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Photographing Translucent, Transparent, and Multicolored Artifacts4

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Ronald L. Ives
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Extract

Projectile points and other small artifacts chipped from cryptocrystalline silicate minerals constitute a rather difficult photographic problem, for which there is no single solution. Reviews of both photographic and archaeological literature disclose little information on the subject, but show that better photographic methods are badly needed.

When the artifacts to be photographed are opaque, dull-surfaced, and of a single color, standard photographic methods, skilfully used, will produce satisfactory illustrations. General discussions of these methods are numerous in photographic literature: a good summary is given in Ridgway's Scientific Illustration.

Many small artifacts are translucent at the edges or elsewhere, transparent, multicolored, or have shiny surfaces. Good figures cannot be secured from these by “straight” photographic methods. Several special techniques, largely adopted from other branches of science, will be outlined here.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , January 1941 , pp. 263 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1941

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Footnotes

4

The writer is indebted to Drs. W. D. Johnston, Jr., and K. E. Lohman, of the U. S. Geological Survey, and Earl Morris, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, for helpful discussions of the problems involved in artifact photography, and to the University of Colorado Museum for use of equipment.

References

1 Sayles, E. B.: Archeological Survey of Texas. Plate XVII, Medallion Series, No. XVII, Gila Pueblo, Globe, Arizona, 1935.

2 Campbell, Elizabeth W., and William H.: The Pinto Basin Site. Plate 8, Southwest Museum Papers, No. 9, Los Angeles, 1935. Also: The Archaeology of Pleistocene Lake Mohave. Plate XXV, Southwest Museum Papers, No. 11, Los Angeles, 1937.

3 Toulouse, Joseph H., Jr.: “The Excavation of the Former Mission of San Gregorio de Abo.” (In preparation).

5 Ridgway, John L., Scientific Illustration. Stanford University Press, 1938, pp. 11–15, 56–63Google Scholar.