Sunday, October 2, 2011

Infrared imaging of Precolumbian murals at Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico. (News & Notes).

Infrared imaging of Precolumbian murals at Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico. (News & Notes). The Classic Maya ruins of Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico, contain whatmay be the most thematically complex paintings in Precolumbian America.In 1995-96, we recorded these murals by employing equipment that, to ourknowledge, had never before been used in remote settings. The resultssuggest that polychrome paintings, including those in isolated places,benefit from documentation beyond the range of human vision. Bonampak Structure I has three rooms, each covered from floor tocapstone with murals. Room I displays feather dances and tributeofferings. Infrared images reveal cacao beans and Spondylus shells;glyphs itemize five units of 8,000 chocolate beans (Miller 1997). Two`holy lords' appear in bloody conflict and the torture ofvanquished warriors in Room 2. Room 3 exhibits sun dances, penile penile/pe��nile/ (pe��nil) of or pertaining to the penis. pe��nileadj.Of or relating to the penis.penileof or pertaining to the penis. bloodletting bloodletting,also called bleeding, practice of drawing blood from the body in the treatment of disease. General bloodletting consists of the abstraction of blood by incision into an artery (arteriotomy) or vein (venesection, or phlebotomy). and human sacrifice. Who painted the murals? Room 1 presents hieroglyphic hieroglyphic(hī'rəglĭf`ĭk, hī'ərə–)[Gr.,=priestly carving], type of writing used in ancient Egypt. Similar pictographic styles of Crete, Asia Minor, and Central America and Mexico are also called hieroglyphics evidence thatthe overlord of Bonampak was a ruler of nearby Yaxchilan; at least oneYaxchilan artisan sculpted the stone lintels. The small site of Bonampakprobably could not have supported the painterly skill evinced by thecalligraphic fluidity and varying style of the murals. Multiple masterpainters from Yaxchilan were presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. at work. The related LaPasadita, Guatemala, murals may also have been executed by painters fromateliers at Yaxchilan (Kamal et al. 1999). The Bonampak murals were likely painted after the dedication ofStructure 1 on 11 November AD 791 (Julian), just prior to the so-calledMaya collapse. Because of their supposedly unfinished character, one ofus previously proposed that the paintings recorded an `artistic andinscriptional record' of the Classic Maya `demise' (Miller1986: 151). However, excepting a few hieroglyphic captions, thepaintings show an almost microscopic scale and exceptional degree ofcompletion. It is evident that the Bonampak murals were to be observed frommultiple viewing points, some only centimetres from the wall. Thepaintings are not rough, unfinished works of art: only a fewhieroglyphic captions are missing. This points to one of twoexplanations: (1) a deliberate omission of names, or (2) the name glyph A displayed or printed image. In typography, a glyph may be a single letter, an accent mark or a ligature. See grapheme. (character) glyph - An image used in the visual representation of characters; roughly speaking, how a character looks. A font is a set of glyphs. pigments were more fragile than others. No pigments were observed in theinfrared within the captions, and the omissions remain as mysterious asever. Many Maya pigments become transparent at near-infrared wavelengths,thus allowing penetration to carbon-based under-drawing. Some pigmentsare transparent at the wavelengths of infrared film; others require thelonger wavelengths provided by the infrared vidicon vid��i��con?n.A small television camera tube that forms a charge-density image on a photoconductive surface for subsequent electron-beam scanning.[vid(eo) + icon(oscope).] . Located in Room 3is a profile image of the Maya hunting god Zip (FIGURE 1). Thoughvisible, the detail of the carbon-based under-drawing is difficult todiscern. An infrared vidicon image (FIGURE 2) discloses the carbonunder-drawing. Also, virtually none of the glyph detail of Room Icaption 33 is visible (FIGURE 3) while the infrared vidicon image(FIGURE 4) reveals crisp outlines of the glyph block. [FIGURES 1-4 OMITTED] Exceptionally fine detail was found in Room 3, including previouslyunseen microglyphs (FIGURE 5) and small, dynamic figures (not shown),both extremely difficult to see at visible wavelengths. Small detailswere observed in the other two rooms as well. Some calligraphic linesare so thin as to appear to have been made with quills or brushes ofonly a few hairs. This depth of detail indicates that the murals weremore finished than previously thought. [FIGURE 5 OMITTED] We conclude that the most viable approach to imaging ancientpaintings is multi-spectral, including infrared. No amount of squintingor guesswork will detect details beyond human vision, though such imagesmay need complementary photographic formats. The success at remoteBonampak recommends application of this technology to other sites andtraditions of painting. Acknowledgements. We thank the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia eHistoria (INAH INAH Instituto Nacional de Antropolog��a e Historia (Spanish: National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mexico)INAH I Need A Hug ), the Getty Grant Program, the National GeographicSociety, Yale University, and Brigham Young University Brigham Young University,at Provo, Utah; Latter-Day Saints; coeducational; opened as an academy in 1875 and became a university in 1903. It is noted for its law and business schools. . Expeditionmembers included David Wooddell, Justin Kerr, Steven Booras, and Jorgeand Victor Perez de Lara. Douglas M. Chabries, Doran J. Baker, DavidStuart, Sean Widauf, Michael Ware and David Oliver also helped. References KAMAL, O.S., G.A. WARE, S. HOUSTON, D.M. CHABRIES, R.W.CHRISTIANSEN & I. GRAHAM. 1999. Multispectral image processing fordetail reconstruction and enhancement of Maya murals from La Pasadita,Guatemala, Journal of Archaeological Science 26: 1391-1407. MILLER, M.E. 1986. The murals of Bonampak. Princeton (NJ):Princeton University Press. 1997. Imaging Maya art. Archaeology May/June: 34-40. G. WARE, S. HOUSTON, M. MILLER, K. TAUBE & B. DE LA FUENTE De La Fuente is a common surname in the Spanish language meaning of the Source Cristi��n de la Fuente David De La Fuente Juan Ram��n de la Fuente * * Ware & Houston, Brigham Young University, Provo UT 84604,USA. gene_ware@byu.edu Miller, Yale University, New Haven CT 06520, USA.Taube, UC-Riverside, Riverside CA 92521, USA. De la Fuente, UniversidadNacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico, DF.

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