Forgot to stabilize that fragile bone find in the field... total collapse

I was excavating a small pit feature near Santa Fe last month and pulled a partial deer mandible. Thought it was dry enough to bag without consolidant, put it in the tray, and by the time I got back to the lab it had crumbled into 20+ fragments. Had to spend four hours reconstructing it with Paraloid B-72 and a lot of swear words. Anyone else learn this lesson the hard way with a piece that looked solid but wasn't?

3 comments

3 Comments

danielb431mo ago

Four hours of gluing sounds way overkill for a deer jaw.

patriciap521mo ago

Did you use B-72 before or after the swearing?

martin.paige25d ago

Wait, four hours? That seems like a lot, but okay. And @danielb43, it's not really about the jaw being fancy, it's about not wanting to lose any tiny bit of info from the fragments. Honestly, the part that got me was reading "thought it was dry enough" - I've done the exact same thing with a piece of rat skull last spring, thought it was fine, then it basically turned to dust in my hand five minutes later. Now I just spray everything with Paraloid in the field, even the stuff that looks solid, because that one time taught me you can't trust dry dirt.