Cultural relics carry splendid civilizations, inherit historical culture, and are precious heritage of all mankind. Due to the preciousness of cultural relics, which are non-renewable, and the basic principle of cultural relic protection with minimal intervention, non-destructive analysis technology has always been the most important technical means of material analysis in the research of cultural relic production technology, deterioration mechanism, and protection and restoration. Therefore, the research and development and application of new non-destructive analysis technology is an important research direction for the protection and utilization of cultural relics. In recent years, portable hyperspectral spectrometers originated from the field of remote sensing have shown great application potential in the analysis of cultural relic materials, and have been successfully applied in the restoration of cultural relics such as stone ancient buildings and paintings. As a non-invasive spectral technology that does not require sampling, the portable hyperspectral instrument can obtain a full-band, high-resolution reflectance spectrum covering the visible light-near infrared-shortwave infrared band (350–2500 nm) in a very short time. At the same time, it is highly portable and has no special requirements for the working environment, light source, etc. It can be used in situ at the site of field cultural relics or ruins. In addition, while collecting spectral data, remote sensing technology can also be used to achieve remote transmission and analysis of data. The above technical characteristics give it unique application advantages in the analysis of cultural relics materials. Based on the basic principles of spectral technology, this paper first introduces the equipment models and performance indicators of portable ground feature hyperspectral instruments commonly used in the analysis of cultural relics materials. Secondly, it carefully sorts out its application status in the qualitative and quantitative analysis of organic/inorganic cultural relics materials, analysis of cultural relics protection materials, and in-situ and real-time monitoring of cultural relics restoration in the past decade. After that, it discusses in depth the two key issues that affect the application effect of this technology, namely the specification of spectral preprocessing and the establishment of a standard spectral library. Finally, it looks forward to the development trend of this technology, and it is expected to have broad prospects in the analysis of fragile organic cultural relics, the combined application of multiple analysis techniques and quantitative analysis research.

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