Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - National Institute of Laser Enhanced Science - Department of Laser Applications in Environmental Metrology Photochemistry and Agriculture

Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) has emerged in the past two decades as a very promising technique for the analysis and characterization of a broad variety of objects of cultural heritage especially bio-archeological samples such as calcified tissues namely teeth and bone. The most important advantages of LIBS from the archeological point of view are its quasi nondestructive nature and its potential of performing in situ measurements. In the present work human calcified tissue samples of recent and archeological bone samples have been studied via LIBS technique. The old samples were from four different ancient Egyptian dynasties representing the middle kingdom (1980{u2013}1630 B.C.), the 2nd intermediate period (1630{u2013}1539/23 B.C.), Roman-Greek period (30 B.C.- A.D. 395) and the late period (664{u2013}332 B.C.). From the obtained results it was possible to differentiate between recent and old samples in view of the emission intensities of the CN and C₂ molecular bands. In addition, it was possible to classify the samples according to their age by obtaining the ratio of the ionic to atomic lines intensity of calcium

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