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
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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
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