I stumbled upon this forum looking for more information about findings I did this summer. I red a good discussion dating from 1999 on square nails somewhere at this forum.

I found about 100 square forged nails, made of wrought iron and about the same number of cramp irons made in the same way. Some horseshoes were there, but most were broken, I have one big horseshoe which has a very peculiar form as it is not made from a small band of iron, but is almost completely closed, apart from the middle section which is about as wide as the sides.

But: the nails! Here comes a piece describing my also other) findings.

I live near a Dutch river. At low tide (although I'm living about 50 km from sea there is a substantial normal tide of more than a metre) I search the river banks near my home. It is a clay ground apart from where the river meets the land, there it is sandy and that is where I search. I have found some nice old coins (copper and silver) from the 16th century and later. The coins are not a problem to catagorize, but I also keep finding large nails and cramp-irons (big "staples"), in fact it is my most common find in that area. These items are most of the time covered by a (mostly thick) sandstone-and-rust crust and then often most of the iron is gone, but I also did find some nice, thick, almost uncorroded ones deep in the clay. The nails do look like the Roman ones and maybe they are, but I can find nothing about the cramp-irons. Maybe they are only a few hundred years old, I suspect some primitive ferry service from about the 17th century could have existed) Both the nails and the cramp-irons have a square cross-section (the cramp-irons at least at the tips, only the heavier ones are square all over) and are obviously wrought iron (to be seen by the fibre like structure).

Most nails are (cleaned) between 110 and 170 gr. Lenghts are between about 18 and 22 cm. The head (roughly trapezoidal)is ca. 3 cm wide. The shaft narrows from ca 1.5 cm (one side of the square circumference) to the point. The cramp-irons are (cleaned) between 70 gr. and 180 gr. Lenghts are between 8 and 12 cm, width is about 8 cm. The bigger cramp-irons have a square cross-section all over and the smaler ones only at the tips. Diameters are in the range of 8 to 15 mm. Both nails and cramp-irons come in many sizes but these are the most common ones. I suspect they could be medieval also but I have no way to tell as the area has been lived in by both romans and later people. Occasionally I do find enrcusted horseshoes. All finds seem to originate from the same level in the clay. The clay-layers near the river are about 1.5 metres below ground level. Nails, cramp-irons and horseshoes can be found whole or in parts. Other finds are nearly zero. No historic sites (forts, bridges or ship-building yard) are known to me, but it is near the northern border of the former Roman empire which lasted there till about 500 AD and much of the history untill the late middle ages here is badly documentated. Recently I found a map from about 1700 which shows a n object at the site that looks like maybe a quay (for a ferry?)

The nails resemble the picture from the BBC website (see the URL http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/education/seeyouseeme/fort/nails.html). Do you have information that can help me further?

Paul

• sorry: please react at the "todays finds" forum !! Paul Duivestein 16:16:20 9/26/2001 (0)