Uses of Ionizing Radiation for Tangible Cultural Heritage Conservation

Book excerpt: The preservation of world cultural heritage is a key issue for maintaining national identity and understanding the influences or exchanges among civilizations throughout history. Development of appropriate preservation techniques that do not compromise longevity or authenticity are therefore of utmost importance. Radiation techniques have demonstrated significant success in the disinfestation and preservation of cultural heritage artefacts, and national and international research programmes have developed harmonized methodologies for such radiation treatment. This publication provides state of the art knowledge on radiation technology applied to the conservation and consolidation of items of cultural heritage and will be of use to collection curators, conservators, restorers, registrars, art historians, archaeologists and conservation scientists active in the various fields of cultural heritage in museums, libraries, archives, archaeological institutions, historical buildings and conservation workshops.