Heat shields
Artifact 2-1-V-18, was recovered during Niku I (1989). It was found near the remains of the village carpenter shop. It is a riveted aluminum structure that had a fragment of some kind of insulating material stuck to one side; the piece of insulation unfortunately has been lost.[1]
Senior technicians at a shop that installs business aircraft interiors later identified the artifact as a "dado"--a panel, often insulated, which covers and protects the juncture of the aircraft’s cabin flooring and the fabric-covered interior wall.[2] Military aircraft do not normally feature dados. The only civilian aircraft known to have been wrecked on Canton Island was an FAA Constellation that crashed and burned in 1962. By that time, the settlement on Nikumaroro was already in the process of being abandoned.