Chemical Indices as a Key to Context: The Use of pXRF to Reassemble Maya Mural Fragments from San Bartolo, Guatemala

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The dissemination of wall paintings from the Late Preclassic period Maya site of San Bartolo, Guatemala, have focused on the in situ north and west walls of the buried chamber named Sub-1A. In contrast to their excellent preservation, the east and south walls of the temple were intentionally broken and buried by the Maya as part of its ritual termination in the 1st century. It took several years to recover over 3000 mural fragments during archaeological excavations of the Sub-1A chamber, and then slowly piece sections back together based on iconographic and stylistic characteristics. However, the relationship among reassembled scenes remained unclear. Compositional analysis characterizing the finishing plaster of the reassembled scenes provides an innovative technique with which to assess their spatial distribution and aid further reassembly. Building on an integrated study of wall substrates, painting techniques, and artistic practice of the in situ walls, this new analysis uses pXRF to identify specific finish plaster compositional groups of the fragments. Plaster compositional groups provide non-visual data informing spatial reconstruction of the original east and south wall narrative sequence. This paper uses chemical indices of mural manufacture to aid contextual analysis of new images from the San Bartolo paintings.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24221