An Iron Age Painted Sherd

While we work primarily with metals in the Kaman conservation lab, we had a particularly lovely painted sherd come through the other week. This sherd was excavated from an Iron Age level at Kaman Kalehöyuk and is typical of the painted ceramics from that period. It was found broken in two and the painted design was partially obscured by soil and surface concretions.

Conservation Intern Claire D'Izarny first cleaned off the soil using cotton swabs wetted with deionized water and then removed the concretions by scalpel. While cleaning the sherds, Claire decided to make use of our Dino-lite USB microscope to show what it is like to do this delicate work under the microscope.  

Here are photos taken with the Dino-lite showing a detail of the painted design before and after removing the concretions.

Now that the painted sherd has been cleaned and re-assembled, it can be drawn, photographed, and studied!