From the mid-1800s to the late 1950s, conservation by alum salts (aluminum potassium sulfate dodecahydrate)—with some variations—was a routine method for treating highly deteriorated waterlogged archaeological wood in many ...

Alum-treated wooden artefacts from the Oseberg collection display a great deal of morphological, structural and compositional inhomogeneity. Thus, an in-depth understanding of chemical processes underlying their degradation ...

Alum-treated wooden artefacts suffer from extreme deterioration, and the stability of these objects and the salts they contain to variations in climate conditions is an important issue. Responses of potassium alum ...

The Viking Age wooden artefacts recovered in the early 1900s from the Oseberg mound (Norway) and treated with alum, are today highly degraded. This is due to the effects of the alum-treatment and the reactivity of alum and ...

The Oseberg collection includes the most complete ensemble of wooden remains from the Viking Age. However, since many of the wooden objects were treated with alum in the early 1900s, they now suffer from dramatic conservation ...

The development of new materials for the consolidation of waterlogged archaeological wood from sustainable sources is an important area of research, as the most widely used consolidant today is petroleum based. Ideally a ...