Olariu, Gheorghina (szerk.): Sesiunea Internaţională de Restaurare - Conservare (Satu Mare, 1997)
Textile
Problems in restauration and conservation of an archaeological textile The restauration and conservation of textiles originating in the archaeological digging are allways raising difficult problems because, given the specificai burial conditions, the textiles have suffered an alteration of their structure. From their manufacturing, the textile objects are subjected to degradation as the result of ageing the material they are made of, their wearing or the environmental factors. Once in the ground, these textiles suffer a first shock of changing the surrounding. These new conditions of preservation will accelerate the process of alteration by both the sudden change of the microclimate, and the appearance of new altering factors (for example, the presence of the products of human body composition in the case of clothes). That is why, depending on the amound of the humidity of these new surroundings (dry or wet soil) and the pH (basic or acid soil) or depending on the appearance of new deterioration factors, the textiles will suffer in the soil alterations specificai for each material (cellulosic or proteic). Yet being kept for a long time under these conditions of microclimate, they tend to reach an equilibrum state with this surrounding at a certain moment. Bringing the textiles out to surface after a quite long time will induce them a second shock of changing the surroundings. At this moment, their equilibrium state varishes and the action of the new medium can be so strong on some of them that, unless precautions are taken imediately, severe degradations or even irrevocabily distractions may occur in a quite short time. I was confrunted myself with this kind ofproblems in the case of textile discovered during the archeological reseach works conducted during 1974 -1975 at the ex - monastery of Dobrovăţ. I was dealing with a head cloth discovered on the skull of a burned from the necropola inside the church pronaus, the grave dating since the XV- XVII - th centuries (depending on the dating offered by the two coins found in situ and by stratigraphic observations). 251
