Apologies for cross-posting, but this is a fishing expedition.
 
The Bloomsbury site in Delaware  was occupied roughly from the middle of
the eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century. Occupants included
members of the local native American community and others who probably were
of European descent.
 
There were no foundation remains, but we found one blue bead in each of
four plowzone units that appear to be at the corners of the house. Another
identical blue bead was found in a well.
 
We have postulated magical significance to the blue beads at house corners,
but no precedent has been documented on other sites.
 
There is another possible connection to superstition on the site. Among the
demolition trash thrown into a well, we found a "Bellarmine" mask face from
one of three brown stoneware jugs. Terminal date for manufacture of these
vessels is a half-century before the house was built. So the jugs, and
certainly the masked example, probably were heirlooms.
 
Masked brown German stoneware jugs are associated with "witch bottles"
placed by doorways in America, Iceland, and Britain during the seventeenth
century.
 
Could it be that a "witch bottle" was brought from an earlier home by this
family, or maybe pilfered from a ruined house, or curated by a believer in
this particular magic?
 
While we glibly refer to "heirloom" artifacts to explain such chronological
anomalies, I continue to wonder if this particular find is an example of a
magical tradition surviving beyond the time of availability of a principal
object of the "cult."  The wide dispersal of a "cult" associated with a
particular industrial product is interesting, too.
 
 
Ned Heite
         _____            Say what? What was that you called her?
     ___(_____)           Baby is a LAND ROVER!
     |Baby the\
     |1969 Land\__===_    As a matter of fact, I have just
     |  ___Rover   ___|o  now returned from the funeral of
     |_/ . \______/ . ||  last fellow who called Baby a J**p
________\_/________\_/_______________________________________
Check out our wool camp web page: http://www.dmv.com/~iceland