Photographing Artefacts on Glass

The archaeological objects on display in The Higgins’ galleries form only one part of the work we do.

Behind the scenes we are carrying on with our programme of collections management work on objects in the store. We monitor their condition, check their details in the database and where necessary photograph the artefacts.

Objects placed on a surface, even when lit appropriately, cast a shadow which shows in photographs, but we were recently introduced to a technique by a visiting researcher who instead placed artefacts on a sheet of raised glass and illuminated them from the sides. Although a shadow is still cast, because the glass is raised the shadow is thrown to the side and the object appears to float.

So, we have since been experimenting with two LED floodlights (the sort used for security lighting), a sheet of glass, and an improvised arrangement of boxes to position things upon, similar to this picture. The lights are easily re-positioned, raised or lowered, or even one switched off, to bring the best out of each artefact.

It’s early days and our methods are still evolving but we have obtained some very pleasing results using this technique. By using a raking light surface detail can be picked out that might otherwise not show and the background can easily be changed if desired by sliding different coloured card underneath, but we quickly found that using black shows every speck of dust on the glass really well! We tend to use a mid-grey background for most things.

The technique works best with single items otherwise the shadow from one object tends to be thrown under another, and this arrangement doesn’t support large artefacts, so it’s horses for courses, but it’s still a useful technique to have in the studio.

As we were processing boxes of artefacts from the Near East at the time that we learned of the technique we immediately tried it on some of the collection’s cuneiform tablets. The raking light brings out the details well on this example which has collection accession number BEDFM 564. Visible are the wedge-shaped writing made by a stylus and also the impressions made by a cylinder seal. Note also the lack of shadow around the tablet. 

Cuneiform writing was invented in Mesopotamia in around 3200 BCE and evolved over the next three thousand years and was used to write in several languages. We hope one day to be able to submit photographs of our cuneiform tablets for translation as we’d love to know more about when and where they were made, what they say, and in which languages.

Written by Keith Balmer, Collections Volunteer