Ancient Basketry on the Inside: X-ray Computed Tomography for the Non-destructive Assessment of Small Archaeological Monocotyledonous Fragments. Examples from South-east Europe

Abstract

This study proposes non-destructive assessment instrumentation, being the X-ray CT scanning, for the evaluation of archaeological basketry remains prior to any destructive analysis. There are three case studies, originating from two archaeological sites in South-east Europe, with three different stages of preservation (poor, sufficient and very good). In addition, there are two preservation modes – charring and desiccation – along with two conservation situations: treated and untreated with conservation agent fragments. The three different scenarios were chosen to explore the potential range of CT scanning technology when applied to monocotyledonous small-sized archaeological remains. It was proved that this non-invasive X-ray method is particularly suitable in the case of the often-disadvantaged ancient basketry remains.