In the ancient city of Cantona (600 B.C a 1050 A.D.) in the region of Puebla, Mexico, a great number of awls made of animal bones were found inside several offerings and burials. The present paper presents the identification of species used to elaborate these awls, along with the formal characteristics of the objects and their manufacturing techniques. The last was studied through experimental archaeology and the analysis of modified traces by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM).

Coinage metals nanoparticles have been widely used in last decade for enhancing the Raman signal of a variety of compounds. Several preparation methods have been proposed, including chemical reduction of gold or silver salts with sodium citrate, hydroxylamine or sodium borohydride, microwave-assisted reduction with glucose, Tollens mirror, electrodeposition, vacuum evaporation and pulsed-laser deposition.

In this work, gold and silver nanoparticles were prepared by chemical reduction with sodium citrate and hydroxilmanine, characterized by UV-Vis spectroscopy and High Resolution Transmission Electronic Microscopy and tested as SERS substrate. Carminic acid, cochineal, axiote, muitle and zacatlaxcalli SERS spectra were recorded at different pH. Natural dyes samples were prepared by extraction from its natural sources, following traditional recipes. Although differs for each dye, best results were achieved by performing SERS experiments at pH neutral to basic.

Maya blue is an organic / inorganic pigment which is composed principally by two elements: a white clay known as palygorskite (in the Mayan dialect Sakalum), and a blue dye called indigo, this dye is extracted from the plant Indigofera suffruticosa. The mixture and the warming of these two elements produce the Maya blue, which exhibits unusual features such as: resistance to the assault of the acids in warm or high temperatures, his persistent color in spite of having been exposed to different climatic conditions as a result of the passage of time and the specific chemical composition that this pigment presents.

In the present investigation natural indigo, palygorskite and synthetic maya blue were analyzed with a new implementation technique called photoacoustic analysis, which detects the structural changes that happen in the material under a controlled increase of temperature. Due to the fact that this technology detects with clarity where the structural changes happen but not that type of changes happen, it used as base termogravimetric analysis. One of the important findings, it was that in the spectrum of the synthetic maya blue were detected the structural changes of the clay and the dye, something that with other used technologies had not been achieved to observe.

Exploitation of satellite radar interferometry on huge cultural heritage sites can facilitate the recognition of spatially distributed deformation patterns, whose morphology, jointly with the analysis of displacement time series, could clarify the nature of ongoing deterioration phenomena threatening the conservation of exposed archaeological heritage. Radar-interpretation is used on selected case studies located in Southern Italy to demonstrate the feasibility of Persistent Scatterers (PS) analyses for site-specific detection of superficial deformation, correlated to natural and/or human-induced instability processes. Evidence of subsidence for the radar targets identified within the archaeological area of Capo Colonna, Central Calabria, confirms the susceptibility of the entire promontory to ground instability, with potential effects on the ruins. Similarly, the uplift/subsidence patterns on the monumental area of Pozzuoli, W of Naples, testify the exposure of the geologic substratum underneath the archaeological structures to the active dynamics of the Campi Flegrei volcanic complex. Finally, the satellite analysis on the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, Sicily, exemplifies the capability to distinguish differential displacement trends and seasonal variations within single PS time series.