About

This project is part of the Science and Engineering in Arts, Heritage, and Archaeology Centre for Doctoral Training (SEAHA CDT) funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Pilgrim Trust, the Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust, and the National Conservation Service (NCS). It is a collaborative initiative between the University of Oxford, National Museum Wales Cardiff (NMC), National Museums Liverpool (NML), BSRIA Ltd., and OR3D.

The project supervisors are Professor Heather Viles (University of Oxford), Dr. Christian Baars (NML), Dr. Jana Horak (NMC), and Tom Garrigan (BSRIA Ltd.).

Each SEAHA project has partners from academia, heritage, and industry, with each partner providing a supervisor. The project is co-created by these partners to answer specific questions and problems faced by museums and heritage. This particular project stems from a lack of knowledge on the behaviour of geological materials in museum environments.

While there is evidence for these materials being unstable, geological collections have not garnered sufficient attention and research to answer the plethora of questions posed by museum professionals. This research project was proposed as a means of rectifying this lack through establishing an awareness of the materials’ susceptibility and by beginning the detailed, scientific studies required. This will bring the knowledge up to par with that available for other material types found in museums, such as paintings, ceramics, and archaeological finds.

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Aims & Scope

The scope of the project has been narrowed from geological materials—which encompasses minerals, rocks, fossils, subfossils, and their associated materials—to just minerals, as they are the building blocks of other geological materials. Even still, this is a massive undertaking, as there is a total of 5,828 currently known mineral species (IMA 2022). However, not all mineral species can persist within the museum environment, due to requiring substantially different temperatures and or pressures to exist. Additionally, many, if not most, mineral species are not represented in museum collections. Over half of known mineral species are considered rare (i.e., are documented to occur in five or fewer localities), and many newly identified species only form at the micro- or nano-scale and were discovered during experiments utilising high-resolution microscopy and spectroscopy (Hazen & Ausubel 2016, Lee & Guo 2022). Taking these factors into consideration, approximately 2,000—or roughly one-third—of all known mineral species are likely relevant to museum contexts.

A review of pre-existing literature (Royce et al. 2021) illustrates that most information on mineral stability is generated by disciplines such as earth sciences, chemistry, and material sciences. However, the majority of this research in unavailable to museum professionals, both physically (due to the lack of open access publications) and verbally. For many museum professionals, literature from other fields may appear laden with specific and technical jargon, strange graphs, and terrifying equations. It is undeniable that these can overwhelm and confuse even the most scientifically inclined if they are unfamiliar with the subject being presented (Hoyles 2020). Thus, the lack of easily accessible and digestible information tailored for a layman’s understanding significantly hampers knowledge transfer into the museum sector. Yet the largest obstruction of knowledge exchange comes from a lack of awareness and effective communication (Tennent 1994, Viñas 2002, Henderson 2018), as many museum professionals are unaware that relevant knowledge is available from other sectors.

Thus, the aims of this project are to:

1. raise awareness that minerals are indeed subject to change and most forms of change can be mitigated or managed, and
2. begin addressing the lack of accessible information on mineral instability within the heritage sector.

These are achievable through the following objectives and methods.

References:

Hazen, R.M. & Ausubel, J.H., 2016. On the nature and significance of rarity in mineralogy. American Mineralogist, 101 (6), 1245–1251. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2016-5601CCBY

Henderson, J., 2018. Reflections on the psychological basis for suboptimal environmental practices in conservation. Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 41 (1), 32–45. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/19455224.2017.1422777

Hoyles, C., 2020. I can’t do maths. UCL Portico Magazine, 7, 48–49.

International Mineralogical Association (IMA), 2022. The New IMA List of Minerals – A Work in Progress.

Lee, S. & Guo, X., 2022. Xuite, Ca3Fe2[(Al,Fe)O3(OH)]3, a new mineral of the garnet group: Implications for the wide occurrence of nanominerals. American Mineralogist, 107 (5), 930–935. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2022-8023

Royce, K., Baars, C., & Viles, H., 2021. Defining Damage and Susceptibility, with Implications for Mineral Specimens and Objects: Introducing the Mineral Susceptibility Database. Studies in Conservation. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2021.2015947

Tennent, N.H., 1994. The role of the conservation scientist in enhancing the practice of preventive conservation and the conservation treatment of artifacts. In: W.E. Krumbein, P. Brimblecombe, D.E. Cosgrove, and S. Staniforth, eds. Durability and Change: the science, responsibility, and cost of sustaining cultural heritage. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 165–172.

Viñas, S.M., 2002. Contemporary theory of conservation. Studies in Conservation, 47 (Sup. 1), 25–34. DOI: 10.1179/sic.2002.47.Supplement-1.25