Brief report on the laboratory archaeology of the tomb M1 at Dahekou

In 2007, Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology conducted excavation to the Dahekou Cemetery of the Western Zhou Dynasty in Yicheng County. In the excavated M1, the wooden parts of the lacquered wares have decayed away and were very difficult to recover and process suitably in the fieldwork condition. Because of this, Conservation and Research Center for Cultural Heritage of the Institute of Archaeology, CASS was invited to conduct laboratory archaeology to these artifacts. By the onsite preservation and reinforcing processing and entire encasing acquisition, these artifacts and their burial context were removed to the laboratory and subject to recovery. The suitable propping materials and reinforcing reagents were selected to comprehensively process and conserve. These methods provided technological standards for the processing and preservation of the lacquered wooden objects unearthed from the semiarid areas; the completion of this project also clarified the characteristics, requirements, patterns and workflow of the laboratory archaeology.