Queen Anne's Revenge
Laboratory Excavation Report
UAB Conservation Laboratory, Greenville
Sarah Watkins-Kenney QAR Project Conservator
Wendy Welsh, QAR Laboratory Manager

We Carry On….

The January/February report described in detail projects ECU Graduate Assistants have been working on at the lab. Work has continued on these projects in the past two months including rinsing and packaging lead shot, drawing artifacts and completing the inventory of the x-radiographs. March 2nd and April 11th x-ray sessions at the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) completed the x-radiography of objects recovered from the 2005 field season.The QAR staff plans to continue to work closely with the NCMA to x-ray objects recovered in the May 2006 field season. A summary report of the findings from the x-radiographs of the 2005-2006 objects will then be written. In April, Cannon 24 (QAR637.000) and the onion bottle (QAR557.000) were also photographed with a scale and solid background to complete the digital image record of the 2005 objects. The QAR staff has also been preparing for the May 2006 field season, making sure all equipment is ready and the lab is in order to receive the newly recovered objects.

Nordgren signs on with The USS Monitor Project

At the end of April Eric Nordgren, our Assistant Conservator, left to take up a position as a conservator with the USS Monitor Project at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Eric Nordgren joined the QAR conservation team in September 2003, after three years of working for the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA-Egypt) in Alexandria, Egypt. While still experiencing the initial culture shock of moving from Egypt to Greenville Eric was initiated right away into the work involved in setting up the QAR Lab at East Carolina University in Greenville. He joined the team at an appropriate time, as in his first week we were faced with the task of a large-scale move of artifacts (i.e. cannon and wood planks) from Morehead City to the Greenville lab. Eric settled in and some of his main tasks included solution monitoring, electrolysis set-up and supervision, and working closely with the graduate students. Eric also researched different topics for the lab from wood treatments to electrolysis and in-situ monitoring. Eric also made many of his contacts in the conservation world available to the QAR lab and in that way continued to strengthen the capabilities of the staff and facility. The QAR project and laboratory staff would like to thank Eric for all he has done and we wish him well in his new job.

Visitors

As interest in the QAR project grows around the university and the east coast, the visitors keep coming! On March 3rd Thomas Herron, Associate Professor in ECU's Dept. of English, and two guest speakers from ECU's Irish Lecture Series, Aiden O'Sullivan from the University College Dublin and Mary Valente from Appalachian State University were given a tour of the QAR lab. March 29th cannon enthusiast, John Sledge of Kill Devil Hills visited the lab to take photos of our cannon for his cannon database. April 7th the staff were visited by from state legislator Marian McLawhorn and David Brook, Donna Rosenfeld, Faye Henderson, and Steve Claggett from our Department to view the artifacts and discuss what will be on display at the NC General Assembly for two days in May. Larry Babits, Director of the ECU Program for Maritime Studies brought Waldemar Ossowski from the Polish Maritime Museum out for a tour of the lab on April 10th. Writer/Producer Scott Goldie from the History Channel's Modern Marvels came out on April 17th with Videographer, Dan Lantz and Audio Engineer Adrian Sam to film some of the QAR objects for a show that will air in July 2006. And lastly, another ECU guest lecturer, Professor Fritz Vollrath from the University of Oxford accompanied Dr. John Kenney from ECU's Physic department for a tour on April 27th.

..Back to Conservation Reports  On to May/June 2006...