Edited by Leslie Rainer and Angelyn Bass Rivera

For millennia, people of all cultures have decorated the surfaces of their domestic, religious, and public buildings. Earthen architecture in particular has been, and continues to be, a common ground for surface decoration such as paintings, sculpted bas-reliefs, and ornamental plasterwork. This volume explores the complex issues associated with preserving these surfaces. Divided into four themes—archaeological sites, museum practice, historic buildings, and living traditions—it examines the conservation of decorated surfaces on earthen architecture within these different contexts through case studies from Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas.

The publication is the result of a colloquium held in 2004 at Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, coorganized by the Getty Conservation Institute and the U.S. National Park Service (NPS). The meeting brought together fifty-five conservators, cultural resource managers, materials scientists, engineers, architects, archaeologists, anthropologists, and artists from eleven countries to present recent conservation work and discuss possibilities for future research and collaboration.

Leslie Rainer is a senior project specialist and wall paintings conservator at the GCI. Angelyn Bass Rivera is an architectural conservator with the NPS at Bandelier National Monument.

220 pages, 9 × 11 inches
70 color and 70 b/w illustrations
paper, $75.00

This book can be ordered online.