Concretion

Concretion is not a “natural patina” in the living-room sense; it is a mineral notebook written by currents, depth, cargo chemistry, and time. For archaeologists, those layers can seal organic residues that answer questions about wine, pitch, or perfume. For untrained hands, the same layers look like dirt to attack with steel wool—destroying data and sometimes scratching glaze. We treat concretion as epistemic infrastructure, not decoration.

Freshwater and brackish environments grow different crust chemistries than open ocean silting; “shipwreck look” in a living room is therefore not self-proving. Microscopy and X-ray work belong in the loop before anyone narrates decades underwater from color alone.

Cleaning without erasing the experiment

Conservators sometimes stabilize concretion with resins or controlled reduction baths chosen object by object. What reads as “cleaner” to a collector may be “poorer” to a residue scientist. If you are comparing typologies across wrecks, insist on seeing which cleaning stage a published drawing represents.

Typology under the crust

Heavy concretion can round a shoulder line enough to mislead a quick sketch. That is why typology work on wreck material belongs with conservators who stabilize first and measure second. Our amphora essay reminds readers that transport jars were designed to be read even when muddy—handles and stamps survive better than fineware egos.

Provenance begins at the waterline

Where an object left the sea, who sampled it, and which institution holds the log files are provenance questions—not footnotes. The Mediterranean & Black Sea corridor ties those threads together without pretending every salvage story is heroic.

Sampling strategy matters: a swab taken from the interior neck can tell a different story than powder drilled from the shoulder crust. Publishing coordinates for samples—inside/outside, crust versus body—lets later researchers argue with you productively instead of guessing what you erased.