Kira

One anecdote and some other information on the vexed question of glass artefacts.

My father still occasionally uses broken glass to cut string or do odd small jobs around the farm.  Glass is abundant - he's a market gardener with 20 glass houses.  However, incidental use like this is unlikley to either result in deliberate shaping prior to use or macroscopic or microscopic usewear of any extent, certainly not enough to distinguish it from natural wear damage, and it would be a very small % of the piles of broken glass he has lying about the place.

Australian archaeologists have written extensively on the use of glass by Aboriginal people following European contact.  Recent work in western Victoria has shown that sytematically used glass is distinguishable by microscopic examination, but there are few if any formal types, and other work in the Northern Territory and western Australia has concluded that there are definite preferences for selecting particular bottle segments for future use.  I can pull out the referecnes for these later by Nathan Wolski and Rodney Harrison.

The context of your find disturbes me - 'artifacts were collected from a domestic refuse scatter loosely associated with a late nineteenth century farmhouse'.  There have been studies showing that normal processes of treadage are sufficient to create 'worked' edges that can easily simulate macroscopic usewear, and that the presence of the damage on its own is insufficient to conclude that these are glass artefacts.  Ruthann Knudson wrote an article [again, the reference just aint here at the moment..] which examined an assemblage of very plausible cowfacts recovered from a surface context on a farm.

While no one disputes flaked points or other substantially shaped artefacts from glass, there does need to be a solid argument for claiming flaked artefact status for pieces of broken window or bottle, before preferring it to a null hypothesis that these are the result of post depositional processes of treadage etc.  Issues would include context of find [surface / underground; among general refuse / in a use context etc]; its protection from post-depositional damage [ie burial rather than surface]; likelihood of users being present at the time [indigenous habitation, my old man, cobblers, etc]; patterning of selected glass source rather than random occurrence on different glass types; macroscopic and microscopic indications.

 I'm happy to dredge up the references when I get home and flick them to the list.

Cheers

Denis Gojak

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Denis Gojak
Heritage Asset Manager
NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning
2-10 Wentworth Street
Parramatta NSW 2150
PO Box 404 Parramatta 2124
Ph:    +61 2 9895 7940
Fax:   +61 2 9895 7946
Email: [log in to unmask]

>>> [log in to unmask] 01/26 4:38 am >>>
I have been analyzing a small historic artifact collection from northwestern
Pennsylvania and have come across several examples of late historic/modern
(post 1870) glass fragments that show evidence of usewear and edge
preparation/retouch indicating use in a fashion similar to prehistoric
Native American scraping tools. These artifacts were collected from a
domestic refuse scatter loosely associated with a late nineteenth century
farmhouse. Several of these glass fragments are from machine made glass
containers, one glass fragment is manganese solarized, another is pink
machine-pressed table glass common during the Depression. I am aware of
worked glass on earlier sites, but the late date is puzzling. Though this
could be the work of either Native Americans or Europeans, there are no
known contemporary Native American settlements in this vicinity. Has anyone
come across any reference to something like this on later European sites?
Native American Sites?

Kira Presler
Kittatinny Archaeological Research, Inc.