NEW TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Zapping an ancient Greek helmet with sci-fi-sounding beams gives scholars useful information, including that the nose guard is a 19th century addition and that the helmet had been hammered out of a single piece of metal (via Archaeologica News):

Physics meets archaeometry in ancient Greece (PhysicsWeb)
4 May 2004

Physics-based techniques are playing an increasingly important role in the analysis of archaeological artefacts. At the 34th Symposium of Archaeometry in Zaragosa, Spain, this week Manolis Pantos and colleagues at the Daresbury and Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in the UK will describe how they used beams of synchrotron radiation and neutrons to examine a bronze helmet from ancient Greece. The non-destructive techniques employed by the group have helped to unravel the object's unusual history and could now used to investigate other ancient artefacts.

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