To browse Academia. Based on the pottery context, the material would have been part of the decoration of a public or private space remodelled towards the end of the 1st century AD. Several samples from to the middle area of the assemblage, including panels, inter-panels and a frieze, were selected and studied using X-ray diffraction XRD , X-ray fluorescence XRF , Raman, gas chromatography and petrographic analysis.
The results revealed the use of hematite, cinnabar, minium and goethite in different panels, as well as goethite, Egyptian blue, calcite, glauconite and carbon for the decorative motifs. They allowed us to define the painting techniques used and how they have affected the degradation of the pigments. We aim with this work to carry out an identification of pigments from these Iberian wall paintings beginning of the 4th century B.
Small wall fragments with pigment decoration and red lumps found in ceramic vessels were analyzed by non destructive Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence spectrometry EDXRF in order to characterize the inorganic elements of the pigments. The results of the analysis have led to the identification of the blue pigment as Egyptian blue and the red pigments as hematite and vermilion, all of them applied over a preparation layer of calcium carbonate and quartz.
These analyses are very important to compare the materials used in domestic wall painting with the pigments used in sculptures, temples or tombs. In the Roman wall paintings different white colours were used, named Paraetonium, Melinum, Anularia, Eretria, Argentaria, etc. FTIR, Raman spectroscopy and X-Ray diffraction were applied to study different white pigments, such as calcite, aragonite, dolomite and huntite, white carbonates present in archaeological findings from roman walls in the Mediterranean region.
This study showed that it is possible to distinguish and identify these components in white colours. About samples of Roman wall paintings were analysed and it was observed that often aragonite is associated to precious coloured pigments. On the basis of the obtained results some considerations about the period in which the different kinds of white pigments were used are proposed. A group of wall painting fragments discovered at Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, an important Roman archeological site located in the former Roman province of Dacia Romania , have been investigated with the aim of defining the material composition of their pictorial layers and exploring the pictorial technology used.
