Investigation Into How Archaeological Gar Scales are Affected by Water and Sea Level Rise

Sea level rise is causing archeological sites in Florida to get wet. It’s unknown how the artifacts will be affected by getting wet. This study investigates how one type of artifact (gar scales) is affected physically and chemically by wetting. This study tested the hypothesis that pristine gar scales retain less water compared to degraded scales. The independent variable was scale condition (pristine vs. degraded). The dependent variable was water weight retention. 32 pristine and 32 degraded gar scales were collected from an archaeological site and weighed prior to soaking in water for 4 days. After soaking all the gar scales were weighed again. A paired t-test analyzed pre- and post-soaking weights across all scales. Another t-test analyzed the percent increase of each pristine and degraded scales to determine if degraded scales retained more water than pristine scales. There was no significant increase in weight for any scales when wet compared to dry, but the degraded scales had a significantly larger percent increase compared to the pristine scales. This indicates that the degraded scales are more at risk to chemical degradation compared to pristine scales. The next step in this research is to soak all the scales in acidic solution for two weeks to determine if the degraded scales dissolve faster than pristine scales.