Description
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We have studied amphorae of the Haltern 70 type found in excavations of a Roman settlement at Castro do Vieito in the northwest of Portugal, as well as from the known kiln sites in Baetica and Lusitania, situated in nowadays Spain valleys of the Guadalquivir and Rio Tinto, and the coast near Cadiz and Algeciras, as well as Algarve Portugal coast.
Haltern 70 amphorae were produced mainly in...
This work concerns the analytical phase of a project exploiting Synchrotron Radiation X-ray fluorescence (SR-XRF) spectrometry for the study of the composition of gold coins (Solidi) of the late Roman period. It is a project conducted at the Elettra Synchrotron in Trieste, on the study of the Treasure of Como: an exceptional discovery of 1000 late-imperial Roman coins (ca. 402-472 AD), found...
In Ancient Egypt the lapis lazuli was the most precious gemstone as it was considered a sacred stone connected to the gods. Its special dark-blue colour symbolized the night sky and the starry heavens. Due to its symbolism and its scarcity, lapis lazuli had been used from the Predynastic period onward as the material of amulets, beads and inlays in jewellery. Despite its early presence and...
The present work focuses on the archaeometric investigation of late-imperial Roman gold coins (solidi), issued by different imperial mints from pars Orientis and Occidentis and dated to about 402-472 CE. The examined coins are part of 1000 solidi of the “Treasure of Como”, a recent astounding discovery of precious and unique archaeological findings in Northern Italy [1].
The elemental...
The SNSF Sinergia project – CORINT encourages partnerships between scientists from different Swiss universities and institutes, working together for elucidating the corrosion phenomena of iron structures in various porous media. Examples of such media are reinforced concrete in buildings, iron cans in bentonite clay for nuclear waste disposal and archaeological artifacts in the ground. The...
Scientific investigations and archaeometric studies have played a major role in the field of archaeology, especially with regard to materials that have been transformed through human activity, like metals. Neutron imaging techniques are used to shed light on the inner structure of composite materials, but also can be used for elemental investigations. In addition, the combined use of X-rays...
In the Upper Palaeolithic, mammoth ivory was an important raw material for the production of tools and jewellery as well as figurative objects, which are among the oldest preserved works of art of mankind. In the caves of the Ach and Lone valleys in the Swabian Alb, which have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2017, numerous objects made of mammoth ivory have been discovered in...
The literary sword, representing a typical ideal pursuit for the Chinese study culture, is a vital writing tool for bamboo and wooden slip modifications in ancient China. Casting in bronze in the early stage followed by iron materials, its utilization can be traced back to Shang Dynasty and was extremely popular with many officials and literati in the Han Dynasty. This western Han iron...
The field of Cultural Heritage (CH) comprises many rare, valuable, and fragile samples. For this very reason, non-invasive and non-destructive techniques are the most preferred for their analysis. Among these techniques, XRF allows a fast elemental characterization of the artifacts, detecting a high range of elements. XRF also allows quantitative analysis, which is more feasible and reliable...
Abstract:
Cuneiform represents the earliest form of writing developed by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia in the second half of the fourth millennium BCE. It was used for more than three millennia all around the Middle East. The cuneiform signs were typically written by imprinting wedge-shaped impressions into wet clay as a medium of writing. From the middle of the third millennium BCE, people...
Diffraction mapping of metallic objects by high energy X-ray beams is a well-established method in order to spatially resolve their macroscopic and/or microscopic strain.
We present a proof of principle of radiographic strain mapping to retrieve markings in metallic objects. The strain patterns can be analyzed by Whole Powder Pattern Fitting, Rietveld refinement or even decorrelated by...
X-ray imaging, diffraction and spectroscopy can reveal compositional, structural and chemical information of heterogeneous objects. In most cases, minimal sample preparation is necessary and non-destructive experiments can be realized, if possible radiation damage is monitored. This leads to the fact, that such techniques are widely used in the field of art and archaeometry.
While routine...
This contribution will present the potential of X-ray Scattering techniques to characterize the nanostructure of selected hand-made papers. Hereby, the technique of Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) has been used for fibre orientation and degree of alignment characterization. Meaning an area of roughly 20 mm × 20 mm has been raster scanned with 0.2 mm resolution and the fibre orientation has...
Ancient Chinese purple-gold glaze (zijinyou) is popular for its beautiful figuration, unique allure and fine craftsmanship. To understand the crystalline nature in the purple-gold glaze, the morphology and structure of crystals precipitated in the glaze layer of purple-gold glaze porcelain fired during the Qing Dynasty were characterized by a variety of methods combining X-ray and...
It is known that conventional materials processing processes at room or high temperatures, such as casting, extrusion, rolling, forging, and etc., can inevitably re-orientate crystalline grains and produce preferred orientation, which is called texture – the distribution function of crystallographic grains with respect to the sample coordinate system. Hence, texture analysis of archaeological...
This presentation demonstrates the applicability of Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis (PGAA) technique for determining the chemical composition of ancient glass finds. A sample set made of 50 Roman and Late Antique glass fragments discovered in several archaeological sites from Romania, most of them on the western shore of Black Sea, was measured with PGAA at the Budapest Neutron Centre...
The excellent craftsmanship of Oriental and Central Asian textile dyers has been renowned since ancient times. It has been suggested by experimental archaeologists that superior color brilliance and persistence are based on the use of an elaborate fermentation procedure prior to dyeing. Fermentation of sheep wool with G. candidum yeast leads to decomposition of the fatty acid interlayers...
Iron gall inks have been widely employed in West Europe since the Middle Ages thanks to the simplicity of the recipes and the difficulties to be removed, it was so widespread that many different recipes can be found. Instead, very little is known about Eastern iron gall ink recipes and especially about Greek Byzantine recipes. The ingredients composing these inks are plant extracts containing...
