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16.7: Dilemmas in Conservation Practice - Approaches to dealing with text

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    34993
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    Conservation practice ranges from preliminary investigation, through preventive measures, to remedial techniques, and to restoration; it may involve removing a vulnerable object from circulation and replacing it with a replica or surrogate. The conservator is faced with several dilemmas: if an object demonstrates several values, and has clearly gone through a number of changes to condition and meaning, should it be conserved in its current state, or should an attempt be made to regain something of an earlier state (Brooks et al. 1996)? Should a musical instrument, or clock, be conserved so that it can demonstrate its original function of producing sound, or keeping time (this may involve repairing or replacing worn parts), or should it be cleaned of later accretions and stabilised as a static example in a typological sequence, or conserved complete with all the damage resulting from association with a notable event (a bugle used in a famous battle, a clock which went down with the RMS Titanic)?

    Should a book be conserved so that the pages can once more be turned safely, or should it be kept in its well-thumbed and disintegrating state to demonstrate prolonged use? Figure 4 depicts an early 18th-century Greek and Latin lexicon showing evidence of early 19th-century schoolboy use. The structure of the book and the binding are not exceptional and the text is now probably of little practical use, although its age and consequent idiosyncrasies may be of interest. It is the object as a whole including the signs of use and wear, and the annotations (no longer seen, at least by some, as defacement but as adding charm) which provides interesting social evidence. This has been conserved as is, with no attempt to repair (despite its relatively poor condition), in order to demonstrate its history of use and to avoid prioritising any particular aspect. It is simply given good general care to prevent further damage.

    The treatment of the lexicon is an example of preventive conservation. This form of conservation is considered the most ethical approach since it involves as little change to an object as possible (Pye 2001: 130; Williams 1997). It aims to conserve both material and meaning, but will not necessarily elucidate concealed text. If the obscuring corrosion on a coin or Roman military diploma is considered stable, these objects could simply be given good storage conditions (preventive conservation), but the text would remain illegible to the naked eye (although it may be possible to detect detail using X-radiography). In practice the perceived significance of the lettering on the coin or the text of the diploma would almost certainly lead to the decision to remove the corrosion. This would enhance legibility but not necessarily improve long-term stability of the metal without further conservation treatment, since a stable corrosion layer will have been disrupted. Thus, the materiality of the writing governs conservation choices, often regardless of the material condition of the object as a whole.

    The Drive to Reveal Text

    The requirement to clarify or reveal lettering brings the problem of balancing the benefit of elucidating text with the risk of damage or loss. The discovery, in the mid-18th century, of a mass of papyrus scrolls at Herculaneum (the Roman town buried by volcanic ash during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ad 79) provides a historical example. Ever since their discovery, classical scholars have been understandably eager to read the contents of the scrolls, and extensive efforts had been made to unroll them. The scrolls are partially carbonised and extremely fragile. A successful, but excessively slow, method for unrolling was perfected in the mid-18th century by Piaggio, but scholars and scientists (including Sir Humphry Davy — the eminent 19th-century chemist) continued to experiment in the hope of finding a better approach (Gilberg 1988). Almost all attempts resulted in failure and apparently very large numbers of the scrolls were lost. However exciting new imaging techniques have now made it possible to elucidate the text on similar scrolls (Baumann et al. 2008; Chabries et al. 2003).

    Conservation cleaning is a current example of risking loss of material of an object in order to reveal the materiality of text. This technique is used to remove superficial accretions which may be masking the significance of an object where this is demonstrated by surface detail (e.g. tool marks, decoration, and text). But cleaning is a complex procedure since it may be difficult to distinguish where the informative surface lies (on corroded metals it may lie not beneath, but within the layers of corrosion, Pye 2001: 135). Cleaning may also damage other significant evidence such as remaining traces of paint. Inscriptions cut in stone were frequently coloured but if the traces of pigment are masked by, or mingled with, dirt or deterioration products of the stone they may be removed by ill-judged cleaning. This situation calls for both careful preliminary investigation, and for collaboration with specialists familiar with the inscriptions. Other important technological features may be as difficult to detect and equally vulnerable to cleaning, such as minutely thin layers of silver on Roman debased ‘silver’ coinage (Vlachou et al. 2003). Thus cleaning (that apparently innocuous, even beneficial, process) is potentially destructive and often controversial. Conservation documentation goes some way to preserving evidence through recording, but even meticulous documentation of the stages and effects of cleaning cannot compensate for the removal of evidence and loss of material relationships.

    To balance the information gained with the potential for loss of other information, cleaning may focus on selective areas only, or may not be taken through to completion. Excavated coins are cleaned to reveal lettering, mint marks and other detail because of their importance in dating the coin (and, on an archaeological excavation, the context from which it came). This is usually undertaken mechanically as this method provides the most control and the ability to monitor carefully what is being revealed; however, it is a time-consuming process. Thus coins are often only partially cleaned, the process being taken just far enough to gain adequate information for identification (Seeley 1980: 6). Coin hoards present another conservation problem since the coins are often ‘welded’ together by corrosion. In this case the drive to identify the number, range and date(s) of the coins usually leads to the use of (less controllable but potentially rapid) chemical treatments to separate the coins.

    Despite the conservation principles discussed above, a fundamentally irreversible process has been used for over a century to preserve the text on cuneiform tablets made of (usually) unfired, sun-dried clay. Because of the problems of fragility and frequently of damaging and obscuring salts absorbed during deposition, the tablets have been traditionally fired to strengthen them. This makes them more easily handleable for reading and more resistant to salt removal processes, but turns the clay tablets into ceramics, thus permanently changing both the colour of the tablets and the material evidence of manufacture. The treatment was recorded in the late 19th century by Friedrich Rathgen (the first chemist to be employed in conservation and widely accepted as the ‘father’ of modern scientific conservation) and, with some modification, has continued in use (Gilberg 1987; Rathgen 1905; Thickett et al. 2002). It is still used for some tablets, although a more cautious, and less interventive, approach may be used where feasible.

    The drive to preserve or protect the text, even possibly at the cost of other aspects of an object, can also be seen in the ways in which books were cared for traditionally. It was considered important to keep books in use (i.e. readable) and to do this the removal of old, worn and damaged bindings and their replacement with new ones, was a widespread and accepted practice. This kept the body of the book well protected and the text accessible; however not only was the earlier binding lost but the process of rebinding might involve other losses through practices such as trimming of pages. Recently a much more conservative approach has been adopted with existing bindings being retained and conserved wherever possible. Historically significant early bindings were not affected by this practice but many more ordinary bindings were lost, and there continues to be a potential conflict over the views of where the value lies — in the text or in the binding (Foot 1984). With similar emphasis on preserving text, in 1999 Karen Pavelka gave a paper at a conference on ‘reversibility’ in which she discussed the difficulties she faced as an archive conservator with responsibility for keeping archives accessible to readers. She acknowledged that she sometimes used irreversible practices such as trimming the edges of damaged and ‘fraying’ documents. By sacrificing some of the material (the edges) she aimed to minimise the further, and worse, damage likely to be incurred during continued handling (Pavelka 1999).

    A different dilemma was posed by the discovery in 1973 of a mass of wooden writing tablets in a waterlogged context at Vindolanda Roman fort in Northumberland (Bowman 1983). Traces of writing in ink were visible but clearly fugitive, and without conservation treatment the wooden tablets would have collapsed and disintegrated (resulting, of course, in the loss of text). The normal treatment for waterlogged wood at that time involved immersion in a synthetic wax which would have darkened the wood and obscured the writing. An alternative treatment was used which involved the potentially dangerous process of heating ether (a highly flammable solvent) in order to dissolve the resin used to strengthen the wood tablets. It was possible to do this safely because the tablets are small and the work could be carried out under carefully controlled conditions (Blackshaw 1974). Had they been larger this treatment might not have been used. Today we would probably prefer to use a freeze-drying technique, after testing carefully to assess the effect on the text (this technique was not widely available in the 1970s). Another option open to us now would be to digitally record and disseminate the visible text before attempting conservation of the physical tablets. Thus, we might display (and preserve) the text in virtual form rather than risk affecting the materiality of the tablets themselves. Indeed, the digital documentation of visible text prior to conservation is a viable option for most, if not all, types of written document.


    16.7: Dilemmas in Conservation Practice - Approaches to dealing with text is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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