Use Of Colorants In Pottery Fragments Coverings From The Rio Salado (Buenos Aires Province, Argentina)

Numerous pottery fragments from the rio Salado microregion (Buenos Aires province) show the use of mineral colorants coverings, mainly red and occasionally white. With these colorants the hunter gatherer fishers groups made coverings or painted decorations on the surfaces of several pots. The aim of this paper is to identify and analyze the compositional data from the inorganic fraction of coverings of these two colors which were applied to pots from different archaeological sites. The analytical techniques used were dispersive X ray fluorescence in length of wave (FRXWD), X-ray fluorescence with geometry of Total reflection (FRXT), X ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectrometry. Preliminary results show that pots with red topping, the most frequent in the assemblages, are composed by hematite. White coverings are the result of mixtures that contain calcium and titanium. Gypsum and bone, which are present in some of the samples, could have been used as mineral colorants or as binders for the toppings preparation.