Conservation

(Real ancient pottery from a September class trip to the Agora)

During orientation, which seems to have taken place so long ago, I signed up for a Conservation Seminar. The Seminar was billed as a very exclusive opportunity to work with an archaeological conservationist over three sessions in November, but not much other information was provided. Thanks to Professor Hitchner's stories of digging in Carthage and tour of a site in Vienne, France, I've recently caught the archaeology bug so I was eager to learn about conservation.

Well, November has finally rolled around and we had our first session last Tuesday! Leading up to the first meeting we had been sent a mysterious email asking us to come prepared with a bag of rice and a cheap imitation of an ancient pot. Since three of my flat mates are also a part of the seminar the apartment was filled with rice and pots. All weekend we screamed theories about the mystery supplies back and forth between the kitchen, living room, and our bedrooms. We all agreed that we were going to break the pots. As one roommate pointed out, "it would be awfully pointless to conserve a brand new imitation pot". Yet we were still very confused about the rice. Our most elaborate scenario involved using the rice to absorb moisture from the pots after submerging them in a model well. I hope it won't disappoint you too terribly, but as it turns out, the rice was not used for such a scheme. No, it was actually used to stabilize the pots as we put them back together.

How did we break them in the first place? We all arrived on Tuesday at 7 pm, clutching our pots protectively. My roommates and I were very serious in choosing the perfect ones! Ashleigh chose Poseidon because she, like me, horseback rides. Picking their favorites, Stephanie chose Athena and Emily chose Artemis. I chose Aphrodite looking at her reflection in a mirror as I'm benefitting from self-reflection here. Our instructor entered with a very serious looking conservationist kit. He explained that in our three sessions we would reconstruct our pots, plaster any missing pieces, and paint the plaster. We will also take a trip to the Agora's conservation lab! Then we fearlessly placed our pots in a plastic bag and gently knocked them against the marble floor of our classroom. Just one light tap was all it took to break the pot into pieces. We then began the puzzle like endeavor of putting our pots back together. I was surprised because this task was both easier and harder than I originally expected. Let me explain! It was easier in that it was pretty quick work to find what pieces fit together, but it was more difficult in that it's not as simple as jut piecing whatever fits together. You must work in one direction, from bottom up or from top to bottom and you must always think a step ahead. If you're only thinking about the current pieces you're gluing then it's likely that you're next piece may not fit perfectly. This happened often and we'd have to take the pieces we had already glued apart to find a better way to reconstruct.

Finally, we all finished, put our pots on a shelf for next time, and said our goodbyes. Two of my Thursday classes are in the same room so it was great to see the pots again then! You can barely tell that they were ever broken...until you turn them around and see huge gaps of missing material. We'll take care of that tomorrow, though! For now I'm just happy that I learned so much and that I had a semi-suitable replacement for Tufts Classics and Archaeology's annual Halloween Pumpkin carving event!