TY - CONF A1 - Radtke, Martin A1 - Margreiter, R. A1 - Eberhardt, K. A1 - Niemeyer, B. A1 - Strub, E. T1 - Investigation on fire gilding using XRF and NAA N2 - Fire-gilding or amalgam gilding is a historical technique for the gilding of objects. The object to be gilded is coated with an amalgam (a solution of gold (Au) in mercury (Hg)). By heating, the largest part of the Hg is subsequently evaporated and there remains a gold layer, containing still detectable amounts of Hg. The information on the used gilding technique might be crucial for the conservation and preservation of archaeological objects. Therefore, the main objective of this work is the detailed understanding of the behaviour of Hg under conditions of fire gilding. I.e. the understanding of the diffusion and evaporating behaviour of Hg, depending on parameters like substrate material (silver, copper, bronze, brass...), heating temperature and duration, and the resulting Hg depth profiles under these conditions. Secondary objective is the establishment of a measurement protocol for the unambiguous identification of different types of gilding, based solely on non-destructive methods, which can be applied to historical samples. In a first step, fire-gilded samples have been prepared on Cu and Ag sheet metal, respectively. Some of the gildings were produced by a professional goldsmith; another set of samples was produced under laboratory conditions. These samples have been examined with NAA (neutron activation analysis) and SR-XRF (synchrotron radiation induced X-ray fluorescence). First results of these measurements will be presented and discussed. T2 - Synchrotron Radiation and Neutrons in Art & Archaeology (SR2A) CY - Chicago, IL, USA DA - 06.09.2016 KW - Synchrotron KW - BAMline KW - XRF KW - Archaeometry PY - 2016 AN - OPUS4-38766 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -