A Study of the Materiality of Codex Tonindeye: Some Preliminary Results

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 2: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Codex Tonindeye, also known as the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, is one of the most striking examples of prehispanic Mixtec historiography and artistry. Brought from Mexico to Italy, it was preserved for centuries in the Dominican convent of San Marco, Florence, until the middle of the nineteenth century, when it was sold to England. Since 1867, it has been held at the British Museum. A new multidisciplinary research project organized by the Santo Domingo Centre of Excellence for Latin American Research (British Museum) and the MOLAB mobile laboratory is currently studying the materiality of Codex Tonindeye. The close inspection of the manuscript provided new insights on its painting process, revealing the existence of deletions and repaintings, some of them never seen before. Hyperspectral imaging spectroscopy (HIS), UV-vis-NIR Fibre Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy (FORS), and External Reflection Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ER FTIR) provided information to chemically characterize the painting materials while further techniques (XRF, Raman, RTI, microscopic imaging, etc.) will be applied in the near future. The paper presents the preliminary results thus far, both in terms of the painting materials and the painters’ working method, providing a fascinating glimpse on “Mixtec historiography in the making.”

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Bringing the Past to Life, Part 2: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38802.0