It started rainy today, so we spent the morning in the lab washing artifacts and bagging the dried artifacts from last week. For primary processing, we separate the artifacts by their material type and give them paper labels with the context info, date recovered and a count.
By lunchtime, the weather had cleared so some people went out to site to finish recording open units and then backfill them. The rest stayed behind with me in the lab and we starting working through the secondary analysis and processing. That took us to the end of the day! I was so busy answering questions I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures.
So instead, I will bring back a time-honoured tradition of I-Spy, where we present a tray of washed artifacts and see if you can spot some specific items.
Another interesting find today was a maker’s mark on the bottom of a plate. I had a poke through my usual sources and narrowed it down to Hollinshead & Kirkham. This mark was used from 1890 when H&K took over the Wedgwood & Co. Unicorn pottery works until about 1900.
Speaking of marks, I also at lunch went to Bata Library to check out that timber mark book but alas our I&B mark was not listed (although the three Smith, Boyd and Co. marks from 1871-1873 are listed. The book does state in the foreword matter that many marks were used and not registered, or the companies sometimes dissolved before a mark could be officially registered or the records have been lost. The fact that we know the timelines of the mill owners at Nassau Mills is very strong evidence for the likely use date of the stamp!
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