TY - JOUR
T1 - On the feasibility of establishing the provenance of Australian Aboriginal artefacts using synchrotron radiation xrd and protoon-induced X-ray emission
AU - Creagh, Dudley
AU - Kubik, M.E
AU - Sterns, Meta
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - Museums and galleries in Australia have extensive collections of Aboriginal artefacts in their custody. In particular, the National Museum of Australia and the National Gallery of Australia are custodians of works of very considerable significance, in both cultural and financial terms. Art fraud can occur, documentation relating to artefacts can be mislaid, or the artefacts can be incorrectly filed. Because of this, it has become essential to establish protocols for the objective determination of the provenance of artefacts through scientific tests. For the work reported here we are concerned with the comparison of very small quantities of materials, paint scrapings from artefacts. Scrapings from artefacts of unknown provenance are compared with those from artefacts of known provenance, and the database established using an extended set of analytical techniques by Kubik. We describe here our use of synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction (SR-XRD) to determine the mineral phase compositions of very small amounts of pigment material (<50 μg), and the use of PIXE to give their atomic compositions to a threshold level of 1 ppm for similar masses of material
AB - Museums and galleries in Australia have extensive collections of Aboriginal artefacts in their custody. In particular, the National Museum of Australia and the National Gallery of Australia are custodians of works of very considerable significance, in both cultural and financial terms. Art fraud can occur, documentation relating to artefacts can be mislaid, or the artefacts can be incorrectly filed. Because of this, it has become essential to establish protocols for the objective determination of the provenance of artefacts through scientific tests. For the work reported here we are concerned with the comparison of very small quantities of materials, paint scrapings from artefacts. Scrapings from artefacts of unknown provenance are compared with those from artefacts of known provenance, and the database established using an extended set of analytical techniques by Kubik. We describe here our use of synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction (SR-XRD) to determine the mineral phase compositions of very small amounts of pigment material (<50 μg), and the use of PIXE to give their atomic compositions to a threshold level of 1 ppm for similar masses of material
U2 - 10.1016/j.nima.2007.05.134
DO - 10.1016/j.nima.2007.05.134
M3 - Article
SN - 0168-9002
VL - 580
SP - 721
EP - 725
JO - Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors, and Associated Equipment
JF - Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors, and Associated Equipment
IS - 1
ER -