Uses of Gas Sorption and Mercury Porosimetry Methods in Studies of Heritage Materials

This review explains why pore structure characterisation, particularly utilising gas sorption and mercury porosimetry, is important for the study of many different types of heritage materials, such as for determining their raw materials, methods of fabrication, and ancient uses. It then describes the basic experimental methods, including details of particular relevance to heritage materials. Several relatively novel methods, such as gas over-condensation, scanning curves and loops, and hybrid experiments, not often used with heritage materials, are also described and their potential applications discussed. In particular, gas over-condensation can probe pores of sizes from the molecular scale to hundreds of microns in one experiment, and thus can be used to provide “fingerprints” characteristic of the internal void space of different types of ceramics or glasses to aid in identification without damaging the finds. This work also surveys the various applications of gas sorption and mercury porosimetry to ancient ceramics, glasses, and building materials, with particular discussion of uses in testing the mode of action and effectiveness of various conservation methods.