Guest blog post: Preparing Mosaics for Stabilization by Annie Cannatella

Guest blogger Annie Cannatella has provided a recap of yesterday's work in the trenches:

Before participating in the Rutgers intensive conservation course, I had experience with similar field school excavations.  However, in the past I have done very little Conservation work on site.  I chose to participate in this course to help me grasp a stronger understanding of what conservation work entails because I am interested in going to grad school for conservation and restoration.  We started off today with finishing the cleaning of the mosaics.  Using water, we removed the dirt from the tiles with gentle brushes and sponges being careful not to further damage the mosaic.  In areas that had a thicker covering of dirt we would dampen the surface and use a wooden tongue depressor to scrape away the mud and then return to brush the tiles clean.  After initial cleaning we went back over the mosaic focusing specifically on the cracks this time.  We used bamboo skewers to remove the dirt from inside the cracks.  These are gentle on the tesserae and will not damage the degraded stone. We excavated each of the cracks down to the original mortar preparation layer.  These cracks would be filled with a lime-based mortar to reseal the damaged area.  The dirt had to be removed in order for the mortar to properly attach to the mosaic. Tomorrow I will begin to work on inserting the mortar into the cracks to prevent any further damage to the mosaic.  

Here's a photo from today's work, with Annie inserting mortar in the mosaic cracks to stabilize them.