Dr. Chris Vyhnal sat down remotely with SAS associate editor Roxanne Radpour to discuss how archaeological science can play an important role in teaching chemistry and experimental science to high school students. Vyhnal, the Science Department Chair at the Thacher School in Ojai, California, designed a 4-day course titled “Chemical Synthesis of Color in Art” for his students when he and the rest of his colleagues at Thacher were tasked to produce an emergency last minute short course in the 2017-2018 academic school year.
Technological examination of copper bolts from the Deltebre I (1813) site by means of spatially resolved neutron texture measurements
In this brief report, the ongoing spatially resolved neutron texture analysis performed on several copper bolts used to fasten different wooden components of the hull’s structure recovered from the Deltebre I (1813) shipwreck is presented. This site corresponds to a transport ship of a combined British, Sicilian and Spanish fleet supervised by Lt. Gen. John Murray, which ran aground in the Ebro delta (Catalonia coast, western Mediterranean) after an unsuccessful expedition to liberate the city of Tarragona from the control of Napoleon’s troops. Since 2008, it has been the subject of archaeological study by the staff of the Catalan Centre for Underwater Archaeology of the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia. The research conducted has included surveying and recording the ship’s structure, and the excavation of the vessel’s whole cargo (Vivar et al. 2014, 2016). Previous metallurgical studies were conducted on different copper-base artifacts associated with the ship’s structure and cargo (Ciarlo 2015; Ciarlo et al. 2016).