Buttons, Beads, Thimbles, and...???

Hi folks!

This lovely Thursday finds the PTAP crew diligently working in the lab, washing and cataloging the seemingly infinite supply of artifacts from our excavations at Burch House. For today's blog I thought I would put up a couple of pictures of some of our interesting small finds.

The category of small finds would not be complete without the inclusion of buttons! Those of you out in the field have probably noticed that we have been coming across a lot of buttons while screening, as well as beads, thimbles, clothing pins, buckles, and clasps. It seems to me that there was a lot of crafty stuff going on...perhaps Mrs. Burch made a bit of money working as a seamstress?

To the left are two different examples of bone buttons we have been finding. The one on the far left is a bone disc with a single hole. It clearly is a button...but I am not sure how a button with a single hole was affixed to clothing. Any ideas? This type of button is typical of the 18th and 19th century. This broad range of dates is not super helpful for dating-generally it is quite difficult to date individual buttons, an exception being those from military uniforms which often have particular designs. The second button is also bone, but has an area on the back where a metal loop was attached in order to sew the button to a coat.


As for the beads, it seems highly unlikely that they were trade beads given their design and the context in which they were found. Many of them were from more recently deposited soils, and were not in strata containing aboriginal material. I actually have been quite surprised by how few aboriginal artifacts we have been finding around the Burch House, given the number of flakes and fire-cracked rock found during other excavations at Port Tobacco. Many of the beads we have found are small round glass beads, often being black or blue in color, as is the one to the right.

The thimbles we have found are all similar. They are made from a copper alloy unlike older thimbles which were often made of brass, are undecorated, and are average in size (meaning they look very similar to modern thimbles!) I will try to get a picture of one of them up tomorrow or next week.


Of course, we have no definite evidence that someone living in Burch House was a seamstress, I am merely speculating such based on the artifacts. On that note, I leave you with a an artifact so mysterious, not even we can figure it out! My bet is that it is some sort of finger guard that would be used during quilting or sewing-what do you all think? Click on the images to the left and right for a close-up!









Not to worry, we are saving plenty of artifacts for our volunteers to wash on Saturday!

Kelley

Bone Button

Stalwart catalogers, Anne and Kelley--having first dried off after a couple of hours of water screening--identified this bone button from Stratum 2 of Unit 52 (Compton Field).

Buttons such as these are fairly common on historic period sites, particularly of the 19th century. Shell buttons are also common and I will write a piece on them some time soon based on my research on shell button making in Delaware.

Both bone and shell buttons can be made with a simple lathe and drill technology. The lathing is particularly evident on the reverse side (lower image) and drilling is clearly evident in the holes on both sides. This piece is about 0.67" (17.25 mm) in diameter and 0.17" (4.25 mm) thick. The bone likely is from a large mammal and the source of the manufactured piece (i.e., domestic or imported) is uncertain. There were stores in town that sold buttons and other goods necessary for the making and maintenance of garments.

Buttons fall within that category of artifacts likely to have been lost, rather than intentionally discarded, but the fact that this item has been broken suggests that it was intentionally removed from a garment after it broke and then thrown away. That suggests that the deposit whence it was recovered represents trash disposal.

Jim