Photogrammetry and Conservation: Modelling Damage and Reconstruction of a Revolutionary War Cannon

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Technology in Terrestrial and Underwater Archaeology" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 2016, the small, regional Berkeley County Museum and Heritage Center approached the Warren Lasch Conservation Center about the possibility of conserving a Revolutionary War cannon recovered from a marine environment on Lewisville Plantation in the 1980’s. Unfortunately, the cannon had not been desalinated post-recovery, and the artifact was visibly deteriorating as a result. Upon removing the coating applied during the initial conservation, WLCC staff found that the degradation was more extensive than previously thought. Photogrammetry was therefore used to record the cannon at different stages of the now more complex conservation treatment. These models can now be used to communicate the damage as well as the reconstruction of the cannon to both the Berkeley museum as well as the public. The Lewisville cannon serves as an interesting case study to assess these strategies as a means of documenting and more broadly communicating the conservation of marine artifacts to a wider audience.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Technology in Terrestrial and Underwater Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 234