An Analytical Methodology for the Study of the Corrosion of Ferrous Archaeological Remains in Soils
Résumé
In the context of the cultural heritage, a methodology based on field and laboratory approaches is developed for studying the long-term corrosion of iron. Moreover it has been adapted to the study of archaeological artefacts buried in anoxic soils in the specific case of in-situ preservation. The environmental parameters are determined on the archaeological sites and artefacts are collected and characterised using complementary multi-scale techniques. Moreover, laboratory experiments are performed to locate the reaction sites inside the corrosion layer and to identify its electronic properties. The results allow estimation of a low corrosion rate for iron buried in an anoxic soil (under 2 µm/year) and the proposal of a mechanism based on a decoupling of the anodic and the cathodic sites. Then a diagnosis of the alteration state of the samples is established.
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