Crystallographic texture analysis: applications in mineralogy and archaeometry

Texture analysis by diffraction methods has greatly advanced in the last few years because of instrumental and computational developments, and it is now to be considered a routine tool for the analysis of crystallite orientation in a wide variety of materials, including rocks, industrial products, and archaeological samples. The advances in the experimental measurements are mainly linked to the use of flexible experimental setups at large radiation sources, such as synchrotrons and neutron sources, which allow faster data collection, the use of samples of any size, and complete coverage of texture and reciprocal space. The developments in the data analysis are mainly related to the use of the full diffraction profiles in place of the single-peak methods. This produces pole figures and orientation distribution functions (ODF) that are statistically more significant and less prone to biases in the data analysis. Furthermore it opens the possibility of analysis of complex polyphasic materials, which are hard to characterize by other experimental techniques. Applications are discussed concerning the texture analysis of metamorphic rocks and archaeological samples.