My friend Tim gave me a bit of old pottery to look at. He reckons it’s about 5000 years old. I have no idea how he knows that but I’ll take his word for it because he works for TimeTeam the TV archaeology show, or volunteers, or something. Anyway, he’s quite good at old bits of pot.
The pot was found on Salisbury Plain and I had a look at it through the microscope. It certainly looks manmade. Lots of sandy and clayey aggregates bound together rather neatly.
The first pictures are taken with a Cooke Troughton and SImms M6000 stereomicroscope. Unfortunately I am not able to take proper photos through the M6000 so they have been taken rather shakily with a phone camera. It was extremely tricky.
The rest of the pictures were taken using a canon EOS 1100D through a Cooke Troughton and Simms M2000 microscope with universal illuminator and a Vickers 10X dark ground objective. As the pottery was so thick (several mm) some areas appear out of focus. I’m really not well equipped for anything thicker than a few microns but I think you get the general idea. Aggregates, clay – definitely a bit of old pot. Huurah!
Spock's Sister Sees 
Comments on: "A piece of old pottery through the microscope" (7)
That looks too cool. I’m amazed you were able to take those pictures with your camera phone. I’m a little bit of a rock geek, and somehow that is transferring to these pottery photos.
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It’s not ideal. I have to admit I swore more than once!
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Try Stacking. If your camera and be rock steady, then a series of photos may have the “in focus” parts extracted and combined into a wonderful, all in focus single photo.! use NIH Imagej. find it under name on the net
Karl Florida, US
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Ah yes! Those pictures were taken before I had any proper photography equipment by holding a phone camera over the eyepiece. Not easy at all.
I now have a proper microscope camera adapter and I have been looking into image stacking software.
I was thinking about using helicon remote but I’ll take a look at NIH Image.
Thanks for the suggestion 🙂
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I’ll repost the pictures once I have stacked them!
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Have you tried blackboard paint with the hammeright?
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no, is blackboard paint not water based?
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