[Mark Losavio] Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to the Submerged NC webinar series, The Science
of Conservation. My name is Mark Losavio, and I'm the media and outreach coordinator for the Monitor
National Marine Sanctuary, and I will be your host today. Joining me as my co-host is Shannon Ricles,
the education and outreach coordinator for the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. This webinar
is brought to you by NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary in collaboration with the North
Carolina Office of State Archaeology. Partnering since 1975, NOAA and the state of North Carolina
work to research, honor, and protect the hallmarks of North Carolina's underwater cultural heritage
-shipwrecks. These shipwrecks hold information about the ever-changing technological cultural
and physical landscapes of our nation. They serve as a uniquely accessible underwater museum
and a memorial to generations of mariners who lived, died, worked, and fought off our shores.
This is one of many webinars that we will be hosting in the coming months for the Submerged
NC webinar series in collaboration with the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology.
Monitor is just one of 14 national marine sanctuaries and two national
marine national monuments in the National Marine Sanctuary System.
This system encompasses more than 600 000 square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters
from Washington State to the Florida Keys and from Lake Huron all the way to American Samoa.
During this presentation, all attendees will be in listen only mode. You are welcome to type any
questions for the presenters into the question box at the bottom of the control panel on the
right-hand side of your screen. This is the same area that you can let us know about any technical
issues that you may be having that we can help with. We'll be monitoring incoming questions and
any technical issues, and we will try to respond to them as soon as we can. We are recording
this session, and we'll share the recording with registered participants via the webinar
archive page. Our URL for this webpage will be provided at the end of this presentation. Today,
we welcome our presenter Kimberly Kenyon, senior conservator for the Queen Anne's Revenge Shipwreck
Project from North Carolina Office of State Archaeology. So let's sit back and relax as Ms.
Kenyon literally takes us into her lab to learn how she and her team work to preserve our history.
[Kimberly Kenyon]
[Kimberly Kenyon] Okay. Thank you so much. Are you seeing me okay?
[Mark Losavio] Yes, coming through perfect. [Kimberly Kenyon] Wonderful. Thank you again. So as
Mark mentioned my name is Kimberly Kenyon. I'm the senior conservator for the Queen Anne's Revenge
Conservation Lab for the Greater Shipwreck Project. So I just wanted to thank NOAA for
giving me the opportunity to participate in this webinar and to share a little bit about what I do
day-to-day in the conservation world. Conservation can be quite a mysterious
process that often happens behind the scenes in a lab setting. And it can happen across
a lot of different disciplines. You hear of conservators who specialize in book and paper,
those who specialize in materials produced on films, so cinema and photographs. What
I have chosen to focus my career on, however, is archaeological conservation. So the act of
preserving objects raised from archaeological excavations, whether on land or from the sea,
working toward preparing them for exhibit. And so that, you know,
more people can learn about them and share in this cultural heritage. So today I'll
be focusing primarily on objects that are having been raised from a marine environment.
Conservation is very critical to archaeology regardless of the environment they're coming from,
but since we are part of this Submerged NC webinar series, that will be my focus for today.
I do get the occasional chance to teach conservation in a classroom setting, and when I'm
teaching students, I like to kind of start with this quote because it really sums up all of the
different personality traits that are critical to being a conservative, being good at what you do,
Not only the knowledge of different environments and how they impact the preservation
of artifacts, but also the knowledge of how to apply certain techniques or chemicals
toward preserving an object. But the foresight to know how these things will impact them
for their existence, for their lifetime. And of course, dexterity. We use our hands quite a lot.
And we also tend to, as conservatives speaking very generally, have a good sense of artistry
for shape, for form, for color. But first and foremost, I always say that it really
takes a very patient personality to be a good conservator. This work that we do may take years
to see the results from. And to really finally be able to be appreciated when it's on display.
And that is that is the nature of this field. So you really have to have an appreciation for
the scale of time it takes and just to be a patient person, you know and be able
to make those decisions that are that will be best suited for any individual object.
We exist by a set of principles that help us make effective decisions and these are adapted
through a number of different conservation entities and governing bodies internationally.
But first and foremost, we as conservators have a respect for the integrity of the object.
Objects exist as a form of a historic document in themselves. They can reveal a lot
about what people did day-to-day, how they used a certain object, and they can hold evidence
of those different activities, residues from food for example. So
we want to work our best and our hardest to make sure that anything we're doing is respectful
of that information that we can later gather from the object and won't interfere with it.
We also try to be constantly aware of our own competence and facilities and how we're limited.
For example, I, myself as an archaeological conservator,
have not been trained in paper conservation and wouldn't feel comfortable taking something like
that on. So we collaborate quite a lot across different fields to accomplish a better goal.
Every object should be treated to the same standard. A single object is not more significant
or more important than another. And so you don't make decisions based on, you know, the fact that
you may have an abundance of this type of object. We never treat something as if it is disposable.
They are all unique, and they can all offer something that we can learn from them.
We keep in mind every treatment option, as we weigh these different things, and
make sure that a treatment is suitable for a certain object. Things that are
more fragile than others may not be able to withstand a more rigorous treatment.
So that is a decision-making skill, and in judgment that we learn along the way as well.
The concept of reversibility plays heavily into how we decide to treat an
artifact. And this concept has been kind of widely debated in conservation in general. Because it's
not always possible to fully reverse a treatment. But the concept is that, you know, anything
that we apply to an artifact, a chemical or a process, should, in theory, not interfere with
the integrity of the object going back to point one. So if you can reverse or remove that chemical
or, you know, whatever you have done to it, you're not then eliminating the possibility for further
study later on. So 20 years from now there may be a technology that we don't have available now.
And if whatever we have done to it is reversible, then we will be able to get back down to the
original fabric of the object to then apply this new science somehow in further understanding
our knowledge of the past. We also try to limit any aesthetic reintegration. So this idea
is founded in this notion that we are not trying to make an artifact new again. We
are not trying to make it look and behave as exactly as it did when it was first produced.
So anything that we do to it, we don't want to create something that was never there. And
we don't want to make it look new. We are merely trying to stabilize it in its present condition,
so that you're not fooling anyone into thinking that it didn't undergo
all of these physical and chemical degradation process that it has been.
It is critical that we, as professional conservators, keep up-to-date on current
research. There's a lot of of new technology that seems to be developing every year, and
we make sure that we are well versed in new techniques and understanding why
old techniques may not be suitable any longer. Old chemicals may degrade and become unstable.
Artifacts may need to be retreated. So it's just a critical part of that career path. And then
finally, we take very seriously the training of students and fellow staff members, what we
call auxiliary personnel. Basically in taking responsibility for someone else's knowledge,
you would never kind of give someone, you know, a set of directions and say go
do this. You want to make sure that you, as a professional, are directly overseeing someone,
so that they can work within the confines of their competence. And then slowly build their skill as
well. So it's just the notion that you're taking responsibility for passing on that knowledge
And we would never kind of advocate for someone doing something outside of their own scope.
So again, these are the basic kind of ruling principles that
we all try to live by when we're making effective decisions for a collection.
Now conservation comes into play pretty much as soon as an archaeological excavation is
dreamed of. So it should be planned for in the very early stages of planning excavation.
Archaeology doesn't just stop in the field. It doesn't stop when you
you dig a trench and you raise all of these neat things. Archaeology continues for many,
many years, because there again, there's so much information that can be learned from artifacts.
And conservation plays a critical role in preserving that data in whatever
form that it's in. So conservation should be part of those early conversations in planning to remove
anything from its burial environment. There's a lot of collaboration that needs to take
place from the archaeological team, to the conservation team, and all the way through to
a team who is responsible for ultimate curation or storage or exhibit of a collection.
This is again important because not only are you doing the best that you can for the objects and
in advocating for their long-term care, but this also includes a tremendous cost.
So archaeology again can be a very expensive venture, especially when you're dealing with
marine sites that need a lot of logistical planning. But the real cost of an excavation
comes along long after that for many years to come in the cost of conservation and the cost of
where are you going to keep all of these things once you have them excavated. It's an important
part of of archaeology and should be in place kind of from the beginning of the excavation.
Once we get into the lab, and you know, once we have everything excavated,
we've collaborated with our field team. They're kind of guiding ideas that we try to
help us make good decisions as conservators. So much like people in the medical field, we first
we must do no harm. We must not apply anything to an artifact that may continue to degrade it
or contribute to its detriment. Priorities have to be established. In many of the collections
and labs I've worked with through my career, the collections have been tremendous. And we've had
this is true of us here at the Queen Anne's Revenge Lab as well. We have a very small staff,
so you have to take the time to sit and assess the needs of the collection in order to drive
priorities for conservation. So whereas, we, you know, we obviously don't want to treat one
artifact as it's more important than another, but there will be times when you have to make
those decisions, as to what artifacts are at the most risk for loss or what objects can offer data
that we didn't have before. Those will generally be prioritized for conservation. As we work through
the collection here, we often communicate with the archaeological team, and as well
as the museum team, to ensure that their needs are being met as well. So that constant communication,
you know, what is planned for an exhibit, what is planned for study, or what would you like to
learn from this collection. Those will all play into conservation decisions as well.
Minimal intervention is a key to this in as much as we can practice it. As we'll get into the
different material types, but a lot of artifacts from marine environments suffer tremendous
factors in degradation. So minimal intervention is a great concept, but it may not always be
possible. But the idea is there, that you don't want to do something that is untoward
when looking at a certain object. So keeping in mind there are a lot of
different ways to approach the same object. And no conservator will have the same toolkit at their
disposal, or you know, different ideas for the same object. But that's what again makes you a
really good skilled conservator is understanding what's good for this iron object, may not be good
for this almost identical iron object over here. So having different ideas at hand.
Reversibility comes into play again during these critical decision-making processes
to ensure that nothing that we do will impact its health long-term or the ability to extract
information and scientific data from that artifact later on. Documentation is important every step of the way.
In science, and we we do consider this a science, if you didn't write it down, it didn't
happen. So documentation is part of the entire process and it begins in the field. We receive
data about every object from the field. Usually that will include not only where it came from, but
a photographic record of the object as well to show it's current state. And as we are actively
conserving things in the lab, I will photograph them at different stages to continue to show how
they're changing, how they're related to other artifacts if we're having to dismantle things,
and again, just a record of its current state. And we keep very detailed records
of all of these conservation treatments that we perform just in case again, 20 years from now
a conservator, you know, long after any of us retire, decides that something that we did may
no longer be good for the object, and they can then make critical decisions toward extracting
it or reversing it. And again, collaboration is critical at every stage. We continue to
communicate with the field team, and then on to the museum, so that the collection has all of its
best interests at heart from start to finish. And we can make those good decisions for it.
So archaeological sites from marine environments have, you know, we see
a huge array of different materials. A lot of different metals, a lot of different organics.
But today I'm just going to focus on two of the main types of materials that we discover,
that we kind of hope to discover from any marine environment. The first of those is wood. Organic
matter is, you know, as part of all of our lives. But for shipwreck sites, you know, we, as
underwater archaeologists, always hope to find a ship that's kind of the dream of every excavation.
And the preservation of those ships, it varies extremely from site to site. So whereas
one site may have excellent preservation, another may not. So the wreck that you're looking at here
is the hull of La Belle, LaSalle's ship that sank off the coast of Texas in the late 17th century.
And they had an excellent amount of the ship pretty well preserved thanks to the
conditions there in Matagorda Bay. It was in an anaerobic environment and didn't really
budge too much in those 300 years that it was buried. On the other end of that spectrum,
we have Queen Anne's Revenge that has not survived really at all. We have very little hull
because of the environment that it was buried in in Beaufort Inlet. It's a very active
environment that worked to break down a lot of that organic matter that you would hope to find.
The ship structure itself offers a lot of information about where it was built, when
it was built, who used it, and what its purpose was. And so, you know, we all again, we all kind
of dream of having this level of preservation. So this is again is La Belle. The first steps
in conserving something of this scale is, you know, obviously I've spoken about collaboration,
but a tremendous amount of planning had to go into recovery on this scale. And that's
why it's so important in the early stages of archaeology to think about conservation as well.
So once La Belle was recovered, it was placed into a custom-built tank that was large enough to hold
it. During these first few years of treatment, the first critical steps of conserving wood is
to desalinate it, to remove all of the salt from the timbers. That happens through many years of
soaking in fresh water. And hopefully, getting to as close to zero parts really as possible.
The next stage is not just letting it dry out. And this is a theme that you'll hear
across marine archaeology, is that if you don't remove the salt, and if you let things dry out,
that can be extremely detrimental to an object. So something as large and robust as this hull you
see here, or something like a cannon, would crumble and decay upon drying out. So,
you know, this is why again conservation is so critical, particularly to maritime archaeology.
Because just the act of raising something and not having a plan in place for conservation
is almost guarantees the destruction of the objects. So in the case of La Belle here, once the
the hull remains were desalinated. Typically, with wood and especially with ships on this scale,
they go through a process called impregnation or bulking. The most common material used for
that is a substance called polyethylene glycol. It will use different molecular weights of that
to penetrate the wood that is better preserved in some areas and not as well preserved in others.
So what this chemical does is to serve to re-strengthen the cell walls of the wood
before it's allowed to dry out. Because these timbers have been waterlogged for so long,
if the water was then just allowed to evaporate off on its own, there would be nothing to support
the internal cells of the wood. So it's particularly significant to be able to
re-impregnate it with something that will strengthen it, and make sure that once it's dry,
you don't again have that loss of data of the original dimensions of the timbers. And then,
you know, total destruction of the hull in some cases. So this process can take many, many,
many years depending on the scale of the objects you have. La Belle was excavated in the 90s and
it only now just went on display recently in Austin, Texas, so it was about a 20-year process.
Now following impregnation with peg,
then we can start to plan for drying and for safe storage, and for a safe safe exhibit.
A lot of labs will make use of freeze dryers to dry wooden objects. And this will again depend on
the scale of the artifacts you're treating and the capabilities of the lab. We only have a small
freeze dryer here. At Texas A&M, where the La Belle was treated, at the conservation lab there,
they have kind of a custom-built huge walk-in freeze dryer. So all these timbers were able
to fit, which was great. That's probably the best, most preferable way now that wood is conserved and
then dried. Basically, skips from the water in the wood that's remaining, skips from a liquid phase
straight to a gas phase, eliminating the pressures that can be exerted once it reaches a solid state
as frozen ice. So a lot of labs may or may not have something this large. We certainly don't,
but again, just plays into what's available to you, what you can accomplish,
and what you may have to collaborate with other labs to achieve.
So then, we'll look at the other most, probably most common
material type found on a lot of wrecks, and that is iron. Iron, particularly in this period we're
dealing with in the historic period, is abundant on marine sites. We find a lot of cannons. We,
you know, ships are held together with large iron fasteners. We find a lot of ammunition.
So it is an abundant material type, whether it's cast iron or wrought iron.
And iron is a fascinating material to work with
because you never know what you're going to find inside that. Iron, as it is deposited in a salty
marine environment, it will start to develop this incrustation on the outside called concretion.
It's very similar to concrete and has a very similar kind of density. It's an aggregate,
but this process is driven by iron corroding. Now, when we find these,
and again the development of concretion will vary from site to site depending on
specific environmental factors, but concretion can get very, very thick.
And so it can completely obscure whatever objects it contains. We know working on our site that
there's nothing naturally occurring on our wreck that looks like this. So when
we stumble across something like this, we know that it must be man-made and we'll recover it.
So once we are able to recover anything like this, the next step is then to start assessing that for
what it contains. And you can see, you know, from this object here,
a lot of these can be just amorphous blobs. And you really don't know what's going on in
them until you can get them back to the lab to be x-rayed. So x-ray is an important tool
because not only does it allow you to penetrate this dense concretion and see what's inside,
but that's really the first document that we have of what may be in there. And it helps us guide
our decision-making process in the conservation lab. It's the first glimpse that we get at what
these concretions may contain. But it also helps guide our priorities and helps us to start
making decisions as to how to progress any specific artifacts that are located in it.
Different materials will have different visual signatures. So you may be able to tell cast
iron from wrought iron and certainly wood if it shows up. A lot of materials, however,
will not be visible. So we find a lot of glass and organic matter embedded in these
that may not have survived otherwise. But, you know, if we're careful enough,
we can extract them and then have even more than we started with, that we bargained for.
The next stage in iron conservation is to then start removing all of that encrustation. And
this is done using a number of different tools. Whether dental picks or hammers and chisels.
We tend to use an air scribe. So this is the cluster of folks working at left from the
Texas A&M conservation lab using pneumatic chisels. So these are basically tiny little jackhammers
that pulverize the concretion down to a dust. It allows us a really fine amount of control
and ensures that those things that we didn't know were there, like glass or organics that
I mentioned previously, won't be damaged in the process. So it is a very time consuming process.
You can get, you know, a lot done in a day or you can get very little in a day. And a
concretion may contain 100 objects or may contain one object. But the air scribe again helps us
maintain that caution and care and control that we can exercise towards the object's best interest.
And this was one such complex project, again from Texas A&M's conservation lab.
This is a chest of tools from the Brother Jonathan shipwreck. And you can see just
how much detail can be preserved by that surrounding encrustation. And how much
you can learn if you, you know, have the time to exercise caution. And what can be preserved
in that. So I thought this was a great cluster and perfectly representative of what some concretions
may contain. And why it takes us so long to get into them and to be as careful as we can.
Now once we dismantle everything, we'll get down to the iron. Then it's time to treat the iron.
So ideally, we'll have a really robust artifact by the end of the deconcretion process, or using
our different tools to get all the encrustation off. Then comes kind of the the lengthy part,
the hands-off part, where you let the artifact kind of do its thing. So this process that you
see here is called electrolytic reduction. This is one of many different ways in which iron
can be treated. So it's not the only way, but it's a common tool that we use here at our lab.
Electrolytic reduction involves the use of an electric current to encourage all of those
salts that I mentioned earlier, so damaging to wood as well are doubly so to iron. But we
want to get all of that out before we allow an iron object to dry out. And then ultimately,
you know, safely display it. So this process, as you can see, the wiring in these tanks here
involves connecting a negative charge to the artifact and a positive charge to either the anode
plates that you see in the tank. In this case is the tank itself, but creating a magnetic pull
so that the negatively charged salts in the iron are forced out into the water into the solution.
And we can gradually rinse them out of it. We know that salts drive corrosion, so we want to get iron
as salt free as possible before it can be safely displayed. This process, the length of time,
varies depending on the size of the artifact and the capability of the lab as well.
So you know time is not standard. It just really depends on a lot of different factors. But for us,
if we have a large cannon, conservation of a cannon can easily take 10 years from start
to finish. From the time that we recover it, until the time that we can fully get all of the
concretion off it and extract all the artifacts from it, you know, desalinate it like you see
here, and then finally are able to safely dry it out and put it on display is easily 10 years
for us. But again, that is very lab specific and will vary depending on a lot of different factors.
So once we get all of the salt out, you can see the images right here, a chemical coltanic acid
is being applied to act as a rust converter and a preventative measure. So that once the iron
is dry it won't be reactivated to corrode in the face of fluctuating relative humidity and
any salts that are residual in there. We can't get all the salt out, but we try our best.
As I mentioned previously, and keep kind of bringing up, documentation
is key along the way. So artifact photography will be part of that. X-ray will be part of that.
We have a few other tools here in our lab that we use. X-ray fluorescence - to identify what metals
we're dealing with is an important part of the documentation process. But also the old-fashioned
artifact illustration is an incredibly useful tool. All of these other things you know x-ray,
XF photography, don't always convey exactly every detail that you can see in an object.
So many times, we'll take the time, especially if something has maker's marks or evidence of
use marks, I will take the time to illustrate it. Because many times the human eye can see so
much more than a camera lens. And so all of those techniques really play into full documentation of
what an artifact really is and all of the information you can gain from it.
And then, finally I mentioned, you know, the concept of curation.
The big goal, and what we all want to see in archaeology, is all of our efforts on display.
You know, we all get a huge kick out of being able to see the things that we spent,
you know, five, ten years conserving, finally on exhibit and for everyone to see.
So that's kind of the dream of any excavation I think, but should also really be planned for
in the very early stages of excavation. Where is this good collection going to end up? Will
it be exhibitable? You know, and can the public appreciate it? Is it, would it be, a big tourist
draw? So again, just it's an important factor to consider. Exhibit halls aren't just kind of a room
that you just shove a whole bunch of stuff in. They need to be carefully planned out as well.
So you have the issues of environmental controls, you know, I mentioned with the iron, you have
issues of relative humidity. If it's too humid in an atmosphere, that may be extremely detrimental
to exhibit iron in. If it's too dry, that's going to be detrimental to wood. So those kind of
fluctuations need to be controlled and carefully monitored. And even at this stage, you know,
you have usually, you have different staff caring for an artifact on display. But communication
with the conservator, with the archaeological team continues. We work very closely with our
museums to ensure that collections we have on exhibit are not degrading. Or if they, you know,
see signs of corrosion or degradation, and they'll tell us right away. So that's a great part of
this, it is such a collaborative project, and it's such a collaborative field across the board.
So I just wanted to leave you with some recommended readings. I'm not trying to
assign anyone homework, but these are a lot of the books that I tend to reference fairly regularly
because I feel like they're up-to- date or they're great compendiums.
You know, not only for conservation practices, but to help you keep in mind, you know, what
you know what is the nature of an object, and what can you learn from it.
So there's a huge array of literature out there on conservation. I would,
you know, recommend anyone getting into it, would take a peek at a lot of these things.
There's some really great books and a lot of articles on very specialized topics in this field.
I do want to take the time to briefly acknowledge some folks that help me gather images for this.
Karen Martindale and Dr. Chris Dostal from Texas A&M's conservation research lab provided me with
some great images from their archive. And he's granted me permission to use them for this.
Steven Atkinson, my friend and co-worker at the North Carolina Underwater Archaeology branch
dug through our archive and found some great images. And I want to thank again the staff
at the NOAA Monitor National Marine Sanctuary for inviting me to participate in this webinar series.
If you would like to follow our project, specifically,
you can find us on Facebook, under the Office of State Archaeology. Or more specifically, the
Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge Shipwreck Project. And I would, you know, be happy to
answer questions, if you care to email us. And I think you can still find archaeology on Instagram.
And if you'd like to know more about conservation, specifically as to how it pertains to
the preservation of the USS Monitor, I strongly encourage everyone to join the next conservation
themed webinar by Will Hoffman of The Mariners' Museum, who will be sharing
his insights on that collection on May 18th. So mark your calendars for that.
So thank you all very much. I really appreciate everyone's time and interest in joining us today.
[Mark Losavio] All right. Thank you very much for that great presentation,
and we do have quite a few questions. But first I want to let you know that you did
get a shout out from the students at St. Mary's College in Maryland.
But I'll go ahead and ask the first question. We do have a member in the audience, who I think
their favorite shipwreck museum is the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, and they were wondering
do you communicate or share procedures with museums like that one or any other ones?
[Kimberly Kenyon] That's a great question. Yes, we do all the time. We, you know, have run across some special
problems I guess through the years, as does every conservation lab will. You know,
something will arise that we haven't faced before or haven't seen before, and so we don't hesitate
to reach out to other labs. And we've had the pleasure of several labs reaching out to us asking
advice. We discovered waterlogged paper here a number of years ago and that's been an interesting
quest to figure out what's best to do with it. So we've been working with archival conservators
with that. And we've had a number of labs internationally reach out because they
are now finding papers that's, you know, yeah we do that all the time. And that's again, this
is just a part of this field, and collaborating with experts from everywhere.
[Shannon Ricles] Okay Kim. This is Shannon. One of the other questions they want to know is what was the most
difficult artifact that you have ever worked on? [Kim Kenyon] Oh man. That's a good question. There
have been quite a few. I guess one of the most challenging objects I've had to do, to deal with,
there are a lot of different facets to that question, but when it comes down to it, some
of the the things that I find most challenging are mechanical objects. So I conserved a musket
recently. And just trying to keep in mind all of the moving parts and how a musket functions,
I had to really learn, you know, a lot about guns that I didn't think that I ever would
need to know. And then trying to make those decisions for an object that is made of both
wood and iron and copper, you know, and some of the iron was gone. So I had to recreate that.
So, you know, making those good decisions to ensure that something that I was doing for
the iron wouldn't negatively impact the wood, while keeping in mind, you know,
the functionality of all these moving parts of such an intricate mechanism.
[Mark Losavio] We have an interesting question. We want to know what led you to this career and
how would you recommend others best prepare for it? [Kim Kenyon} Oh, that's a great question.
So I have to reach back a little bit. So I always loved archaeology. I was always fascinated with
that and my mom took me to the library all the time. And I grew up in a very small town,
and so I think I read every book on archaeology that that library had to offer.
So when I reached kind of junior high age, I discovered maritime archaeology for the first
time in a French archaeologist exploring the sunken city of Alexandria in Egypt in
the 90s. And then, kind of my interest was really piqued by that, and I wouldn't let the notion go.
And so I stuck with that and went to Texas A&M University at Galveston to pursue a degree
in maritime studies, because I knew that I then wanted to go on to Texas A&M to get a
master's degree in their nautical archaeology program. And so while I was there, I really
gained a love for working with my hands. I was given a chance to work in the lab there. And I do
quite a lot of field work, overseas primarily, but those aspects of both field work and being
able to work in the conservation lab, that's what really I just fell in love with the technical
part of that. And being able to take something that no one else has touched in, you know,
hundreds, if not thousands of years, and kind of bring it back to life and give it a story again.
So that is how I got into this this career. There are a lot of different ways that people do that.
I came in from an archaeology perspective. There are many different schools that offer
degrees in conservation. There's some fantastic schools in the UK, as well as here in the U.S.,
where you can specifically study objects - how they deteriorate,
the scientific processes of conservation, and that are very theory based. So those are
kind of the main two tracks I would say as to how to get into conservation as a career.
[Shannon Ricles] Okay and one of the other questions that we have is, when you're dealing
with iron, does the conservation process differ in fresh water? And if so, what are the differences?
[Kimberly Kenyon] It can. In my experiences, freshwater objects, because there's not as much salt,
they don't take as long. We may still apply the same kind of concepts to make sure that
there's no residual salt in the end, as that is the most damaging thing for iron.
But yeah, in my experience it's been a difference of not necessarily applied technique,
but the length of time it takes to get all the salt out and prepare it for exhibit in the end.
[Mark Losavio] Here's another question. How is there a distinguished, I guess distinction,
and how do you distinguish between historically significant and insignificant wrecks?
[Kimberly Kenyon] That is really not a call for any individual to make honestly. That is something that is very
much guided by someone's individual research. I think every shipwreck is significant in its own
way. What, you know, what it can tell us and what information it can offer. So that
to me guides, you know, my desire to help preserve them in any capacity. Whether that means to
fully excavate them and study them, you know, in a lab like we do, or to leave them in place,
so that someone, you know, 100 or thousand years from now can then find it. And then,
you know, answer questions that they may have. So yeah, significance is kind of a hard word to
define, but I guess I see it as a duty to preserve underwater cultural heritage no matter the age.
Because you never know what someone else may want to learn from that wreck. So it's
our kind of collective responsibility to make sure that those kind of sites are preserved,
so that everyone can appreciate them, and we can all learn from them.
[Shannon Ricles] Okay. And then we have a question that's been asked a couple of times.
Does the ocean protect the ship in any way or does it do more damage to it?
[Kimberly Kenyon] It can certainly do both, you know, in the case of La Belle in Texas, that sediment level,
there really helped to preserve the wood and that's not something you would see here in
North Carolina. We see a lot of degradation to wood because of large storm events because of,
you know, dredging or you know, any kind of human driven event. So yeah, it really can both be very
damaging and work towards preservation, depending on the environment. Depending on what type of
material you're looking at. And we find things on shipwrecks that you may not find on terrestrial
sites. You know, because of the same thing, you know, the acidity of the soil, the oxygenation,
or human activity has a lot of impact on preservation for terrestrial sites as well.
[Mark Losavio] All right. We'll take just two more questions.
One of them is - is the Queen Anne's Revenge are pieces of it still being recovered from the site?
[Kim Kenyon] Not currently. We typically have a fall field season every year,
but it's been a number of years since we've recovered anything. We're in the mode now of
monitoring it for its safety, but that's it. We recover and uncover things in the lab every day,
but we haven't actually raised anything from the site in several years.
[Shannon Ricles] Okay. And so our last question is - what happens when priorities clash?
Say for example, an artifact needs immediate attention but may not be the most important
addition to a museum collection. [Kim Kenyon] That's a good question. My
priority is always artifact centric. So whether something is deemed uninteresting or,
you know, if we for instance we have a quarter million pieces of lead shot from this project,
my first instinct is to say that whatever the artifact needs, that is the priority. If you
have something that is actively degrading. That gets the highest priority over anything
else. It is always our duty to protect and preserve the artifacts no matter what they are.
[Mark Losavio] All right, great stuff. So
we had a lot of really great questions, and I'm sorry I wasn't able to get to them all today.
But if you want more information about the Queen Anne's Revenge, you can go to their
website to learn more information. And if you did not get your question answered or if you think of
a really good one down the line, you can email Kim at this email down here at the bottom of the page.
Once captioned, a video recording of this presentation will be made available on
the sanctuary's webinar archives page, found at the URL listed here at the top. In addition,
this webinar, it will also be archived on the Monitor's website. Click on the multimedia section
tab right here to access the webinar's box. And don't worry, all this information will be sent
to you in a follow-up email once the recording is ready. So if you missed that social media slide,
it will also be recorded and you can look at it again once we send it to you.
Be sure to register for our next Submerged NC webinar airing on Tuesday, April 20th at 1pm
and learn from Mr. Stephen Atkinson, the assistant state archaeologist with the North Carolina Office
of State Archaeology about the North Carolina shipwreck beach tagging program. In addition
to Mr. Atkinson's presentation, the Submerged NC series also has these webinars coming up in
the near future, and the previously mentioned talk with Will Hoffman is May 18th there at the bottom.
Be sure to go to our website, monitor.noaa.gov, and click on the link on the home page for more
information on the Submerged NC webinars and to register. If you enjoyed this webinar,
please be sure to check out others in the National Marine Sanctuaries webinar series. On April 21st,
join Travis Marcoux as he learns and teaches us about the biggest fish in the ocean,
the whale shark. Lastly, as you exit this webinar, there is a short survey for formal and informal
educators. If you are an educator, NOAA would really appreciate it if you would take a minute
or two of your time to complete this survey. Your answers will help us develop future webinars to
meet your needs. Your participation is voluntary and your answers will be completely anonymous.
Once again, we would like to thank Ms. Kenyon for a really fascinating presentation.
And I would like to thank you for taking the time to join us this afternoon. And I hope
you have a wonderful day. This concludes the presentation, and I will now end the broadcast.