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).
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Giorgia Albani, for her assistance in TOF-ND measurements and Alberto Paleari for useful discussions on Raman measurements.
ISIS and PSI are gratefully acknowledged for the access granted to INES and ICON beamlines, respectively. In particular, this work was supported within the CNR-STFC Agreement 2014–2020, concerning collaboration in scientific research at the spallation neutron source ISIS (UK).
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Di Martino, D., Perelli Cippo, E., Uda, I. et al. Disclosing mineralogical phases in medioeval iron nails by non-destructive neutron techniques. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 9, 515–522 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-016-0384-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-016-0384-2