Topic ID #10260 - posted 4/9/2011 3:28 AM
Jennifer Palmer
Webmaster
Artifact Staining Leaves Chemical Questions
Jennifer Palmer
Webmaster
Artifact Staining Leaves Chemical Questions
April 6, 2011
This winter, Gilberto Artioli’s team reported the structures of three new pigment molecules. Because the molecules came from samples that originated near Verona, Italy, the Univ. of Padua geoarchaeologist named two of the brilliant blue dyes after Verona’s Shakespearean star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Artioli’s dyes are also the protagonists of a drama of their own. And for some researchers, things might have been better if the pigments had never existed.
Artioli’s samples came from prehistoric flint tools that last year began showing very visible signs of contamination—a bright blue tinge. The mystery sparked a furor in Italy and in the archaeology community. In ensuing media coverage, the case became as much about finding human culprits for the damage as about finding chemical ones.
“Flint stones are commonly rather unreactive materials,” so the blue cast was especially puzzling, Artioli says. With blue-stained flint samples supplied by Laura Longo, then-curator of Verona’s Natural History Museum, and by the regional office of Italy’s Ministry of Culture, Artioli, analytical chemist Andrea Tapparo, and colleagues set to work. Their earliest tests detected contamination with hydrocarbons but didn’t turn up any colored molecules.
Read the rest here.
April 6, 2011
This winter, Gilberto Artioli’s team reported the structures of three new pigment molecules. Because the molecules came from samples that originated near Verona, Italy, the Univ. of Padua geoarchaeologist named two of the brilliant blue dyes after Verona’s Shakespearean star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Artioli’s dyes are also the protagonists of a drama of their own. And for some researchers, things might have been better if the pigments had never existed.
Artioli’s samples came from prehistoric flint tools that last year began showing very visible signs of contamination—a bright blue tinge. The mystery sparked a furor in Italy and in the archaeology community. In ensuing media coverage, the case became as much about finding human culprits for the damage as about finding chemical ones.
“Flint stones are commonly rather unreactive materials,” so the blue cast was especially puzzling, Artioli says. With blue-stained flint samples supplied by Laura Longo, then-curator of Verona’s Natural History Museum, and by the regional office of Italy’s Ministry of Culture, Artioli, analytical chemist Andrea Tapparo, and colleagues set to work. Their earliest tests detected contamination with hydrocarbons but didn’t turn up any colored molecules.
Read the rest here.
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