Rich Veit wrote on behalf of William Norman:
>William is interested in locating Revolutionary
>War era musket balls which were manipulated in order increase
>lethality.  He is familiar with the examples Calver and Bolton recovered
>in their NYC excavations, including the famous musket ball with a nail
>driven through it.  He also has examined some split musket balls from
>Monmouth Battlefield, and knows about the mutilated musket balls found
>by Hanson and Hsu at Fort Stanwix.  Letters from General Howe and George
>Washington referring to musket balls altered to increase lethality also
>exist.  William's hope is to determine how widespread this practice was,
>the ways in which musket balls were altered, and the social reasons for
>this practice.

Rich & William:
I suggest you get in touch with David Starbuck who directed the excavations
at Fort Edward (F&I War), Fort William Henry (F&I War), and Mount
Independence (Am. Rev.)  We found many musket balls which had the supposed
teeth marks in them, perfectly cast half balls, and lead cubes which
appeared to be hammered out of balls.  There was at least one that had a
perfect hole of about 1cm. diameter drilled or cast clean through - must
have whistled as it flew - a good psych weapon.  I don't recall any peirced
or spiked balls, but I was there for only a few seasons.  I suspect that
any non-aerodynamic "musket balls" would have actually been used for
close-range scatter shot out of a large bore gun, rather than single shot
small barrel.

From what I remember the half and bored balls did not have sawing or
drilling striations and may have been cast that way.

I never did believe that the many pock-marked balls that we found really
had been clenched in teeth during surgery, whippings, or whatever (such as
evidenced by that wonderful amputated hand my crew found in a post hole).
Some of these "teeth-clenched" balls had square indentations - not pointed
dental cusps but more like from a small square-ended punch, and I would
like to see some alternate explanations for modifying them.

I'm not sure what David's address is lately and word is that he still
hasn't joined the computer age like most of us, but hopefully someone can
supply an address or phone #.

        Dan W.