Analytical chemistry meets art: The transformative role of chemometrics in cultural heritage preservation

This review intends to illustrate the fruitful collaboration between chemometrics and cultural heritage science. It showcases past achievements, aiming to inspire numerous cultural heritage researchers who have yet to incorporate multivariate techniques in analysing their research findings. The goal is to practically discuss applications with examples extracted from the literature. These range from the most basic early applications, influenced by the limited laboratory equipment available at those times, to the more contemporary research endeavours. Recently, numerous new analytical instrumentations have gained widespread adoption, some of which were previously inconceivable for field use or analysing micro-samples, characteristics needed to work with cultural heritage. Chemometrics serves as the binding element in this process. It handles the multivariate data generated by analytical instruments, even from multiple instruments used to characterize the same sample and yields easily interpretable graphs that encapsulate all the information considered simultaneously. This review will delve into the challenges of achieving commendable results and constructing effective descriptive or predictive models. Additionally, it will offer essential theoretical insights crucial for a comprehensive grasp of the fundamental algorithms employed. We have explored fundamental qualitative and quantitative models capable of addressing most issues encountered in studying a historical or artistic artifact. Additionally, focus was directed towards data pre-processing, at times essential for enhancing model outcomes.