Cleaning Artifacts?

A conservator is a person who uses different scientific techniques to gently clean and preserve artifacts after they have been removed from the ground. Artifacts are made up of many different materials such as ceramic, glass, cloth, bone, and metal. It is the conservator’s job to know all treatment methods so that they can choose the right one for each object!

Conserving artifacts is important for studying what they originally looked like and for helping them last into the future. It takes a long time to treat even tiny artifacts. Watch the video below to see the many steps it took to clean a small ring found at Jamestown. How many can you count?