Trajan's Column in Colour

[Nathan Ross]

This is from a few weeks ago - does anyone know any more about it?  hock:  

Trajan’s Column Shows its True Colors

Trajan’s Column, one of Rome's most famous monuments, could soon be restored to its original glories. An international team of scientists and researchers have announced the initial findings of a revolutionary new analysis of the column’s ancient paint scheme, and their discoveries look set to overturn many preconceived notions about the appearance of the Roman army on campaign.

Heather Prowsen, Archaeology Today, February 17, 2010

Erected in 113 A.D. in honor of the Emperor Trajan (53-117 A.D.), the huge marble column stands almost 100 feet in height. It is decorated with a spiral relief sculpture, winding 23 times around and depicting the story of Trajan's triumphant campaigns in Dacia, now part of Romania. One of the best preserved of all Roman artworks, the monument has however lost what might have been it most distinctive feature -- color. "The column was a carnival of color. The soldiers, the shields, the horses, the rivers, the sky were all painted," explains team leader Maurizio Anastasi, head of the technical office of Rome Superintendency for Archaeology.

Over nearly 2000 years, the heavily polluted air of central Rome has obliterated all traces of the pigments. But Professor Anastasi’s team, which includes a team of scientists from the WMG foundation at the UK’s Warwick University, together with archaeologists from the British School in Rome and the Università degli Studi Roma, have found a high-tech way around this problem.

Recent advances in technical photography, including UV fluorescence and reflectography, allow painted ornamentation to be made visible even in areas where no pigment has survived, due to chemical transformations of the surface of the stone. Professor Giovanni Verro, a scientist from the conservation and scientific research department of the Università degli Studi Roma, explains that the team have been using portable detectors with light-emitting diodes to beam infrared light onto the surface of the column, and a camera that can detect the light reflected by the chemically-altered stone particles.

“These areas were then analysed using energy dispersive X-ray analysis (SEM-EDX), to provide information about the chemical elements present in the stone,” Professor Verro explains. “Examination by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy with attenuated total reflectance (ATR) microscopy, provided further information about the chemical composition and structure of the areas studied.” This information has allowed a complex picture to be built up of the colored pigments used on the monument when it was first erected.

The results have surprised even the team members themselves. “Many of the colors found were what we had expected,” says Professor Simon Baker, archaeologist at the British School in Rome. “The sky is blue, the trees are green, and the skin areas show traces of pink flesh tones. What’s been most surprising, though, are the colors of the armor and clothing worn by the troops.” Until now, historians have assumed that the Roman army dressed in plain colours, with tunics of red or brown and polished metal armor. Not so, believes Professor Baker. “The analysis so far shows an astonishing variety of pigments, from the usual red to blue, green and yellow. In places, we’ve been able to ascertain patterned tunics in different colors, cheques and stripes, even polka-dots.”

More extraordinary still are the paint traces from the armor of the soldiers. “We’ve believed for some time that ancient Greek warriors often painted their armor,” says Simon Baker, “but never expected the Romans might have done the same. But alongside grey, we’ve been finding red and orange, pink and pale blue. Even the famous banded or segmented armor of the legionaries appears to have been painted in bright colors. Some samples show alternating bands of red and white, or yellow and green. The overall effect is very striking, almost ‘psychedelic’, and quite a change from the drab, rather spartan image suggested by many recent reconstructions.”

Work on the column is still ongoing, but Professor Anastasi and his team hope to present their findings in a public exhibition at Rome’s Museo della Civiltà Romana, alongside plaster casts of the column itself, later this year.

- Nathan