Maya nobles wore mirrors on their backs ... torch while his wife engages in a painful rite: She pulls a thin, obsidian-studded rope through her tongue. These fragments of cooled lava, believed ...

Two new trace element analyses have taken a fresh look at obsidian mirrors crafted by Inca and Aztec artisans. Obsidian was most often used by peoples around the world to make flaked stone tools ...

Geochemical analysis of the museum objects indicate that they were all made from obsidian from Mexico. The mirror in Dee’s possession and a similar one were made with obsidian from Pachuca ...

For the Maya, who did not have metal tools, obsidian (or volcanic glass) was highly valued because of its sharp edges for use as cutting instruments. Maya lords and other elites derived power from ...

Now, a new analysis of Dee's infamous mirror has finally traced its origins — not to the spirit world, but to the Aztec Empire. Obsidian mirrors such as Dee's were known from Aztec culture ...

Dee may have bought the mirror in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) in the 1580s. S. Campbell / Antiquity An obsidian “spirit mirror” used by John Dee, an advisor to England’s ...

Researchers used a portable x-ray fluorescence scanner to examine John Dee’s mirror, as well as three other obsidian objects—two almost-identical circular mirrors and a polished rectangular ...

A team of Polish archaeologists diving in a possibly sacred lake in northern Guatemala has recovered hundreds of Mayan artifacts, including ceremonial bowls and obsidian blades that may have been ...