In reply to:
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
 
Amy Young, now at Univ. of Southern Mississippi, did some research on nail rain, and quantification of nail types.  Also, Jay D. Edwards and Tom Wells have a really good publication entitled "Historic Louisiana Nails:  Aids to the Dating of Old Buildings", published in 1993 by The Fred B. Kniffen Cultural Resources Laboratory, Monograph Series No. 2, at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.