The morphology of the CH stretching region appears to be very
informative, but its description requires a multivariate approach. The
more relevant parameters are the ones that are related to the
molecular structures, hence, the ones extracted from the spectral
decomposition. Multivariate analyses were performed on these para-
meters and new criteria independent of the material conservation
state were obtained, that can discriminate between different chemical
families, but also between different geographical provenances of
terpenoid resins allowing the reconstruction of ancient commercial
routes, or providing information for history of art and techniques. In
order to apply the proposed methodology, a representative spectral
database of natural organic substances is needed. As shown for the
archeological testing samples, the multivariate analyses should be
performed considering the unknown sample as a supplementary item,
and its identification would be deduced from its position on the
score plot.