Image credit: CIMS.
Dr Simon J Jackson, Collections and Learning Curator, Ipswich Museums, Colchester and Ipswich Museums, writes:
X-ray analysis is a powerful tool to help us look beneath the surface of our objects and into their very fabric and nature. What are they made of? How have they been made? Does organic tissue, such as bone, provide any clues about how the organism may have lived (or maybe died)? These are questions which the technology can help us to potentially answer, and perhaps, in so doing, add even more value to these objects. So, let’s go deeper…
Although the technology has been around now for several decades, recent advances in x-ray technology allow far more detail to be seen. Ipswich Museum is lucky enough to have been offered access to the University of Suffolk’s new state of the art x-ray facility, which is part of their new Health and Wellbeing building in Ipswich, and to work with some of their specialised staff.
On July 4, Dr Simon J. Jackson (Natural Sciences Collections and Learning Curator), Carrie Calver (Conservation Officer) and Tim Rousham (Museum Assistant) went up to the facility with a handful of carefully selected objects to test the equipment. These were just a few objects of many that we want to learn more about through exploring their internal structure.
Thanks to Dr Chris Cobb, a senior lecturer in diagnostic radiography at the University of Suffolk and his skilled team, we were able to test the new equipment on our objects. For example, the x-ray results have allowed us to peer inside the structure of 200,000 year old steppe mammoth vertebrae excavated from the Maidenhall area in Ipswich, revealing an illness that would have had a significant bearing upon the mammoth’s life (more details to be released later!).
X-rays of an Anglo-Saxon knife (seax) from Belstead, Suffolk have allowed us to peer into the skilled metal workmanship that would have made this high status knife – revealing the beautiful and intricate pattern welding that would have been once visible on the surface.
These tests clearly show the potential of this technology in helping us to delve beneath the surface of our objects in order to more fully understand them. Undoubtedly, more secrets are locked away in our collections waiting to be discovered… Perhaps x-ray analysis offers a vital key.