The industrial revolution led to degradation of air quality in urban areas, adding an important parameter to the deterioration processes of the building materials of monuments. In this study, samples of black crust from the Roman-era monument of the Library of Hadrian (Athens) have been collected to perform chemical and mineralogical characterization of the degradation products. The chemical composition of the crusts, the elements’ distribution along the crust and the characterization of individual embedded particles were combined to determine groups of elements related to specific sources and investigate how they are related to each other. Traffic was found to pose a clear fingerprint on the type and chronological development of anthropogenic pollutant deposition in the black crusts formed in this particular urban environment.
This study is part of the diploma thesis of Dimitris Mitsos in the MSc course CultTech at the Department of History, Archaeology and Cultural Resources Management of the University of the Peloponnese.
Read the full article published in the journal "Journal of Cultural Heritage" here.