The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) is a public organisation under the responsibility of the French Ministry of Education and Research. CNRS encourages collaboration between specialists from different disciplines, in particular with universities, thus opening up new fields of enquiry to meet social and economic needs. CNRS has developed interdisciplinary programmes that bring together various CNRS departments as well as other research institutions and industry. CNRS laboratories (or research units) are located throughout France, and employ a large body of tenured researchers, engineers, and support staff.

IPANEMA (Director Loïc Bertrand, www.ipanema.cnrs.fr), Service and Research Unit, is the European Research Platform on Ancient Materials from CNRS, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication and the Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. It is located on the site of the SOLEIL synchrotron site (Plateau de Saclay, Southern Paris region). IPANEMA is a unique facility in the world, 100% devoted to the study of ancient materials at a large‐scale facility. IPANEMA supports and collaborates with scientists studying ancient materials, and develops its own research activities concerning the advanced imaging and spectroscopic analysis of ancient materials, and relevant data processing.