Lapis Lazuli in an Enigmatic ‘Purple7rsquo; Pigment from a Thirteenth-Century BC Greek Wall Painting

Mineral Pigments in Archaeology: Their Analysis and the Range of Available Materials

“…Apart from the tentative identification made by Brysbaert [154], ultramarine is not seen in Europe until the early Mediaeval Period. In Britain it has been identified on Anglo Saxon and European manuscripts dating from the late 9th Century through to 11th Century [97].…”

“…The first recognised uses of ultramarine pigment were in the Sogdian States in the 1st Millennium CE. However, Brysbaert identifies what she calls an "enigmatic" occurrence of ground lapis lazuli used in a purple pigment found at the mainland Greek Bronze Age site of Gla [154]. The mineral was identified using Raman spectroscopy and the purple paint was created from red ochre (hematite) mixed with blue pigments.…”

Painted plaster from Bronze Age Thebes, Boeotia (Greece): a technological study

“…An HK plaster fragment (sample THA 7) has preserved a purple colour. Generally speaking, this colour was obtained in various ways in the Bronze Age Aegean (Brysbaert, 2006). XRD analysis showed that the HK sample contained calcite, quartz, haematite and dolomite.…”

“…This organic material was identified for the first time in the context of Bronze Age Aegean painted plaster, thus providing an exciting piece of information in relation to the potential uses of new techniques in the field of painted plaster Vandenabeele, 2004, 2006). Equally interesting were the identification of murex purple by means of MRS on a mural from Akrotiri (Chryssikopoulou, 2004;Chryssikopoulou and Sotiropoulou, 2003) and its likely identification on a mural from Gla (Brysbaert, 2006;Brysbaert and Perdikatsis 2008).…”

“…Table 1 lists these samples according to where they were found, and provides macroscopic information about both pigment and plaster layers. Painted plaster has been considered a commodity in Mycenaean palatial contexts, and played a specific role in diplomatic relationships between elites from the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean during the latter part of the Bronze Age (Brysbaert, 2006(Brysbaert, , 2007). The scenes depicted at Thebes reflect, in some cases, themes recurrent elsewhere on the mainland and in the Bronze Age.…”