A Study of Various Types of Natural Marble Towards Their Use in Cultural Applications

Abstract

Marble has been used as decorative or building material since ancient times. Various archaeological marble materials of cultural heritage (e.g., statues) are frequently encountered in excavation sites amongst other finds. The scope of the present work is to investigate whether natural marble could be used for dosimetric purposes in cultural applications, such as dating or authenticity test of ancient marble objects, through an integrated experimental approach. For this purpose, the chemical composition, structure/morphology, and luminescence properties of 11 different types of natural marble of different origin (from various geographical regions) were examined by means of micro-x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, stereoscopic microscopy, thermoluminescence (TL), and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), respectively. Results indicate that though TL and OSL could be used for the identification of the marble type (origin), the use of natural marble for dosimetric purposes using these methods requires the a-priori knowledge of its type along with some of the main luminescence properties.