Ur | In the Artifact Lab

By Tessa Young

Who doesn’t love a beaded necklace? They’re sold commonly today, but did you know that they were popular in the Ancient Middle East? There are a number of fabulous pieces of beaded jewelry on display in the new Middle East Galleries, and several beaded items from our collection will be featured in the Museum’s Jewelry of Ur lecture and workshop scheduled for June 14th!

https://www.futurity.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/beads_dirt_770.jpg

Excavation of a Bronze Age necklace from a burial in the UK (Credit: Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service Contracting Team and Persimmon Homes Ltd [Anglia]) (https://www.futurity.org/shells-necklace-bronze-age-718992/)

When beaded artifacts are unearthed during excavation, typically the floss, or string, which held the beads has disintegrated in the burial environment. To ensure that the beadwork does not lose its original design, archaeologists will document their findings both photographically and through written records, and sometimes, they will string the beads onto a new piece of floss. This floss was usually good enough to get the pieces back to the museum, but it is not up to our modern conservation standards!

B15918 before treatment, with a broken strand and hasty repair tying off the ends

Here at the Penn Museum, when beadwork is destined for loans, display, or requires handling for programming, the Conservation Department wants to be sure that these objects are secure. For the upcoming Jewelry of Ur program, fellow conservation technician Alyssa Rina and I were tasked with restringing several pieces of beaded jewelry, including B15918, pictured above. The floss on this piece was previously broken and then tied off in a quick repair. The plan for this conservation treatment was to restring the beads in a loop with a more durable floss.

Depending on the piece, we restring using two different weights of braided nylon floss, which has the strength necessary to hold the beads securely while also being capable of holding knots. Monofilament (fishing line) is another popular choice, but we have found that knots can come undone rather easily with this material.

Restringing beads in a padded box using a needle in the artifact lab

Penn Museum Conservators have developed several tactics to keep the beads in place during the restringing process. First, we always keep the beads contained within a padded box, preventing the beads from rolling away and getting lost. Second, as seen in the photograph, we typically use a small clamp to secure the floss to the edge of the box. This keeps everything from shifting and rolling around. Finally, we thread the floss onto a small needle to aid in the efficiency of stringing the beads. These beads had large and regular enough holes to use a standard sewing needle, but thin, flexible beading needles are also an option.

Conservators also want to be sure that the stringing will remain in place. The first bead on the string is tied into place with two half-hitches (more-or-less a fancy double knot), and then the rest of the beads are strung into place with the help of a thin, flexible needle. If the beadwork is supposed to be a loop, at the end of the strand, the floss is threaded back through the first bead, and again tied off with two half-hitches. If the beadwork is supposed to be linear, the terminal bead is tied off with two half-hitches, making sure that the beads are tight but comfortable on the strand. Once this is done, the beads are stable enough to be handled or put on display without any fear!

B15918 after re-stringing

Update – this post contains outdated language. We no longer use the term “mummy” and instead use “mummified human individuals” to refer to Ancient Egyptian people whose bodies were preserved for the afterlife. To read more about this decision, follow this link.

Recent visitors to the Artifact Lab may have noticed this new sign posted on one of the lab windows:

Since we opened in fall 2012, you might have occasionally caught us working on non-Egyptian things, but if you visit us now, you will definitely see us working on things from other parts of the collection, especially artifacts that we are preparing for our new Middle East Galleries. Right now, we are focusing a lot of our efforts on treating ceramics and lithics, most from Iraq and Iran.

We have tens of thousands of ceramics and lithics in this museum’s collection, but somehow, in my over 4 years here, I have gotten away with working on only a handful.

Conservator Tessa de Alarcon reconstructing a ceramic vessel. This is a common sight in our main lab (behind the scenes) but not so much in the Artifact Lab…until now.

So this is how, after spending over 4 years working on mummies and coffins, working on a small ceramic vessel becomes a novelty. And that is why I am going to walk you through some of the fairly routine steps of treating a ceramic, because I’ve never gotten a chance to write about it on this blog before, and honestly, I’m excited about it.

This small ceramic vessel with a simple striped pattern was excavated in 1931 in Ur, which is a site in modern day Iraq. It dates to the Ubaid Period, so is at least 6000 years old.

31-17-318, before treatment (BT)

As you can see in the above BT image, it was previously broken and repaired. In order to get it ready for exhibition, those old repairs need to be removed. We don’t always remove old repairs (and we never remove repairs that date to when the objects were still in use), but based on observations of the vessel and referencing an old conservation treatment report, I knew that the repairs had to be undone – if left in place those old materials are likely to fail and possibly cause more damage to the object. Another goal of the conservation treatment is to improve the appearance of the vessel, as there was excess adhesive and overpaint in areas and many of the joins were not well aligned.

Based on that old treatment report and tests in the lab, I knew that the old adhesive is soluble in acetone and that the material used to fill missing areas would soften in acetone enough to allow it to be removed. So the first treatment step, after documenting the piece fully, was to put it in an acetone vapor chamber:

An acetone vapor chamber isn’t anything fancy – in this case it was created with a plastic bag. I placed the vessel and 2 small containers of acetone in the bag and then clamped the open end to prevent the acetone from leaking out. Sometimes an object only needs a few hours in a vapor chamber before it can be taken apart. This little vessel required 24 hours before even one piece could be taken off. The whole thing was finally deconstructed after a week of sitting in the chamber on-and-off and poulticing and swabbing the joins with acetone.

During treatment, after the first piece detached

During treatment, after about half the vessel was taken down

During treatment, after more than half the vessel was taken down

Success! All the pieces are finally apart, placed on images of the vessel in order to keep track of everything.

Once the pieces came apart, I had to swab all the joins with acetone to remove excess adhesive and fill material. I’m now at the point where I will start joining the pieces together again.

Swabbing a break edge of a ceramic to remove excess old adhesive

Swabbing a break edge of a ceramic to remove old adhesive

Stay tuned for more posts about our work on these objects, and our continued work on the Egyptian collection and other projects!

In the Artifact Lab

Tag Archives: Ur

Beaded Necklaces: Restringing to Secure the Past

Conserving Egyptian mummies…and more