Museum material, analysis

Thailand. In Organic Contents of Ancient Vessels Materials Analysis and Archaeological Investigation, ed. Biers, W.R. and McGovern, P.E., MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology, Volume 7, The University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, pp. 59 67. 

In this paper we have drawn on analyses carried out as part of the Maya Jade and Ceramics Project, a collaborative program of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Brookhaven National Laboratory during 1977-1983. Work at Brookhaven was conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy. Exploration into the interface between archaeological objectives, compositional variation and statistical modeling is an endeavor of the Smithsonian Archaeometric Research Collections and Records (SARCAR) facility located at the Smithsonian s Conservation Analytical Laboratory. Neffs participation in this research is made possible by a Smithsonian Institution Materials Analysis Postdoctoral Fellowship. 

We are grateful to the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for permission to sample specimens for compositional analysis. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BNS76--3397. Aspects of the investigation were carried out under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy. 

Hummel, S. Herrmann, B. In Ancient DNA Recovery and Analysis of Genetic Material from Paleontological, Archaeological, Museum, and Forensic Specimens-, Hummel, S., Herrmann, B., Eds. Springer-Verlag New York, 1994 pp 59-68. 

Analysis of the original 29 Wari samples revealed three easily distinguishable chemical groupings, labeled Wari I, 2, and 3, with two samples identified as outliers (labeled Mejia A and Wari-Unas). What remained of this material (20 samples) was subsequently returned to Williams at the Field Museum. We show here a principal components biplot of the INAA data with only 18 samples plotted (Mejia A and Wari-Unas have been excluded for purposes of clarity), showing the three main analytical groupings (Figure 4). 

Schieweck, A., Markewitz, D. and Salthammer, T. (2007b) Screening emission analysis of construction materials and evaluation of airborne pollutants in newly constructed display cases, in Museum Microclimates, Contributions to the Conference in Copenhagen 19-23 November 2007 (eds T. Padfield and K. Borchersen), The National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark, pp. 67-72. 

Museum collections are a tremendous and still largely underutilized resource for molecular systematic studies. The large research collections in the world contain huge amounts of material amenable to molecular analysis that may be otherwise unavailable due to extinction or collection difficulties. This can be especially acute in higher level studies of geographically diverse taxa. Collections can make possible, in time and resources, studies for which it would take years to gather material. 

References in general entomology usually include insects specific to fabrics and paper, although the special concerns of museum or historic conservation, older materials and natural dyestuffs, usually are not considered. A comprehensive analysis of the complete insect-related problem, including fumigation and control of textile pests, is available in Ebeling (9), or in an earlier treatise by Mallis (10). 

Because both the black and the green materials contain aluminum oxide or hydroxide, a cause for the black color must be found. The amorphous copper material that shows in the EDAX results but not on the XRD pattern may be this cause. A possible source of the black color in corroded bronze is suggested by Gettens (13) in his study of the corrosion of an ancient Chinese fragment. He attributes a black color in the corrosion layers to the presence of tenorite (CuO) and states that because it is so amorphous, it gives indistinct diffraction patterns or none at all. In a later paper Gettens (14) repeats his belief that the dark product in bronze corrosion is tenorite and stresses the need for further analysis. Plenderleith (15) agrees that the dark material in bronze corrosion is tenorite, but much debate continues as evidenced by a more recently published discussion between corrosion scientists and museum conservators (16). 

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