Another aspect of blacksmithing not already mentioned is horseshoeing. A
colleague, Rick Morris, did his Master's thesis on horseshoes and horseshoe
nails, entitled "What the Horse Left Behind: The Archeological Study of
Horseshoes," at the University of Nevada, Reno, 1988. He also wrote an
article based on a presentation made at the Great Basin Conference in 1986
that appeared in the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4, the
1987 Winter issue. Although the thesis deals with late 19th and early 20th
century material, I used it for a sawmill site that had a blacksmithing area
dating from c. 1858 to the 1860s. The activity area for horseshoeing was
determined by the form of the nail present, i.e., new nail, bent nail, nail with
clench (shoe fell off), clipped nail (shoe removed by blacksmith), and nail tip.
A high concentration of all but the new nail is highly suggestive of where the
horses were shoed. Thought this might be of use in your work.
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