Gotta light?

We take matches and propane lighters for granted, but what if--in the Colonial period--you wanted to start a fire or light a pipe? Well, if lucky, there would be a fire in a neighbor's hearth from which you could borrow an ember. Otherwise, you start from scratch, or rather, from a strike-a-light.

Several weeks ago, while working on a project in southern Prince George's County, Maryland...a half hour or so north of Port Tobacco...the GAC team recovered a very small flake of what appeared to be English flint (pictured at right). It is only three-quarters of an inch long, about a half inch wide, and about 0.15 inches thick. The magnified images clearly show that small flakes were removed from around the edges on both sides.

I think these flake removals were unintentional, or a byproduct of striking this small flake on a piece of iron or steel, the resulting sparks lighting a bit of tinder with which to start a fire.

Since I was taking pictures of the flake with my digital microscope anyway, I amped the magnification to 200 diameters to see if there were any fossil radiolaria (plankton) or sponge spicules in the matrix. These fossil invertebrates commonly occur in sedimentary flints and cherts. There were none to be found, but I did identify several minute bits of iron, one of which appears in the right-most image. It may be possible to identify the source of this stone, or at least to verify that it is English flint rather than a North American chert. We did find some other Colonial or Early Republic artifacts around this find.

Jim

Strike-a-light

The history boys (Pete, Scott, and me) completed the survey of the fields south of Port Tobacco this afternoon. It was a bit of a trying day, the winds not yet having picked up and the deer flies deciding it was a good day to get out and reproduce. Ah, spring.

We collected nary an historic artifact today...all prehistoric, including projectile points, pottery, and the usual flakes and fire-cracked rock.

I thought I might share a bit about one historic artifact that we collected two days ago on the earliest of our historic sites: a strike-a-light (see below).

This nugget of English flint (it's barely an inch long) looks a little like a gunflint and, in fact, worked as such; however, instead of being clenched in the hammer of a flintlock rifle it was held firmly between the thumb and forefinger of some anonymous colonist. Struck against a piece of iron it would have sparked, igniting a small wad of tinder, then kindling a fire. Sulphur matches weren't even a glint in an inventor's eye at the time and many folks had a flint and steel kit for the purpose of lighting a kitchen fire. Now all we have to do is find the kitchen, which I think we can. We are, after all, archaeologists: if we can find a 'match,' how hard can it be to find the hearth?

Jim

PS. Voting on the choice of "Movie Night" ends tomorrow. All in favor of Jim's home movies of him as a child, say yea! Maybe we could just watch those and forego the action films. There are about fifteen hours worth, but if we spread them out over five nights there is no reason anyone should miss a single minute.