Hello Pam,
I had to freeze my entire reference collection, freshly "inherited" from the vet school with resident pests, last year. I consulted the Canadian Conservation Institute and the Museum of Nature and this is what they recommended:
Yes we freeze ... -31 C for 1 week or -21 C for 3 weeks depending on which freezer we have used. These treatments are based on work done by Tom Strang at CCI. We haven't used pesticide for about 10 years or so.
The temperatures they are freezing too are much lower, of course - but perhaps that is related to the timeframe. Would they consider contacting the CCI and/or freezing to -31C for a week since this is an established practise for getting rid of Necrobia and Dermestes?
Best of luck & happy New Year
Ariane
Dr. Ariane Burke, Professeur Titulaire,
Dept. d'anthropologie,
Université de Montréal,
C.P. 6128, Succursale Centre-Ville
Montreal, QC
Canada, H3C 3J7
Tel. 514-343-6574
http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/burkea/
________________________________
From: Analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites on behalf of Pam Crabtree
Sent: Mon 2011-12-26 2:27 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ZOOARCH] a question about freezing bones
Dear Zooarchers,
Happy Holidays and best wishes for peace and joy in the New Year. I have a question for you. Since November I have been expecting a small collection of faunal material that was excavated by one of my NYU colleagues from the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. After the bones had been cleaned and bagged in the field, some spiders apparently slipped into the boxes. The boxes with the fauna were seized by the USDA and sent to UC Riverside for decontamination. One possible means of decontamination is to freeze the bones down to minus 80 degrees C. Does anyone have any experience with this method? How badly will it damage the bones?
Many thanks for any help you can give me.
Happy New year, Pam Crabtree
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