Abstract
Waterlogged archaeological wood (WAW) artifacts, made of natural biodegradable polymers, are important parts of many precious cultural heritages. It is of great importance to understand the hygroscopic behavior of WAW in different deterioration states for the development of optimal drying processes and choices of safe storage in varying conditions. This was investigated in a case-study using two Hopea (Giam) and two Tectona (Teak) WAW samples collected from the Xiaobaijiao No.1 shipwreck. The deterioration state of WAW was evaluated by the maximum water content (MWC) method and by the cell morphological structure. Both Hopea and Tectona WAW could be classified into moderately and less decayed WAW. The hygroscopic behavior of moderately and less decayed WAW was then comparatively investigated using Dynamic Vapor Sorption (DVS) measurements alongside two sorption fitting models. Compositional analysis and hydroxyl accessibility measurements of WAW cell walls were shown to correlate with the hygroscopicity of WAW in different deterioration states. It was concluded that moderately decayed WAW possessed higher hygroscopicity and hysteresis than less decayed WAW because of the lower relative content of polysaccharides and the higher relative content of lignin, including the slow hydrolysis of O-acetyl groups of xylan and the partial breakage of β-O-4 interlinks, accompanied by an increased hydroxyl accessibility. This work helps in deciding on which consolidation measures are advised for shipwreck restauration, i.e., pretreatments with specific consolidates during wood drying, particularly for wooden artifacts displayed in museums.
Highlights
Waterlogged archaeological wooden artifacts counting as valuable cultural heritages are being excavated worldwide [1,2,3]
According to the maximum water content (MWC) values, the most commonly used parameter to classify the deterioration state of waterlogged archaeological wood [9,10], samples H2 and T2 belong to class of moderately decayed wood (185% < MWC < 400%), while H1 and T1 can be regarded as class of less decayed wood (MWC
LM and SEM revealed the morphological structures of the Waterlogged archaeological wood (WAW) specimens and confirmed these deterioration states [6,9]
Summary
Waterlogged archaeological wooden artifacts counting as valuable cultural heritages are being excavated worldwide [1,2,3]. In dependence of environmental factors, wood species, period, and processed treatments, WAW excavated even from the same archaeological site or collected either from the surface or the inner part of the same wooden artifact would probably be found in different deterioration states [4,5,6,7,8]. WAW can be divided into severely decayed wood, moderately. Even though the water environment remarkably slows down the wood deterioration caused by microbiota, waterlogged wooden artifacts still suffer from a high possibility of deterioration. The conservation of WAW artifacts generally necessitates a water removal treatment [2,14]
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