Ancient Art Materials and Techniques

Mirrors or mirror-like objects/"mirrors" made of stones, minerals, glass and metal were found in various archaeological contexts, generally in burial, offering and cache contexts. These remarkable and somehow enigmatic objects are best known from Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites of Çatal Höyük, Domuz Tepe, Güvercin Kayası and Tepecik in Turkey; several Olmec, Maya, Aztec and Inca sites in Americas, as well as from ancient Egyptian and Indian excavations. According to the realms of archaeological and historical recoveries, the mirror appears throughout the human history from prehistoric times to today and most likely still waters were the first mirror-like functioning natural element until actual mirrors made of solid material like obsidian, and later liquid "mirrors"/reflectors made of mercury were manufactured. Based on iconography informed by textual, historical and ethnographical accounts, solid and liquid mirrors were associated with the soul, supernatural spirits, afterlife, magic, scrying, sorcery, divination, astronomy, the sun, sun gods, fire, light, darkness, authority, hidden truth, cosmetics, beauty, scientific applications, luxury, prestige, self-recognition and self-delusion. However, because mirrors archaeologically have not been studied well, specifically those of Prehistory and Protohistory, both as a material object and non-material abstract remains of past cultures, they are still need to be explored. Therefore, this session aims to investigate prehistoric and protohistoric mirrors from all around the World both as a material object and other aspects beyond materiality; past peoples' perception of mirrors and reflections on shiny objects; personal and societal need for gazing into mirrors from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives. In addition to technological, typological, functional and experimental aspects, astronomical, symbolic, religious, magical, ritualistic, artistic, neuroscientific, and paleopsychological aspects also will be discussed.

In queste righe tratteremo le raffigurazioni di natura morta e soggetti a essa assimilabili nelle decorazioni parietali abitative di età romana, con particolare riferimento a contesti in area vesuviana. Con lo scopo suggeriamo una selezione di contributi scientifici, avendo maggior riguardo per ricerche e cataloghi recenziori di alcuni autorevoli studiosi che si sono succeduti nell’indagine del genere, sulla scorta di Ueber Stilleben aus Pompeji und Herculaneum, opera di H.G. Beyen che già nel 1928 tentò una preliminare classificazione delle pitture di natura morta in base allo stile di appartenenza. Il distacco materiale dalle pareti di provenienza, nonché il campionamento inventariale in base al genere di soggetti dipinti, hanno inficiato praticamente sino agli ultimi decenni l’organizzazione d’un sistema di conoscenze critiche esaustivo e uno definitivo studio per questa categoria di reperti.

A group of four marble fountain spouts in a storeroom in the Vatican Museums appeared to be made of dolomitic marble from Thasos. Analysis of the marble with paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy confirmed this identification. In spite of differences, all four pieces seem to be produced by the same workshop, which can be called the Vatican Fountain Workshop. Examples of this type of fountain spout, which have water stairs on four sides and were intended to be placed in the center of a pool, are found scattered throughout the western Roman Empire. One example in Pula, Croatia is clearly a product of the Vatican workshop and appears to be made of Thasian marble. Most surviving monolithic fountain spouts appear to date from the second century, but the type clearly underwent a rapid development from simple to richly decorated forms during the course of the last third of the first century CE. The Vatican workshop evidently specialized in relatively simple cubic forms. Although the workshop favored Thasian marble and included at least one sculptor from Thasos, it was based in Rome. It also may have produced statues of the sleeping Ariadne in dolomitic Thasian marble for fountains.

L’opera traccia un compendio globale della collezione di pitture ercolanesi e pompeiane del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, pubblicato in concomitanza con la riapertura della sezione che li custodisce e allo stato degli studi in data di pubblicazione. Il lavoro giunge al termine d’un lungo processo di adeguamento della struttura e riallestimento di queste testimonianze superstiti della pittura antica.
La pittura pompeiana è un testo strutturato in diciassette capitoli, cui segue il catalogo suddiviso in dodici, ciascun riservato a un ambiente del Museo tra quelli che espongono attualmente le pitture: Sale dalla LXVI alla LXXV, LXXVII e LXXVIII. Ogni sezione dell’opera è riccamente illustrata con fotografie a colori di L. Spina.

Materials in Art and Archaeology through their Infrared Spectra introduces students and professionals in archaeology, conservation, chemistry, and materials science to the world of archaeological and art materials. The infrared spectra of materials directly reflect their structures, whether amorphous or crystalline, color or colorless, polar (hydrophilic), or nonpolar (hydrophobic). Through this book, the reader is offered a top-down approach for interpreting the rich but often subtle information drawn from the infrared spectra of most materials in the above-described context and correlate them to their molecular geometry, their molecular environments, and, most importantly, their deterioration pathways that lead to their current condition.
#Materials Science; #Archaeology; #Discoveries of the Past

The goal of this study is to examine whether analysis of typological, structural and production procedures of beads, can assist in the dating and description of an archaeological site.
The corpus of beads found at the Tel Azekah archeological site by the Lautenschläger-Azekah expedition, during the first four seasons of excavation was assembled. The beads were dated to the period between the Early Bronze Age and Hellenistic period. Most of the assemblage was discovered by means of wet and dry sieving and sorting.
The identification of the twenty-five raw materials from which the beads were made of was achieved by chemical and optical means, as well as by the interpretation of literary, historical and scientific sources.
The provenances of most of the said raw materials were traced to Egypt and Mesopotamia, while a few may have come from Jordan, India (the Indus Valley), Cyprus, The land of Israel, and even from the area surrounding Tel Azeka.
In addition, the technologies used to produce the beads were identified mainly in Egypt and the Indus Valley. A beads manufacturing workshop was not found on the site and its surroundings, and therefore, with the exception of the bone beads which could have been produced at Tel As-Safi / Gat, the obvious conclusion is that the beads have reached the site through commerce, or social connections.
Given the large variety of raw materials from which the 222 beads were made, as well as their shapes and production techniques, it may be deducted that the population that lived at Tel-Azekah had a high and well established political, social and economic status. Moreover, the settlement was located on top of a mound, dominating a central junction of commercial routes, and in the area of other important settlements, such as Gat, Ekron, Gezer, and Lachish, and therefore was likely to have had direct and indirect social and economic ties with the surrounding peoples, such as the Philistines and the Phoenicians, whose influence is noticed in the beads assemblage.
In most cases, beads cannot be used as a single dating element of certain periods, but rather as an additional one, but certain types of beads may serve as a characteristic of a certain period or culture.

The chryselephantine statue of a young Minoan male was discovered in the town of Palaikastro on the northeastem coast of Crete. Standing nearly 50 cm. high, it is the largest Minoan sculpture ever found and it is virtually complete. Its very fine workmanship is evident, with highly realistic details such as sinews and blood vessels clearly indicated both on hands and feet. The statue is built up from 8 separate pieces of hippopotamus ivory. The craftsman's ability to unite the pieces flawlessly was particularly intriguing. What technical procedure could he have used to ensure identical proportions on each of the sections? For example, Egyptian artists worked within a framework of guidelines or grids in order to draw and sculpt human figures according to a fixed canon of proportions. Such a grid would have also undoubtedly facilitated the fitting of separate parts into a seamless whole. Had the kouros been carved and assembled following some similar proportional system?

Les résultats de la recherche permettent de constater
que les effets de matière, la répartition des couleurs,
des matériaux, et l’utilisation des décors suivent globalement
la même évolution que les sculptures polychromées
du reste du Nord de l’Europe. Il apparaît également
que la polychromie du xiiie siècle ne relève pas
d’une typologie unique caractérisée par une dominance
de l’or visant à imiter l’orfèvrerie  mais qu’elle se décline au contraire en
plusieurs formulations. Se pose ensuite la question de la signification de
ces diverses finitions colorées. Or, il apparaît d’emblée
que le thème iconographique n’est pas le facteur déterminant
pour établir des typologies de polychromies. Il
faut donc chercher ailleurs les caractères intrinsèques de
la relation entre la forme et la polychromie. Pour ce
faire, il apparaît opportun de considérer les résultats de
l’analyse matérielle et typologique des polychromies en
les envisageant dans les différents contextes sociaux de
l’affectation des sculptures.

Entering the Circle - Journey of a Shamanic Artist is a (3) year (2012-2015) long endeavor in esoteric experiences related to the creation of art through the use of dreamwork, shamanic poses/journeys, rituals, religious specialists and media exploration, resulting in a body of spiritual work with the intention of creating a meaningful and personal life healing experience for both artist and viewer.

Multi-method analysis has previously established that four out of 200 statues in Cyrene are dolomitic marble from the northern Aegean island of Thasos. Art historical analysis shows that three of the four are careful replicas of famous Greek prototypes, made by copying plaster casts of the originals. The fourth is a free interpretation of a now-obscure prototype. In two cases it seems likely that a workshop connected to Athens and Crete carved the Thasian marble, probably in Cyrene. Sculptors with a connection to Thasos may have been involved in finishing some or all of the sculptures, but the evidence is fragile.

In antiquity Thasos was virtually alone in producing white, coarse grained, dolomitic marble. On this basis over 400 ancient sculptures from the USA, Europe and Turkey have been sampled and identified as Thasian marble. Most seem to be sculptures rather than architectural carvings. The spread of Thasian sculptures is traced from Archaic through Roman times, and a spreading geographic range is tracked as well. Several distinct stylistic or typological  groups are identified, and in some cases these groups can be traced back to Thasos or Northern Greece. In Italy the use of Thasian dolomitic marble for sculpture seems to peak in Trajanic and Hadrianic times but limps along into the fifth century. In sarcophagi at Rome, the use of Thasian dolomite seems sustained across the second century, and it forms a significant part of the marble used, based on a survey of the sarcophagi in the Chiostro Grande of the Museo Nazionale Romano. The figures decorating the sarcophagi are invariable carved at Rome. In free-standing sculpture it is also difficult to identify Thasian workmanship. Roman workshops may have been the mediators of Thasian marble to sites in the Western Mediterranean.

Faience objects produced from the fourth millennium BC in ancient Egypt are considered as the first high-tech ceramics in human history. Despite extensive studies on manufacturing technology, many aspects of this complex technology remain a mystery and there is no methodology in place to unravel the techniques of Egyptian faience object production. Detailed studies presented herein fill the gaps, verifying standing opinions and allowing certain aspects of faience manufacturing technology to be reconstructed. The object of this innovative investigation is a hemispherical faience bowl discovered by archaeologists excavating a Ptolemaic workshop district at the site of Tell Atrib in the southern Nile Delta. The multiproxy analysis included the application of specialised software and preparation techniques coupled with complementary methods of light and digital microscopy, SEM with EDS, XRD, STA with EGA, as well as image analysis. Sources of raw and accessory materials (mineral and org...

Künstlerische Verfahren entstehen und verschwinden. Dieser historische Wandel gilt als wesentlicher Motor für eine Entwicklung der Künste. Nicht selten jedoch wird ein altes Wissen um frühere Herstellungsprozesse wiederentdeckt, bewusst reaktiviert und dadurch erneuert. Mit dem Interesse an unzeitgemäßen Techniken bilden sich historische Narrative heraus, die die Wahrnehmung und Deutung von Kunst beeinflussen. Ausgehend vom frühen Mittelalter bis in die Gegenwartskunst widmet sich dieser Band den technischen Anachronismen, durch die Traditionen gebildet, aber auch durchkreuzt werden.

Have you ever wondered how ancient people lived? How they made their tools, clothes, and food? How they wrote on clay and papyrus? Do you want to learn about ancient artifacts and recreate them? This course offers a unique opportunity to experience how archaeologists use experimental archaeology to study the relationship between people, materials, and ancient techniques, and how they reconstruct ancient lives.

Experimental Archaeology is an analytical tool to answer a great variety of research questions in archaeology. It helps us recreate aspects of ancient societies in order to test archaeological hypotheses or interpretations. This course is designed to introduce students to experimental archaeology by making and using the materials and objects used around 3000 BC. Our goal is to understand how archaeological information is produced and what kind of evidence it is based on.

Wederom wordt in dit nummer een object van de Vereniging door een deskundige onder de loep genomen. Deze uitdrukking mag in dit geval vrij letterlijk worden opgevat want Lucien van Valen heeft monsters van een fragment van een Chinese 14e eeuwse muurschildering onder haar microscoop gelegd en doet in haar artikel verslag van haar bevindingen.

Cette manifestation scientifique est la troisième du programme consacré à l’ « Invention des traces », qui s’inscrit dans le cadre du projet 2016-2020 « Temps-espaces-matière » du laboratoire PLH. Alors que les deux premières sessions de ce cycle ont été dédiées aux « Espaces de l’écrit », cette journée d’étude vise cette fois à interroger, sur le temps long et dans des aires géographiques variées, les traces matérielles et les traces sensibles comme témoins du patrimoine matériel et immatériel.

One Roman and two early Hellenistic marble sculptures in the Thasos Museum were studied isotopically and with cathodolumiescence (CL) to determine the provenancee of the marbles used. The CL of the Roman piece could not be determined, but its isotopic values and its fine grain indicated that it was not the medium- to coarse-grained dolomite of Cape Vathy, Thasos, normally used for sculpture on the island but probably calcitic marble from the distant quarries of Carrara. The two Hellenistic pieces proved to be fine-grained Pentelic marble. This result was also useful for interpreting previous studies, in which early Hellenistic sculptures excavated on Thasos and now in Istanbul were shown to be calcite, not the local dolomite. The fabric of the Istanbul sculptures suggests that they too are carved in the marble of Mt. Pentelikon.
Judging by their style, these high quality sculptures of around 300 B.C. were not only carved of marble imported from the neighborhood of Athens but also were carved by Athenian artists. Similar sculptures in Libya long connected with Thasos can also be interpreted as Attic works, produced by sculptors leaving Athens in the artistic diaspora of the late fourth century B.C.

By studying the sensoaesthetic aspect of ancient materials, this workshop will explore the way specific experiences of materials could offer further knowledge over their physical properties. By examining how cultural and sensory experiences of a society allow aspects of the physical properties of materials to be appreciated, it will discuss choices of materials in relation to producer’s intentions, and, consequently, artefacts’ design, and the context of their use.

La dynastie du Quesnoy est constituée de Jérôme le Vieux (Béthune, ca 1570-Bruxelles, 1650), arrivé à Bruxelles en 1594, et de ses deux fils :François (Bruxelles, 1597-Livourne, 1643) et Jérôme le Jeune (Bruxelles, 1602-Gand, 1654). Néanmoins, seules la vie et l’œuvre de François du Quesnoy, qui avait connu à Rome une brillante carrière, avaient été l’objet d’études approfondies. La condamnation au bûcher de Jérôme le Jeune en 1654 pour sodomie avait entraîné dans son sillage la considération que la critique aurait pu porter à son œuvre. Ce dernier avait pourtant lui aussi connu une importante ascension sociale et artistique, en devenant le sculpteur, statuaire et architecte de la cour de Léopold Guillaume (1647-1656), alors gouverneur des anciens Pays-Bas. Cette thèse étudie sous un angle neuf la biographie et la production de Jérôme le Vieux et de Jérôme le Jeune. Les questionnements sous-jacents à la recherche portent autant sur le dynamisme et le contexte de la sculpture bruxelloise durant la première moitié du XVIIe siècle, que sur l’existence d’une transmission intergénérationnelle au sein de l’atelier. L’analyse des sculptures du catalogue tend, une fois dégagée des présupposés largement diffusés à travers l’histoire de la sculpture flamande, à présenter de manière inédite les apports et l’originalité de cet atelier. Ces apports avaient en effet été occultés d’une part, par l’importante contribution de François du Quesnoy et, d’autre part, par celle, non moins importante, de Rubens, envisagé par beaucoup comme l’unique fondateur de l’art baroque flamand. Ce travail fournit également le premier catalogue raisonné des deux artistes.La reconstitution du fonctionnement de l’atelier (composition, pratiques, collaborations extérieures, spécialisations, tâches principales et secondaires, matériaux mis en œuvre et technique) a permis de présenter de nombreuses découvertes et de montrer un changement dans la pratique de la sculpture entre le père et le fils ;cette reconstitution s’insère dans un cadre prédéfini par la corporation des Quatre Couronnés, dont l’organisation a aussi été étudiée dans ses rapports avec l’atelier. À partir d’une analyse pointue du catalogue des deux sculpteurs, plusieurs caractéristiques typiques de la manière des du Quesnoy et de nombreux apports, notamment à l’iconographie, ont été révélés. La particularité du schéma iconographique de plusieurs groupes figurant Sainte Anne et la Vierge, outre la nouveauté dans la présentation du thème, a permis d’établir pour la première fois une filiation entre l’œuvre de Jérôme le Vieux et de Jérôme le Jeune. Du Quesnoy le Vieux apparaît désormais comme un artiste ouvert à divers courants artistiques, mêlant l’art du XVIe siècle flamand et français, ainsi que l’antique. L’œuvre de Jérôme le Jeune, qui constitue une sorte de livre ouvert sur le parcours du sculpteur, entre Flandre, Italie et Espagne, a instillé dans la sculpture flamande une veine baroque originale. Ses productions ont souvent fixé dans le marbre certains évènements de l’histoire de ses commanditaires, au rang desquels l’évêque de Gand Antoine Triest (1576-1657) ou le gouverneur des anciens Pays-Bas du Sud, Léopold Guillaume.

Los avances en la tecnología de los materiales se han ampliado la variedad de materiales disponibles para el artista, la creación de nuevas posibilidades para la pintura mural. Las reinterpretaciones de algunas viejas tecnologías también indican las posibilidades innovadoras. El pasado está involucrado en un diálogo con el futuro. Las innovaciones en los materiales relacionados con la nano-tecnología incluyen pigmentos híbridos orgánicos/ inorgánicos, cristales fotónicos coloidales y recubrimientos anti-graffiti. Un aumento de la información sobre los materiales puede llevar en muchas direcciones. Una de ellas es la idea de la pintura mural como conservación. En un proyecto reciente, usé una resina acrílica hecho para la conservación de la albañilería como aglutinante en los pigmentos minerales. La resina aumentó la penetración de partículas de pigmento y ayudó a consolidar el ladrillo antiguo. Las antiguas tecnologías a menudo muestran el camino para las nuevas orientaciones en la pintura mural y la conservación. Las prácticas de pintura al fresco se relacionan con temas de actualidad como la sostenibilidad y la conservación del patrimonio cultural. El uso de cal tiene ventajas medioambientales, tales como costos energéticos más
bajos en la producción y el transporte. La pintura al fresco refuerza los conocimientos tradicionales sobre el uso
de cal y las habilidades con el yeso, que a la vez, apoya los esfuerzos para conservar el patrimonio arquitectónico.
Uno de los objetivos a largo plazo es crear un modelo para un enfoque integrado a la conservación del patrimonio inmaterial, cultural y natural.

Advances in technology of materials have broadened the variety of materials available to the artist, creating new possibilities for mural painting. Reinterpretations of some old technologies point towards innovative possibilities as well.
The past is involved in a dialogue with the future.

Innovations in materials related to nanotechnology include organic/inorganic hybrid pigments, colloidal photonic crystals
and anti-graffiti coatings. An increase in information about materials can lead in many directions. One is the idea of mural painting as conservation. In a recent project, I used an acrylic resin made for conservation of masonry as a binder for mineral pigments. The resin increased the penetration of pigment particles and helped to consolidate old brick. Old technologies often show the way for new directions in wall painting and conservation. Fresco painting practices relate to current issues of sustainability and conservation of cultural heritage. The use of lime has environmental advantages, such as lower energy costs in production and transportation. Fresco painting reinforces traditional knowledge about lime use and plastering skills, which in turn supports efforts to conserve architectural heritage. A long term goal is to create a model for an integrated approach to the conservation of intangible, cultural and natural heritage.

Paraules clau
Blau maia, arqueomimetisme, pintura al fresc, pigments, morter de calç.

The Alexandria Faculty of Arts Museum hosts a series of Predynastic artefacts, including palettes and amulets, all of them of unknown provenance. Six greywacke palettes cover different object types and periods. Rhombic (lozenge-shaped) palettes are typical of the early Naqada period, while animal-shaped ones flourish in the Naqada II period and simple, rectangular ones, close the Naqada interval. It is however worth mentioning that these artefacts are often, as in the Alexandria collection, devoid of archaeological context. Ages therefore rest on a limited number of objects with a known origin. Besides, as with contemporary stone vases, a type may appear in the early Naqada period and persist over time. The age given for each object is thus a mere reflection of a statistic distribution of objects in time, as clearly shown by W.M. Flinders Petrie (1920-21) and more recently, by K.M. Ciałowicz (1991). The material of these palettes is a rock sometimes called “slate” in the literature. The terms siltstone/greywacke have been preferred, as they better correspond to the geological nature of this fine-grained, dark, slightly metamorphic material found in the Eastern Desert.

Over the last two years, 10 ancient sculptures in white, coarse-grained marble have been shown by X-ray-diffraction to be dolomite - and therefore vey probably from the quarries of Cape Vathy on Thasos. These sculptures come from the Archaeological Museum in Odessa, Ukraine, from several museums in Tunisia, and from private collections.
The geographical spread of Thasian dolomite is extended by two sculptures in Odessa; both carvings were found on the north coast of the Black Sea. As in other regions, dolomite appears to have been used for only a small minority of the sculptures recovered. A sphinx from Olbia dates from the 5th century B.C., a time when Thasian exportation briefly reached most of the Greek world accessible by sea. A Serapis from Chersonesus indicates that, as elsewhere, these relations were resumed in late Hellenistic times.
The dolomite sculptures in Tunisia, which all date from the Imperial period, help to characterize the use of Thasian material there. Most look as though they were produced by local workshops using marble that was exported as raw material. A workshop at Utica, however, manifested an ongoing fondess for Thasian dolomite during the first half of the second century.

The Alexandria Faculty of Arts Museum hosts a series of some 40 stone vessels coming from an unspecified tomb/cemetery in Saqqara (n. 1 to 65), and collectively dated from the 3rd Dynasty. These vessels are remarkable by their large size, their fine craftsmanship and the materials used, calcite (frequently named “alabaster”, see below), diorite and other hard porphyritic stones. These vases compare favourably with those coming from contemporaneous elite tombs in the surroundings, the Archaic Cemetery (North Saqqara) and the Step Pyramid. Some of these vessels are typical containers of the 3rd Dynasty while others are known from earlier periods, Naqada II-III and the first two dynasties. For each vessel, the collective dating “3rd Dynasty” has been somewhat refined in “Late Predynastic”, “Early Dynastic”, “3rd Dynasty” to account for both the typical age of the form and a possible re-use of ancient vases in the 3rd Dynasty tomb(s) whence they come. The large number of stone vessels from the Step Pyramid indeed proved to date from the 3rd Dynasty and from earlier periods. Many of the vases below are carved out of a material usually known as “Egyptian alabaster”. This Egyptian alabaster is actually made of calcite (contrary to true alabaster, which is gypsum), hence this term has been preferred to describe the material. It is worth mentioning that “calcite” describes a mineral and not the rock made exclusively of it. There is at present no agreement on a name that would be geologically correct and acceptable for Egyptologists. The term “travertine” proposed by ASTON (1994) should be avoided as it implies a specific mode of formation that has not been checked, nor confirmed, for the “Egyptian alabaster”. Although the term “calcite” is not geologically perfect, it fits reasonably well the mineralogical nature of this specific material and the need for a widely understandable term. “Calcite-alabaster” (DE PUTTER, KARLSHAUSEN 1992; KLEMM, KLEMM 2008) is also acceptable.

Faience objects produced from the fourth millennium BC in ancient Egypt are considered as the first high-tech ceramics in human history. Despite extensive studies on manufacturing technology, many aspects of this complex technology remain a mystery and there is no methodology in place to unravel the techniques of Egyptian faience object production. Detailed studies presented herein fill the gaps, verifying standing opinions and allowing certain aspects of faience manufacturing technology to be reconstructed. The object of this innovative investigation is a hemispherical faience bowl discovered by archaeologists excavating a Ptolemaic workshop district at the site of Tell Atrib in the southern Nile Delta. The multiproxy analysis included the application of specialised software and preparation techniques coupled with complementary methods of light and digital microscopy, SEM with EDS, XRD, STA with EGA, as well as image analysis. Sources of raw and accessory materials (mineral and organic binders, fluxes, colourants) used for preparing the silica paste and glaze slurry were determined. The results helped to reconstruct how the raw material was prepared and how faience vessels were made. The bowl was moulded by compression using a two-part mould. The moulded and dried bowl was then covered by glaze slurry using the application method. A synthetic colourant, Egyptian Blue, was probably used to colour the glaze. The item was fired once at a temperature of 1050-1150 • C. Oxidised conditions were maintained in the kiln during the firing process and firing at the maximal temperature was relatively short. Application of the multiproxy approach has shed light on the technological aspects of faience bowl manufacturing. The obtained results have confirmed the usefulness of the comprehensive methodology that was applied for the reconstruction of particular manufacturing stages of faience objects.

Metal leaves were widely used as decorative materials in post-Byzantine ritual painting. Fiftytwo icons (mid-15th to mid-19th centuries) were studied by means of analytical techniques in order to reveal the materials and techniques encountered in their metal-leaf decorations.
High-purity gold leaf was used throughout the studied period. Silver was employed rarely and mostly during the latter part of the period in consideration, while metal powders were mostly used from the mid-18th century onwards. The identification of a gold–silver powder mixture and an ‘electrum’-type alloy are among the reported findings, which are novel for post-Byzantine icons. Three micromorphologically distinct highlighting techniques were also documented.

Since the discovery of the now well-known and preserved examples of furniture found in several per-djet of ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom (c. 2686-2160 BCE) and New Kingdom (c. 1550-1069 BCE) it was possible to analyze in detail each object uncovered, revealing how it was built, the composing materials, the techniques that maintained it together and other elements present in its composition. The most interesting fact for this study is that, upon analysis, there seems to be interesting similarities between construction techniques used to assemble both ancient furniture and the ones used nowadays for the same purposes. To test the hypothesis, this paper is focused in three particular objects, the Solid Ebony Chair of Tutankhamun JE 62033, from KV62, and the Chairs of Hetepheres MFA 38.957 and JE 53263, from G7000X,-a much older chair-and analyses its structures, the materials and techniques used to assemble them, the similarities and dissimilarities, if any, between these two examples and to see if the is any correlations with them and their analog structures built three and a half millennia later, in our current days.

Original or copy, that's the Question
Comparison of my original relief with the electroplated relief (galvanoplast)
The galvanoplast I recently obtained for comparison purposes looks like my original relief on a quick glance. However, when looking at the enlarged areas, the differences become clearly visible.
But also the tecnical analysis showed strong hints, that my relief is certainly not a galvanoplast but a driven manual:
• The microstructure of my relief is typical of a multi-heated and re-cooled thin metal work.  The microstructure of  the galvanoplast looks different, and shows a rough structure with the typical for this technique, largely from top to bottom passing stems.
• My relief can be bent very well, but the galvanoplast is totally rigid. This is a further proof that my relief is a driven manual work.
• There are traces of drifting on the back of my original, but not on the galvanoplast. These tracks are clearly visible on the front as well as the back.
For more details see the at my hompage www.bildhaftes-Relief.com

Seven sculptures of Parian marble have been identified in a multi-method provenance study of seventeen objects; sixteen of the sculptures are in the Museum of Fine Arts, and one is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, also in Boston. The basic method used for the identification of the marble was analysis of ratios of stable isotopes of carbon and oxygen. This technique was supplemented by geological (thin section) and chemical analyses. The seven Parian pieces came from both the lychnites quarry (Marathi) and the Paros-2 quarry (Lakkoi + ex-Choridaki). In general the study suggested that throughout antiquity Parian marble tended to be used for better-quality works. Paros-2 marble proved to have been exported to northern Greece in the early 5th century B. C. Two Parian pieces were of late Hellenistic or early Imperial date, one coming from Pompei and the other from Alexandria. Their softly modeled late Hellenistic style, which is fairly comparable to that of sculptures found on Delos, raises the question of whether there was a diaspora of artists from the Cyclades or if finished sculpture was exported from one of the Aegean islands around the time of Augustus. The remaining four sculptures, dating from the 1st and 2nd c. and coming from Italy, are all of notable quality and indicate that Parian marble had considerable prestige in Imperial Italy. A statue assembled from a series of fine Parian blocks at a site far above Rome on the Tiber provides interesting insights into the production of sculpture in the 1st c. B.C.