We present a systematic non-invasive investigation of a large corpus of early printed books, exploiting multiple techniques. This work is part of a broader project -- Argeia -- aiming to study early printing technologies, their evolution and, potentially, the identification of physical/chemical fingerprints of different manufactures and/or printing dates. We analyzed sixty volumes, part of the important collection of the Ateneo Veneto in Venice (Italy), printed between the 15th and the 17th centuries in the main European manufacturing centers. We present here the results of the imaging analysis of the entire corpus and the X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) investigation performed, focusing on the XRF data and their statistical treatment using a combination of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Logistic Regression. Thanks to the broad XRF investigation -- more than 200 data points -- and to the multidisciplinary approach, we were able to discriminate the provenances of the paper -- in particular for the German and Venetian volumes -- and we potentially identified a chemical fingerprint of Venetian papers.

中文翻译：

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15 至 17 世纪书籍生产中的印刷材料和技术：一个被低估的研究领域

我们利用多种技术对大量早期印刷书籍进行了系统的非侵入性调查。这项工作是一个更广泛的项目——Argeia——的一部分，旨在研究早期印刷技术、它们的演变以及可能识别不同制造商和/或印刷日期的物理/化学指纹。我们分析了 15 至 17 世纪在欧洲主要制造中心印刷的 60 卷，这是威尼斯（意大利）Ateneo Veneto 重要收藏的一部分。我们在此展示了整个语料库的成像分析和 X 射线荧光 (XRF) 调查的结果，重点关注 XRF 数据及其使用主成分分析 (PCA) 和逻辑回归相结合的统计处理。