ABSTRACT
This chapter will be structured as follows. In the first section we emphasize the specificity of heritage materials and briefly describe the main issues relevant to archaeology and art history that can be usefully addressed using compositional data. These questions echo the successive life phases of cultural heritage materials-namely, their fabrication, use, ageing, and actions to be taken for their sustainable conservation. In the next section we review the main qualities of IBA techniques for cultural heritage studies and show their remarkable suitability for this field. The third part of this chapter is devoted to examples of recent applications that illustrate the powerful impact and unmatched capabilities of IBA techniques in the interdisciplinary field of archaeometry and conservation science.
