The paper presents an analytical method developed for the nondestructive study of nineteenth-century Persian polychrome underglaze painted tiles. As an example, 9 tiles from French and German museum collections were investigated. Before this work was undertaken little was known about the materials used in pottery at that time, although the broad range of colors and shades, together with their brilliant glazes, made these objects stand out when compared with Iranian ceramics of the preceding periods and suggested the use of new pigments, colorants, and glaze compositions. These materials are thought to be related to provenance and as such appropriate criteria for art-historical attribution. The analytical method is based on the combination of different nondestructive spectroscopic techniques using microfocused beams such as proton-induced X-ray emission/proton-induced gamma-ray emission, X-ray fluorescence, 3D X-ray absorption near edge structure, and confocal Raman spectroscopy and also visible spectroscopy. It was established to address the specific difficulties these objects and the technique of underglaze painting raise. The exact definition of the colors observed on the tiles using the Natural Color System helped to attribute them to different colorants. It was possible to establish the presence of Cr- and U-based colorants as new materials in nineteenth-century Persian tilemaking. The difference in glaze composition (Pb, Sn, Na, and K contents) as well as the use of B and Sn were identified as a potential marker for different workshops.

Within policy and research debates on the smart city, the urban environment has become an arena of contestation. Claims that digitalisation will render the city more resource-efficient are countered by criticism of the tensions between smart and sustainability practices. Little attention has been paid, however, to the role of nature in digitally mediated urban environments. The flora, fauna and habitats of a city are a void in research and policy on digital urbanism. This paper provides one of the first conceptually grounded, empirical studies of 'digital urban nature' in practice. Taking the empirical example of Berlin, the paper demonstrates how a single city can spawn a rich variety of digital nature schemes, develops from this a typology to guide future research and analyses two schemes in depth to illustrate the aspirations and limitations of digital technologies targeting urban nature. The empirical findings are interpreted by bringing into dialogue pertinent strands of urban research: first, between smart environments and urban nature to explore ways of representing nature through digital technologies and, second, between digital and urban commons to interpret changes in the collective and individual use of urban nature. The paper reveals 2 City XX-X that digital platforms and apps are creating new ways of seeing and experiencing nature in the city, but often cling to conventional, anthropocentric notions of urban nature, with sometimes detrimental effects. More broadly, it suggests that exploring practices of digitalisation beyond the remit of conventional smart city policy can enrich scholarship on digitally mediated human-nature relations in the city.

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