Santander, February 19th-22nd 2008 - Aranzadi

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HORTENSIA DE VEGA, EMILIANO R. MELGAR, M. DE LOURDES GALLARDO
that all the pieces correspond to a horizontal setting.
In this stage the interdisciplinary work determined our
hypothesis and the next conservation procedure.
As we thought that the nacreous elements
were imbricated in the original setting, we needed
to protect the back part of each piece, locating a
Japanese paper support (fig. 13a), that will also
act as a reinforcement. This procedure took a long
time and consisted in the union of an individual
support for each bead. The support was made of
Japanese paper glued with a cellulosic adhesive.
The fragments with more than 50% of the original
were treated with another Japanese paper to complete
the original. When this procedure had been
finished, we proceeded again to set all the elements
in one unit with the lower edge of the rectangular
shell elements. Also, we designed a paper
model for the garment according to the normal
male chest measurements that will define the final
shape of our proposal. Then, we did the adjustments
to get the garment in order to cover the
chest and part of the shoulders as we saw in the
iconographical investigation and in the particular
characteristics of the archaeological objects (fig.
13b). After that, we proceeded to sew all the shell
pieces to a cotton fabric set in a wooden rack. We
used cotton thread in this procedure as well. Every
stitch has a knot in order to secure every shell
piece. When this treatment was finished, the fabric
was cut according to the model (fig. 14).
Figure 13. The Japanese paper (a) and the shape of the paper model (b).
Figure 14. The shell garment of Oxtankah.
MUNIBE Suplemento - Gehigarria 31, 2010
S.C. Aranzadi. Z.E. Donostia/San Sebastián