Where Materials Come From

Monica Ganio: So the Technical Studies Research Group is a liaison between the Museum and the Science Department. And what we do is study everything that concerns the materials, technology, the provenance of the materials, how it was made, and then sometimes what happened to the object, and what are the previous restoration treatment that we can find on it, and how to help the conservators and curator to better understand the object.

Here we have an XRF, so X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. You use an X-ray source to illuminate the sample, the material, to irradiate the material, and then you have the responses of fluorescence. So it gives you a fingerprint of what is the elemental composition of a certain material. To me, it is always shocking and surprising when you discover that something that you think of as a new thing today maybe was already in use seven centuries, 10 centuries ago. And it was totally possible with none of the technology we have today. So it was just the human making it with their hands. I mean, it’s quite surprising.