Most archaeological artefacts are just cleaned up, preserved, and tucked away in a warehouse somewhere. If they have any other use, it's generally as a museum exhibit–though I did once commandeer a wrecking bar from an industrial site to help with the excavations.Now news comes of 2,000-year old Roman lead ingots being used as shielding for a particle detection experiment. It turns out that the experiment is extremely sensitive and even the residual radiation from the lead will throw things off unless the shielding is left to "cool" for a couple of millennia. Enter the cargo of a Roman freighter lost off the coast of Sardinia in the 1st century BC.
Nice of the Romans to have the forethought to lay some by.
I read once that the small amount of radioactive fallout in the atmosphere would make steel jackets of medical or scientific equiptment unsuitable.
ReplyDeleteThe solution? The sliced up canons of WWII ships.
(Citation needed.)