Biotechnology Approaches for Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Heritage Conservation must be viewed as a cultural and technical activity supported in humanistic and scientific research that aims to extend the life of cultural heritage and, if possible, to clarify the artistic and historical messages therein without losing their authenticity and meaning. Conservation practice transferred knowledge and materials from chemistry and physics for specific applications such as cleaning and consolidation of cultural heritage artefacts but the conservators’ experience and long term assessment of the effects of these applications have shown the necessity of proposing novel products and ways of application/evaluation, less harmful for operators and also for the art-work. Green chemistry, surface sciences and biological sciences are today novel areas of knowledge which show promising results for being applied to Cultural Heritage conservation. Ionic liquids and nano-particles, enzymes and bio-based approaches in particular are main trends in this field with interesting applications, to be further developed and tested.