Mosaic Conservation Technician Training

Mosaic pavements from the Roman and Byzantine world can be found throughout the Mediterranean region. Unfortunately, a vast number of these mosaics are at risk, creating an urgent need for skilled practitioners, both technicians and conservators, to preserve this heritage. The practical hands-on training program aims to develop teams of skilled technician-level practitioners in the southern and eastern Mediterranean region to address basic stabilization and maintenance needs of in situ mosaics and those lifted from their archaeological setting.

• A 2012-2013 North African regional course was held at the site of El Jem in Tunisia in collaboration with the Institut National du Patrimoine on repair treatment of in situ mosaics. It also included training in the maintenance of mosaics detached and relaid on reinforced concrete, as well as the stabilization of wall plasters and the reburial of mosaics. The course was organized as a series of four modules that took place over a two-year period, between which trainees carried out supervised practical work in their home countries. The course provided trainees with handbooks in Arabic and in either English or French, as well as tool kits for mosaic documentation and conservation treatments.
• A second course was carried out in Volubilis, Morocco for newly hired Moroccan employees in 2017-18. After the first two modules on the documentation and stabilization of in situ mosaics, third module focused on the conservation of detached and re-laid mosaics and on wall plaster and wall stabilization, as well as on zellij. A fourth and final module addressed the conservation of mosaics in storage left without any re-backing, and on relaying in situ on lime mortar foundations a mosaic previously relaid on a concrete panel. This module provided specialized training for trainees from previous courses in North Africa.
• In 2019 the Getty Conservation Institute began to carry out training for technician-level practitioners in the Middle East, and in addition Libya, first, at the site of Byblos on in situ mosaics, and then in 2022 in Sidon on mosaics in storage, both in partnership with ICCROM. These courses were only one module in length and were meant to provide specialized training for those who had other MOSAIKON training as well as to train two local groups for the DGA of Lebanon. The training in Sidon provided a sustainable methodology for documenting and conserving lifted mosaics using lime mortars to stabilize and re-back them, along with preventive measures for long-term storage.
• Didactic materials, including a handbook and illustrated glossary, and twenty-four richly illustrated lessons on the conservation of mosaics—those in situ, those detached and relaid on site, and those kept in storage—were produced in English, French, and Arabic, to aid these training courses and those carried out by other institutions in the region

Mosaic pavements constitute a shared inheritance from the Roman and Byzantine world throughout the Mediterranean region. Due to the vast number of mosaics presently at risk, there is an urgency to train skilled practitioners at both the technician and conservator levels to preserve this heritage.

Institut National du Patrimoine of Tunisia; Direction du Patrimoine Culturel of Morocco; Direction Generale des Antiquites of Lebanon; ICCROM (courses in Byblos and Sidon)