The Conservation of Human Remains: Ethical Questions and Experiences in America

The ethics and deontology of the conservation-restoration of human remains in the United States is explored in this article. Most indigenous people venerate human remains. When considering care, treatment, storage, display, or research there are typically ideological intensions and ethics, cultural traditions of appropriateness, and legal regulations that must be considered. Conservators need to be responsive to legislative changes and to calls from descendant communities. Conservation has moved away from treatment to a responsive and collaborative role in research, analysis, or repatriation. This paper gives an introduction to propriety and impropriety of conservation related to NAGPRA.Cet article examine l’éthique et la déontologie de la conservation-restauration de restes humains aux États-Unis. La plupart des peuples indigènes vénèrent les restes humains. La conservation, la restauration, la présentation, le stockage, ainsi que l’analyse des restes humains soulèvent les questions éthiques de la finalité intellectuelle, du respect des traditions culturelles et du dispositif légal en vigueur. Les restaurateurs doivent rester attentifs à l’évolution du droit et aux demandes des populations concernées. Ils limitent désormais leurs interventions pour privilégier la collaboration éclairée dans la recherche, l’analyse ou le rapatriement. Cet article évoque aussi le cadre fixé par le NAGPRA, la loi fédérale sur la protection et le rapatriement des tombes d’Amérindiens

Pesticide Contamination and Archaeological Collections: Contextual Information for Preparing a Pesticide History

The issue of pesticide-contaminated archaeological collections has generated concern among staff in collecting institutions. Pesticides have long been used, but the awareness of their unseen persistence and their potential as a human health hazard is a new aspect of preventive conservation. Background information and guidelines for developing a pesticide history are provided for repositories, museums, cultural resource management companies in the private and public sectors, academia, and other public collections.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Investigating Liquid CO2 to Clean Textiles and Basketry

This presentation illustrates the use of micron-sized snow particles to transfer and displace particles of surface soiling on delicate textile and basketry surfaces.  Liquid CO2 from a tank (with syphon) connected to a valve and a nozzle expands without exchanging heat, thus becoming a mixture of gaseous CO2 and dry ice that surrounds the soil particles with a gas envelope which slides over the object surface, and then the CO2 volatilizes into the air.  This momentum transfer and displacement system is dry, non-conductive, nonabrasive, and non-toxic.  Our process of testing this technique is described. Click on Video link on the right to view presentation.&nbsp

Woman-Ochre, A Stolen de Kooning Painting Comes Home

On Nov. 29, 1985, a Willem de Kooning painting, "Woman-Ochre," was stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art.  Decades later, on August 3, 2017, a routine Thursday afternoon at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, staffers were preparing for next season's exhibitions when the phone rang.  Arrangements for its quick return to Tucson from Silver City, New Mexico followed. The painting was unpacked and examined the following Wednesday.  The nature of the theft, the discovery, the return, and the preliminary examination for authentication provide an interesting story that highlights the importance of a conservator. Click on Video link on the right to view presentation.&nbsp

Chinchorro Twined Shrouds

The first inhabitants of the South Central Andes arrived to the Pacific coast of what is now Northern Chile and Southern Peru about 8000 BC. The early Chinchorro were fisher-hunter-gatherers that made use of two media for their artistic expressions, their own bodies and large canvases made from twined reeds and sedges. Mats and textiles were used for a variety of domestic and personal uses, including shelter, packaging and shrouding the dead. It is likely they were used as blankets for the living as well. The textile shrouds and stylistic mummification techniques employed by the Chinchorro culture predate pottery, agriculture and metal work Large shrouds made of semi-processed sedge fiber were probably made with a basic warp-weighted loom and twinning. Evidence indicates that they were initially painted and by 6000 BC they were embroidered with dyed camelid hair in a variety of geometric designs. Analyses of a decorated twined shroud from the Morro site in Arica, Chile together with contexts gathered from other archaeological evidence help build a more complex picture of the Chinchorros and their environment. Recent studies, including fiber, dye, construction and stylistic analyses reveal the experimentation and growth of technologies, materials and communication that are the beginning of the long and rich Andean coastal textile tradition. The textile studies plus the mortuary contexts provide new insight into the lives of these first settlers in the Americas

UV Fluorescent Epoxy Adhesives from Noncovalent and Covalent Incorporation of Coumarin Dyes

Epoxies are commonly used in art conservation as adhesives for artifact reconstruction and repair. However, with the development of colorless epoxies, it has become more difficult to detect repair work. Fluorescent epoxies would allow for easy detection of the epoxy joints by simple visual inspection under UV light while remaining unnoticeable under normal display lighting. Coumarins are natural dyes that can be added in very small amounts to make thermosets fluoresce. Depending on the functionality of the coumarin used, the dye may be physically encapsulated in the cross-linked polymer or it may be bound to the polymer through covalent bonds. In this paper, we examine the efficacy of coumarin (<b>1</b>) and coumarin 480 (<b>2</b>) as physically encapsulated dyes and 7-hydroxycoumarin (<b>3</b>) and 7-glycidyloxycoumarin (<b>4</b>) as covalently bound dyes in a commercial epoxy thermoset, Epo-Tek 301. All four dyes could be used to make the epoxy fluorescent, but coumarins <b>1</b> and <b>2</b> slightly reduced the lap shear strength of the thermoset and could be extracted with solvent. In contrast, coumarins <b>3</b> and <b>4</b> had little effect on the mechanical properties of the epoxy and only minute amounts could be extracted