Recent trends in IBA for cultural heritage studies

Abstract

Ion beam analysis (IBA) techniques play an important role in the field of cultural heritage. IBA was one of the first physical methods applied to archaeology in the 70s. 40years later, more than 25 accelerator laboratories were or are involved in cultural heritage applications. The advantages of the IBA techniques match very well the requirements for the analysis of archaeological or museum objects: non destructiveness, major, minor and trace element analysis, information in depth, elemental mapping… Thanks to this collected information, IBA techniques can answer archaeological and conservation questions: provenance determination, ancient technologies (fabrication, transformation, recipes…) and conservation issues.In spite of the competition with portable devices and large facilities (such as synchrotron or neutron reactors), the IBA methods keep their interest due to the possibility of associating two or three of them according to the archaeological or art issue. In this article, some examples chosen for their original approach are presented: PIXE for X-radiography, provenance of prehistoric pigments and painting characterisation. They illustrate the useful versatility of IBA for cultural heritage studies. Perspectives for further improvements are also proposed.