Disclosing mineralogical phases in medioeval iron nails by non-destructive neutron techniques

Abstract

There is not only one methodology for the study of mineralogical phases in archaeological samples. In this paper, we discuss a strategy applied to ancient iron nail samples completely based on non-destructive analyses. The archaeological samples come from the archaeological site of Valle delle Forme (province of Brescia–Italy) and date back to the 1300–1400 ad. Neutron-based techniques, like time-of-flight neutron diffraction and neutron tomography, have been used to determine the mineralogical composition and the structure of nails. An independent check for the assessment of the presence of different mineralogical phases was given by Raman spectroscopy. The combination of different non-destructive techniques has provided very useful information on their chemical composition, nature of the patina and corrosion features of the nails (also in the bulk of the samples).