180

Ceramic Conservation in Archaeological

Museums: The Current Situation in
Northwestern Argentina
(Province of Catamarca)
Guillermo Adrián De La Fuente* and María Cecilia Páez
[email protected]
Laboratorio de Petrología y Conservación Cerámica “Samuel Lafone Quevedo”
Escuela de Arqueología
Universidad Nacional de Catamarca
Campus Universitario s/n, Belgrano N° 300
4700 Catamarca
Argentina

Keywords: ceramics, museums, SEM-EDS, XRD, IR, archaeology, Northwestern Argentina

Abstract
During the last four years, a survey was conducted in several archaeological museums in the
Catamarca Province of Northwestern Argentina with the aim of obtaining as clear a picture as
possible of the conservation conditions of ceramic objects and their museum environments. The
survey recorded several variables regarding the main conservation problems affecting ceramic
objects. Basically, we observed that most of the archaeological ceramic objects are affected by
different kinds of soluble and insoluble salts, as well as by structural problems endangering
their integrity. In addition, they generally do not receive adequate conservation treatment. The
collections are managed by people without any conservation training and the museum buildings
in many cases are not appropriate to house archaeological collections.

Introduction
Archaeological ceramic conservation in the museum context is a very well established subfield
of conservation and a number of treatments are in common use for objects ranging from fragile
low-fired ceramics or terracottas to high fired earthenware, stoneware or porcelain (Cronyn
1990, Buys and Oakley 1993). However, in many parts of the world conservation treatments
are not carried out by conservators or even people with basic guidelines for the proper care
of objects. This is the case in many archaeological museums in the Northwestern Argentine
region, where most of the ceramic vessels have been badly conserved and are exhibited in poor
conditions. In Catamarca Province there are eight archaeological museums which house around
2,000 to 3,000 ceramic vessels from different cultural periods, the most representative being the
Middle (ca. 400-900 C.E.) and Late (ca. 900-1100 C.E.) Formative Periods. Ceramic vessels are
the most important objects recovered from the several hundred archaeological sites throughout
the province.
 181

In this paper, we present the preliminary results of a survey carried out in several
archaeological museums located in Catamarca Province in an attempt to identify the main
conservation problems affecting the archaeological ceramic objects, both those exhibited to the
public, and those in the museums’ storage facilities. As part of this ongoing research, samples
of salts, efflorescences and staining materials were sampled for analysis by scanning electron
microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and
Fourier Transform infrared analysis (FTIR). In addition, several old restorations were observed
and recorded.

The Archaeological Museums in Catamarca Province

Catamarca Province has eight archaeological museums, located in five different political
departments:
1) Adán Quiroga “Calchaquí” Archaeological Museum (Capitol Dept.),
2) “Omar Barrionuevo” Anthropological Museum (Capitol Dept.),
3) “Tulio Robaudi” Archaeological Museum (Tinogasta Dept.),
4) “Alaniz” Archaeological Museum – private collection – (Tinogasta Dept.),
5) “Museo del Hombre” Archaeological Museum (Tinogasta Dept.),
6) “Condorhuasi” Archaeological Museum (Belén Dept.),
7) “Eric Boman” Archaeological Museum (Santa María Dept.), and
8) “Samuel Lafone Quevedo” Archaeological Museum (Andalgalá Dept.).

The museums were originally formed by the donations of private collections and with time
they passed to the Catamarca Province. Thus, they were located in historic buildings that were
not strictly appropriate to house archaeological collections, lacking the required temperature
and humidity controls (Figure 1)1. Basically, the museums function as storage facilities where the
ceramics collections undergo no periodic assessment of their conservation conditions and where
they receive inadequate treatment when necessary. Only two of the museums have staff – mainly
advanced archaeology students – with some basic knowledge about ceramic conservation and
conservation science. Another characteristic of these museums is that most of them do not have
an adequate infrastructure to exhibit the ceramic objects to the public. The vessels are either
located directly on wooden shelves on the wall or, in the case of large objects, on specially built
iron bases on the floor where they are exposed to the air and the public. Very few vessels are
properly located in closed cabinets with temperature and humidity controls.

Figure 1. Adán Quiroga “Calchaquí”

Archaeological Museum.View of the
main exhibition hall.
182 De La Fuente and Páez

Museum MAJ MIN BIOL CHEM SURF DISF ACCR OLD COND

Adán Quiroga Museum (n=50) -- X -- X X -- X X 3

Omar Barrionuevo Museum (n=20) -- X -- X -- -- -- X 2

Tulio Robaudi Museum (n=93) X -- -- X X -- X X 4

Alaniz Museum (n=14) -- -- -- X -- -- -- -- 1

Museo del Hombre (n=26) X X -- X -- -- -- -- 2

Condorhuasi Museum (n=55) -- X -- X -- -- -- -- 2

Eric Boman Museum (n=35) X -- -- X -- -- -- X 3

Samuel Lafone Quevedo Museum (n=7) X -- -- X -- -- X -- 3

Table 1. Main types of damage observed in exhibited archaeological vessels (N=300)

Key

Categories of Damage

MAJor structural damage (breaks, loss, loose part(s), unstable travelling crack(s), piece(s)
detached)
MINor structural damage (stable crack(s), chip(s), firing cracks)
BIOlogical infestation (mould, insect(s), rodent(s))
CHEMical deterioration (salts –soluble-, salts –insoluble-, other)
SURFace damage (glaze flaking/lifting, paint flaking/lifting, wear and abrasion,
scratch(es), disrupted body, stains, ingrained dirt, other)
DISfigurement (stained, scratched)
ACCRetions (surface dirt, cleaning residue(s), water mark(s), deposit(s), encrustation(s),
burial debris, oil)
OLD bad repairs (aged adhesive, misaligned joins, aged retouching, adhesive tape, excessive
overpaint, filling loose, other)

Condition Rating

1 = good (good condition, stable)

2 = fair (disfigured or damaged, no immediate action)
3 = poor (probably unstable, needs remedial work)
4 = very poor (actively deteriorating)
 Ceramic Conservation in Archaeological Museums: The Current Situation in 183
Northwestern Argentina (Province of Catamarca)

The Ceramic Condition Survey

Condition surveys are widely used to evaluate the conservation state of large numbers of
museum objects (Walker and Bacon 1987, Keene 1991, Hett 1992, Labi 1992, Richmond 1992,
Walker 1992, Cassar and Oreszcyn 1994, Dollery 1994, Kingsley and Payton 1994, Johnsen
1994, Keene 1996, Sully and Suenson 1996). Recently, the use of these surveys seems to have
increased, although Taylor and Stevenson state that the value of a condition survey is totally
dependant upon the accuracy of the information recorded, and that the process of assessing
condition and translating into a written format may be subject to a variety of situational variables
or other factors, which may affect how the objects are evaluated (Taylor and Stevenson 1999).
As was pointed out by Taylor and Stevenson (1999) a tick box survey is greatly dependant
on the design of the survey form. After reviewing several condition survey forms, we decided
to use a form with language as simple as possible to allow the information gathered through the
survey to be easily accessible to people with only basic conservation knowledge. In the end we
used a form designed specifically for ceramic objects, which was a mix of Keene’s form (1991)
and one used at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, for ceramics and glass. A sample of
300 ceramic vessels from the Catamarca museums was inspected, recorded and analyzed.

Results and Discussion

The results obtained from the survey are summarized in Table 1. From this table, it can be
observed the most important damage affecting the ceramics is deterioration caused by both
soluble and insoluble salts (Figure 2), followed by several types of structural damage mainly
affecting the large vessels. Also, a significant number of ceramics exhibited surface damage (glaze
and paint flaking, abrasion and scratching) as well as accretions on the internal and external
surfaces due to old cleaning processes.

Figure 2. Encrustations of calcium carbonate on

the external surfaces of ceramic vessels of the Late
Formative Period (ca. 900-1100 C.E.).“Tulio Robaudi”
Archaeological Museum.

A more detailed analysis of the nature of the chemical deterioration by SEM-EDS, XRD,
and FTIR performed on samples from the vessels revealed that most of damage was caused
by insoluble salts (mainly calcium carbonate or calcite, CO3Ca), and soluble salts, such as
nitrates and chlorides (Figure 3). Carbonates in semi-arid environments cause exfoliation
and flaking of paint on ceramic surfaces, whereas soluble salts, such as nitrates and chlorides,
184 De La Fuente and Páez

Figure 3. SEM-EDS and XRD of carbonates showing

the presence of calcite on ceramic vessels from the Late
Formative Period (ca. 900-1100 C.E.),“Tulio Robaudi”
Archaeological Museum.

produce encrustations and partial destruction of the fabric (Cronyn 1990, Buys and Oakley
1993). These salt compounds appear on the ceramic surfaces as a result of the poor conditions in
which these objects are exhibited, without any control of the basic environmental parameters,
such as temperature and humidity. In some vessels, we observed accretions on the external
surface as a by-product of old cleaning processes with acids to extract the salt encrustations.
Surprisingly, we did not observe any attempts at desalination in any of the museums (Paterakis
1987a, 1987b, 1995, Holbrow et al. 1995, Costa Pessoa 1996, Ling and Smith 1996, Shipp and
Lippert 1997, Beaubien 1999, Koob and Ng 2000, Unruh 2001). The few conservation practices
we did observe included joining shards with inappropriate adhesives (mainly PVA), cleaning
the ceramic surfaces with tap water, and sometimes the application of acids to extract insoluble
salts. In the later case, the acids are used without any basic knowledge of chemistry, sometimes
soaking ceramics in pure hydrochloric acid or a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids, which,
in some cases, produces unintentional damage on the vessel surfaces and in the ceramic body.
In addition, the structural damage observed in several large vessels is the result of bad
practices in transport, handling, exhibition, and storage of ceramics in the museums. Many of
the vessels have very long transverse cracks in their walls endangering their physical integrity
(Figure 4). Old inappropriate restorations were observed in large vessels, which included aged
adhesive (PVA, cellulose nitrate, and animal glues), adhesive tape, misaligned joins, and obsolete
fill materials (plaster, clays, and ceramic shards) (Koob 1987, 1991, 1998) (Figure 5).
 Ceramic Conservation in Archaeological Museums: The Current Situation in 185
Northwestern Argentina (Province of Catamarca)

Figure 4. Cracks in vessels

compromising their physical integrity.

Figure 5. Old repairs using PVA and animal glues on vessels of the Late Formative
Period (ca. 900-1100 C.E.), Adán Quiroga “Calchaquí” Archaeological Museum.

Conclusions
The main conclusions we can draw from this preliminary survey of several archaeological
museums in Catamarca Province, is that the conservation of ceramic objects in these museums
is far from adequate. The main problems affecting the ceramics are chemical damage due to
soluble and insoluble salts, deterioration of physical integrity of the larger vessels due to bad
handling, transportation, exhibition and storage in the museums, inadequate environmental
conditions in the museums, which have no temperature and humidity controls, the lack of trained
ceramic conservators, technicians, or conservation students with basic conservation knowledge,
inappropriate building facilities to house the collections, and deficient cultural management
policies from the Catamarca state which would insure good preservation and conservation of the
archaeological collections.
We observed that most of the bad conservation conditions prevailing in the archaeological
museums could be remedied by the implementation of a strategy to orient cultural administrators
to promote conservation as a priority in the preservation of the archaeological heritage. Most of
all, we could see that the problem might be easily solved by training people, such as archaeology
and museology students, in basic conservation science.

Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge several people in the archaeological museums who assisted us and
participated in this survey. The recently created Laboratory for Petrology and Ceramic
186 De La Fuente and Páez

Conservation, in the School of Archaeology, National University of Catamarca, allowed us to

develop this preliminary research on the conservation conditions of archaeological ceramic
vessels. Microanalytical analyses were performed at the Constituyentes Atomic Center, CNEA,
Buenos Aires. XRD analyses were done at the Geological Research Institute (C.I.G.), at La
Plata, Buenos Aires.

Notes
1 Catamarca province, like most parts of the Northwestern Argentine region, has an arid climate
with very wide temperature amplitude, ranging in summer from 26ºC up to 48ºC, and in
winter from 8-10ºC to 28ºC. The humidity never rises higher than 35 percent. These dry
conditions in the Puna area are very appropriate for the conservation of some kinds of
archaeological objects, such as some textiles and basketry.

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