A piece of old pottery through the microscope
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!
