North-West European artists’ ground layers analysed with multivariate techniques

Multivariate analytical methods, e.g., principal component analysis (PCA), self organising maps (SOM) and hierarchical clustering (HC), are applied to introduce a novel approach for the analysis of SEM-EDX spectral results obtained from ground layer cross sections. These methods aim at reducing large amounts of chemical data to a handful of distinct clusters that share similar spectra and, therefore, similar compositions.