Recently, Zhejiang Provincial Museum has once again achieved new scientific and technological achievements in the protection of water-saturated wooden cultural relics. On the afternoon of July 11, the Provincial Science and Technology Innovation Conference issued the 2021 Zhejiang Science and Technology Award. The project of “R&D and Application of Freeze-dried and Stable Unearthed Water-saturated Wood Cultural Relics” jointly declared by Zhejiang Provincial Museum and Zhejiang University scientific research team won the third prize of Zhejiang Province Science and Technology Progress Award (ranked second).
The rich material cultural heritage of Chinese civilization includes a large number of wooden cultural relics. Wooden artifacts unearthed in coastal areas or from the sea are in a saturated state and need to be dehydrated and finalized before they can be preserved and displayed. Small-volume wooden cultural relics can be dehydrated and protected by solvent replacement and other methods, but due to environmental pollution and fire hazards, it is difficult to apply to the protection of large-scale water-saturated wooden cultural relics.
In response to this practical demand, Zhejiang Provincial Museum has carried out long-term exploration guided by modern science and technology and achieved fruitful scientific research results. In the award-winning project of “R&D and Application of Freeze-drying and Stable Unearthed Water-saturated Wooden Cultural Relics”, in view of the protection of unearthed (effluent) wooden cultural relics, the scientific research team of Zhejiang Provincial Museum and Zhejiang University carried out basic scientific and technical research on freeze-drying and pretreatment of wooden cultural relics, and developed key technologies such as automatic hot dip treatment of large-scale wooden cultural relics and freeze-drying of large-scale wooden cultural relics, so as to achieve the goal of dehydration and stereotyped protection of large-scale wooden cultural relics unearthed (effluent). The project has made outstanding innovations in vacuum freeze-drying of large-scale saturated wooden cultural relics and batch freeze-drying of small and medium-sized wooden cultural relics, effectively reducing the risk of failure of the treatment of wooden cultural relics and greatly improving the efficiency of protection, with significant social and indirect economic benefits. The project has obtained 5 authorized invention patents, 1 utility model patent, and published 25 papers, including 11 papers indexed by SCI/EI, “the overall technology has reached the international leading level in the cultural relics protection industry”.
The results of this project have been applied in many batches of cultural relics protection, such as the unearthed wooden components of the Yuan Dynasty Lock Site in Zhidanyuan in Shanghai, the Maoshan Canoe in Yuhang, Hangzhou, and the excavated wooden components at the Yizheng Tobacco Bag Mountain Site in Jiangsu, among which the Maoshan Canoe is the longest and most complete prehistoric canoe unearthed by domestic archaeological excavations, which is an important material evidence of Liangzhu culture. The project results have made significant contributions to the protection of cultural heritage in Zhejiang Province and improved the technical level of the protection and restoration of wooden cultural relics in China.