Some recent instrumental developments
X-ray absorption spectroscopy in cultural heritage research

The above examples show just how important the ability to carry out XAS analyses locally and obtain chemical maps is for the analysis of ancient and artistic materials. This is due to the heterogeneity of these materials, which results either from a mixture of ingredients (e.g. pigment particles, dispersed in a binder, like ink on paper), or from a mixture of components formed during the manufacture of the object (e.g. metallic nanoparticles dispersed in a glassy matrix), or from the surface alteration of these different materials. In this context, species localization is as important as species identification. In this section, we describe recent instrumental developments aimed at improving analysis in terms of chemical imaging.