Maya Blue: An Unsolved Problem in Ancient Pigments

Abstract

The early peoples of Southern Mexico decorated pottery and painted pictures on walls with a stable blue pigment which is not found elsewhere in the world. Investigation of this blue was started over 30 years ago, but still the true nature of the blue color principle is unknown. Since the blue cannot be destroyed by boiling nitric acid, it does not seem to be vegetable or organic in origin. It is quite unlike azurite or natural ultramarine or other blue minerals which were employed as sources of blue pigment by other ancient peoples. The main obstacle in the investigation is the extreme scarcity of research material. The only samples of the blue available for testing are thinly painted films on potsherds and on wall painting fragments where it is mixed with lime plaster and other impurities. Although attempts to procure lump specimens of the blue, even in gram quantitives, have failed, some progress has been made. It is now known that the inorganic base of the blue pigment is a clay mineral called attapulgite. Ordinary attapulgite is nearly colorless. We still do not know what makes the clay blue; whether it is a special kind of attapulgite or if the Maya produced it artifically. In this paper all the evidence accumulated to date is reviewed.

A combined synchrotron powder diffraction and vibrational study of the thermal treatment of palygorskite–indigo to produce Maya blue

“…2 X-ray diffractograms recoded as a function of the temperature for a palygorskite and b palygorskite-indigo mixture (l wt% indigo). Insets: X-ray diffractograms averaged in three temperature ranges …”

“…In addition to the continuous interest in the cultural, historic, ethnologic, and archaeological aspects of this pigment invented by the Maya at some time during the first centuries AD [1][2][3], MB can be considered as a predecessor of modem hybrid complexes [4]. Yet, a long lasting debate concerns the structural and chemical aspects of this organo-c1ay pig ment.…”

Organic inorganic dye filler for polymer: Blue-coloured layered double hydroxides into polystyrene

“…Typically, 10 −2 mol of dye was dissolved into 500 mL of a solution of decarbonated water. To this solution, two others were added dropwise, one containing 1.362 g (10 × 10 −3 mol) of ZnCl 2 and 1.207 g (5 × 10 −3 mol) of AlCl 3 (H 2 O) 6 , and the other NaOH (0.5 mol L −1 ).…”

On the interpretation of the Raman spectra of Maya Blue: a review on the literature data

“…[2] The existence of the MB, a term coined by Gettens and Stout in the 1940s, [3] was first reported by Merwin. [4] Shepard [5] first introduced the idea of MB resulting from embedding a dye into certain clays in Yucatan, whereas Gettens [6] systematised acid attack tests for identifying MB. Van Olphen [7] prepared pigmenting materials with properties close to that of MB using different procedures, while Arnold first discovered use of palygorskite in Yucatan and that the contemporary Maya used this clay for a variety of purposes.…”