“New approach to the differentiation of marble samples using thermal analysis and chemo-metrics in order to identify provenance”. (Gatta et al. 2014)
A Chemistry Central Journal produced in 2014 and having a doi number of 2014,8:35 doi:10.1186/1752-153X-8-35. (Gatta et al. 2014)
The problem addressed in this peer reviewed journal is the feasibility of the application of a novel chemo-metric approach which could enable marble samples gotten from different quarries located in the Mediterranean basin to be differentiated.
The data for this experiment were gotten by employing the thermal analytical techniques: Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA), Derivative Thermo-gravimetry (DTG), and Thermo-gravimetry (TG). From the curves, obtained after employing the above listed thermal analytical techniques, kinetic materials were extracted. These extracted kinetic parameters make it possible to evaluate the values of the activation energy. The evaluations of the values of the activation are done together with the logarithm of the Arrhenius pre-exponential factor of the main Thermo-gravimetry (TG) to Derivative Thermo-gravimetry (DTG) process. Principal Component’s analysis was employed for carrying out the chemo-metric evaluation from which the main data were obtained. The obtained main data have shown its level of usefulness as it successfully identified the original quarry of a small number of archaeological marble finds.
In conclusion, this research made evident one of the most evident advantages of the thermoanalytical - chemometric approach; this advantage is that, it makes it possible to identify an unknown find which is made up of a marble that has been known to be present in the considered reference samples in the reference files. Also, this thermoanalytical - chemometric approach averts the manifestation of highly uncertain or erroneous identification that might occur if the find being tested is not within the considered reference file. The coupling of the principal component analysis and the thermal analysis presented a valuable tool that can be employed to differentiate ancient marbles; this has been duly evidenced in the level of dissimilarities and similarities shown among the samples that were investigated. The combination of these two methods of analysis specifically made it possible for the differences that exist between a set of chosen marbles to be obvious and understood in terms of the thermal transition that has been observed experimentally.
I fully concur with the conclusion of this research as the main aim of the research is to verify whether unknown samples could be ascribed to any of the marble types that have been taken as the reference. It is thereby obvious that the chemometric approach described in this research possesses lots of advantages relative to other approaches that could have been used. The consistency that has been shown between the ascription of the only known test sample and its real origin denotes that this approach would give very accurate results. In addition to that, incorrect assignments and interpretations of finds were prevented as a result of using standard diagnostics for the identification of distant samples; this specifically proved valuable in the detection of marble samples that does not tally with any reference material.
However, the results derived from this research cannot be considered conclusive due to the fact that only one sample was available for this research, which means that, this research suffers from a lack of adequate number of validation samples of known origin since there is no way to univocally evaluating whether the they suffer from the lack of a sufficient number of validation samples of known origin (here, only a single sample was available, and so there was no way of univocally assessing whether the categorization of some of the unknown samples as outliers relative to the reference data, based on the values of T2 and Q is in line with their real origin or not.
The lack of information on the true origin of the available specimen and the inadequate availability of samples of known origin make me a bit skeptical about this experimental method.
The society will benefit from the findings of this experiment as these findings makes it possible to identify an unknown find which is made up of a marble that has been known to be present in the considered reference samples in the reference files which means that marble samples gotten from different quarries located in the Mediterranean basin can be differentiated.
Reference
Gatta, Tania. Gregori, Emanuela. Marini, Federico. Tomassetti, Mauro. Visco, Giovanni.
Campanella, Luigi. New approach to the differentiation of marble samples using thermal analysis and chemometrics in order to identify provenance.Chemistry Central Journal2014,8:35 doi:10.1186/1752-153X-8-35
