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| Lots of Smalls from the Sifter | ||
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| andy g. |
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  Registered Member #9 Joined: Thu Apr 26 2007, 10:46Posts: 113 | Over the last few years, my digging buddies and I have steadily increased our practice to sift good privies for the small artifacts that they might produce. As follows are examples of the “smalls” that we extract from privies – and you will see it is quite a range of stuff made of all sorts of materials including glass, metal, hard rubber, stone, pottery, porcelain, wood, ivory, and turtle shell. Let’s start with the most obvious smalls – glass seals off of bottles. And no, I did not break the bottles to keep the seals. The ones in this picture date from the late 1700s to early 1900s. [ image disabled ] The next category is toys and games. Dolls are prevalent -- whole ones, and parts from heads to arms to legs. These date from the 1850s to the 1900s. [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] Marbles are found in virtually every pit too. Here are some Bennington glazed marbles and stone marbles ranging from the size of golf ball to peas. Also shown in the following image are some glass swirl marbles and decorated china marbles. We have found marbles in pits from the 1750s to the modern era – the bulk of the marbles shown are from the 1850s to the 1890s or so. [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] Let’s not forget about other toys and games. The chess pieces are ivory with both the pawn and bishop made of two pieces that screw together. The checkers piece is of some compound that we could not figure out. The dominos are ivory and ebony with a brass or copper rivet. The dice are made of pottery much like rough porcelain or parian-ware. [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] Items of personal hygiene also show up with great frequency. At the top of the list are bone and ivory brushes for the hair and teeth. But one cannot forget about mustache and lice combs – both folding and traditional – made of metal and hard rubber. [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] Also in this category are the shaving materials – here a straight razor first. Then along with two parasol handles (to keep the sun off of a woman’s face so she would stay pale) is the ivory handle to a shaving cream brush. [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] At first these finds stumped me but after doing research, it became evident to me that the following are a substitute for the whale boning that was in women’s dresses to make the dress hold its shape and to squeeze a lass’ waists too. They are all stamped with various manufacturers of Goodyear’s patented hard rubber. [ image disabled ] Even more personal are the tools for enemas and douches – must have been quite popular in the day for all. Not to be missed on the personal front are dentures – these are from the last quarter of the 1800s. I once found a set of dentures that was pure gold with ivory caps. And while we are on healthcare, of sorts, syringes both glass and hard rubber often make an appearance in the sifter. [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] Now for all of you metal detectorists, we also find a fair amount of coins and even rare military objects. Some of you may have seen a few of these objects when Roland Frodigh did a masterful job of removing the crust off of a few of these objects. And to answer the unstated question, the CS tongue was found in Brooklyn, NY -- we have found a fair number of buckles over the years not even including the ones depicted. Even one of the coins (likewise was found in NYC) is an 1840s token from a slave auction house in Charleston, SC. [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] One category I forgot to take a picture was of the metal buttons we find (but you can see a couple in one of my earlier posts below). But a fair number of buttons made of other materials are recovered. I have slipped into this category some of the jewels we have found since they may well have been part of buttons too. [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] Also uncovered are Indian artifacts. (Sorry about the image quality.) [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] Clay pipes are extremely common in particular the kaolin ones that white. I did not take pictures of these pipes but do have a selection of reed stem pipes to show this category. [ image disabled ] The last two items are lenses from eyeglasses and the tools for writing in the 1850s, specifically, slate and slate pencils that still work to this day. [ image disabled ] [ image disabled ] andy g. As a wise, old privydigger once told me: May your shovel be light and may you find many colored pontils. | ||
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| ca_drm1n |
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   Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Apr 12 2007, 09:24Posts: 339 | Andy, You are killing me! Great stuff, thanks for posting... Let's go dig! - Al | ||
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| ddelph |
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  Registered Member #11 Joined: Tue May 08 2007, 10:38Posts: 60 | Awesome post Andy! A great educational tool for other diggers. How many times have we tossed something unique over our shoulder in a shovel full of dirt never to be seen again. | ||
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