The jewelry restoration was done with the help of both computer technologies and traditional methods. Wax, clay and bronze were used.
The archeologists restored a jewelry object made in the Iron Age. It was done with the help of digital technologies.
Restoration included scanning of the clay molds that were used for casting bronze in the 1st and 2nd centuries B.C. Original molds found in Cairns, at South Ronaldsay island of Orkney islands, Scotland, were too fragile to use for jewelry.
Ben Price, a PhD student at the University of the Highlands and Islands, department of Archeology. Around 80 fragments of clay molds were found during the recent excavations of a broch dating back to the Iron Age in Cairns.
Brochs or so-called “atlantic roundhouses” were the stone towers common in Scottish Islands and Highlands. The brochs feature a round shape and were built using the dry stone methods, without any mortar.
Ben Price reproduced the whole Iron Age jewelry making process, from using authentic press molds to casting of a new pin.
This is how it was done:
The fragments found in Cairns were collected;
A 3D model was made based on the 3D scans and photographs of fragments;
A wax pen was 3D printed based on a model;
A press mold was made based on a wax pin;
Bronze poured into the mold;
It was left to solidify for 48 hours;
The mold was broken, revealing a pin.
Ben Price photographed and scanned original Iron Age molds and made a 3D model out of them. Then he made a 3D model of a pin. It was 3D printed with wax which was a perfect material for casting with bronze: this is how the jewelers of Orkney Islands were making the pins thousands years ago.
According to Martin Carruthers, Masters degree programme leader at UHI, the whole project gave an insight about how people of Orkney Island used and made the objects over 2,000 years ago.
He adds that all of the imperfections of the product are clearly visible, which is expected since the technology is literally ancient.
"The process also opens up many possibilities in terms of experimental archeology in addition to educating the public at large.[...] The object also in a way opens up the possibility that the Iron Age was full of colour and bright objects that were treasured. [...] Perhaps they were not so dissimilar to people of today”, he concludes.
Those, who want to reproduce the process, can do so using various highly accurate 3D scanners. Scantech KSCAN Magic I is a good example, since it’s designed to work with smaller objects (ranging from 1 cm to 10 cm in size).
