The ethics of researh: destroying 2,000 years old artifacts

[Kramodlog]

Interesting debate and it shouldn't be political. It is about destroying 2,000 years old Roman lead ingots retrived from the sea. Physicists wants to use them do study dark matter. Some object because it woudl destroy artifacts important to our cultural heritage.

BIRMINGHAM, England, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- Physicists and archaeologists are at odds over the use in contemporary experiments in particle physics of lead recovered from ancient shipwrecks.Scientists from a dark matter detection project in Minnesota and from a neutrino observatory in Italy have begun to use the specimens, but archaeologists have raised alarm about what they say is the destruction of cultural heritage artifacts.
More than 100 lead ingots from a Roman ship recovered in the waters off Sardinia have been used to build the advanced detector of neutrinos -- almost weightless subatomic particles -- in Italy. Lead ingots recovered from an 18th century shipwreck off the French coast have found their way into dark matter detector located in a mine in Minnesota.
Why the desire for ancient lead in modern experiments?
"Roman lead is essential for conducting these experiments because it offers purity and such low levels of radioactivity -- all the more so the longer it has spent underwater -- which current methods for producing this metal cannot reach," underwater heritage expert Elena Perez-Alvaro from the University of Birmingham said.
"Lead extracted today is naturally contaminated with the isotope Pb-210, which prevents it from being used as shielding for particle detectors," physicist Fernando Gonzalez Zalba from the University of Cambridge said.
The two researchers, writing in the journal Rosetta, address the dilemma: Should we sacrifice part of our cultural heritage to achieve greater knowledge of the universe?
"Underwater archaeologists see destruction of heritage as a loss of our past, our history, whilst physicists support basic research to look for answers we do not yet have," said Perez-Alvaro, "although this has led to situations in which, for example, private companies ... trade lead recovered from sunken ships."
Perez-Alvaro and Zalba say they encourage dialogue between both disciplines, and call for legislation that regulates such activities without limiting them exclusively to archaeologists, and to allow use by physicists.
"Recovery for knowledge in both fields, and not merely for commercial reasons," they stress.

What do you think? Me I think preserving some of the ingots (half?) and using the rest seems like a reasonable compromize.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Interesting debate and it shouldn't be political. It is about destroying 2,000 years old Roman lead ingots retrived from the sea. Physicists wants to use them do study dark matter. Some object because it woudl destroy artifacts important to our cultural heritage.



What do you think? Me I think preserving some of the ingots (half?) and using the rest seems like a reasonable compromize.[/FONT][/COLOR][/FONT][/COLOR]

They're just bars of lead. Nothing to see here, move along...

 

[Jan van Leyden]

With more than 100 ingots found, archeologists could spare some, I think. Shouldn't their interests be more along the lines of documenting the wreck?

Being far from an expert at archeology I always thought studying the material found in order to analyse were it's from and to reconstruct trading routes were a standard modus operandi. So they are also using found stuff in destructive ways, aren't they?

 

[Hand of Evil]

time to put them to use, this is salvage and I have always thought there should be a time limit of a countries right on the items pulled from the sea. If researchers want them, they should be out getting them or working more with salvagers.

 

[freyar]

Disclaimer: I'm a physicist working on dark matter research. Basically, when not teaching or doing "administrative service," I spend a bit more than half my time thinking about dark matter.

That said, I also don't believe items of significant cultural or historical importance should be destroyed or really even owned privately.

The real issue here is that I can't see that the quantities of lead bars talked about here are a significant part of cultural heritage. By the accounts I've read, there are many many of these ingots around, so I don't really see the problem with destroying some as long as (a) a large quantity remain, (b) the ones destroyed are recorded and imaged to provide as much knowledge as possible for archaeological research, and (c) everything is done legally on the up-and-up. (I imagine the CDMS collaboration has regret that they didn't check their source carefully enough and will put safeguards into place for the future.)

I guess I'd put it this way: despite the fact that we may be able to gain more knowledge about Roman history, trade, and culture by cataloging this type of ingot, I would argue that the Roman Colosseum is a much more significant part of cultural heritage and more worthy of preservation than an individual ingot. And I see the scientific experiments, like CDMS, as much more like the Colosseum or other major ruins in terms of the cultural heritage we are leaving for the future.

 

[billd91]

The way I see it, you can't preserve everything nor should you try. You just end up with increasingly cluttered storerooms of crap that does nobody any good. You should try to preserve the knowledge of what you can, collect samples to study and preserve, preserve and protect particularly important samples, collect information like location and disposition, but stuff that can be reused and recycled outside of that probably should be put to use whether it's land or materials.

The operative question in the current case is - what information can archaeologists glean from 100 bars of lead that they can't get from 5 or 10? There's probably something, but chances are that information would also be pretty marginal. There is, however, a good use case for the old metal in another application.

 

[Janx]

The way I see it, you can't preserve everything nor should you try. You just end up with increasingly cluttered storerooms of crap that does nobody any good. You should try to preserve the knowledge of what you can, collect samples to study and preserve, preserve and protect particularly important samples, collect information like location and disposition, but stuff that can be reused and recycled outside of that probably should be put to use whether it's land or materials.

The operative question in the current case is - what information can archaeologists glean from 100 bars of lead that they can't get from 5 or 10? There's probably something, but chances are that information would also be pretty marginal. There is, however, a good use case for the old metal in another application.

Indeed. Given that most of the info from the lead bars is on the surface, they could make a mold of the bars, and thus retain the knowledge before melting them down.

 

[Ragnar_Lodbrok]

It's a bunch of lead ingots. I can't see how they could present any new archaeological information, or how they constitute cultural heritage.

 

[tomBitonti]

The bars might preserve information about where the lead was processed, and from where it was obtained.

I'm kindof curious as to the problem of pollution of bars smelted today, and if there is no way to overcome the problem. I'm presuming that we have filled out environment with low level radioactive isotopes which create a signal that masks the dark matter signature.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Zombie_Babies]

It's a bunch of lead ingots. I can't see how they could present any new archaeological information, or how they constitute cultural heritage.

Bro, they said the reason they're using them is because they're significantly different from any we can produce today. That's significant out the wazoo. Don't mean we need hundreds or thousands of 'em, no, but they are important.

Look at it like this: Native American arrowheads are just stone - flint, chert, whatever. There's literally tons of the stuff just laying all over the ground. The heads, though, are significant in several ways because Native American hands crafted them hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of years ago. These ingots are much the same. Some Roman dood had to make 'em and he ain't 'round no mo'. Lead is lead, ingots are ingots but this lead is different and these ingots were made by hands that were alive during a historically significant time.