Abstract The history of bowed string instruments includes centuries of experimentation performed by violin makers with different manufacturing processes and several natural materials. The characterization of the material components can therefore often help researchers to identify the construction period of an instrument, its geographical origins or, if possible, the name of the violin maker. In a few cases, musical instruments, especially bowed ones, that were played frequently over time suffered severe damage (e.g. cracks, woodworms), and some parts of the instruments needed to be replaced to repair such damage. Gaetano Sgarabotto (1878–1959) and his son Pietro (1903–1990), two of the most eminent violin makers and restorers of the 20th century, collected many replaced parts in a group of fragments from musical instruments manufactured between the 16th and the 19th century by some of the most important Italian and European violin makers. In this work, non-invasive and micro-destructive analyses could be combined through portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (PXRF) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with an EDAX spectrometer (SEM-EDX) on 24 fragments of the Sgarabotto collection. Principal Component Analysis was applied to classify relics, highlighting the most relevant and particular elements in the dataset. The principle of transformation is the extraction of maximum variance for each successive new variable. This procedure leads to the separation of valuable information from noise and to the selection of a small number of influential and statistically significant variables. The application of this analytical procedure leads to (i) assessing the existence of elemental markers of specific historical periods and/or manufacturing areas; (ii) characterizing the materials that the layers of a selected group of fragments are composed of; (iii) identifying any correlations between different fragments.

中文翻译：

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元素分析作为历史乐器的统计初步研究

摘要 弓弦乐器的历史包括几个世纪以来小提琴制造商使用不同制造工艺和多种天然材料进行的实验。因此，材料成分的特征通常可以帮助研究人员确定乐器的建造时期、地理起源或（如果可能）小提琴制造商的名称。在少数情况下，经常演奏的乐器，尤其是弓弦乐器，随着时间的推移会受到严重损坏（例如裂缝、木虫），需要更换乐器的某些部件以修复此类损坏。Gaetano Sgarabotto (1878–1959) 和他的儿子 Pietro (1903–1990)，两位 20 世纪最杰出的小提琴制造商和修复师，从 16 世纪和 19 世纪之间由一些最重要的意大利和欧洲小提琴制造商制造的乐器碎片中收集了许多替换零件。在这项工作中，可以通过便携式 X 射线荧光光谱法 (PXRF) 和扫描电子显微镜 (SEM) 与 EDAX 光谱仪 (SEM-EDX) 对 Sgarabotto 收藏的 24 个碎片进行非侵入性和微破坏性分析。应用主成分分析对文物进行分类，突出数据集中最相关和特定的元素。变换的原理是为每个连续的新变量提取最大方差。这个过程导致从噪声中分离出有价值的信息，并选择少量有影响力和具有统计意义的变量。该分析程序的应用导致 (i) 评估特定历史时期和/或制造区域的元素标记的存在；(ii) 表征组成选定片段组的层的材料；(iii) 识别不同片段之间的任何相关性。