Olfactory heritage

Olfactory heritage is an aspect of cultural heritage concerning smells that are meaningful to a community due to their connections with significant places, practices, objects or traditions, and can therefore be considered part of the cultural legacy for future generations.

[1][2] Research in olfactory heritage involves and interacts with many disciplines such as history, heritage science, chemistry, archaeology, anthropology, art history, sensory science, olfactory museology and sensory geography.

[3] Olfactory heritage science is an emerging field of research, focused on the scientific techniques to analyse, document and preserve odours and the perspectives to understand their relevance.

[citation needed] Due to the intangible and ephemeral nature of odours, one of the main challenges of olfactory heritage science is developing methodologies for documenting and archiving the smells for the future.

[7] In addition, a framework for the systematic study of olfactory heritage was proposed in 2017, aiming to document both the chemical properties and the human perception of smells of cultural importance.

Researcher sampling the volatile organic compounds of a historic book using solid phase microextraction at the Heritage Science Lab in University College London Institute for Sustainable Heritage.