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I chipped a 4,000 year old pot sherd on my first dig at Tel Hazor and lied about it
Back in summer 2019 I was a volunteer at Tel Hazor in Israel and on day 2 I knocked a Bronze Age rim sherd against the bucket edge while washing it. I panicked and glued the flake back with superglue from my bag instead of telling the area supervisor, which I now know was the worst possible move since it contaminates the ceramic for any future testing. I finally fessed up to her three days later and she just sighed and logged it as a surface find. Does anyone here know if there's a real way to reverse that kind of glue damage, or is that sherd basically ruined for analysis now?
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grantt3920d ago
Used to figure superglue damage was just a cosmetic thing you could scrape off later, but reading this made me get why conservators freak out about it. The cyanoacrylate soaks into the pores and messes with any test that reads the clay's chemistry, so it is not really fixable once it sets. Best bet now is to document exactly what happened and where so future researchers know that sherd is compromised.
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