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Spent years cleaning artifacts with distilled water and a soft brush. Then a visiting curator in Chicago told me I was damaging surface details on bone fragments.
Turns out using a 70 percent ethanol solution with a gentle swabbing motion preserves microscopic wear patterns much better. Anyone else have a basic technique they learned late in their career that saved them time or kept finds intact?
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the_jordan2mo ago
Doesn't that kind of hit on something bigger though? I've noticed in life we often get so used to doing things one way that we forget to question if there's a better method out there.
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kevin_martin2mo ago
Nah, I actually push back on "better method" being out there all the time. Sometimes the old way is the best way just because it works and everyone knows it, you know? Not everything needs to be fixed or reinvented.
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