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On The Trail of the Fathers: The Serendipitous Santos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

Harry A. Alden  and
Alvaro E. Galvis
Harry A. Alden*
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education
Alvaro E. Galvis
Affiliation:
San Francisco State University
*
aldenh@scmre.si.edu

Extract

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I am a botanist, with an expertise in plant anatomy, specifically wood anatomy. In my capacity of mkroscopist for the Smithsonian Institution, I help answer research questions developed by curators, conservators, anthropologists and archaeologists. I am typically presented with a variety of materials that range from large, entire objects from museums to small, deteriorated, fragmentary samples from archaeological digs. Many of the requests center around the questions “What is it?” and “Where did it come from?” The answers to these questions help determine the traditional materials used by a culture and the distribution of these objects through trade and cultural exchange. Of the numerous requests that I receive, one or two each year tend to stand out as captivating examples of applied optical microscopy. The one that I would like to present in this article (along with my intern for the project - Alvaro Galvis) is the early Catholic statues (santos) from Chihuahua, Mexico and southern California.

Type
Research Article
Information
Microscopy Today , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , July 2004 , pp. 8 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2004

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