THE GETTY CONSERVATORS DIG IN

Think of it as an overdue merger of the art world’s diggers and doctors. In one camp are archeologists digging for buried treasure. In the other are conservators working in laboratories to piece together fragments of our cultural heritage and heal sick artworks.

Archeologists and conservators would seem to be natural collaborators but, according to Luis Monreal, director of the Getty Conservation Institute, they have traditionally worked so independently that their camps may as well be on different planets. And the results of their separation have been disastrous.

“We know that Classical Greek sculpture in marble was polychromed. One can assume that if these pieces were properly excavated, the polychrome would still be there,” Monreal said, in an interview at the institute’s temporary quarters in Marina del Rey.

“I’ll give you another example: An early 16th-Century text tells us about the discovery, in the Roman Forum area, of a marble sarcophagus containing the perfectly preserved body of a very beautiful young lady. The body disintegrated in the next 20 minutes.”

There’s no way to restore the original color of the Greek figures or the body of the Roman woman, but the Getty Conservation Institute (created in 1982 as an operating program of the J. Paul Getty Trust) has taken a major step to reverse this tradition of destruction by bringing together archeologists and conservators. “In Situ,” a weeklong conference beginning Sunday in Mexico City, is the first professional meeting to address the subject of archeological conservation, according to Monreal.

In collaboration with the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History, the Getty Conservation Institute has invited 24 experts from 10 countries to deliver papers on such subjects as “Preventive Measures During Excavation and Site Protection,” “Working with Conservators: An Archeologist’s Viewpoint” and “The Preservation of Archeological Sites by Environmental Intervention.”

Jane Slate, the Getty’s special projects coordinator, has organized a program allowing about 200 participants (including many young Latin American professionals) to visit archeological sites around Mexico City and exchange ideas on how to recover the most information with the least damage.

Mexico City was chosen as the location of the conference because the excavation of Templo Mayor (discovered in the city center in 1978) is “the most successful large-scale example of in situ conservation,” according to Monreal. “Thanks to the presence of hand-in-hand conservators and archeologists, we have for the first time polychrome sculpture of the Mochica period, for example.”

“In Situ” is the first highly visible evidence of the new institute’s mandate to identify “pressing needs” of the field and facilitate an interdisciplinary approach to problems. By bringing together people who have begun to “think along the lines of conserving as well as excavating and dating,” Monreal hopes the meeting will generate a new approach to field archeology, contribute to historical research and stop the loss of evidence.

“Before the 1930s, archeology was purely a treasure hunt, using the same tunneling techniques as the tomb robbers in Egypt,” he explained. “It was an activity aimed at collecting masterpieces. All the potsherds were thrown away.

“Fifty years ago Sir Mortimer Wheeler introduced a systematic way of digging through layers--dividing areas into five-meter squares, proceeding in a horizontal pattern and defining various strata--to find historical context. After Wheeler a site could be read as a mille-feuille cake.”

Wheeler turned archeology into a science but, according to Monreal, the ensuing 50 years have brought few changes. “Progress has been made in surveying sites, in locating, identifying and dating findings, but I would say that no significant progress has been made in using modern technology to preserve them. We are as unprepared to deal with the discovery of a body in a Bronze Age site as were the 16th-Century people who found the beautiful lady in the Roman sarcophagus.

“Until now, the concern of archeologists has been to preserve once a dig is concluded--to build protective structures above the remains--but it’s too late because the dig itself is a very destructive exercise. A lot of historical evidence is sacrificed,” he said.

A major part of the problem is archeologists’ failure to anticipate unexcavated findings. “A surgeon wouldn’t enter your body without determining what specialist is needed. He knows if he is to put in an artificial heart or a stainless-steel juncture of the femur,” Monreal said. “But until now archeological work has been conducted exclusively by archeologists, not a team including conservators and scientists able to analyze or forecast what is going to be found.”

New technology being developed in Japan and elsewhere now makes it possible to drill into a site, extract air and analyze it to predict the kind of materials that will be found there, Monreal said. “We can be prepared with an emergency team to preserve semi-mummified bodies, leather and bone from the radical change between a protected, stable atmosphere of the tomb and the air outside.”

In accordance with its function of identifying, testing and finding potential applications for new products, the Getty Conservation Institute is currently testing a vacuum-applied coating (developed by the electronics industry) that allows such fragile objects as butterflies and spider webs to be handled without damage. Monreal hopes that the synthetic coating may eventually help preserve papyri and prevent Tutankhamen’s ostrich fan from its slow but inevitable disintegration. “But we can’t recommend it yet,” he said, “because we don’t know its life expectancy.”

Other synthetic materials embraced by conservators 20 or 25 years ago have actually accelerated destruction, Monreal said, so the field has come around to “a more serious and sound approach” while experimentation is done on the aging of such products.

“In Situ” will give the Getty an opportunity to share results of its research. Monreal also hopes the meeting will “lead to some practical work in the field: first, to identify sites that present interesting field conservation problems and--with teams of local archeologists and conservators--undertake pilot studies to find solutions for those sites; second, to publish technical reports presented by the participants.”

Will the conference lead to a new academic discipline?

“I hope it will lead to a new morality. The rest is just technicalities,” Monreal said. “It’s not possible any longer just to dig for archeological purposes. The price is too high. In 50 to 100 years, we will have better methods of interpretation and we will not have the evidence. The process is irreversible, and this is still a very primitive discipline.

“Now archeologists who have developed ethical principles have decided not to dig 100% of a site but to leave untouched areas so that future archeologists can apply methods we can’t even dream of today. It’s wise to keep slices of the cake for future research.”

This “new morality” needs to infiltrate the public consciousness, in Monreal’s view. “Treatment is only a last resort. We must start with a state of mind, the will to preserve our cultural heritage,” he said. “If every country’s defense budget were applied to conservation for the next 25 years, it would still be insufficient to deal with the hundreds of sites and the millions of objects that need attention.

“Specialists need to use more imagination in preventive measures that can be implemented at low cost and without intervention. In my country (Spain), there are hundreds of abandoned monuments in rural areas. A simple educational campaign telling farmers, ‘Don’t put your goats in castles,’ would be a good investment in preventive conservation.”