Combined neutron and laser techniques for technological and compositional investigations of hollow bronze figurines

Here, an innovative non-invasive multi-analytical approach for the archaeometallurgical characterisation ofancient bronze artefacts using high resolution neutron tomography, time of flight neutron diffraction, andlaser induced plasma spectroscopy has been investigated. We show its effectiveness through an exampleapplication aimed at describing the crafting processes, characterising the alloy compositions anddeterioration phenomenologies of three small bronze figurines from the antiquarian collection of theEgyptian Museum of Florence. The present methodology has allowed unprecedented overallarchaeometallurgical descriptions of these artefacts based on the detection of fine morphologicaldetails, degree of mineralisation, elemental and phase composition of the metal walls, and mineralcontents of the core materials. Such an approach can be extended to other hollow copper alloyartefacts in order to identify their raw materials and interpret their technological processes.