Speaker
Dr
Jérôme Beaucour
(Institut Laue Langevin)
Description
D. Atkins(1), J.Beaucour(1,6), T. Pirling(1), U. Koester(1), N. Kardjilov(2), F.Ott(3), E. Ando’(4), A.Tangettini(4), I. Tomandl(5), I. Groutso(6), C. Montet-Beaucour(6), I. Matuschevskaya(6), V. Danilovitch(7), S. Dernovitch(7), V. Kochman(7), V. Lakiza(7).
1. Institut Laue Langevin (ILL), 71, Avenue des Martyrs, CS 20156 F - 38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France.
2. Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB), Hahn-Meitner-Platz 1, D-14109 Berlin, Germany.
3. Laboratoire Léon Brillouin (LLB – CEA, CNRS), Centre d’Etudes de Saclay, F – 91191 Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France..
4. Laboratoire 3SR, UGA, CNRS, F – 38000 Grenoble, France.
5. Nuclear Physics Institute of the CAS (UJF), Rez 130, 250 68 Husinec, Czech Republic
6. Centre d’Etudes Napoléoniennes, 4 rue Camille Pelletan, F-92300 Levallois, France.
7. Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 1 Akademicheskaya Street, Minsk BY-220072, Belarus.
An important collection of artifacts have been unearthed during preventative archaeological surveys from 2012 to 2014 around the village of Stoudienka in Belarus – the site of the Napoleonic army’s passage during the retreat from their Russian campaign in November 1812. Recovered objects such as fragments of imperial eagles, brass plates and buttons with faint outlines of inscriptions and several lead bullets have resulted in historian’s needs for further characterisation to obtain otherwise uncertain information, for example their mode of destruction, their composition and dating.
The Belarus Academy of Science and the Centre d’Etudes Napoleoniennes collaborated with the Institute Max Von Laue Paul Langevin in a series of experiments using non-destructive neutron diffraction techniques available at the ILL on selected artifacts: For instance, mechanical deformation measurements on the strain imager SALSA provided insights into object biographies and neutron activation analysis was used to obtain clearer knowledge of fabrication processes.
Collaborations with other centers (HZB Germany and LLB France) in neutron radiography and tomography as well as complementary XCT analysis at the laboratory 3SR in Grenoble, along with recent experiments in the neutron imaging facility NEXT-Grenoble at the ILL have revealed hidden details in certain objects and the identity of hitherto unrecognizable artifacts. Another advanced non-destructive technique - prompt neutron activation analysis – was carried out at UJF (Czech Republic) on a series of musket shots from Berezina and compared with similar shot recovered from the Waterloo battle site.
Primary author
Dr
Jérôme Beaucour
(Institut Laue Langevin)
Co-author
Mr
Duncan Atkins
(Institut Laue Langevin)
