Assessing the Influence of Buried Archaeology on Equine Locomotion Comparison with Ground Penetrating Radar Results.

The aim of this trial project was to identify whether buried archaeological remains may have an influence on equine locomotion, through comparison with a non-invasive Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey. This study was conducted at the world-renowned Burghley Horse Trials site, near Stamford, City of Peterborough, U.K. that has a diverse range of heritage assets throughout the wider park land centred on the Grade 1 listed Elizabethan Burghley House. The initial aim of the research was to first use geophysical survey to identify and characterise archaeological remains, and then to determine a suitable location to conduct an equine locomotion study. This trial was conducted with five event type horses with their gaits recorded through the use of three axis, wireless, Inertial Measurement Units, and high speed video capture. It was hoped that this study might indicate an association between the presence of well preserved archaeological remains and changes in the gait of the horses, similar to those shown by studies of dressage horses over different riding surfaces. The results from the equine locomotion study did demonstrate a correlation between the presence of surviving archaeological remains and the alteration in the horses' gait and, although this is only a preliminary study, the results may well be of interest during the design and construction of equine event facilities. Geophysical survey could, for example, be considered during the design of new or alteration to existing equine courses to allow some mitigation in the location of the course with respect to any archaeological remains, or through the appropriate use of a protective artificial surface.

Crowdsourcing as an Analytical Method: Metrology of Smartphone Measurements in Heritage Science.

This research assesses the precision, repeatability, and accuracy of crowdsourced scientific measurements, and whether their quality is sufficient to provide usable results. Measurements of colour and area were chosen because of the possibility of producing them with smartphone cameras. The quality of the measurements was estimated experimentally by comparing data contributed by anonymous participants in heritage sites with reference measurements of known accuracy and precision. Participants performed the measurements by taking photographs with their smartphones, from which colour and dimensional data could be extracted. The results indicate that smartphone measurements provided by citizen scientists can be used to measure changes in colour, but that the performance is strongly dependent on the measured colour coordinate. The same method can be used to measure areas when the difference in colour with the neighbouring areas is large enough. These results render the method useful in some heritage science contexts, but higher precision would be desirable.

Non-destructive characterisation of iron gall ink drawings: not such a galling problem.

Iron gall inks are of extraordinary historical significance considering their widespread use for over a millennium. Due to their corrosiveness, which is a consequence of their acidity and content of transition metals, iron gall inks accelerate the degradation of the writing or drawing support, which in this study is rag paper. Characterisation of acidity (pH) and degree of polymerisation (DP) of cellulose in paper is thus of high interest as it enables the estimation of material stability and assessment of risks associated with its handling. Based on a well-characterised set of samples with iron gall ink from the 18th and 19th centuries, we developed a near infrared spectroscopic method with partial least squares calibration for non-destructive determination of pH and DP of both inked areas and paper. Using this method, 27 18th and 19th century iron gall ink drawings from the British Museum collection were analysed and in all cases, inked areas turned out to be more acidic and degraded than the surrounding paper. Based on the obtained DP data, we were able to estimate the time needed for the inked areas to degrade to the point when they become at risk of damage due to handling. Using the average uncertainty of the calculated lifetime, we propose a quantitative stability classification method which could contribute to the curatorial and conservation decision-making process.

Material degradomics: on the smell of old books.

We successfully transferred and applied -omics concepts to the study of material degradation, in particular historic paper. The main volatile degradation products of paper, constituting the particular "smell of old books", were determined using headspace analysis after a 24 h predegradation procedure. Using supervised and unsupervised methods of multivariate data analysis, we were able to quantitatively correlate volatile degradation products with properties important for the preservation of historic paper: rosin, lignin and carbonyl group content, degree of polymerization of cellulose, and paper acidity. On the basis of volatile degradic footprinting, we identified degradation markers for rosin and lignin in paper and investigated their effect on degradation. Apart from the known volatile paper degradation products acetic acid and furfural, we also put forward a number of other compounds of potential interest, most notably lipid peroxidation products. The nondestructive approach can be used for rapid identification of degraded historic objects on the basis of the volatile degradation products emitted by degrading paper.