Wax on pottery

I am posting this message for a colleague working on Peruvian
ceramics.

    We have come across some pottery that was cleaned and then
    coated with wax to "seal" it. Any idea what kind of wax might
    have been used by ceramics collectors in the early part of this
    century? beeswax, or something else?

    I plan to do some runs with our portable PIMA spectrometer--we
    are building up a reference library of spectra on museum
    restoration materials (very useful for comparing to original
    ceramic surfaces).

Angela Steiner Neller
Curator of Collections
Ill. Trans. Arch. Research Program and the Laboratory of
    Anthropology
Department of Anthropology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
209 Nuclear Physics Lab, 23 Stadium Drive, MC-571
Champaign, IL  61820
Office Phone: 217-333-0263
Program Fax: 217-244-7458
Program Office: 217-244-4244


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 15:22
               Distributed: Wednesday, September 5, 2001
                       Message Id: cdl-15-22-015
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