Appraisal of the new approach to the archaeometric study of ancient metal artifacts by the use of movable EDXRF equipments

The capability of the new generation EDXRF portable equipment offers a unique possibility to study the technology of production and to reconstruct the casting history of metal artefact. The most important improvement in the EDXRF system development is the use of small and portable X ray tubes and non cryogenic detectors having similar performance of the traditional cryogenic ones. Another very important contribution to the in-field use of the EDXRF technique has been the development of software specifically engineered for in-situ acquisition and data analysis and storage data managing. One of the finalities of the present archaeometric research is to support the hypothesis on ancient metallurgical technologies with statistical significant set of data obtainable only with a large number of measurement on many artifacts. This large amount of data implies the choice of a proper statistical approach. This work will show the method actively in use discussing the most relevant points that make possible the use of EDXRF in the study of big sets of metallic samples. Several extensive examples campaigns will be listed (bronze samples from the Archeological Civic Museum in Bologna and from the Archeological Museum in Chieti and golden samples from the Archaeological Museum in Athens)