Prehispanic Colors to Re-create New Images and Stories: Materiality and Technology of Color in the Colonial Houses of Chajul, Guatemala

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The houses of Chajul, region of Ixil, Guatemala, have preserved stucco coatings and mural paintings from the colonial period. Since 2019, the University of Valencia (Spain) has collaborated with the Jagiellonian University (Poland) within the framework of the Project of Conservation of Chajul Murals–COMUCH. The objective of this study has been to apply physicochemical analysis to the colors that have been preserved on the walls of these houses over time to identify their nature and origin. The results obtained to date indicate that the materials and color technology of these paintings is mainly prehispanic, as evidenced, for example, by the presence of Maya blue. This paper will present the multi-technical method that we have used in this study, which combines microscopic, spectroscopic, and chromatographic techniques, and the results obtained, which provide new evidence on the hybrid character that the mural paintings had in colonial times: coloring matter of prehispanic origin to create images and iconographic stories that were due to a new era and culture.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Maya Wall Paintings of Chajul (Guatemala)   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37072.0