J.CAC VOLUME 24 (1999)

Conservation of the Punic Collection at the Museum of Carthage. Part I – Mapping the Collection: Methodology, Classification and Assessment

Vanda Vitali, Ursula M. Franklin

In recent years, conservation projects have become increasingly multifaceted undertakings in which the role and involvement of conservators has expanded beyond the treatment of artifacts. This paper, the first in a series of three articles, reports on one such multifaceted research and salvage conservation project: the joint University of Toronto-Museum of Carthage Project, undertaken between 1989 and 1992. The project had several interrelated aspects: (a) the inventory, classification, and evaluation of the Punic collection of the Museum of Carthage; (b) the assessment, conservation, and storage of the artifacts; and c) the museological presentation of the collection and of the work accomplished. This paper discusses the first aspect of the project. To analyze and evaluate the collection, assembled over time and from various sources, a materials-based statistical approach was developed. In this approach large assemblages of artifacts of the same material were considered as populations and assessed according to parameters of design, size, scale, and aspects of technology and craftsmanship. This method emerged as the most helpful way to extract relevant information from a collection now detached from its context. The methodological approach developed here allows the exploration, in a scientifically justifiable manner, of a large collection of antiquities assembled prior to the development of current methods and cross-referencing systems. It may be useful to other scholars, curators, and conservators faced with similar problems of extracting information from large collections and deciding how to proceed with preserving them.

Download: JCAC24 Vitali & Franklin