Egypt
The Scientist (Bob Grant)
See the above page for the full story.
- Getting To The Root Of Egyptian Hair
Petrie Museum Blog Thanks to Jan Picton for the news that the Petrie Museum is co-operating in an interesting new project. Called “African Combs: 5000 years of culture, politics, and identity,” a multi-disciplinary project at the Fitzwilliam Museum,...
- Analyzing The Book Of The Dead
Analyzing Pigments in the Book of the Dead Using XRF Spectroscopy Brooklyn Museum blog (Caitlin Jenkins) With excellent photos and diagrams. One of the many scientific analytical techniques used in art conservation is called X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy,...
- The Puzzle Of Rekhmire's Pygmy Mammoth
ScienceBlogs blog (Darren Naish) With photos One of the things that came up in the many comments appended to the article on Bob's painting of extinct Maltese animals was the famous Egyptian tomb painting of the 'pygmy mammoth'. You're...
- New Method Could Revolutionize Dating Of Ancient Treasures
Science Daily Scientists have developed a new method to determine the age of ancient mummies, old artwork, and other relics without causing damage to these treasures of global cultural heritage. Reporting at the 239th National Meeting of the American...
- Journal: Archaeometry Vol 51/3
Wiley InterScience The latest issue of the journal Archaeometry has an article which may be of interest: A MULTI-ANALYTICAL APPROACH FOR THE CHARACTERIZATION OF COMMODITIES IN A CERAMIC JAR FROM ANTINOE (EGYPT)* (p 480-494) E. RIBECHINI, M. P. COLOMBINI,...
Egypt
Sample, don't trample
The Scientist (Bob Grant)
Historical, archaeological, and paleontological artifacts are precious. And often preciously small: a 500-millimeter fossil fragment, 2 milligrams of charcoal from a prehistoric fire. Decoding the chemical composition of a material—especially things like bone, shell and teeth—can yield a wealth of information about the organism and time to which it belonged. But often studying something means dismantling it, and the thought of grinding some part of these tiny treasures into a fine powder for analysis makes museum curators cringe.
In a lab at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Conservation Institute in early spring, scientist Odile Madden fingers tortoise shell hair combs and samples of elephant tusks. She explains that one technique can differentiate between an object made out of ivory from an engendered elephant species and one made from cow horn, for example.
Raman spectroscopy can peer into the molecular interstices of many materials, fingerprinting their composition and the nature of their chemical bonds in great detail without harming the object it's probing. Other nondestructive techniques, such as infrared spectroscopy, analyze molecular structure with less resolution. "Infrared spectroscopy can tell you that you have a protein. It can't tell you if you have keratin, which is the protein of horns and hair and turtle shells," Madden says.
See the above page for the full story.
- Getting To The Root Of Egyptian Hair
Petrie Museum Blog Thanks to Jan Picton for the news that the Petrie Museum is co-operating in an interesting new project. Called “African Combs: 5000 years of culture, politics, and identity,” a multi-disciplinary project at the Fitzwilliam Museum,...
- Analyzing The Book Of The Dead
Analyzing Pigments in the Book of the Dead Using XRF Spectroscopy Brooklyn Museum blog (Caitlin Jenkins) With excellent photos and diagrams. One of the many scientific analytical techniques used in art conservation is called X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy,...
- The Puzzle Of Rekhmire's Pygmy Mammoth
ScienceBlogs blog (Darren Naish) With photos One of the things that came up in the many comments appended to the article on Bob's painting of extinct Maltese animals was the famous Egyptian tomb painting of the 'pygmy mammoth'. You're...
- New Method Could Revolutionize Dating Of Ancient Treasures
Science Daily Scientists have developed a new method to determine the age of ancient mummies, old artwork, and other relics without causing damage to these treasures of global cultural heritage. Reporting at the 239th National Meeting of the American...
- Journal: Archaeometry Vol 51/3
Wiley InterScience The latest issue of the journal Archaeometry has an article which may be of interest: A MULTI-ANALYTICAL APPROACH FOR THE CHARACTERIZATION OF COMMODITIES IN A CERAMIC JAR FROM ANTINOE (EGYPT)* (p 480-494) E. RIBECHINI, M. P. COLOMBINI,...