Hi back!
As far as I was told, the Mensell book is used primarily to describe the
color of the soils in which one is excavating.  And although I do find
its use rather difficult at times--even frustrating, I think its a good
idea to try and use a standardized medium for description whenever
possible.  I agree that color-blindness (color-sight impaired for all the
pc people out there) can pose a problem when trying to interprit the
Munsell or the soil for that matter, but the use of a helter-skelter
descriptive vocabulary could compound the problem as well.  For example,
I'm not so sure I know what seaweed green looks like.  Being an avid
sushi buff, I am familliar with several shades of seaweed.  My point is,
that we must be careful when trying to describe colors.  These things can
be important.  The munsell is simply a standard code we all recognize.
Though it may be frustrating, its all we have right now.  I would like to
see an easier system developed--one that would allow us to recreate the
colors we find in the ground, as opposed to trying to conform our ground
colors to the book.
 
Joel Tyberg
Department of Anthropology
University of Maryland
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On Tue, 12 Dec 1995, Eliot Braun wrote:
 
> Hi, I find that Munsell is not a good idea and I'm against its use.  I've
> heard the same thing from a number of English colleagues.  Much data is
> difficult to focus on and long strings of numbers for color coding
> pottery seems, to me, impossible to comprehend.  The only way I can use
> it is to have a very expensive and hard to acquire little booklet in hand
> and keep looking up information.
>         Since the color thing form most earth derived artifacts includes
> things we visualize individually, dependent upon the degree of
> sensitivity or blindness to color, the kind of light an object is viewed
> in, etc. (variabilities ad infinitum), I find that the simplest way to
> give a reader some idea of the color is to use the names of colors and
> very unscientific descriptors.  My latest effort is with glazed wares
> which are, I think, not included in Munsell (another problem).  Does
> anybody object to my describing one glaze as seaweed green?  I think that
> for most people this evokes what is necessary, some sense of the color of
> an object.
>         Here in the mideast we tend to lump all brown to red earthen
> colors in the red category and even have a convention for drawing them.
> Most are slips based on clays with high ferrous content.  The addition of
> munsell to descriptions would be more exact as far as the color but no
> more than a few words.  Further, much pottery is not uniform in color and
> so longer and longer strings of numbers are necessary.  There's also the
> problem of which come first, etc.
>         I hope that ? Munsell forgives me.  I think that his opus magnum
> should be left out of archaeology in most cases.
>         Eliot Braun Israel Antiquities Authority
>
> On Mon, 11 Dec 1995, Francine Cote wrote:
>
> > Does anyone know where we can find a copy of the Munsell Color
> > Code?  Any help would be appreciated.
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
>