Cultural heritage science at CNA (seville, Spain): Applications of XRF and IBA techniques to art and archaeological objects.

Abstract The use of nuclear analytical techniques has experienced an extraordinary growth in recent decades in the field of cultural heritage. Nowadays, their use in the study of objects of interest in heritage has become essential. An important effort has been made since the 90s by the archaeometry research group of the Centro Nacional de Aceleradores , CNA (Sevilla, Spain) to develop different non-destructive analytical techniques for the study of art and archeological objects. These efforts were initially focused on the use of Ion Beam techniques (IBA) and lately in the development of portable X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) equipment, including microbeam versions with the implementation of polycapillary lenses (μXRF and confocal XRF). The different methods and instrumentation developed in the past years at CNA are presented in this work and several applications illustrate the capabilities for the analysis of different types of objects: jewelry, coins, paintings, ceramics, etc. Advantages and limitations of the different techniques are shown together with examples of how the combination of several of those methods can overcome some of the limitations are presented.