The treatment of the two Al’Ubaid Friezes has progressed since the last post. This post is going to focus on what we have been doing with the marching bull frieze (B15880). This frieze is made up of shell pieces for the bulls (probably made from large conch shells) on a background of black stone pieces with copper alloy borders at the top and bottom of the frieze.

B15880, frieze of 6 bulls

The archaeologists who excavated these materials in the 1920’s set the mosaic into plaster over a wooden backing. Overtime, this support had started to flex, causing the plaster to separate from the wood. This lead to movement of the mosaic frieze casing pieces to loosen and detach as well as causing breaks in the stone. Over the years detached pieces were re-adhered using a variety of different adhesives depending on when the work was done.

Diagram of B15880 showing the 1920’s backing materials in relation to the copper, shell, and stone materials of the frieze.

Because of these issues the mosaic has now been removed from the 1920’s support. One of the perks of having the pieces free from the support, is that we can see both sides of each piece. While we knew from the X-ray that in antiquity they had been attached to the original support using copper alloy wire twists, we can know see those twists.

Detail of the shell showing the remnants of a copper alloy twist/fastener

Detail of the stone showing the remnants of a copper alloy twist/fastener

Now we are working to stabilize each individual piece. The shell bulls are in very good shape, so that has just been cleaning to remove the plaster, areas of over-paint, and adhesive residue. The stone pieces are, however, in much worse shape. We have been consolidating them to restore the cohesion of the stone, joining broken fragments, and cleaning to reduce plaster and old adhesives.

Image showing the progress on cleaning and stabilizing the mosaic pieces.

The next step will be to adhere the clean and stable pieces to a new backing with new grouting around them to keep them in place. Exactly what materials we will use and how that will be done is something we are still working on, but here you can see some of the test tiles that we are making to help make that decision!

Test tiles with bone beads and different possible grouting materials.