When
artifacts are excavated in the field, they are put in bags marked
with the precise location they came from. Once in the lab, however,
they must be separated by material type, cleaned, re-labeled and
put in acid-free containers.
Once
the artifacts are cleaned, sorted, recorded and put in containers,
they are organized into these special museum storage cabinets. The
St. Augustine collections take up 47 of these cabinets.
Without
treatment, iron begins to deteriorate as soon as it is removed from
the ground. Not all pieces can be conserved, since thousands of
fragments are excavated, and treatment is very expensive for each
artifact. Here is an example of what happened to untreated iron
objects in less than ten years.
Conservators
have developed many techniques to clean and stabilize objects so
that they do not deteriorate further. Here you see a buckle from
Ft. Mose, before and after conservation treatment.
A sixteenth century matchlock musket lock from Augustine, before
and after conservation.
Only
a few of the hundreds of thousands of pottery sherds excavated from
sites can be reconstructed to form whole pots. When they can, it
is a valuable clue to what people ate and how they cooked it, where
they got their pots, and how they were made.
When
artifacts are excavated in the field, they are put in bags marked
with the precise location they came from. Once in the lab, however,
they must be separated by material type, cleaned, re-labeled and
put in acid-free containers. 
Once
the artifacts are cleaned, sorted, recorded and put in containers,
they are organized into these special museum storage cabinets. The
St. Augustine collections take up 47 of these cabinets.
Without
treatment, iron begins to deteriorate as soon as it is removed from
the ground. Not all pieces can be conserved, since thousands of
fragments are excavated, and treatment is very expensive for each
artifact. Here is an example of what happened to untreated iron
objects in less than ten years.
Conservators
have developed many techniques to clean and stabilize objects so
that they do not deteriorate further. Here you see a buckle from
Ft. Mose, before and after conservation treatment.
Only
a few of the hundreds of thousands of pottery sherds excavated from
sites can be reconstructed to form whole pots. When they can, it
is a valuable clue to what people ate and how they cooked it, where
they got their pots, and how they were made.