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The setting up of a mobile laboratory by a conservator-restorer within a collaboration with Inrap made it possible to respond to the needs expressed by archaeologists and metal furniture specialists. In direct contact with the excavation team, the presence of the restorer creates a favorable synergy to the research (determination of intervention strategies, participation in study and preventive conservation issues, sharing of knowledge). By following the operating chain of metal furniture analysis, from the field to post-excavation, the relevance and scope of this close collaborative work is illustrated by several examples from preventive archaeology.

This article presents the feedback of two specialists in metal furniture - an archaeologist and a conservator-restorer - on the use of tomographic imaging in the analytical operating chain of artifacts, from the micro-sampling of samples to the various conservation-restoration interventions and their study of the objects. Different examples illustrate the advantages of this non-destructive analysis technique while considering its few limitations. As our activities are closely linked to the evolution of these new X-ray imaging technologies, we can already measure their impact both in the choice of intervention protocols during cleaning for study or restoration and in the scientific exploitation of the documentation and its valorization.