Combined X-ray diffraction and fluorescence analysis in the cultural heritage field

X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) techniques are broadly used for materials characterisation. In some respects, they can be regarded as complementary, as long as the first is mostly used to get phase (crystallographic) information and the second to evaluate chemical composition of the analysed samples. In this paper we present a combined approach for the acquisition and integrated analysis of XRD and XRF data. A novel laboratory instrument has been developed to perform XRD and XRF measurements simultaneously, using the same radiation source and two detectors collecting the diffraction and fluorescence patterns in a scanning mode. A combined Rietveld based refinement of both XRD and XRF data is then performed to obtain phase and chemical compositions. As a field test of the proposed approach, we analysed some archaeological finds from an alpine pastoral enclosure in Val Poré (Val di Sole, Trentino, Italy). The different features of the analysed archaeological specimens provide indications on the wide applicability range of the proposed approach, that may therefore result particularly useful and effective in materials analysis, including those pertaining to the archaeological and cultural heritage fields.