Organic Remains 1
- Created by: ktommo
- Created on: 21-05-17 14:59
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- Organic Remains 1
- Organic artefacts include anything made from something that was once alive like an animal or plant and includes wood, hair, shell and leather.
- Sites where organic finds survive in large amounts are unusual and in some cases may not be 'typical sites.
- They are often waterlogged or underwater, frozen, dessicated or in preserving chemicals as in a salt mine.
- Occasionally traces of organic artefacts can be found as impressions on other materials, as in the case of the textile impressions in metal corrosion at Illerup.
- Environmental samples, once removed from the soil, are identified by species and then analysed in similar ways, using microscopes for plant and invertebrate remains.
- The main purpose of conservation is to stabilise materials and prevent deterioration; for example bone may be treated with polyvinyl acetate (PVA) to stop it crumbling, while organic samples may require mild fungicides to halt decay.
- Pollen survives well in wet, acidic conditions due to their tough outer case.
- Palynology- Pollen assemblages can be used to assign relative dates to samples from other sites where the environmental sequence matches.
- Diatoms are microscopic, single celled plants usually found in open water or in wet conditions like bogs and waterlogged soil, and are very sensitive to changes in the local water.
- They have a hard outer shell and survive better in alkaline or anaerobic conditions.
- Phytoliths are the silica from the cells of plants.
- They survive well enough in alkaline soils to be identified to the particular group of plant which they were originally part of.
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