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In the recent years, several sampling devices have been used for the non-destructive collection of volatile organic compounds in heritage environments. To heritage scientists and conservators, these have become essential tools, as they enable the investigation of material composition, degradation processes, and conservation treatments, in principle without damaging the artefact. This paper investigates the performance of sorbent tubes, common sampling devices used in museums, and HiSorb probes, to analyze the volatiles emitted from two historical snuffboxes. The first one, an empty one from the National Museum of Slovenia, has undergone conservation, while the second one is an untreated historical object from the Historical Reference Material Collection of the Heritage Science Laboratory Ljubljana, still containing tobacco. Comparison of the different sampling devices showed that both sorbent tubes and HiSorb probes gave comprehensive chromatograms, detecting products related to wood degradation, such as acetic acid, formic acid, furfural, nonanal, and decanal. Furthermore, HiSorb probes detected terpenes and tobaccoderived compounds, like nicotine, and pyridine-derivatives. Noticeably, these compounds were characterized as traces in the cleaned snuffbox, while they showed high peaks in the reference one, consistently with their conservation history. The small size of the HiSorb probe, which allowed its insertion into the snuffbox, likely contributed to the higher abundance of the detected volatiles. Gas chromatography was coupled with two detectors - mass spectrometry and olfactometry - to define the olfactory profile of the two case studies and correlate each compound with the detected smell. Two sampling devices were compared: sorbent tubes and HiSorb probes. In contrast with commonly used sorbent tubes, this study represents the first application of HiSorb sampling in combination with olfactometric analysis for heritage objects, introducing a novel methodological approach. The results demonstrated that olfactory analysis following HiSorb sampling is feasible, with a number of the most intense smells comparable, or even higher, than when sampling with sorbent tubes. The outcomes confirmed the chemical analyses, highlighting "wood", "leather", "flower", and "fresh" as main descriptors, with the snuffbox belonging to the reference collection presenting a richer profile including more compounds giving "wood", "sweet", and "powder" notes. (c) 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
The bilingual monograph A Journey through Space and Time: the East Asian Heritage of the Saxon Princes of Schönburg-Waldenburg at Snežnik Castle deals with East Asian objects that are part of the collection of the Snežnik Castle Museum. The last private princely owners of the castle were members of the noble family Schönburg-Waldenburg from the Dresden area in Saxony. They renovated the castle and furnished it with paintings, furniture, stoves, and numerous objects that they brought to the castle from Dresden. Among these objects are twelve East Asian objects and a lacquered box closely modelled on East Asian lacquered objects. The monograph discusses the historical links between the European aristocracy and East Asia and the lively interest in ‘exotic’ Asian art which was sparked by the first trade contacts in the 16th century and showed no signs of waning 300 years later. The book is richly illustrated and also highlights other aspects and historical circumstances of European trade and relations with East Asian societies and cultures.
This paper provides an overview and synthesis of the archaeology of the Roman military conquest and consolidation of Roman imperial power from the 1st century BC to the mid-1st century AD in the territory of present-day Slovenia. This focus is timely, as recent decades have seen a significant increase in both the quantity and quality of archaeological evidence concerning Roman military activities during this period in the region. The evidence presented highlights the Roman military as an important force in imposing Roman control over large areas of what is now Slovenia during the second half of the 1st century BC and the early 1st century AD. The roughly two-century-long process of Roman conquest in this territory, strategically highly significant to the Roman state, was concluded in the early reign of Tiberius.
Ovo istraživanje usmjereno je na prikupljanje sociodemografskih podataka posjetitelja muzeja: spol, dob, obrazovanje, mjesto stanovanja te njihovo zadovoljstvo manifestacijom i učestalost dolaska na manifestaciju Noć muzeja u Čakovcu. U tu je svrhu provedeno primarno istraživanje putem upitnika kojem su ispitanici pristupali s pomoću barkoda, a u kojem su sudjelovala 164 posjetitelja iz Međimurske i susjednih županija te susjedne Republike Slovenije. Ispitanici su bili posjetitelji, pa je riječ o prigodnom uzorku. Ispitanici su svojevoljno popuniti anketni upitnik, koristeći se aplikacijom barcod / QR code. Anketni upitnik sastojao se od dvaju dijelova: u prvom se dijelu ispitivao profil posjetitelja, a u drugom zadovoljstvo posjetitelja. Popunjavanju ankete mogli su pristupiti samo punoljetni posjetitelji. Rezultati su obrađeni osnovnim statističkim metodama te su grafički prikazani i uspoređeni sa sličnim istraživanjima. Nadalje, na temelju rezultata ovog istraživanja zaključujemo da velika većina posjetitelja nisu samo lokalni posjetitelji, da većina ispitanika nije prvi puta na manifestaciji, da najviše njih dolazi s prijateljima ili obiteljski, pa se tako navika dolaska na manifestaciju prenosi na mlađe naraštaje. Dolaske na manifestaciju tijekom više godina potvrđuje i činjenica da su posjetitelji više nego zadovoljni temama, programom i postavom muzeja tijekom Noći muzeja. Nakon rezultata vezanih za održavanje manifestacije, broj posjetitelja i teme manifestacije, u nastavku rada analiza je usmjerena na profil i zadovoljstvo posjetitelja.
Jesuit Marcus Antonius Kappus (1657–1717), born in Kamna Gorica (north-western Slovenia), set sail for the New World in 1687. He spent the next thirty years as a missionary among the indigenous Ópata people in the far northwest of Mexico, then part of the Spanish colony of New Spain. In 1708, he wrote a poem entitled Enthuʃiaʃmus ʃive, ʃoLeMnes LVDI PoëtICI MetrIs, pro DVrante anno 1708 ChronographICIs sVb PyroMaChIa DepICtI, which was published in Mexico City. The poem consisting of 276 hexameters in Latin, each printed as a chronogram, was devoted to Louis Philip of Bourbon, the newly-born Prince of Spain (1707–1724). For a long time, only the title of the poem was known, and it was even thought to be lost, as no exemplar could be found in either American or European libraries or archives. Janez Stanonik devoted a special study to the poem, published in Acta Neophilologica in 1995. The author of this article, prompted by Stanonik’s research on Kappus, then came across a copy of the poem in 2021 during an online search in the Biblioteca Foral de Bizkaia in Bilbao. Enthusiasmus is of great significance for understanding Kappus’ missionary and political activities, as well as his literary and artistic capabilities. The article in this issue of the journal discusses the fate of the long-hidden poem, the historical circumstances of its creation, and provides an overview of its content, message and cultural-historical significance within the political and social context of contemporary New Spain and more broadly of the Spanish empire during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). Envisaged for the forthcoming issue is a transcription of the poem together with its English translation accompanied by a linguistic and literary-historical study, as well as a synthesis of the current knowledge on this extraordinary work by Kappus.
