Shaanxi museum, French foundation team up for relic protection

The Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum will strive to implement the cooperation agreement recently signed with its French counterpart to promote joint protection and restoration of cultural relics between China and France, officials said.

According to the cooperation agreement, the museum in Northwest China's Shaanxi province will collaborate with the Heritage Sciences Foundation of France in two major areas: scientific research on the protection of wooden remains and earthen archaeological sites.

Officials at the museum said the two sides have chosen the common issue of protecting wooden remains as the starting point for their cooperation. Both the museum and the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris have extensively used wooden materials and have fire-damaged wooden remains.

The research on protecting wooden remains will involve joint efforts to preserve and restore the fire-damaged wood from the two world cultural heritage sites. It will also include wood species identification, preservation status assessment, degradation mechanisms, and protection techniques and methods, the officials said.

The two sides will conduct research on the protection of earthen archaeological sites, including durability, stability, production techniques, disease identification and evaluation, damage mechanisms, and soil conservation techniques.

The museum said that due to the scarcity and nonrenewable nature of cultural relics, the cooperation will begin with basic research conducted in the form of laboratory analysis and simulated experiments.