Maya Blue and Franciscan Evangelism

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Amara Solari ◽  
Linda K. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Material Characterization ◽  
Color Theory ◽  
Blue Pigment ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Religious Transformation ◽  
Color Selection ◽  
Characterization Techniques ◽  
Maya Blue ◽  
Material Record

In the first decades of the Franciscan evangelical campaign in Yucatán, Mexico (1540–90), Maya builders and artists directed the construction and pictorial decoration of hundreds of Christian edifices, ranging from small-scale chapels to larger churches and entire monastic complexes, offering a material record of the peninsula’s religious transformation. Strategic color selection and the deployment of Maya blue pigment in particular architectural, iconographic, and liturgical contexts enabled Indigenous catechumens to reconcile post-Tridentine conceptions of divinity with precontact sacred ideologies. By weaving diverse methodologies from the study of visual sources, textual documents, and material characterization techniques, we demonstrate how colonial Maya color theory actively engineered localized Catholicism.

The Maya Blue Pigment

2011 ◽  
pp. 453-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Sánchez del Río ◽  
Antonio Doménech ◽  
María Teresa Doménech-Carbó ◽  
María Luisa Vázquez de Agredos Pascual ◽  
Mercedes Suárez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Blue Pigment ◽  
Maya Blue

Maya Blue: An Unsolved Problem in Ancient Pigments

1962 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rutherford J. Gettens
Keyword(s):  
Unsolved Problem ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Wall Painting ◽  
Blue Pigment ◽  
Blue Color ◽  
Southern Mexico ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Research Material ◽  
Maya Blue ◽  
Lime Plaster

AbstractThe 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.

Characterization of Maya Blue pigment in pre-classic and classic monumental architecture of the ancient pre-Columbian city of Calakmul (Campeche, Mexico)

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Luisa Vázquez de Ágredos Pascual ◽  
María Teresa Doménech Carbó ◽  
Antonio Doménech Carbó
Keyword(s):  
Blue Pigment ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Maya Blue

Critical Review—Experimental Diagnostics and Material Characterization Techniques Used on Redox Flow Batteries

2018 ◽  
Vol 165 (5) ◽  
pp. A970-A1010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Ashraf Gandomi ◽  
D. S. Aaron ◽  
J. R. Houser ◽  
M. C. Daugherty ◽  
J. T. Clement ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Material Characterization ◽  
Redox Flow Batteries ◽  
Characterization Techniques ◽  
Flow Batteries ◽  
Experimental Diagnostics

Comparative Study of Two Blue Pigments from the Maya Region of Yucatan

2012 ◽  
Vol 1374 ◽  
pp. 115-123
Author(s):  
Silvia Fernández-Sabido ◽  
Yoly Palomo-Carrillo ◽  
Rafael Burgos-Villanueva ◽  
Romeo de Coss
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Chemical Properties ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Blue Pigment ◽  
Spectroscopic Techniques ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Traditional Preparation ◽  
Maya Blue ◽  
Maya People ◽  
Physical And Chemical

ABSTRACTA comparative study of two blue pigment found in separate megalithic structures in Yucatán México is presented. The first sample (M1) is a piece of turquoise stucco discovered at the top of a building known as Structure-2 in the town of Dzilam González. The second sample (M2) is a residual blue powder that was contained in a Oxcum Café type ceramic vessel recovered in the rubble of the Kabul building in Izamal city. The interest in characterizing these samples increases with the possibility of finding in them evidence of Maya Blue, a dye created in the eighth century by the Maya people, whose extraordinary physical and chemical properties have been studied in laboratories around the world. Maya Blue was a tailored technology used for several centuries, even during the Spanish occupation, throughout Mesoamerica. Despite 80 years of study, the mysteries of its composition, traditional preparation and obsolescence have not yet been fully resolved. Using different spectroscopic techniques (SEM, EDX, XRD, FTIR, UV-Vis DR) we have studied and compared the blue colorants in M1 and M2. Results indicate that M1 is Maya Blue. Despite some similarities in the infrarred vibrational spectra of the two samples, we have determinated that M2 is not Maya Blue but a non-Mesoamerican mineral pigment known as Ultramarine which was probably introduced to America by Europeans.

Strategy and Tactic in the Analysis of Archaeological Hunter-Gatherer Systems

2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Q. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Lower Order ◽  
General Concept ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Cultural System ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Archaeological Analysis ◽  
Adaptive Nature ◽  
Material Record

Archaeologists studying past cultural systems commonly employ the concept of strategy to characterize both general and specific aspects of those systems. It is herein argued that a “strategy” is a plan; a general concept or blueprint conceived to achieve a goal. The fulfillment of a strategy requires that specific, lower-order, actions be taken. These actions are tactics—small-scale activities that generate a material record. It is the patterned remains of tactical behavior that form, and are recovered from, the archaeological record, with higher-order strategies being inferred from some understanding of tactics. In practice, however, many researchers interchange the concepts of strategy and tactic, equating plans with actions and vice versa. This tends to homogenize the reconstruction of strategies and masks the diversity, variability, and adaptive nature of the tactical inventory within the larger cultural system. Thus, the degree and scale of initial archaeological analysis should be at the level of tactic, rather than of strategy, an approach that would broaden the archaeological perspective in modeling and understanding past systems.

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