Synchrotron Methods: Color in Paints and Minerals

Making visible the invisible. A microarchaeology approach and an Archaeology of Color perspective for rock art paintings from the southern cone of South America

“…These interrogations, problems, and results resumed for Argentinean and Chilean rock art are very similar to what has been observed and described in other parts of the world (Rowe, 2001;Chalmin et al, 2003;Reiche and Chalmin, 2014;Bonneau et al, 2012;Huntley and Freeman, 2016;Chalmin and Huntley, 2017). Our bibliographic review demonstrates how in the southern cone of South America, a region rarely integrates into other published synthesis, can contribute to the debate issue of the physicochemical applied to rock art studies.…”

“…This shows a clear increase of publications in English in the last years, a tendency observed, for example, in Chilean archaeology in general (Gurruchaga and Salgado, 2017). Despite this internationalization effort, there is a still low impact of Argentinean and Chilean studies on physicochemical rock art analyses, mainly led by United States, Europe and Australia (Clottes et al, 1990;Rowe, 2001;Bonneau et al, 2012;Beck et al, 2013;Reiche and Chalmin, 2014;Chalmin and Huntley, 2017; between others).…”

“…This time expanded and displaced rock art studies focused mainly on images analyses to a greater interest on the characterization of their location, their material composition, and dating, and contribute to offering new interpretations of art based on its relations with socio-cultural and historicalrelated processes, and their association with thems such as social identity, gender, and shamanism, among others (Conkey and Hastorf, 1990;Bahn, 1994;Chippindale and Tacon, 1999;Withley, 1999;Sanz et al, 2009;McDonald and Veth, 2012;Sanz and Fiore, 2014). This movement implied the introduction and application of new methodological techniques, parallel to the technical advancement observed in other disciplines, such as mapping techniques and Geographical Information System (GIS) (Wienhold and Robinson, 2017), digitalization of rock art records (Brady et al, 2017), analysis of images with specific informatics programs (Cerrillo-Cuenca and Sepúlveda, 2015), and the implementation of systematic physicochemical analyses, between others (Clottes et al, 1990;Rowe, 2001;Chalmin et al, 2003;Reiche and Chalmin, 2014;Bonneau et al, 2012;Huntley and Freeman, 2016;Tomasini et al, 2016;Chalmin and Huntley, 2017;). Like what happened in other archaeology-related areas, the collection of new complementary data at different scales broadened our understanding of the painted and engraved rock art representations.…”

Elemental analysis of pottery obtained from the historical site of Kohneh Gorab Amlash using Micro-PIXE technique: classification and provenance study

“…It is clear that according to the value of copper and iron oxide, the glazes are divided into two main categories in terms of their colors: In the rst group, it is observed that the iron oxide only acts as a colorant agent, and the weight percentage of iron oxide in these glazes is much variable and changes from 0.7-3.7wt%. This oxide can be used as responsible elements for making green, blue, black, and brown colors (Reiche and Chalmin, 2014).Although, this oxide can exist as impurity in silica raw materials less than one percent that is out of control. However, when the value of iron oxide in composition of glazes is more than one present, it must be intentionally added to the glazes during manufacturing process.…”