Textiles, long-term preservation

Long term burial of artifacts recovered in archaeological excavations often leads to friability, salt encrustation, physical damage, and severe corrosion. Field conservation is limited to such measures as are required to preserve the artifact until it may receive the attention of specialists in the museum laboratory. Typical conservation treatments for textiles, waterlogged wood, bone and ivory, cuneiform tablets, and cast and wrought marine iron are reviewed with particular emphasis on the effects such treatments may have on the subsequent technical examination of the artifact. 

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