Flora Garibaldi is a half-Italian conservator working and living in Italy. She grew out of my first excavation experience near Siena, my favorite medieval town. Subsequent trips to Italy took me all over to the many museums I needed to visit to write my archaeology dissertation. I fell in love with the country, the food, and the language, but I didn't live there long enough to feel like a true native.
This series grew out of my intense interest in antiquities smuggling and art forgery, perhaps because of my experience of being named an art "curator" when my training was still very recent. How could I weight in as an expert on any type of object, or decide if something was authentic without help?
The answers came from my next job in the interdisiplinary field of archaeometry, or archaeological science, which forced me to learn about scientific techniques now used by modern conservators and other researchers who want to know where and how a painting or vase was constructed and how it traveled from its place of manufacture to its current home. Chemistry is especially useful in such work, because obtaining the chemical composition of something can tell you what type of clay was used in pottery, or whether a pigment is ancient or modern. And medical imaging (X-rays and CT scans) can reveal rhe technology of a terracotta statue or what's inside a mummy (an animal, or a bunch of reeds?)
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