Title

Archaeological Artifacts

Description

Artifacts found during the 2017-2018 Pope County Archaeological Survey.

An historic artifact assemblage was collected at this site. Methods of collection included metal detection, surface collection, and shovel testing inside and next to the depression. The artifacts indicate a long period of use throughout the 19th century related to a habitation.
Artifacts were recovered from architectural, personal, and domestic classes.
The assemblage is complex in that it includes architectural window glass, lighting parts, table wares, a toilet ewer fragment, a shell fragment, and personal items including a commemorative whisky flask sherd. Together with the depression, these artifacts indicate a sense of permanency. Datable items indicate the site had a period of use from at least the Civil War era (1860s) into the 1880s. This occupation begins before the entry of the railroad into the region in the1870s and could have been related to the use of the nearby Ox Cart Trail.
The most diagnostic artifacts consisted of five sherds of a single mold-blown pictorial whisky flask in alight emerald green color. A complete but slightly different version of this bottle type is photographed and described in several sources, although there were molds with different variations. The original flask had a "clasped hands" motif within a shield surrounded by olive branches with the words "UNION" above below 13 stars on one side and an eagle with banner motif on the other side. Like other examples of this bottle genre that have been described, there are bits of cinder impurities caught in the glass and bubbles trapped in the bottle neck where it transitions from the mold to a hand finish1. This bottle can be firmly dated to a Civil War era manufacture (ca. 1861-1864). The bottle also provides evidence of political affiliation to the Union. These fragments were exposed on the surface at an area of bike path construction. The fragments appear to be from a pint size bottle. Other glass bottle and flat window glass fragments cannot be dated.
Another personal item that potentially dates to the Civil War era is a Prosser manufacture type ceramic button with a pie-crust rim that retains some blue pigment in the impressions. These buttons for female attire were made from 1840 into the 1880's. It is interesting that the pigment is ephemeral and seems to have been applied after manufacture and not baked on, which could indicate an earlier date, perhaps from the same Civil War era as the whisky flask. Both the button and flask could be considered "personal" because the button was worn, and pictorial/political pint flasks were special items that would have been carried on the person, refilled, and reused.
Eight recovered refined earthenware (whiteware) sherds are generally nondescript. These ceramics represent both table and toilet-wares. One large fragment, a heavy paneled Ironstone vessel probably from an ewer for morning washing has a manufacture and style that dates from c.a. 1860-1880. A single salt-glazed stoneware fragment represents the neck of a larger cider/ginger beer bottle that would have been made before 1900.
Metal artifacts include a brass screw-on cover with center opening, most likely part of a kerosene lamp, a circular, slightly domed zinc object with center perforation (not a caning lid liner), a brass ferrule, and various pieces of flat metal fragments of different manufacture. None of these metal items can be dated with certainty but they do indicate that a variety of activities including lighting took place at the site.