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Scientific Methods and Cultural Heritage: An introduction to the application of materials science to archaeometry and conservation science

Online ISBN:
9780191723308
Print ISBN:
9780199548262
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Scientific Methods and Cultural Heritage: An introduction to the application of materials science to archaeometry and conservation science

Gilberto Artioli
Gilberto Artioli
Director of the CIRCe Center for the Study of Cement Materials, and Professor of Mineralogy and Crystallography at the University of Padova, Italy
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Published online:
1 September 2010
Published in print:
8 July 2010
Online ISBN:
9780191723308
Print ISBN:
9780199548262
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Scientific techniques and methods developed in materials science offer invaluable information to archaeology, art history, and conservation. A rapidly growing number of innovative analytical techniques, as well as many established experimental ones, are constantly being improved and optimized for the analysis of cultural heritage materials. The book is intended as a comprehensive entry-level introduction to the methods and rationales of scientific investigations of the cultural heritage materials, with emphasis placed on analytical strategies and modes of operation, materials properties, and resulting information rather than on instrumental technicalities. The first part of the book is devoted to the understanding of the basic principles of available techniques and the information they provide. The second part describes the properties and the processes related to the most common classes of materials, including several topics such as textile, paper, and amber analysis, conservation of photographic materials, and non-invasive metal analysis that are hardly covered in other non-specialist textbooks. Students and researchers from the humanities approaching scientific enquiry should find it a useful manual of available techniques and protocols, whereas scientists applying familiar techniques and methods to unfamiliar problems related to cultural heritage materials might discover interesting and unusual fields of investigation. The extensive and up-to-date reference list aims to be a useful starting point for further reading on all the presented topics.

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