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Once soft organic materials — leather, textiles, arrow fletchings — surface, researchers have a year at most to rescue them for conservation before the items degrade and are lost forever.

Archer’s parents had been Catholic and there are markings on one side of the box possibly depicting arrow fletchings—an apt choice for a man named Archer.

Whether it be cycling in the velodrome, archery at Lord's or gymnastics at the North Greenwich Arena, by the time action gets going all the spectators will know their keirins from their omniums, their bow sights from their fletchings and their double backward somersaults from their front hand springs.

He had been the hope of Sir Button Budd, Who bred him there at the Fletchings stud, But the Fletchings jockey had flogged him cold In a narrow thing as a two-year-old.