Recent Progress in Cultural Heritage Diagnostics

A special issue of Heritage (ISSN 2571-9408).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 23 May 2025 | Viewed by 2524

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Industrial Desing and Production Engineering, University of West Attica, GR-12241 Athens, Greece
Interests: archaeometry; absolute dating; material characterization
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Guest Editor
Laboratory of Advanced Materials and Devices, School of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GR-54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Interests: archaeometry; materials characterization; dating; ageing; FTIR spectroscopy; thermal analysis; X-ray methods (XPS and XRD)
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Guest Editor
Department of Chemistry, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Interests: Raman spectroscopy; analysis of works of art; degradation
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Guest Editor
RCDOT Laboratory, Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, NCSR “Demokritos”, Agia Paraskevi Attikis, Greece
Interests: direct dating techniques; radiocarbon; stimulated luminescence; statistical analysis and interpretation; firing temperature assessment; new computational techniques for age calculation; age limit extension

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As novel technological advances emerge in the field of cultural heritage analysis, together with evolving challenges that demand inovative approaches, the diagnosis of cultural heritage materials has evolved into an interdisciplinary field of breakthrough research. Interdisciplinarity plays an important role in studying, understanding, and protecting cultural heritage objects. Τhe complex questions related to human history and several aspects of cultural heritage require a combination of deep scientific understanding and analytical methodologies in order to be answered.

This Special Issue aims to bring together researchers from different research fields such as materials science, chemistry, physics, art history, archaeometry, archaeology, and computer science, together with museum experts and conservators, in order to unravel the materiality of the past. The objective is to give prominence to interdisciplinary approaches by sharing research and expertise on novel diagnostic methods and technologies that can aid in either characterizing or dating a wide range of materials—metals, ceramics, glass, textiles, pigments, and organic materials—commonly found in cultural heritage artifacts.

Thus, this Special Issue wishes to start a dialogue on the interdisciplinarity applied to cultural heritage studies (including studies on original materials, their degradation products, and the preservation state of the artefact), including cutting-edge applications to already existing techniques, innovative techniques along with their methodological standardization, data interpretability, Artificial Intelligence, and big data analysis.

Specific areas of interest for this Special Issue include but are not limited to:

  • Non-invasive analytical methods for material identification;
  • Novel laboratory methodologies;
  • New or enhanced analytical protocols of analysis;
  • Machine learning algorithms for data analysis and pattern recognition;
  • Climate-sensitive degradation processes and their diagnostics;
  • Provenance studies employing isotopic or elemental analyses;
  • Artificial Intelligence;
  • Big data analysis.

Dr. Nikolaos Laskaris
Dr. Lamprini Malletzidou
Dr. Anastasia Rousaki
Dr. Georgios S. Polymeris
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Heritage is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • non-invasive analytical methods
  • machine learning
  • big data analysis
  • Artifical Inteligence
  • diagnosis of cultural heritage materials
  • degradation
  • preservation state of the artifact

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 4599 KiB  
Article
Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Historic Centers with Two Fast Methods Based on CARTIS Survey Methodology and Fragility Curves
by Giuliana Cardani and Elsa Garavaglia
Heritage 2024, 7(10), 5356-5372; https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage7100252 - 28 Sep 2024
Viewed by 539
Abstract
After an earthquake, legislation tends to permit the rapid demolition of damaged buildings, including the built heritage, for safety reasons, as was the case for many small historic centers after the 2016 earthquake in central Italy. A balance should, of course, be struck [...] Read more.
After an earthquake, legislation tends to permit the rapid demolition of damaged buildings, including the built heritage, for safety reasons, as was the case for many small historic centers after the 2016 earthquake in central Italy. A balance should, of course, be struck between safety and preservation. There must be a willingness to engage in continuous interaction with the various bodies involved in post-earthquake management, particularly in the preventive phase of the complex activities regarding the issues of the seismic vulnerability of historic built. The widespread historical built heritage in Italy requires fast and reliable assessment procedures that allow a large-scale evaluation of the vulnerability of historical buildings before a seismic event. To this end, a proposal is presented here for the inverse use of the protocol for the seismic vulnerability survey of historic centers by means of a system called CARTIS form, coordinated since 2015 by the Italian consortium of Seismic and Structural Engineering Laboratories (ReLUIS). This rapid assessment is compared with an equally fast method for constructing fragility curves, based only on the information available in the ReLUIS–CARTIS database, defining the relationship between the probability of reaching a level of loss of structural safety or a vulnerability index as a function of the seismic acceleration PGA and the ground orography. The methodology outlined could be considered to be progress in cultural heritage diagnostics on a large scale, considering cultural heritage to be the diffuse historical residential masonry buildings that form the historic centers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Progress in Cultural Heritage Diagnostics)
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28 pages, 10508 KiB  
Article
Interdisciplinary Analysis and the Role of Experiments in Raw Materials and Technology Identification for Prehistoric Pottery in the Bistrița River Basin (Romania)
by Ana Drob, Neculai Bolohan, Viorica Vasilache, Bogdan-Gabriel Rățoi and Mihai Brebu
Heritage 2024, 7(9), 5120-5147; https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage7090242 - 13 Sep 2024
Viewed by 811
Abstract
The paper presents an interdisciplinary study based on an experimental model for investigating clay sources to identify prehistoric human behavior regarding resources. The study focuses on the Middle Bronze Age (1955/1773–1739/1614 cal. BC) settlement of Siliştea-Pe Cetățuie in eastern Romania, where archaeological [...] Read more.
The paper presents an interdisciplinary study based on an experimental model for investigating clay sources to identify prehistoric human behavior regarding resources. The study focuses on the Middle Bronze Age (1955/1773–1739/1614 cal. BC) settlement of Siliştea-Pe Cetățuie in eastern Romania, where archaeological materials from the Costișa and Monteoru cultures were discovered. Standard criteria for macroscopic analysis and analytical techniques, such as optical microscopy (OM), Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), Micro-Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (µ-FTIR), and thermal analysis (DTA and TG), were used to investigate the ceramic material from multiple points of view. The results showed that there were no significant differences between the ceramics of the two communities. Putting together the data obtained from macroscopic and physico-chemical analyses helped in partially reconstructing ancient human behaviors related to the production and use of ceramic vessels. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Progress in Cultural Heritage Diagnostics)
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13 pages, 2651 KiB  
Article
An Innovative Method Based on In Situ Deformometric Monitoring to Support Decisions for the Structural Restoration of a Historic Panel Painting
by Paola Mazzanti, Bertrand Marcon, Linda Cocchi, Giacomo Goli, Lorenzo Riparbelli and Luca Uzielli
Heritage 2024, 7(8), 4193-4205; https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage7080197 - 7 Aug 2024
Viewed by 492
Abstract
This paper describes an innovative method developed by the authors to support basic decisions concerning the structural restoration of a large historical panel painting which had been damaged by inappropriate attachment to a wall and ongoing exposure to severe changes in environmental humidity. [...] Read more.
This paper describes an innovative method developed by the authors to support basic decisions concerning the structural restoration of a large historical panel painting which had been damaged by inappropriate attachment to a wall and ongoing exposure to severe changes in environmental humidity. The Lapidazione di Santo Stefano is a large panel (2.78 × 3.92 m2) painted by Giorgio Vasari in 1571 and has been housed since then in the Church of Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri in Pisa (Italy). Its wooden support is made of large horizontal planks glued together along their edges and stiffened by vertical, dovetailed crossbeams. The panel was tightly fastened to a church wall with several rigid bolts; due to the moisture cycling produced by rainwater leakage and a subsequent “compression set”, it had developed severe tension stresses perpendicular to the grain, resulting in cracks affecting both the wood and the paint layers. To decide how to carry out the structural restoration of the panel, it was necessary to know whether slippage could occur between the panel and crossbeams during seasonal variations in environmental humidity. Without slippage, tensile stresses would be generated in the wood and could produce further cracks and damage the paint layers. An in situ monitoring method for assessing the possibility of slippage was developed and implemented. An analysis of data collected over a period of 6 months before the structural restoration confirmed that adequate slippage was possible; hence, the decision to fully repair the cracks was taken. Monitoring continued for a year after restoration and confirmed the previous findings. This paper describes the monitoring method, the equipment used, the results of its implementation and its value as a preventive conservation tool. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Progress in Cultural Heritage Diagnostics)
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