{"title":"Toxic Heritage","authors":"T. Bangstad","doi":"10.1558/jca.21609","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In the course of modern museum history, a variety of toxic chemicals have been used to prevent the deterioration of collected objects. The residues of pesticides and preservatives now persist together with the objects they were intended to protect. These chemical conservation technologies are intimately bound up with the unpredictable material agencies that are characteristic of the legacy of Anthropocene residues on a planetary scale. However, chemicals also form part of local, domestic, everyday worlds where they were used to maintain order, prevent loss and ensure material coherence. In this article I investigate Norwegian open-air museums as sites where new chemical products with pesticidal and protective properties were domesticated and placed on trial in the battle against “museum pests” and the decay of wooden buildings. By exploring carbon-based chemicals derived from the waste products of coke production, I reflect on the material convergence of waste and heritage in preserved buildings and how in the early and mid-twentieth century museum conservation came to rely on these unpredictable and highly persistent chemical agents.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.21609","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ARCHAEOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In the course of modern museum history, a variety of toxic chemicals have been used to prevent the deterioration of collected objects. The residues of pesticides and preservatives now persist together with the objects they were intended to protect. These chemical conservation technologies are intimately bound up with the unpredictable material agencies that are characteristic of the legacy of Anthropocene residues on a planetary scale. However, chemicals also form part of local, domestic, everyday worlds where they were used to maintain order, prevent loss and ensure material coherence. In this article I investigate Norwegian open-air museums as sites where new chemical products with pesticidal and protective properties were domesticated and placed on trial in the battle against “museum pests” and the decay of wooden buildings. By exploring carbon-based chemicals derived from the waste products of coke production, I reflect on the material convergence of waste and heritage in preserved buildings and how in the early and mid-twentieth century museum conservation came to rely on these unpredictable and highly persistent chemical agents.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Contemporary Archaeology is the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to explore archaeology’s specific contribution to understanding the present and recent past. It is concerned both with archaeologies of the contemporary world, defined temporally as belonging to the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as well as with reflections on the socio-political implications of doing archaeology in the contemporary world. In addition to its focus on archaeology, JCA encourages articles from a range of adjacent disciplines which consider recent and contemporary material-cultural entanglements, including anthropology, art history, cultural studies, design studies, heritage studies, history, human geography, media studies, museum studies, psychology, science and technology studies and sociology. Acknowledging the key place which photography and digital media have come to occupy within this emerging subfield, JCA includes a regular photo essay feature and provides space for the publication of interactive, web-only content on its website.