Study of an archeological opaque red glass bead from China by XRD, XRF, and XANES

Abstract

As a kind of rare archeological founding in China, red decorative beads (300–400 ad) were discovered in Leijiaping, Badong County, Hubei, China. For the first time, this paper reports an advanced structural analysis of glass beads using micro synchrotron X‐ray near‐edge absorption spectroscopy. The results show that in spite of being opaque, the red bead is made of glass containing two forms of copper atoms, including 0+ and 1+. In combination with X‐ray diffraction results, it is advised that the mechanism of red coloration mainly comes from metallic copper. This paper indicates that micro synchrotron X‐ray near‐edge absorption spectroscopy is an outstanding and advanced technology to study ancient glass objects with nondestructive mode. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Synchrotron XANES and ED‐XRF analyses of fine‐paste ware from 13th to 14th century maritime Southeast Asia

“…X‐ray fluorescence (XRF) technique can be used to determine the elemental composition of materials. One of the main attraction of this technique is that it is nondestructive, which makes it very attractive for analysis of samples that are irreplaceable, such as artifacts from an archeological site . The XRF data were analyzed by using statistical approaches to classify samples in to groups based on their compositions .…”

“…The XRF data were analyzed by using statistical approaches to classify samples in to groups based on their compositions . In addition to commonly used XRF, X‐ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is a powerful technique for archaeometry studies . X‐ray absorption spectroscopy is divided into to two regions: (1) the low energy region, which covers photon energy up to about 60 eV above the absorption edge, called the X‐ray absorption near‐edge structure (XANES) and (2) the higher energy region from 60 eV up to ~1000 eV above the absorption edge, called the extended X‐ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS).…”

Colouration mechanism of underglaze copper-red decoration porcelain (AD 13th–14th century), China

“…it is non-destructive, element-selective, sensitive to trace constituents and applicable to amorphous components, have been gradually regarded and applied in the field of cultural heritage, art and archaeometry in recent years (Wang & Wang, 2011;Bardelli et al, 2012;Robinet et al, 2011;Monnier et al, 2010). More recently, synchrotron radiation XANES has also been successfully employed to identify the valence state of copper in glass and copper-red glaze (Zhu et al, 2012;Silvestri et al, 2012).…”