Conservation Waterlogged Wood At Haimenkou Archaeological Site

Wooden artifacts conservation is great significant to study human civilization forwooden artifacts reflects ancient human activities and wisdom. Due to deep buriedunderground for a long time, most of the wooden artifacts are in saturated state, and theorganization structure, chemical components and mechanical properties of thearchaeological wood were damaged greatly. For example the softwood’s moisture contentis between100%to500%, the hardwood’s moisture content is between200%to1000%. Ifthe relevant treatment measures is not timely or improper, the waterlogged archaeologicalwood will dry, deformation even weathering crushed. Therefore, the scientific protect thesewooden artifacts is an important research topic.The degradation of cellulose and hemicelluloses cause the increase of porositysaturation absolute moisture content and the reduction of density and mechanical strength.Currently, often used in the description of ancient wood preservation state and degradationdegree index are saturated absolute moisture content, density, holocellulose content andmicrostructure of the waterlogged wood. This study adopts the natural resin (methanolsolution of rosin and LAC) and phenolic resin on the reinforcement of waterlogged woodunearthed from Haimenkou site, and explore the anti-aging properties and basicphysico-mechanics properties of the reinforced ancient wood, and to research on theprotection of ancient wood.Study shows that, the reinforced ancient Pinus kesiya by the natural resin andphenolic resin:(1) surface color pale, maintain the wood’s natural color, vein and texture;(2) the basic density has increased by41.40%and99.36%respectively; mechanicalstrength has increased by24.58%and490%respectively; the dimensional stability alsoclose to healthy Pinus kesiya wood; at the same time, ancient wood’s mechanicalstrength given by phenolic resin than natural resin, even more than the performance ofhealth material;(3) microscopic structure diagram showed,the reinforced ancient woodcell wall smooth, dense, clean cut, and the good interface combined with cell wall,cellcavity is smooth. Comparing the two experimental groups, the thickness of the cell wall ofancient wood threngthened by phenolic resin is thicker slightly than by the rosin andshellac, which also explains why the density and strength of phenolic resin group greater than natural resin group.In order to study the anti-aging resistance of reinforced ancient wood, this study fromthe laboratory aging condition and natural environmental aging condition to study multipleperformance indexes of reinforced ancient wood (dimensional stability, compressionperformance, weight loss, surface contact angle, surface cracking). The results show that:(1) the wood cell wall’s supporting force and the ability to resist deformation of thereinforced by phenolic resin better than the natural resins group;(2)the ancient woodreinforced by resin from the strong hydrophilic into hydrophobic, which can explain thenatural resin and phenolic resin can give the ancient wood certain hydrophobic ability; thehydrophobic ability of rosin and shellac is better stronger than phenol resin, thehydrophobicity of rosin and waterproof ability of shellac film was to reflec, by this pointwe can see that the durability(resistance to water, anti weathering)of reinforced ancientwood has been outstanding enhanced;(3) Compared with unreinforced ancient wood, thereinforced ancient wood have the glossy and dense appearance, and texture clear, andhaven’t cracking, indicating the reinforced ancient wood’s anti-aging properties issignificantly improved.