the artifact.

Anyone who knows of a good parallel, please let me know!