Developing a Master Preservation Plan for Collections at the Museum of History and Art

The museum's staff requests a planning grant to engage representative city officials and a team of three consultants--a conservator, environmental management specialist, and historic preservation architect--to develop a Master Preservation Plan for Collections. The museum's collections are currently housed in a designated historic building constructed in 1937 by the Works Progress Administration. The preservation plan would focus on collaboratively developed strategies to balance collections needs and vulnerabilities with the performance capacity of the historic building envelope. Project staff would employ appropriate passive and active measures to mitigate risks to stored collections by determining reasonably achievable targets for collections environments. The plan would also propose solutions that would be energy and cost efficient; respect the historic fabric of the museum and a possible second 1950s-era building designated for future museum use; and make efficient use of available storage spaces

Reviewing past environments in a historic house using building simulation

This paper reviews different heatingregimes applied to the same space,using building simulation. Theconstruction of a computer simulationmodel to investigate past and presentenvironments in a historic house libraryis described. The model simulated fourhypothetical scenarios, based on realdata. The simulation outputs werereviewed in terms of the risk ofphysical and chemical deterioration,and their relationship with an existingnational standard for archives. Thepossibility of simulating pastenvironments to investigate naturalageing is also discussed

Hydrological controls of in situ preservation of waterlogged archaeological deposits

Environmental change caused by urban development, land drainage, agriculture or climate change may result in accelerated decay of in situ archaeological remains. This paper reviews research into impacts of environmental change on hydrological processes of relevance to preservation of archaeological remains in situ. It compares work at rural sites with more complex urban environments. The research demonstrates that both the quantity and quality of data on preservation status, and hydrological and chemical parameters collected during routine archaeological surveys need to be improved. The work also demonstrates the necessity for any archaeological site to be placed within its topographic and geological context. In order to understand preservation potential fully, it is necessary to move away from studying the archaeological site as an isolated unit, since factors some distance away from the site of interest can be important for determining preservation. The paper reviews what is known about the hydrological factors of importance to archaeological preservation and recommends research that needs to be conducted so that archaeological risk can be more adequately predicted and mitigated. Any activity that changes either source pathways or the dominant water input may have an impact not just because of changes to the water balance or the water table, but because of changes to water chemistry. Therefore, efforts to manage threatened waterlogged environments must consider the chemical nature of the water input into the system. Clearer methods of assessing the degree to which buried archaeological sites can withstand changing hydrological conditions are needed, in addition to research which helps us understand what triggers decay and what controls thresholds of response for different sediments and types of artefact

Comprehensive Environmental Assessment

George Eastman House requests a $40,000 planning grant to conduct a comprehensive environmental assessment of its building complex, to support a total project budget of$97,869. The planning grant will provide the staff, administration, and governing body with a core document to guide the Museum in implementing sustainable preservation environments for its collections. The Museum also requests $10,000 in supplemental funding to enact a pilot implementation project, crafted with the consulting team, to address a need identified during the site-visit

Using Sequential Mixed Social Science Methods to Define and Measure Heritage Conservation Performance

There is no agreed-upon definition for heritage conservation performance, but it is possible to borrow ideas from the natural resource conservation field to inform this concept. Dimensions of performance can include economic, technical, and sociocultural and experiential indices. Because heritage conservation ostensibly benefits people as its primary goal, however, the values of most stakeholders ought to play a role in defining performance. Most of these values are subjective and represent sociocultural and personal meanings and tend to differ dramatically from the positivistic, fabric-centered value system of conservation experts. Measurement implies quantification, yet many sociocultural values are based on qualitative meanings that defy direct attempts at quantification. One solution for this predicament is to employ a sequential mixed-method approach where qualitative meanings are gathered from stakeholders and then these meanings are used to inform the development of a quantitative method, such as a survey instrument. In this way, while the qualitative meanings are not being directly “measured” as such, aspects of the phenomenon behind these meanings can be measured, quantified, and subjected to statistical techniques. A brief representative case study is presented as an example of how social science methodologies can help define and measure performance

3D modelling of geological and anthropogenic deposits at the World Heritage Site of Bryggen in Bergen, Norway

The landscape of many historic cities and the character of their shallow subsurface environments are defined by a legacy of interaction between anthropogenic and geological processes. Anthropogenic deposits and excavations result from processes ranging from archaeological activities to modern urban development. Hence, in heritage cities, any geological investigation should acknowledge the role of past and ongoing human activities, while any archaeological investigation should be conducted with geological processes in mind. In this paper it is shown that 3D geological and anthropogenic models at different scales can provide a holistic system for the management of the subsurface. It provides a framework for the integration of other spatial and processmodels to help assess the preservationpotential for buried heritage. Such an integrated framework model is thus contributing to a decision support system for sustainable urban (re)development and regeneration in cities, while preserving cultural heritage. A collaborative approach is proposed to enhance research and implementation of combined geological and archaeological modelling for sustainable land use planning and heritage preservation, using York and Bryggen as prime examples. This paper presents the status of 3D framework modelling at Bryggen in Norway as an example