Many excavated waterlogged wooden cultural relics suffer from degradation and have very high moisture contents due to the organic components they contained; because of this, they can easily collapse, crack or deform during the drying process. Therefore, study of dehydration technologies for waterlogged wooden cultural relics has become an important topic in the conservation field. In order to study the effectiveness of the air-cooled drying method, we conducted experiments on a collection of waterlogged wooden cultural relics. After identifying the species of wood and determining the moisture contents, basic densities and chemical compositions, we used an air-cooled refrigerator to freeze-dry the selected samples at -18℃, recorded the required time and effects of this drying method and analyzed the heat and mass transfer characteristics at a basic level. We conclude that the air-cooled drying method gives good results and has wide applicable for dehydration of waterlogged wooden cultural relics. In addition, it is also characterized by low costs and easy handling.