{"id":9518,"date":"2013-12-10T11:32:24","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T16:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conservators-converse.org\/?p=9518"},"modified":"2013-12-10T11:32:24","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T16:32:24","slug":"archaeological-conservation-at-asor-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/2013\/12\/10\/archaeological-conservation-at-asor-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Archaeological Conservation at ASOR 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three weeks ago LeeAnn Barnes Gordon and I co-chaired a conservation session at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research <\/a>(ASOR) in Baltimore, MD.\u00a0 Friends, I loved every minute of it.
\nThis year the session, titled \u201cConservation and Site Preservation in the Near East,\u201d kicked off at 8:20 in the morning on the very first day of the conference.\u00a0 We were concerned about the early start time, but attendance was good and the audience was engaged and responsive. This was the second\u00a0in series of 4 planned sessions, and I\u2019ll tell you about our lofty goals for the series a bit later. First, here are the 6 papers from this year, with a few notes from me about each:
\n\u201c<\/em>Preserving Egypt\u2019s Cultural Heritage: Experiences Gained and Lessons Learnt\u201d<\/strong>
\nMichael Jones<\/i><\/strong> (Antiquities Conservation Project,<\/em> American Research Center in Egypt)<\/em><\/p>\n

I was surprised to learn in this talk that ARCE\u2019s fantastically comprehensive conservation and education programs in Egypt, underwritten by USAID, all began as a simple salvage response to the deadly 1992 earthquake. Michael spoke about building stakeholder support for conservation in Egypt, about the challenges of recent political turmoil, and showed us the wonderful results of conservation efforts at the Red Monastery in Sohag, among other sites. If you don\u2019t know much about ARCE and its conservation programs, read more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/em>Training for the Conservation and Management of In Situ Mosaics: The MOSAIKON Initiative\u201d<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Leslie Friedman\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/i>(Getty Conservation Institute)<\/em>, Jeanne Marie Teutonico\u00a0<\/i>(GCI)<\/em>, Kathleen Dardes\u00a0<\/i>(GCI)<\/em>, Thomas Roby\u00a0<\/i>(GCI)<\/em>,\u00a0 <\/i>and Zaki Aslan\u00a0(ICCROM)<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/i>Everything you\u2019ve ever wanted to know about mosaics preservation, MOSAIKON is improving and teaching it. How to do a great job with locally available materials? They\u2019re on it. Training for the next generation in-country? That, too. Conservation education in Arabic? Yes! Mentoring for conservators in the Middle East? Of course. What about my favorite site preservation solution, reburial? They\u2019re studying the most effective ways to do it for mosaics. And of course, they are producing publications about it all. Check it out here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/em>Digging on the Edge: Archaeology and Conservation at Kourion, Cyprus\u201d<\/strong>
\nWilliam Weir <\/i>(University of Cincinnati), paper delivered by Stephen Humphreys<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/em>This site-specific case-study delivered great information and dramatic visuals of mosaics perched precariously on cliff-edge. It detailed, from the archaeologists\u2019 perspective, the experience of working with conservators to document and save mosaics at a site. It also illustrated the complexities of conservation at archaeological sites; within a single site, the response to each mosaic differed depending on the mosaic\u2019s location, construction, and the project\u2019s ongoing research. A great talk illustrating successful collaboration in archaeological conservation and research.<\/p>\n

<\/i>\u201c<\/em>Painted Roman and Byzantine Cypriot Tombs: Properties, Processes and Preservation\u201d<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Ioanna Kakoulli\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/i>(University of California, Los Angeles)<\/em>, Christian Fischer <\/i>\u00a0(UCLA)<\/em>,<\/i> and Demetrios Michaelides\u00a0<\/i>(University of Cyprus)<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was an excellent talk for anyone interested in conservation of wall-paintings; these Cypriot rock-cut tombs have undergone structural damage from shifting bedrock and water damage from floods and rainfall. Ioanna also discussed the technical analysis of plaster, pigments, and binders for the paintings. This talk was also great for anyone interested in preservation and management of active tourism and pilgrimage sites: littering, vandalism, education and interpretation! How about making your conservation plan work for nearby hotels as well as an active monastery? Done. This talk detailed a comprehensive approach to a complex series of problems. <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>\u201c<\/em>Dilemmas in Preservation of Iron Age Sites in the Valley of Beer-sheba\u201d<\/strong>
\nZeev Herzog<\/i><\/b> <\/i>(Tel Aviv University)<\/em><\/p>\n

Zeev\u2019s talk beautifully, and humorously, detailed the decades-long effort to preserve mud-brick architecture at the site of Beer-sheba in Israel. An unusually inventive series of campaigns beginning in the 1960\u2019s tried almost everything the determined teams could think of: chemical consolidation, firing the bricks in-situ with a portable kiln, capping the walls with new mudbricks, and, finally, capping and restoration with modern, fired bricks. In addition to illustrating a half-century of conservation and site preservation at a single site, this talk explored preservation and interpretation goals for important Iron Age sites in Israel. \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

<\/i>\u201c<\/em>The Conservation and Technical Analysis of Ancient Near Eastern Objects at the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum\u201d<\/strong>
\nSanchita Balachandran<\/i><\/b> <\/i>(Johns Hopkins University)<\/em><\/p>\n

A<\/em>s a conservator in a university archaeological museum, I\u2019m always impressed by the JHU Archaeological Museum\u2019s (and Sanchita\u2019s) commitment to linking conservation to undergraduate teaching and using object-based projects to improve learning for students. This talk was especially useful because it had detailed case-studies of specific objects and projects. I especially liked the way Sanchita used these projects to develop transferable skills like observation and critical thinking for her students.<\/p>\n

Back to our lofty goals<\/strong> – LeeAnn and I began this series of sessions with the goal of fostering collaboration and better integrating continuing education in the allied disciplines of conservation and archaeology. We want to bring more conservation information to our archaeology colleagues, and we hope to promote archaeology meetings as a forum for conservators. \u00a0So far each session has been an excellent educational opportunity for us, and we hope our audiences have felt the same way. We\u2019re grateful to our speakers in both years thus far and to ASOR for embracing the series.
\nArchaeological conservators, we hope you\u2019ll join us<\/strong> for future meetings in San Diego (2014)<\/strong> and Atlanta (2015)<\/strong>.\u00a0 If you\u2019re willing to contribute to conservation sessions at either meeting, please write us! We\u2019d love to hear from you. The deadline to submit abstracts for 2014 is February 15.
\nSuzanne Davis: davissl@umich.edu<\/a>
\nLeeAnn Barnes Gordon: leeannbarnes@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three weeks ago LeeAnn Barnes Gordon and I co-chaired a conservation session at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) in Baltimore, MD.\u00a0 Friends, I loved every minute of it. This year the session, titled \u201cConservation and Site Preservation in the Near East,\u201d kicked off at 8:20 in the morning on … Continue reading “Archaeological Conservation at ASOR 2013”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,32],"tags":[117,150,272],"class_list":["post-9518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allied-organizations","category-ccs","category-objects","tag-archaeological-conservation","tag-asor","tag-conference-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}