Reasoned use of chemical parameters for the diagnostic evaluation of the state of preservation of waterlogged archaeological wood

Waterlogged archaeological wood undergoes decay processes that depend on both the burial conditions and the constituting species, and which cause the depletion of the structural components of wood cells. To quantitatively assess the state of preservation of the decayed material, specific parameters are usually measured by means of both chemical and physical analyses. In this paper an innovative approach in the use of the data obtained from these kinds of measurements is developed. A series of 132 archaeological wood samples of different wood species, burial times and states of preservation, and coming from different sites in Italy, was analysed. Their residual chemical composition, maximum water content and basic density were measured, and a reasoned use of these parameters was carried out through their elaboration, with the aim of both evaluating eventual incongruence or anomalies in the raw physical and chemical data (which has never been accomplished so far) and directly comparing in a reliable way the analytical results obtained from archaeological samples with very different states of preservation. This approach allowed defining the effective values of chemical parameters related to wood decay according to a same reference basis of calculation among the various data. By this way, it was possible to state that lignin can be also attacked by the agents causing biotic decay, and that in hardwoods its decay is more related to the burial conditions than to the wood species. Instead, the mechanism of polysaccharide depletion is diversified: conifers showed a uniform behaviour whereas hardwoods were more species-dependent. Moreover, in addition to the chemical composition, also anatomical factors influence the carbohydrate rate of decay in waterlogged wood.