
Indiana Jones may say that artifacts belong in museums, but he probably never encountered a whiskey bottle filled with pee or arsenic-laced ant poison.
Now, two scientists are revealing the results of their years spent cataloging "odious materials" from archaeology collections around the U.S. In a study published Oct. 19 in Advances in Archaeological Practice, University of Idaho archaeologist Mark S. Warner and his colleague, chemist Ray von Wandruszka, summarized the 15 years they have spent identifying and testing noxious substances from archaeological artifacts.