La question de l'émergence et du développement des métallurgies du cuivre et du bronze constitue un enjeu majeur pour aborder les dynamiques culturelles et économiques de la fin du Néolithique et du début de l'âge du Bronze dans l'Ouest de l'Europe...

Cultural heritage often brings to mind elements like sculptures, paintings, monuments, and buildings as well as archeological objects. Today, underwater heritage and its surrounding environment are also considered part of cultural heritage because communities identify themselves with the natural landscape...

Lapidary craftsmanship was an important part of the material culture of Amerindians in the Antilles during the Early Ceramic period (400 BCE to 400 CE). Exhaustive analysis of archaeological beads and pendants from the French islands of the Lesser Antilles has revealed a green lapidary material used for the production of nine artifacts from five archaeological sites: sudoite. This di-trioctahedral member of the chlorite group has the relatively simple chemical formula of Mg2Al3Si3AlO10(OH)8...

The Aurignacian (ca. 43–35 ka) of southwestern Germany is well known for yielding some of the oldest artifacts related to symbolic behaviors, including examples of figurative art, musical instruments, and personal ornaments. Another aspect of these behaviors is the presence of numerous pieces of iron oxide (ocher); however, these are comparatively understudied, likely owing to the lack of painted artifacts from this region and time period. Several Aurignacian-aged carved ivory personal ornaments from the sites of Hohle Fels and Vogelherd contain traces of what appear to be red ocher residues.

Characterisation of vegetal colourants in manuscripts is still a challenging task. Their identification using non-invasive techniques - since sampling is rarely possible - is valid only if there is evidence that the recorded signals are generated by compounds specific to the plant species. Otherwise, more extensive chemical characterisations are required to relate the non-invasive technique signals to the chemical composition of the dye extract and thus avoid misidentification...

Seven artworks representing the diversity of paints used around the 1960s and created by German and Italian painters (J. Albers, A. Bonalumi, L. Boille, T. Scialoja and M. Schifano) were studied on-site at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (Rome) with mobile instruments. We present a methodology based on Specular Reflectance Infrared Spectroscopy (SR-FTIR) adapted to unvarnished paintings. Complementary measurements have been performed by Raman spectroscopy...