Moderators
Jean-Paul Itié
Pauline Martinetto
Summary
This micro-symposium will seek to highlight the role played by crystallography in the study of ancient and heritage objects: it will aim to show how it can be used to trace the life of these objects, from the exploitation of natural resources for their manufacture, their association with ancient know-how, to their alteration over time and the issues of their conservation that arise today. The discussions and presentations in this session will draw on case studies to illustrate these different aspects: identification of phases to determine the nature and origin of raw materials and document alteration processes, microstructural analysis to describe the transformations undergone during the preparation stages of the material (operational chain), quantitative analysis to reconstruct ancient recipes and processes, etc.
This micro-symposium will also focus on earth sciences, which share with heritage sciences the nature of the samples (complex, inhomogeneous and multi-phase materials) and the main characterisation techniques. Presentations on recent developments in terms of (i) instruments for non-invasive characterisation, (ii) analytical strategies, particularly multi-source and/or multi-technique strategies, and (iii) methods for processing increasingly large amounts of data will enable a productive exchange between these two communities.