- Mar 30, 2020
- 419
- 2,768
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
After heavy rains I went out yesterday and discovered this fragment of a kaolin pipe eroding out of the ground. It's only the second one I have ever found, the other being a Free Ireland marked pipe I discovered while gardening decades ago. The area where I found it has settlement beginning in the 1670's and a farm that shows up on my 1830's map. It then subsequently had an 1860's house built on top of the site, now since long gone.
It's fun to research artifacts which have been off of my metal detecting radar. There is a good published typology of styles helpful for dating sites, much like buttons and buckles. Even the diameter of the wire used to push through the stem provides a date range. I might get lucky and ID the maker's mark.
I often complain about how little cultural remains were left by early agrarian settlers. Finds like this remind me that a significant portion of their material culture was either wood, bone, horn, or ceramics that have either decayed or are not seen by my metal detector. Fortunately the glaze of some ceramics is detectable.
It's fun to research artifacts which have been off of my metal detecting radar. There is a good published typology of styles helpful for dating sites, much like buttons and buckles. Even the diameter of the wire used to push through the stem provides a date range. I might get lucky and ID the maker's mark.
I often complain about how little cultural remains were left by early agrarian settlers. Finds like this remind me that a significant portion of their material culture was either wood, bone, horn, or ceramics that have either decayed or are not seen by my metal detector. Fortunately the glaze of some ceramics is detectable.
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