Seminars Archive

Multitechnique spectroscopic investigation in Cultural Heritage

Abstract
As is well established, archaeometric research represents, by means of a multidisciplinary methodological approach, an absolutely modern and innovative field of interchanges between scientific and humanistic areas. Therefore, a complete and correct investigation needs to join different points of view and several qualified expertise, ranging from chemistry to physics, from geology to biology. The archaeological considerations are important to classify the aesthetic style of an artwork and hypothesize the possible historical and geographical context in which it has to be framed. This approach helps to understand the meaning and the sense of the object in the artist’s mind, in order to point out the problem we are requested to solve. Nevertheless, the scientific investigation allows to unambiguously characterize the materials and provide information about the manufacture techniques, the production site, the historical age of the artifact. Pottery finds are challenging systems; they combine the physical complexity which originates from the coexistence of an amorphous phase and a crystalline phase in the same sample, with the charming richness of the historical information delivered if properly interrogated. Recent and less recent probing methods have enriched the classical approach of the archaeologists. The archaeometric investigation of the finds can give access to a quite diverse number of physical-chemical information, including the composition in terms of elements and minerals, the structural properties on the mesoscopic scale up to the macroscopic inhomogeneity. Here, a complete characterization of decorated pottery shards excavated in different archaeological sites of the Mediterranean area and dated back to a wide temporal range is presented. The used methodological protocol which includes consolidated (XRF, Raman scattering, FT-IR absorbance) and innovative techniques (Neutron scattering, SR-XAS) allowed us to get a complete scenario both as regards the ceramic body that the decorated pigmented surface.