Surface texture of lithic materials

A preview: seeing is believing

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The surface texture is an important characterisitic of the material and is used for classification and identification of it's source. Therfore a digital online reference collection of archaelogical lithic material (flint) would have to show the surface texture of each type of material.

More information about lithic material can be found here. And there are also (international) sites with an online lithic material collection or classification system: LITHOTHECA, Comparative Raw Material Collection (Hungary), SARC,stone age reference collection (Norway), Illinois chert sources (USA).

All images where taken by a Nikon D50 camera with a Nikon AF Micro Nikkor lens(60mm, 1:2.8). Selection of shutterspeed, apperture and focus was done manually. The orignal image size was 3008x2000 pixels.

Overview

To give an indication of the complete object an 'overview' image with a scalebar was taken.

A	B	C	D
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	[s][m][l]		[s][m][l]

Sequences

The camera was mounted on a tripod and the rotation table was operated by hand. The subsequent angles where choosen such that the image sequence revealed the surface properties.

A

Fresh fracture.

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View sequence: [small] [medium]

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B

Fresh fracture.

[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]

View sequence: [small] [medium]

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C

Old fracture, with shiny and wrinkly looking surface.

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View sequence: [small] [medium]

Fracture caused by frost probably initiated by the impurity visible on the left. Small glittering crystals (prb. quarts) can be observed.

[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]

View sequence: [small] [medium]

Old fracture with shiny and smooth surface.

[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]

View sequence: [small] [medium]

Showing more detail, but the color is to light and also some lens flare visible.

[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]	[s][m][l]

View sequence: [small] [medium]