Munsell notations and color names: Recommendations for archaeological practice

Abstract

Archaeologists have long used the Munsell Soil-Color Charts for describing the color of stratigraphic contexts and unglazed pottery. The range of colors in these charts has limited the wider application of the Munsell system in archaeology, and here I review the merits of four complementary color sets: the Munsell Color Charts for Plant Tissues, The New Munsell Student Color Set, the Munsell Bead Color Book, and the Geological Rock-Color Chart. Since the Munsell system does not include color names, I advocate for the adoption of Inter-Society Color Council-National Bureau of Standards (ISCC-NBS) names for colors not found in the Munsell Soil-Color Charts. Using a compromise between these nomenclatures, I collated a list of color names and prepared freely available name charts that can be inserted into the books’ bindings. The solutions outlined here will allow archaeologists to describe a fuller spectrum of colors, while maintaining a terminology that is intelligible to their peers and consistent with past publications.