Maya Blue is an unusual blue pigment used on pottery, sculpture, and
murals from the Preclassic to the Colonial period. Until the late 1960s,
its composition was unknown, but chemists working in Spain, Belgium,
Mexico, and the United States identified Maya Blue as a combination of
indigo and the unusual clay mineral palygorskite (also called
attapulgite). A source of palygorskite in the Maya area was unknown for
years; then ethnoarchaeological research in the mid-1960s demonstrated
that the contemporary Maya recognized the unique physical properties of
palygorskite and used it as an additive for pottery temper and for curing
certain types of illnesses. Because of its importance in Maya Blue,
pre-Hispanic sources of the mineral were then suggested based on
ethnoarchaeological data. One of these sources was the cenote in the town
of Sacalum, Yucatan. This paper briefly reviews the history of the Maya
Blue research from an anthropological perspective and presents evidence of
a second possible pre-Hispanic mining site for palygorskite at Yo'
Sah Kab near Ticul, Yucatan. Archaeological and technological approaches
have demonstrated the use, distribution, composition, and characteristics
of Maya Blue, but ethnoarchaeology has related it to Maya language and
culture and to possible pre-Hispanic sources of one of its constituents,
palygorskite.