Material analysis methods applied to the study of ancient monuments, works of art and artefacts

Cultural heritage resources are often subject to the singular or combined action of different weathering phenomena. To study these deleterious processes conservation scientists can rely on a whole variety of analysis techniques, which provide both bulk and localised (micrometer scale) chemical information. In this presentation an overview is given of the analytical approaches that are at present most commonly applied to solve cultural heritage related problems. The use of some of these techniques is illustrated with a case study on the weathering of two historically important Belgian building stone types. Future cultural heritage related research at the IMR (Tohoku University) is briefly discussed.