ABSTRACT
This chapter primarily addresses the preservation of artifacts from nautical excavations of the 17th-century site of Port Royal, Jamaica, but the results have important implications for maritime archaeology in other areas of the world. Since 1997, several experiments have been conducted at the Texas A&M University Archaeological Preservation Research Laboratory, College Station, to evaluate the ability of selected short-chain, silanol-ended polydimethyl siloxane polymers to conserve similarly sized shards of devitrified glass. Prior to treatment, scanning electron microscopic (SEM) analysis and neutron activation analysis were conducted on a small fragment of a nearly complete onion bottle. Independent testing and computer modeling of the accelerated weathering process concluded that glass treated with a short-chain, hydroxyl-ended polymer/methyl trimethoxy silane solution followed by immersion catalyzation appears to be stabilized for a predicted period of 250 years. Ancient beads from the Bronze Age Uluburun shipwreck and small colored glass beads from La Salle's 17th-century vessel, La Belle, have all been successfully treated using total immersion processing.
