# Photo search and remaining gaps

Updated 11 September 2026. The collection contains **675 photographs**, **177 textiles**, **118 scroll or manuscript views**, and **66 prepared comparisons**. This sweep adds **27 reviewed images** to the previous 648. Unchanged source JPEGs total 2.89 GiB. Counts refer to photographs, with 24 related-view groups helping identify repeated objects and sites.

## Browse by place or material

| Collection | Images | Scope |
| --- | ---: | --- |
| [Egypt](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=egypt#collection) | 98 | Painted tombs, decorated coffins, sculpture, papyri and woven garments. |
| [Pompeii & Rome](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=rome#collection) | 57 | Painted rooms and panels from Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, Stabiae, Roman villas and early medieval Rome. |
| [Ancient Greece](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=greece#collection) | 26 | Bronze Age Aegean frescoes, painted marble, funerary panels and polychrome terracotta. |
| [Europe](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=europe#collection) | 239 | Ice Age pigment, early medieval murals, illuminated pages, polychrome sculpture and woven color. |
| [Ice Age Europe](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=ice-age-europe#collection) | 7 | Original Palaeolithic cave pigment, plus an Azilian painted pebble from the transition into the Holocene. |
| [Early medieval Europe](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=early-medieval-europe#collection) | 57 | Carolingian and Ottonian murals, Lombard painting, Insular manuscripts and gold ink on purple parchment. |
| [Babylon & Sumer](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=mesopotamia#collection) | 12 | Babylonian glazed brick, Early Dynastic painted pottery and earlier Ubaid vessels. |
| [Persia & Iran](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=persia#collection) | 15 | Sasanian wall paintings, glazed friezes from Susa, textiles and manuscripts. |
| [Textiles](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=textiles#collection) | 177 | Dyed, woven, embroidered and painted cloth, from ancient cotton to historic barkcloth. |
| [Asia](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=asia#collection) | 149 | Painted scrolls, palm-leaf pages, temple murals and dyed cloth across Asia. |
| [Macedonia](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=macedonia#collection) | 21 | Ancient tombs, medieval frescoes and historic textiles with qualified regional attributions. |
| [Oceania & Pacific Islands](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=oceania#collection) | 32 | Hawaiian kapa, Pacific barkcloth, dyed fiber, painted paddles and other works from Pacific islands and Australia. |
| [Caribbean](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=caribbean#collection) | 8 | Indigenous painted cave panels from Aruba and the Dominican Republic. |
| [Indigenous North America](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=indigenous-north-america#collection) | 23 | Diné and Hopi textiles, Tlingit and Haida painted works, and Ancestral Pueblo pottery. |
| [Scrolls & manuscripts](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=manuscripts#collection) | 118 | Colored ink, painted parchment, palm-leaf books and scrolls on silk and paper. |
| [Mesoamerica](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=mesoamerica#collection) | 24 | Cacaxtla and Bonampak wall paintings, Teotihuacán murals and Maya painted vessels, stucco and sculpture. |
| [South America](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=south-america#collection) | 41 | Paracas, Nasca and Wari cloth, painted Andean ceramics and rock paintings. |
| [Africa beyond Egypt](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=africa#collection) | 53 | Nubian murals, Ethiopian and Sahelian manuscripts, dyed cloth, San painting and Yoruba polychrome woodwork. |

Collections overlap. A cultural attribution alone does not establish a findspot. Object dates, photograph dates, modern reproductions and later coatings remain distinct.

## Latest additions

- Thirteen original mural views from Mexico: six from Cacaxtla, six from Bonampak and one of Teotihuacán’s Puma Mural. The new [Mesoamerica collection](https://color-study-painted-surfaces.kristen368163.chatgpt.site/?collection=mesoamerica#collection) also brings together the existing museum objects. [INAH’s Cacaxtla context](https://lugares.inah.gob.mx/es/node/5417) and [Bonampak account](https://lugares.inah.gob.mx/es/node/5416) accompany the studies. Two wide Cacaxtla panoramas reach 9,366 and 13,514 pixels across.
- Six Hawaiian kapa photographs and a painted paddle from Buka or north Bougainville in the Solomon Islands archipelago, present-day Papua New Guinea. Barkcloth is beaten fiber rather than woven cloth. These records identify later historic objects; two undated kapa works remain undated instead of borrowing the photograph’s date.
- Three manuscript leaves from the Mamma Haidara collection, photographed in the 2017 Paris exhibition. Their photographers’ CC BY 4.0 grants are retained separately from the public-domain artwork designation. Dates follow the exhibited-source attribution; material identifications that were not independently verified remain qualified.
- Three views of [Olowe of Ise’s palace doors](https://www.britishmuseum.org/visit/object-trails/collecting-and-empire-trail) and a Yoruba Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ mask. Surviving pigments share the surface with exposed wood, carving and shadows. The doors’ collecting history and early-20th-century date are visible in the study context.

Five candidate views were withheld: two likely or documented Bonampak reproductions, a strongly color-processed Cacaxtla mosaic, a Tepantitla view whose original-versus-copy status was unresolved, and a badly color-shifted historical print. The review record is in `data/expansions/2026-09-11-pacific-paintings.json`.

The preceding 40-image sweep remains available: Amenemhat’s tomb at Beni Hasan, Herculaneum, Oplontis, Stabiae, Mari, Erebuni, Dunhuang, Faras, Pazyryk and a Khmer sculpture with later lacquer. That sculpture is Angkor Wat style with unknown exact provenance; it is not a hidden painting from the temple itself.

The earlier Ice Age and early medieval collections remain: six original cave-surface views, an Azilian transition object, and 57 early medieval mural or manuscript images. Detailed acquisition records for both sweeps are retained in `data/expansions/`.

## What remains thin

| Priority | Next useful acquisition |
| --- | --- |
| Angkor Wat | Original high-resolution color photographs of the documented faded paintings. Macquarie University’s [boat-painting record and associated photographs](https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/painting-on-a-wall-of-angkor-wat-of-a-boat-noel-hildago-tan/BwGn38bvUSSvHQ) credit Noel Tan but do not state an open reuse license. The [original study](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/hidden-paintings-of-angkor-wat/C240B6324B44F1BF4DE0818F132546AD) supplies research context. A high-resolution original with an explicit reuse grant is still needed. The [NASA article](https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Manipulating_Satellite_Photos_Now_Reveals_Ancient_Images) remains a technique reference, not permission to republish its images. |
| Pacific islands | Niue hiapo, more material from the modern Solomon Islands, Marquesas and Micronesian painted works. Hawaiian kapa and the Buka/Bougainville paddle broaden coverage but do not fill these gaps. Museum metadata and each image’s reuse terms need separate review; some Te Papa images prohibit modification. Existing Pacific coverage is mostly later historic material. |
| Wider Caribbean | Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Bahamas and the Lesser Antilles. Prioritize painted objects and pictographs rather than incised marks. |
| Mesoamerica | Original Mixtec manuscripts, more Maya sites beyond Bonampak, and painted objects from underrepresented Mesoamerican cultures. The new mural views improve coverage but cluster at three sites. A reviewed Tonindeye/Zouche-Nuttall display photograph may show a facsimile and was withheld; the [British Museum explains that a copy is displayed](https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/indigenous-reframing-fall-aztec-empire). |
| Africa and South America | More West/Central African painted works and Sahelian manuscripts beyond the new Nigerian objects and three leaves from one Timbuktu collection; Amazonian, Mapuche, Colombian, Ecuadorian and Brazilian material. Existing clusters overrepresent a few museums and manuscript books. |
| Northern/eastern Europe | Viking textiles, Baltic and Sámi material, secular painted objects, and more color documentation of early medieval northern Europe. |
| Ancient Asia and the Near East | More original Anatolian painted surfaces, Southeast Asian manuscripts, early Mesopotamian color and Central Asian murals. Several new views of one Mari object do not constitute broad regional coverage. |

“Missing” means absent or thin in this gallery, not absent from the culture or necessarily unavailable online. An unsuccessful search does not establish that no open photograph exists.

## Reuse and interpretation

New photographs were inspected alongside item-specific metadata and saved Commons license-page revisions. Original bytes are preserved. Derived comparisons, thumbnails and photographic social cards retain source-image terms and modification notices; see [CREDITS](https://github.com/kristencline-arch/color-study/blob/main/CREDITS.md). Published color reproductions remain explicitly identified. The separate Phrasikleia reconstruction photograph is labeled as a modern research reference, not an ancient original or a result of this app.

False color can emphasize pigment, dye, stains, repairs, weave and lighting. It cannot identify a pigment, recover an original palette, date a mark, see through opaque overpainting or establish deliberate destruction. Historical interpretation requires source context and independent evidence.

The contribution page includes a photography guide, specific requests and immediate CC BY 4.0 publication. Visitors can report rights, attribution, privacy or context concerns without a GitHub account. Reports are private to the owner.