USING TECHNOLOGY AGAINST THEFT AND FORGERY OF CULTURAL HERITAGE GOODS

Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate problems of museums and collectors that buy cultural heritage objects from individuals without asking a certificate of authenticity. Keeping collection of museums authentic is going to be more difficult because of developed replication technologies used by forgers who want to sell fake objects to museums and collectors. Moreover because of ill intended museum personnel who want to replace authentic objects with fake. In order to overcome such problems, it is necessary to get chemical composition of cultural heritage objects. Cultural heritage objects are sensitive and unique so the technique that is going to be used in analysis of such objects must be non-invasive. Portable Energy Dispersive X-Ray Florescence (P-EDXRF) lets scientists analyze cultural heritage in a non-destructive way. Determination of chemical composition of objects in quite short times such as 30 seconds per analysis) and seeing qualitative and quantitative results simultaneously is possible. Results of P-EDXRF can be used in determination of authenticity, provenance studies, getting information about production technology of analyzed objects and for restoration purposes. Moreover, P-EDXRF lets scientist make multiple analyzes, especially from big objects as it is non-invasive, fast and cheap. Besides, due to spectrometers being as light as 2 kg, it is portable and enables in situ analyses in museums or wherever objects are being kept. Characterization of cultural objects let museums keep chemical composition of objects in the inventory books. Chemical composition of object would act as the fingerprint of the objects. Therefore P-EDXRF results can be used to determine if an authentic object in the collection was changed with a fake one or not. These can be done by comparing new chemical composition of suspected existing cultural heritage objects and chemical composition that record in inventory book. Moreover in case of a museum robbery, recorded analysis results of stolen objects can be used to prove authenticity of recovered items. Majority of the time, after museum robberies fakes of stolen objects are made by forgers and are tried to be sold to collectors or museums. P-EDXRF also used for restoration with the aim of detecting the chemical composition of the artifact. In authenticity studies SEM-EDX also is widely used to determine chemical composition and matrix morphology of the objects. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n22p32