Welcome to the Swedish Neutron Week 2025
The purpose of the Neutron Week is to bring together Swedish neutron users, facilities, industry, and funding agencies, to offer an annual event facilitating networking, cooperation and joint actions between the participants.
The Heritage Science theme will present on the subject of: Reflections from the LINXS Heritage Science theme.
Title: Reflections from the LINXS Heritage Science theme
Presenter: Elyse Canosa, The Swedish National Heritage Board
Read more about the event and register here
When: 9-13 June, 2025
Where: Clarion Hotel Wisby, Visby, Sweden
Organisers: SwedNess, SNSS Uppsala University.
Abstract
Elyse Canosa1, Mikael Fauvelle2, Helena Berg1
1 The Swedish National Heritage Board, Visby, Sweden
2 Lund University Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund, Sweden
Heritage resources are the culturally and scientifically significant objects, artefacts, and places that modern society has inherited from past generations. This includes both natural resources, such as fossils, sediments, and landscapes, as well as cultural resources including art, archaeological artefacts, and ancient buildings. Heritage resources are of great interest to both academic and public communities as they can help us reflect on and understand our shared human origins. Synchrotron and neutron sources have the potential to open a new frontier in the study of heritage resources by providing scientists with the tools needed to powerfully, yet non-invasively, characterize, image, and communicate these critically important and often invaluable materials. The Heritage Science theme at the LINXS Institute of Advanced Neutron and X-ray Science, active during 2023 and 2024, brought together archaeologists, anthropologists, art historians, paleontologists, geologists, chemists, and physicists to explore the cutting-edge potential of using synchrotron and neutron science to study and understand our shared cultural and natural heritage.
What questions can we now ask about heritage resources that we never before thought was possible? This question lies at the core of the Heritage Science LINXS theme. Recent advancements and investments in neutron and x-ray science have opened the door to new applications that bridge the divide between the sciences and the humanities. A key field for development is Heritage Science, where these powerful new techniques can be harnessed to ask central questions about humanity’s history and shared patrimony. Many practitioners working with heritage resources, however, are unfamiliar or even unaware of these important new scientific developments. The Heritage Science LINXS theme therefore aimed to connect experts on cultural and natural heritage research with experts on neutron and synchrotron techniques in order to determine what new questions and applications can be explored today that were impossible in the past. During 2023 and 2024, the theme hosted workshops, tours and webinars during which students and professionals from a range of disciplines explored and discussed topics related to accessibility to facilities, proposal writing, sampling, non-invasive methods for analysis and visualization tools. Participants additionally experienced practical aspects of performing analysis at synchrotron and neutron facilities and forged new research connections. This talk will present the motivations, activities and reflections from the Heritage Science LINXS theme.
