Reducing Human Error and Identifying Unknowns: X-ray Fluorescence as a Tool for Identifying Paint Composition of Mesa Black-on-White Pottery

Summary

Although Mesa Verde Black-on-white pottery paste and temper have been well-studied, the composition of the decorative black paints and white background slips to identify available resources and the varying recipes used across time and space has received much less attention. Paints are typically categorized as either coal-based (organic) or iron-based (mineral), and archaeologists have long used visual differences to identify these two paint bases. While it has been shown that even novices can usually achieve better-than-random accuracy in visually identifying the two paint types, there is still a margin of human error as well as a void of information related to linking specific organic or mineral sources with compositions. Using X-ray fluorescence, we began by characterizing modern test tiles with possible paint recipes produced using local resources (southwest Colorado) to better understand how elemental composition varies with different, known paint recipes. Analyzing known samples created an interpretable baseline that not only permits discerning how the use of slightly different recipes influences composition, but also can be a comparator for archaeological unknowns. We tested the latter utility by comparing the paint composition of samples from Goodman Point Pueblo with the baseline, enabling stronger linkage to the use of specific mineral-based recipes.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage