Non invasive and non destructive techniques applied to culrural heritage

Abstract

This contribution reviews the applicability of non invasive and non destructive techniques in the field of cultural heritage, since methods for characterization of materials till procedures for diagnosis of the conservation state of heritage properties, including the effects of chemical stressors of urban-industrial and/or agricultural environments. The non invasive and non destructive techniques are based on spectroscopic methods of analysis together with some treatment tools to: (a) identify chemical elements or compounds, inorganic and organic, in the surfaces under analysis using databases, (b) chemometric treatments on the spectroscopic information, (c) chemical modelling procedures to understand and predict the chemical reactions between original compounds and environmental stressors. The overall spectroscopic information together with the treatment tools have been used to develop new methodologies to define: (a) the impacts of environmental (natural and/or anthropic) stressors, (b) the decaying pathways of chemical reactions between original and surrounding compounds and (c) the design of dedicated protocols for remediation (cleaning, consolidation, rehabilitation). Nowadays, the use of portable instrumentation with non invasive and non destructive techniques allows obtaining in-situ the required information to perform such studies. After describing the current state, the future developments will be commented that will arrive in few years, and will become current non invasive and non destructive techniques.