Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Mystery Object Revealed!

At first glance, this artifact did not appear to be anything particularly special - a chunk of rust and corrosion found in a box with other rusted metal pieces from a historic site collection held by the Museum of Ontario Archaeology. Our imaging lab tech Zoe was in the midst of performing various proof of concept tests on the MicroCT, and we decided that this would be an interesting piece to scan. We had no idea what we would find below the rust - historic sites often yield a wide array of metal artifacts, and our mystery piece could be one of any number of things. Or was their nothing to discover at all - could this simply be a piece of rust that had broken off of another object?

As seen in the video, using the MicroCT, Zoe was able to isolate and strip away the less-dense layers of rust and corrosion, revealing two small thin metal objects below. Mystery artifact appears to be (drumroll please) - a nail! Or, at least one nail, and possibly part of another. What do you think the mystery object could be?


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