Microclimate monitoring in the Carcer Tullianum: temporal and spatial correlation and gradients evidenced by multivariate analysis; first campaign

Abstract

Too often microclimate studies in the field of cultural heritage are published without any or scarce information on sampling design, sensors (type, number, position) and instrument validation. Lacking of this fundamental information does not allow an open discussion in the scientific community. This work aims to be an invitation for a different approach.Three main parameters (temperature, humidity, luminance) were monitored in a selected part of a complex construction by an inexpensive self-assembled system along some horizontal and vertical vectors. All data was then processed and analyse by chemometric methods. Some measurements of oxygen, carbon monoxide and dioxide and pressure were also performed.Correlation of some indoor and outdoor data was shown for temperature and humidity. In case of outdoor changes the indoor environment reacted with a certain delay which is position-dependent and more evident for humidity data. The two observed rooms (Carcer and Tullianum) behave differently and the hypogean one is less influenced by the outdoor environment. Instrument validation before and after the campaign, allows to consider detected variations as significant.The fundamental importance of Sampling Design and of instrument validation before and after the monitoring campaign was enhanced. The choice of two main and two minor vectors allowed detection of different behaviour for the two rooms, also permitting to detect for both rooms a trend towards a spontaneous microclimate necessary for a conservation project. In the next campaign we will focus on the choice of the best sampling frequency to use more sophisticated statistical methods.

Microclimate monitoring of Ariadne’s house (Pompeii, Italy) for preventive conservation of fresco paintings

“…Knowledge about ideal or limit values of microclimate parameters for conservation of cultural heritage is still poor [28]. The Italian UNI 10829 [29] and DM 10/2001 [30] are currently the approved standards on this issue.…”

Multivariate Thermo-Hygrometric Characterisation of the Archaeological Site of Plaza de l’Almoina (Valencia, Spain) for Preventive Conservation

“…A monitoring study of temperature and relative humidity (RH) was carried out at the hypogeum archaeological site of Carcer Tullianum (Rome, Italy) [12]; in that work, statistical tools for exploratory purposes, such as box and whisker plots, were used, but statistical comparative techniques were not applied, which is one of the aims of this paper.…”

A multidisciplinary diagnostic approach preliminary to the restoration of the country church “San Maurizio” located in Ittiri (SS), Italy

“…Certainly, an analytically significant monitoring of a building produces a large amount of data that it becomes difficult to process. Multivariate analysis surely provides a simple overview of data and, consequently, allows us to identify correlations that in turn will help to reduce the monitoring points [23,24]. The main problems of the UNI 11087: 2003 [22], concerning the salt content analysis, relies on the invasive analytical procedure and the lack of a sampling guideline.…”