Chemical Residues Analysis and Infrared Spectroscopy to Determine a Kiln´s Function from a Henequen Hacienda in Yucatan, Mexico

Summary

San Pedro Cholul was a henequen plantation and industrial facility, a hacienda estate, situated on the northeastern part of Merida city, Yucatán, México. Its principal development was during the last decades of the nineteenth century, known as Yucatan´s Gilded Age, and it was totally abandoned by the middle of the twentieth century. In 2015 we excavated a kiln facility in order to confirm its function as a lime production structure, to obtain archaeomagnetic dates, and to extract sediment samples for laboratory analysis. Our goal was to distinguish the lime productive procedures, following a methodology developed by Chu et al. (2008) and Regev et al. (2010). Through chemical and physical sediment analysis and infrared spectroscopy we were able to calculate the exposure temperatures of limestone materials and identified the presence of ash and lime production splinters on the kiln sediments. We hypothesize that the owners of San Pedro Cholul were using these standardized construction materials on principal buildings, like the main house and the chapel. This study was also relevant to understand the adoption of lime technology, the production processes, and the usage of lime in the context of a henequen fiber production settlement at the dawn of the twentieth century.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Archaeometric Studies in the Maya Area

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14983