ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 4, 1996 TAG: 9611050033
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HAMPTON (AP)
SOURCE: MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON [NEWPORT NEWS] DAILY PRESS
TECHNOLOGY INTENDED to make space travel safer helps protect artifacts dug out of the earth.
Elliot Jordan stands in a small, darkened room peering at the cluster of X-rays hanging on the wall.
``Lots of surprises,'' the archaeologist said, pushing his nose close to one of the glowing pictures.
Only a few minutes before, Jordan and fellow conservator Michael Lavin had started to unbox dozens of mysterious, rust-colored lumps found at the site of the first permanent English settlement in the New World.
Working under the watchful eye of NASA engineering technician Bob Berry, they arranged the puzzling clods under the lens of an industrial X-ray machine at Langley Research Center's nondestructive evaluation radiographic lab.
Soon, the first sheets of film were spitting out of the developing machine and slapping into a wire hopper. From there, they went to the gleaming white surface of the fluorescent lightbox, where Jordan, Lavin and Berry smiled broadly as the secrets of the hidden artifacts unfolded.
Instead of rusty blobs, the X-rays turned up a handwrought hinge, a box lock, a hasp and a gang mold used for pouring lead musket balls. They also uncovered a cauldron leg, a knife handle and a saw-toothed strap used for hanging kettles over a fire.
``This is much better than going to a lot of trouble for something that's not much more than a big block of nails,'' said Lavin, who performs most of the iron conservation work for the Jamestown Rediscovery project.
``It can take a week just to clean one bag of these things - and then you find out it's something that's not worth cleaning.''
No one knows exactly how much work the NASA X-rays have saved the archaeologists at Jamestown.
Using the pictures as a guide, they cut the time needed to clean an iron breastplate to around 100 hours, Lavin said.
Over the past couple of years, the scientists have brought dozens of promising yet ambiguously shaped lumps of rusty clay to Berry's lab, hoping to avoid the tedium and risk of doing their work unaided.
The objects have ranged from slender bridle bits to broad axheads, and they include such significant finds as the breastplate and a helmet.
``Some of them we think we know before we come down here, and some of them we have no idea,'' Jordan said.
``It lets you know right off the bat what you're working with.''
The highly detailed pictures also help the archaeologists determine the smartest methods for conserving the often fragile pieces of iron.
Using equipment designed to ferret out design and manufacturing flaws in aircraft and space flight hardware, they can identify weak areas that need special treatment. And they can weigh the benefits of cleaning an extremely rare artifact by hand or with such laboratory techniques as electrolysis.
``This feels heavy, so it seems like it should be sturdy enough to go through electrolysis,'' Jordan said, holding up a chunk of rust that hides an axhead and a skeleton key.
``But you'd probably lose part of it if you did because of the extensive corrosion.''
No ordinary medical X-rays could provide enough detail to make such delicate judgments. The fine and extra-fine grade film used here is about 10 times more sensitive than that normally used in hospitals, Berry said.
The exposure times are far longer, too, averaging about a minute or so for each of more than about a dozen pieces of film.
``Here, we're capable of imaging a couple of hundred lines of data per millimeter,'' Berry said.
``If you got five with medical film, you'd be really happy.''
The Jamestown project isn't the first conservation job that the NASA engineering technician has worked on over the years.
Berry helped conservators at Colonial Williamsburg scan the upholstery of a priceless 18th-century Masonic chair after the X-ray lab at the Smithsonian Institution ran into problems.
Most such jobs are selected on a case-by-case basis, he said. But the Jamestown project - because of its unique historical importance - has been treated as a top priority.
``We look at it as a way of sharing our technical expertise,'' he said. ``NASA's done a good job of being a good neighbor for a long time.''
Berry's expertise goes far beyond his ability to operate the industrial X-ray machines. Because of his years of experience scrutinizing metal objects, he can often spot details that might otherwise go unobserved.
Taking up an X-ray of one particularly misshapen rusty clod, he quickly detected evidence of the telltale copper tacks that once attached the object to the center of a wooden shield.
That discovery, in turn, helped the archaeologists establish the identity of the onion-shaped iron boss as well as the long-deteriorated artifact it once protected.
``Our curator's going to be real happy when she sees this,'' Jordan said, tracing the fine line of tacks with his finger.
``This verifies for sure that it's a buckler boss.''
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. NASA engineering technician Bob Berry points out aby CNBcharacteristic of an artifact shown on an X-ray for archaelogist
Elliot Jordan, who works on the Jamestown project.