2017-04-05 Davide Domenici (Univ Bologna) - Codex Painting Practices and Technological Traditions

Codex Painting Practices and Technological Traditions in Ancient Mesoamerica: Non-Invasive Scientific Analyses of Pre-Hispanic and Early Colonial Pictorial Manuscripts
5 April 2017, ARF Brownbag
Speaker: Davide Domenici (University of Bologna)
Non-invasive scientific analyses recently performed by the European mobile laboratory MOLAB on a number of pre-Hispanic and early colonial pictorial Mesoamerican manuscripts allowed us to chemically characterize their material compositions, significantly deepening our knowledge of Mesoamerican codex painting practices. Davide Domenici, a Mesoamericanist from the University of Bologna (Italy) working with the MOLAB team, will present the results of the scientific analyses and discuss some of their cultural and historical implications, including a comparison with information recorded in early colonial sources, the spatial and chronological variations pointing to the existence of different technological traditions, the emic values associated with the materiality of color, and the changes that Mesoamerican codex painting practices underwent in early colonial times.