Name: Cultural heritage and geoscience - Raman spectroscopy seminar
Start: 2025-02-25T09:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-02-25T17:00:00+00:00
Location: Natural History Museum, London, UK

Join us for a seminar exploring the fascinating intersection of cultural heritage and geoscience through the lens of Raman spectroscopy!
About this Event

Cultural heritage and geoscience - Raman spectroscopy seminar

Discover how the specificity of Raman spectroscopy reveals fakes and forgeries; how it enables conservation of historical artefacts, and how it identifies modern and historical materials. It answers the question ’where does this come from?’ – whether that be material from Stonehenge, the provenance of ivory or the composition of the surface of Mars.

Join us at our upcoming Raman seminar on cultural heritage and geoscience at The National History Museum. We have an exciting lineup of confirmed speakers who are leading scientists in their field. Discover the captivating applications of Raman spectroscopy in art authentication, mineralogy, and provenance studies.

Our confirmed presentations include:

"Going where no Raman has gone before: Spectroscopy on Mars" - Joseph Razzell-Hollis, Postdoctoral Researcher, Natural History Museum, London
Raman spectroscopy, a vital tool for chemical analysis on Earth, has been utilized on Mars since July 2021. The SHERLOC instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover employs deep-ultraviolet (DUV) Raman spectroscopy to identify minerals and organic compounds, aiding the search for evidence of past life and habitability on Mars. Joseph will summarize the mission’s findings from the first few years and discuss the unique challenges of conducting Raman spectroscopy on another planet.

"Discrimination of ivory from extant and extinct elephant species using Raman spectroscopy" - Rebecca Shepherd, Senior Lecturer, University of Bristol
This talk will discuss non-destructive technologies, such Raman spectroscopy, that can be used to quickly, relatively inexpensively and non-destructively identify samples unknown sources. These technologies are being developed for use worldwide by law enforcement to ensure that ivory being traded is compliant with any relevant laws and restrictions on ivory trade, but could also have a role in materials identification for object conservation.

"Raman Spectroscopy: a tool for teaching research-based cultural heritage" - Paul Garside, Lecturer, University of Glasgow
At the Kelvin Centre for Conservation and Cultural Heritage Research (University of Glasgow), Raman spectroscopy has an important role in both research and teaching. It is a particularly useful way of introducing students to complementary analysis (alongside techniques such as XRF and FORS), allowing them to explore strengths and limitations of analysis, in addition to sampling and interpretation. By doing so, they are also able to carry out their own research (recently on important manuscripts such as the Historia de Tlaxcala and the Margarita Philosophica), as well as appreciating staff-led research on materials including iron gall ink and parchment.

"Raman and Geoscience at University College Cork" - Richard Unitt, Research Fellow, University College Cork
A Raman spectrometer was purchased by the School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, UCC in 2018 specifically for studying roadstone aggregates. Although this work continues the spectrometer has since been utilised for many and varied geoscience projects.
Raman is still an emerging technology in the field of geoscience/geology, and we have taken on projects where there are little or no previous studies to provide reference material. As such, we are often leading the way in publishing detailed petrographic Raman maps, sometimes in 3D, as well as developing new methodologies to examine exceptionally preserved fossils.

"Old objects, new pigments: unexpected findings in cultural heritage collections" - Lucia Burgio, Lead Conservation Scientist, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Occasionally, 'new' pigments can be found unexpectedly within museum collections, hiding in plain sight. In recent years, four of them have been discovered at the V&A on objects from different continents, spanning multiple centuries. Find out more about bismuth white, mercury white, bismuth grey and spherical copper resinate, and learn about the objects that are decorated with them.