**1. Introduction**

The application of advanced techniques to the study of ancient materials has been increasingly demonstrating to be fundamental to a deeper knowledge of artistic and historic artefacts, contributing to their conservation and restoration. The number of scientific methodologies applied to the Cultural Heritage is huge and difficult to be listed. However, it can be noted that an important role is played by Materials Science: scientific techniques developed in Materials Science allow to contribute a multidisciplinary approach in Archaeology, History of Art, and Conservation Science. By studying the materials that constitute the artefact, deeper information can be reached, relatively to the work of art, such as the elements and compounds by which it was made and their level of degradation over time. The final goal is the possibility of determining the chronology of the making of the various part of the work of art, its provenance, the techniques of realization, the attribution to an author, and the way of intervention for restoration. Materials Science offers many different scientific methodologies in order to investigate ancient materials and artefacts. The current Special Issue collects papers dealing with the applications of Materials Science to the different types of human artefacts such as ceramics, glass, paintings, metal objects. This Special Issue includes six papers that were accepted through a stringent reviewing process and they are summarized in the following section. The contributions topics range from instrumentation and technical developments to case studies, and to methodological innovations. The authors have exploited many characteristic analytical methods of Materials Science: imaging techniques (IRR, RX, tomography); traditional as well as innovative dating techniques like various luminescence methods; spectroscopic techniques (PIXE, Raman, FTIR, UV-vis reflectance spectroscopy), and their synergic association.
