A big thank you to everyone who wrote in on ideas over the snipped copper alloy
nails.

A particularly big thank you to Cass Philippou for putting on the track of other
examples here in Victoria.

Just in case anyone's interested, I'll bring you up to date with how my
thinking's now evolved over these nails.  Especially since I've now finished
cataloguing the metal from this site, and discussed it with the person (Greg
Jackman) who excavated the site (what a novel idea!).


First of all, a detail I left out of the original post: there was a shipyard at
Port Arthur in the colonial period.  So it would seem entirely reasonable to
draw a connection between the manufacture of copper alloy nails at the
penitentiary workshops with the presence of a shipyard at Port Arthur.

As to why some of the nails are snipped...  while perhaps somewhat boring, I
think the simplest explanation is probably best - it seems to be a matter of
manufacture technology rather than decoration.

The nail shafts are all essentially identical in form & thickness, and it would
seem readily apparent that there was some sort of nail cutting machine at the
workshops.  However, the complete nails (and I subsequently came up with
contexts where there were many more of these than had been the case when I sent
that original post) do not have a standard length despite the standardisation of
the rest of the shaft.  It's also readily apparent that the heads are being
applied separately.

So... the workshop copper alloy nail shafts were cut, but were snipped down to
the required length before the head was then subsequently applied.  These nails
were intended for the nearby shipyard.  Some of the snipped-down nail shafts
were simply lost amongst the floorboards (you may remember Greg posting to
HISTARCH about evidence of floorboards in this workshop a month or so ago)
before the head was applied.

So unless someone can come up with a compelling reason why this _isn't_ the case
(and please don't be shy about sharing if you can), I think this simple solution
seems the best.

Thanks again to everyone who shared ideas,

Alasdair