Treasure hunters take shine off finds

Submitted by TimPrevett on Thursday, 18 December 2003 Page Views: 1450

Amateur treasure hunters are damaging many of the tens of thousands of ancient objects they unearth each year with botched attempts at conservation. Their cleaning solutions include acidic HP brown sauce, fizzy cola and denture solution, experts said yesterday.

Important archaeological information had been lost and the problem was widespread, Haley Bullock, an archaeological conservator at the British Museum, said.

Every schoolchild knows that dropping a modern coin in a glass of cola will clean it overnight, but finders using metal detectors are naively using the same technique on ancient objects, stripping the patina, in which important detail often lies.

The British Museum has an Iron Age knife and a metal brooch that have been eroded by such makeshift remedies. They stripped away all the corrosion products that the surface of the knife would have incorporated, such as organic remains of the leather scabbard, and removed detail of the brooches decoration.

With more than 50,000 archaeological objects found this year alone, compared with 37,000 last year, the problem has become so acute that a conference is being staged at the British Museum today to tackle the subject.

Conservators, metal detectorists, scientists and archaeologists will discuss the best approach to caring for finds. Whose Find is it Anyway? has been jointly organised by the UK Institute for Conservation and the British Museum.

Finders are being asked to leave items undisturbed until the advice of a conservator has been sought. Even wiping dirt with fingers can destroy fragile surfaces.

Source: Times online 18/12/2003

Contributor Bio for TimPrevett: Based in Warrington, contributing since 2012. Favourite site: Taversoe Tuick. Occupation: Creative Media.

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