Investigation of Ancient Roman Pigments by Portable X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy and Polarized Light Microscopy

Abstract

The subject of this study is a collection of raw pigments from a second to early fourth century C.E. pigment shop located in the Area Sacra di S. Omobono, in the Forum Boarium in Rome. The shop was excavated in 1974, yielding a total of more than two kilograms of blue, light blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, and white pigments. An ongoing project to re-examine materials from this excavation resulted in an opportunity to study this remarkable pigment collection. A Bruker Tracer III-SD portable X-ray fluorescence spectro-meter was used to determine major, minor and trace elements present in representative samples of each pigment. On this basis, the types of pigments available for trade in this ancient marketplace were identified as Egyptian blue (two prep-arations), green earth, at least five distinct iron earth pigments (red, yellow, and orange ochres) and lime white (calcium carbonate). Additional characterization of select pigment samples was conducted using polarized light microscopy. Particle characteristics observed under transmitted and reflected light and between crossed-polars were compared to those observed for reference samples of historical pigments.

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