S. A piece of thin twine initially threaded by way of the openwork decoration was also preserved. A wax seal of a bishop was originally attached to its end, affixed on a piece of paper with a detailed description of your relic. The description using the seal confirmed the origin and authenticity of your relic. Only traces of those components on the cross surface are preserved. The vividly blue bead was removed from opening no. 24A (Figure 3b). It has the shape of a polygon having a slightly flattened face and a diameter of about one centimetre. The face with the bead was ground to acquire a square that has in its middle a shallow, presently slightly distorted engraving: a circle surrounded by smaller cavities with wavy external edges. It truly is filled with a white mix forming a type of inlay. It has no hole. The bead is preserved in medium Dansyl Biological Activity situation: it was heavily soiled when taken out of the stairs and compact scratches are visible on its FCCP Epigenetics surfaces and losses in the white mix utilized to fill the relief.Minerals 2021, 11,six ofThe black bead has an oval shape and is about four mm wide (Figure 3c). It was found in opening 3A. It has a round hole in its middle, employed to string it on thread or twine. The bead was preserved in extremely superior condition. It was only superficially soiled when removed from the stairs. The kind of artefacts analysed placed substantial limitations on the laboratory solutions which could possibly be applied through the investigation with the material. All artefacts have been studied raw, devoid of undergoing any preparation process and making use of non-destructive approaches. Laboratory investigations were focused on mineralogical and geochemical analyses making use of scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS), X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and Raman microspectroscopy (RS). The samples had been studied working with an FEI 200 Quanta FEG scanning electron microscope with an EDS/EDAX spectrometer (FEI Corporation, Fremont, CA, USA). The maximum excitation voltage was 20 kV along with the pressure 60 Pa (the low vacuum mode). The samples were not coated. To be able to find out the phase composition on the studied objects, it was decided that the X-ray powder diffraction strategy (XRPD) should be utilised. It was understood that possessing gear for powder preparations, the results wouldn’t be totally satisfactory. Even so, an attempt was created in the hope that it would be doable to record even several diffraction reflexes to enable phase identification. Thinking about that the specimens have to not be physically altered in any way, a special holder was produced to spot the specimens securely within the measuring plane of your diffractometer. The XRD process demands the analysed surface to become flat and smooth. Sadly, in the case of the specimens studied, the option of a appropriate surface was pretty limited, and so, for the blue bead, X-ray patterns were recorded from the front (surface with ornamentation) and back surfaces, and for the cross in the front surface. There was no flat surface around the black bead. Its X-ray diffraction was thus recorded by placing its convex surface around the measuring plane from the instrument. Only the X-ray patterns from the blue bead had been suitable for standard phase analysis. The values of interplanar distances were used to identify mineral phases, primarily based around the information within the ICDD catalogue (Powder Diffraction File PDF-2. International Centre for Diffraction Information. 2018) along with the XRAYAN laptop or computer program. A Rigaku Smart Lab 9.0 kW diffractometer with Cu-K radiation was employ.
