The nature of heritage metals (archaeological and historical), their history, and the environments to which they have been exposed are all parameters that influence their long-term conservation. The professionals who study them (archaeologists, collection managers, museum curators, conservators, conservation-scientists, corrosion experts, and archaeometallurgists) perceive them differently depending on their competences and level of expertise. Some limit themselves to the visual (macroscopic) description of the objects studied and their surface appearance, while others examine the materials they are made of at the microscopic level in order to specify their fabrication techniques, study the corrosion mechanisms developed, and predict their future evolution.
Everyone has their own approach methodology, vocabulary, and examination methods to describe what they see. The information obtained is not always shared between the communities concerned and leads, in fact, to an often partial perception of the objects, based on the conservation conditions of the materials.
The online and freely accessible MiCorr application (www.micorr.org), initiated in 2016 and optimized since then in the framework of several projects including MetalPAT of the Interreg France–Switzerland program (2014–20), aims to promote the sharing of information between communities involved in the conservation of heritage metals and more specifically the diagnosis of their preservation state. This sharing is based on object sheets collecting all the information available on these objects and transmitted by those responsible for them—archaeologists, collection managers, or museum curators (context of discovery and use, dating, inventory number, metal family, etc.), the conservators who have documented them (non- or microinvasive observation of the corrosion structures developed in order, for example, to specify the limit of the original surface of the object), the conservation scientists/corrosion experts who have assisted the latter in the analysis of these structures, on the basis of samples studied in cross-section, and the archaeometallurgists who study the metal microstructure to determine its elaboration methods and provenance. Thus, the Mi- Corr database is enriched by the contributions from all four parties, which improves the relevance of the application.
MiCorr is not just a database. It is also a diagnostic support platform, consisting of three search engines enabling the user to consult the available entries and compare the data observed on an object under study with those contained in the database.
The consultation is possible through keywords (“By keywords” engine). The user can also identify the family of the metal observed from its physical characteristics and surface appearance (“By visual inspection” engine). They also can construct representative stratigraphies of the corrosion forms they have observed on their objects using the “By stratigraphy representation” engine and compare them with those of the database entries. Only the last two engines are detailed in the next sections.
