. >> my name is don warmky, and i do conservation in the lab. basically we're out there from around the beginning of april to the end of november. we usually are inside from, like, december through march. once the field season is done, we have all the artifacts from the course of the year have to be processed. you have reports to write up. you have things to catalog. we can't always be digging. and then you also have to research the items that you've found for any reports you want to have as far as new discoveries. so, i spend, like, 3 1/2 days out in field and then about a day and a half in the lab. >> what are some of the most exciting days or finds that you've had? >> i've been here a little over seven years, so there's been a number of things i've found. but just like last week i was digging -- you're familiar with the corps de guard, it's one of the post holes there? the post hole when i was digging it out actually located a -- what you would call a petri dish inside the post hole. it was a glass dish about this large and about an inch, inc

. >> my name is don warmky, i'm one of the archaeologists on staff here but i do do some conservation in the lab. what i'm doing this afternoon is conservation of a lead object that we found at the site. lead also has to be conserved, and it's a fairly simple process. a lead object will come into the lab and depending upon how badly it's corroded, we'll usually use a microscope with the procedure. basically we'll take a scalpel and remove the surface corrosion with a scalpel using the microscope, and then after that's done, we take the object and we put it into an acid bath which removes the remaining surface corrosion from the object. we put it through a water rinse to remove all the remaining acid, and then we put it in another solution that essentially finishes the process of the corrosion removal process. then the iron -- or the lead object will go into a vacuum chamber where any water or remaining water is essentially removed from it. it's totally dried. then what we'll do is we'll take the object and put two protective clear coatings over it. so, after that's done it's basically