Ned:
 
     Under a previous name, I did a fairly extensive quantitative analysis
     of nails found at the Moore Cabin and House site in Skagway, Alaska.
     You might want to look at
 
     Blee, Catherine Holder
       1988     Archeological Investigations in Skagway, Alaska, Volume 2:
                The Moore Cabin and House, Klondike Gold Rush National
                Historical Park. US Government Printing Office, Denver, Co.
 
     The report was sent to all government repositories, so you should be
     able to find a copy wherever you can find other government documents.
     If not, it can be acquired from the National Park Service Technical
     Information Center, Denver, Colorado (303)969-2130.
 
     I had stratified deposits dating from 1888-1900, 1900-1914, 1914-1940,
     and 1940-1980. I compared sizes and types of nails to known
     construction, repair and demolition activities for each period.
 
     In the same report I also looked at the nails that were recovered in
     the attic of a cabin that was built in 1888 and re-roofed in 1896. The
     226 nails appear to have been used on the 1888 roof and were lost in
     the attic when it was reroofed.
 
     I've also tried to pay considerable attention to the nails in most of
     the work I did in Skagway in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but the
     Moore Cabin and House deposits yielded the most interesting data.
 
     In glancing back through that report, I see that Fontana and
     Greenleaf's study of Johnny Ward's Ranch was the only one I cited for
     comparative information! Hope others find more for you!
 
     Cathy Spude
     [log in to unmask]
 
 
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Nails
Author:  Ned Heite <[log in to unmask]> at NP--INTERNET
Date:    9/27/97 2:48 PM
 
 
Back 35 years ago (that long, really!) Fontana published an interesting
study of the nails from Johnny Ward's Ranch (Fontana and Greenleaf 1962).
This subject was expanded in an article that appeared in one of the two
Conference on Historic Site Archeology proceedings that were published as
issues of Florida Anthropologist.
 
Since then, has anyone attempted to quantify nail usage on historic sites?
As I recall, Fontana showed a house plan to several carpenters and asked
them to specify the nails. He compared these numbers with the nails from
the Ward Ranch site.
 
In trying to interpret the Bloomsbury Site in Delaware, we have quantified
the nails in hopes of interpreting architectural details, but the only
similar tabulation we can find is Fontana's!
 
Has anyone done a similar tabulation during the years since?
 
Ned Heite