Event: Friday Seminar: "Using Non-Invasive Chemical Analysis with Mobile Instruments to Understand Artists' Motivation in Antiquity"


Date & Time

October 7, 2016 - 4:00pm to 6:00pm
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Contact Information

Matthew Swanson
mswanson@ioa.ucla.edu

Location

Fowler A222

Event Type

Friday Seminar

Event Details

Speaker: Dr. Philippe Walter, Sorbonne Universités, Université Pierre et Marie Curie

The precious character of the Cultural Heritage artifacts and their uniqueness imply particular cautions and require instruments, which may give the maximum of information directly on the objects, in-situ in the museums or in the archaeological sites. The implementation of new analytical tools, including mobile instruments, allows a deep insight on the archaeological and artistic materials. 

We will show the performances of different new mobile instruments (X-ray fluorescence and X-ray diffraction) we built recently in the laboratory to allow in situ characterization of materials, for instance on prehistoric rock art paintings in France or marble sculptures from Greece (Delphi) and Tunisia (Bardo National Museum), alteration products and modes of preparation of different pigments. XRF imaging – in which the surface of an object is scanned with a focussed X-ray beam to obtain elemental distribution images – and hyperspectral imaging can reveal significant new information on the antique polychromy.