Colleagues,
Please accept my thanks for the responses, including responses within responses, to my request for help identifying the scallop-edged sheet-metal artifacts from our 19th-century rancho north of Santa Fe. The exigencies of time and money prevent me from following up on each in the detail I would like (it is a contract project, after all, and I have already made much of metal projectile points and window glass from the same site), but I have taken the opportunity to summarize your ideas and follow up briefly regarding early tinsmithing in New Mexico for the report, since I think that's what we're seeing.
Since several folks have asked that I get back to them with what came of this exercise, I am taking the liberty of including with this message the text from the report as it stands now. I have also taken the liberty of "spreading the blame around" by including the names of people who responded as personal communications; please be assured that I will take the heat for all this if my conclusions turn out to be completely bogus. Use of the word "we" does not represent the "royal we," but rather the fact that the chapter actually has four authors.

"Figure 8.10 shows selected examples of ferrous metal scraps with negative scalloped edges. Some fragments have small remnants of “shiny” coating that we suspect is tin. The edges show that the scallops are the result of punching through the metal fragments with a stamp that was .5 inch (1.27 cm) in diameter, based on the relative uniformity of the scallops. The purpose of this activity is not clear. Consequently, we used electronic networks to consult colleagues for opinions about the identities of these artifacts, and received direct and indirect responses from archaeologists, tin-smiths, knife-makers, and other metal-workers (George Arms, Eric Blinman, David Carmichael, George Crawford, Allen Dart, Dody Fugate, JR Gomolok, David Greenwald, David Kirkpatrick, Steven Lakatos, Guadalupe Martinez, James Moore, Harding Polk, Christina Sinkovec, Cordelia Snow, as well as personal communications cited by them, personal communication, 2011). The general consensus, which is reasonable to us, is that the artifacts are left-over materials from the process(es) of cutting pieces of sheet metal. We do not know whether the use of a stamp or punch produced corresponding positive scallops on the other items, as would be the result of using a half-round chisel or punch (Coulter and Dixon 1990:9), for instance, or corresponding negative scallops similar to those on the pieces we found, resulting from a full-round punch. Minor irregularities in the scallops suggest that the punch or stamp was not machined in an industrial factory but, instead, might have been hand-made from a piece of iron rod stock.
            We also cannot know whether the other pieces of metal that resulted from these processes were “practical” or decorative (recognizing differing cultural aspects of defining practicality and decoration) because we did not recover them during excavation. For instance, it is possible that a punch or stamp was used simply to cut out a shape without the use of a saw or snips that would have produced a more regular cut edge. The resulting scallops could then have been cut or filed off or bent under to make a more regular edge. Alternatively, intentional production of scalloped edges might point to decorative edges. We refer the reader to Coulter and Dixon (1990) for many examples of New Mexican tinwork with decorative scalloped edges from different “workshops” and individual tinsmiths, including one, a piece of furniture (Coulter and Dixon 1990:Fig. 4.37), in which the metal may have had practical purposes but was decorated with scalloped edges. As some respondents pointed out, it is also possible that the results of cutting the tinned iron included tinklers, conchos, buttons or button covers, and a variety of other items.
            While we cannot specifically identify these artifacts, we suspect that they materially represent the early years of “tin-working” or tinsmithing in New Mexico. Coulter and Dixon (1990:7) point out that, “Tin, or more accurately tinplate, was sheet iron coated with a thin layer of pure tin. This coating is safe to use in contact with foods, and tin plate was the material used to construct tin cans.” Further, “(a)ll nineteenth-century New Mexican tinwork [with a few rare exceptions] was made from salvaged cans” (Coulter and Dixon 1990:7; brackets in original). As with window glass (Chapter 19, this volume), tinned iron in the form of tin cans was very rare in New Mexico before the US occupation beginning in 1846 (Coulter and Dixon 1990:2). In fact, tin cans were not common in the United States until about 1840 and, therefore, would have been in short supply for import to New Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail until near the end of the Mexican period. Coulter and Dixon (1990:2) state that Alfred Waugh observed tin candle sconces at the La Castrense chapel on the Santa Fe plaza in 1846, not long before the arrival of US troops. Whether that tin came to New Mexico in the form of cans along the Santa Fe Trail between 1840 and 1846 is not known. The first reported tinsmith working in New Mexico was an American known only as “Roberto,” who was in Santa Fe in 1826. Coulter and Dixon (1990:2) state that Roberto “probably produced small kitchenware, pails, and other containers and did some repair work” since there was no demand for roofing, gutters, or flues until the US occupation. Clearly, his tinned iron did not come to Santa Fe in the form of cans, although it probably did come along the Santa Fe Trail. Following the US occupation,

            The simultaneous availability of large five-gallon lard cans, inexpensive religious prints, window glass, and wallpaper caused tinwork to flourish in New Mexico by the late 1850s . . . The period from 1860 to 1890 was the time of greatest production for nineteenth-century New Mexican tinsmiths. Thousands of frames, sconces, nichos, crosses, and boxes were made in this period. (Coulter and Dixon 1990:3).

            The 1850 New Mexico census lists five residents of Santa Fe, all with Hispanic surnames, as “tinners,” as well as one Ygnacio Valdez, age 27, listed as a hatter (Coulter and Dixon 1990:173). Ygnacio is potentially important because, in the 1860 census, he is listed as a tinner living in Cuyamungue. Ygnacio was still living in Cuyamungue in 1880, but was listed as a laborer. It is, obviously, tempting to speculate that Ygnacio Valdez was related to Vicente Valdez, who owned LA 4968, and that the scallop-edged artifacts found at LA 4968 represent Ygnacio’s tinsmithing work. Whether Ygnacio was related to Vicente Valdez, however, is not known; he does not appear in genealogical records for Vicente’s family, although Vicente had three sons by his first wife and their names have not been identified (Chapter 14 and Appendix 1, this volume).
            If we are correct in suspecting that these artifacts represent tinsmithing, whether practical or decorative, they actually belong in the Economy and Production Items category. We have chosen to leave them in the Unassignable Items category because, despite our suspicions, we cannot demonstrate that they represent tinsmithing."

Thanks again to all who gave consideration to our mystery artifacts. They are, perhaps, less mysterious now.
Jeff


Jeffrey L. Boyer, RPA
Supervisory Archaeologist/Project Director
Office of Archaeological Studies, Museum of New Mexico

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"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." -L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953