At 3:02 PM -0400 5/23/02, Keith R Doms wrote:
>I am not sure of your question.  Are you asking for AR marks inparticular
>or AR on m-m ware?  We (UDCAR) recovered a stoneware drinking jug from the
>William Strickland Plantation Site (7K-A-117) in Delaware, circa
>1710-1754. It was recoverd from a well that was filled in around the
>1730s.

Curation is a factor we don't always consider.  At Bloomsbury, which
was occupied from the middle of the eighteenth century to the 1812
period, we found three "bellarmine" jugs, one of which still had its
mask.  One of the jugs had clearly been used a time after breakage,
since the top edges were worn down considerably, and we didn't find
any parts from above the break.

We need to keep reminding ourselves that manufacture date hasn't a
whole lot to do with discard date.  We also need to remember that
"dated" objects were made long after their supposed manufacture date.
For example, you can still buy new or new-old-stock tin paste
brushes, Pamplin pipes, and parts for Model T Fords, within a few
miles of where I sit. Go into my rust collection in the shop, and
you'll find plenty of nineteenth-century tools, Tremont nails, and a
can of rose-headed wrought nails.

Manufacture date provides only the terminus post quem and not much else.



--
***************************  Ned Heite  ([log in to unmask])

Words to live by:

"My personality
does not interest me"

--- Andrei Gromyko