Are these a product of 19th century forging processes?

[MattyG]

First up, my apologies if this is the wrong subforum to post this in.

I am an archaeologist in Ontario, Canada.

I was recently excavating an early site in Hamilton. Many of the features we excavated included the artifacts pictured here. One feature included thousands of them.

The forms are all rod-like, but of greatly varying thicknesses. Length varies as well. Some are coupled together, as pictured.

The texture is as an aggregated of sand or varying grades. When we first encountered them we wondered if we had come across a fulgurite, but these are too uniform and far too common.

The site included a large feature which included corroding metals that appeared industrial in character, along with around 24 barrel hoops.

Accordingly, we wondered if these maybe related to early 19th century smithing, possibly sand casting.

If any of you experts out there can provide any thoughts or suggestions on where to inquire further, much appreciated.

[Frosty]

Welcome aboard Matty, glad to have you. If you'll put your general location in the header we won't have to keep asking. Telling us once won't stick in our minds after we open another thread, especially once we start thinking about and discussing your question and asking our own.  

Do these features show a pattern of arrangement or are they scattered, jumbled, closely grouped, aligned,  etc? What is the maximum and minimum lengths and diameters? Length will be the better indicator as corrosion will effect a smaller % than diameter. For example a .5mm expansion due to oxidation will be significant on 5mm dia. nail but possibly undetectable outside a lab to a 50mm length.

Have you tried electrolysis to convert the oxidation back to iron/steel and see what their shape was when buried? I'd try the thinnest as electrolysis tends to weld iron/steel in contact together. 

What is the composition and gradation of the soils you're excavating? 

I have a couple thoughts but want to read some more responses before offering blue sky ideas.

This will be fun, thanks.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Jobtiel1]

More information would be useful indeed, if all of the sizes are smaller in length, I think of offcuts, maybe to be reused and welded together for new stock whenever business was slow. The fact that some of them appear welded together would support that in my eyes. That would mean that they would be stored on a central heap, and not scattered over the entire site.

Curious what others think.

~Jobtiel

[Charles R. Stevens]

What alloy is also helpful. Is it wrought iron, woots steel, etc. 

may first blush it appears to be sand imbedded in rust, but Jerry’s questions and suggestions will give us all a clearer idea. 

[anvil]

What type of building are you excavating? No matter its age, even back to the 16th century, there should be records to show its history. 

From your description above, it could be anything, even a merchants store to a storage building to a blacksmith shop. What time frame do you put these items?  

Looking forward to where this goes. 

[MattyG]

Hello, thank you all for your responses.

The area in question was thought to be a shanty town by the early 1830s when a wealthier individual purchased the land the site is on. He built a fancy house nearby, but his land use etc is unlikely to be related to this site, except that he likely did some agriculture on the land which explains the dispersal of artifacts through the soil column.

By 1850 he had sold a small portion and the new owner have built a two story wood framed house. This house stood into the 21st century. The excavation of its foundations revealed they had only an unmortatred (dry set) rubblestone foundation on the north and south walls and none on the east and west. (Crazy). Some time in the 19th century an east and west foundation wall had been installed, of two walls of unmortared (and poorly set) brick. (Yes, also crazy). This house and its yard had the majority of the features we excavated and sectioned. The deeply buried assemblage of corroded  metals (pictured below) was located roughly a metre from the former backdoor of this house. This is odd, but the contents of the feature included artifacts with date ranges that skew into the 1850s. Most notable is a portion of a fire brick made by Stephensons in Newcastle. This factory was operating by 1849. The mark on it is not their earliest known, so I am thinking some time in the early 1850s. Given the time required for one of their bricks to be manufactured, transported, used, damaged and discarded, the feature must post-date the building of the house.

The soils here are sandy and deep. However, we identified two lots (or layers) in the soil column. The other house in the Study Area, and most of the nearby houses, was built in  the early 1860s. All those basements had to have their sandy material go somewhere, and it is possible they were dispersed into the Study Area. This may be the origin of the two lots. There is some distinction in the artifacts recovered from each lot. For example, Lot 2 (the lower lot) contained no wire nails, but did contain wrought nails, including wrought horseshoe nails. Lot 1 had cut nail and some wire nails but no wrought nails. Generally in Ontario, wrought nails date to the 1830s, cut nails from the mid-1830s to 1870s. That's just one example that seems to confirm a period difference between the two lots, even though visually it was often indistinct. The feature with the corroded metals was entirely in Lot 2 and deeper (lot 3, or subsoil).

The other important feature, the one with the hundreds of "sandy rods" was on a parcel of land that was sold in the 1860s. The house there is extant, but due to be demolished. The feature lay close to the west wall, maybe 1.5 metres from it. Again, this is oddly close for such a deep feature (1.4m) to have been excavated next to a residence, so it is much more likely to have been dug, used and buried prior to the building of the house.

I do not know if the metals in the pit were just iron. My knowledge of grades of steel and how to differentiate them based on corrosion is essentially zero.

In the image below, a couple of barrel hoops can be seen underneath, but for the most part they were higher up in the feature and were removed. The second image shows a selection of them. (The white object is a chamber pot.)

[Purple Bullet]

I think the casting is a good hypothesis. Similar, but random sizes may be from vents or sprue cutoffs. Barrels may have held them until the wood rotted away. The joined pieces are probably just corroded together. 

Back in my diving days I once came across something I thought must be a badly corroded cannon ball. Getting it to the surface revealed it was a bag of nuts that corroded into a solid ball and the bag rotted away.

[Frosty]

I'm not clear, were the metal rods buried in the same pit as the barrel hoops?

The sandy texture is easily explained as concretion of iron oxide and sand. The "sandy" surface of castings are concave, not convex let alone stuck to the surface. 

If I had to guess now I'd say it was a trash pit buried by the construction crew who built the current house. That is a WAG of course.

Frosty The Lucky.

[MattyG]

Attached here is an image of the profile of one of the rods that I broke to show the composition a little clearer. Honestly, it looks like someone epoxied beach sand.

 

I understand that these may have nothing to do with smithing.

[Charles R. Stevens]

Now that is interesting.  Mind if I forward this discussion to a Geology PHD I know? He has worked on some Mediterranean digs dating volcanic deposits in absence of dateable organic material. 
As to the barrel bands, I have seen then broken down to make furniture hinges and other hard wear. The consistent size of the pieces make me think that is a possibility. Might whant to check the existing house for site built hardware 

 

materials

[MattyG]

16 minutes ago, Frosty said:

I'm not clear, were the metal rods buried in the same pit as the barrel hoops?

The sandy texture is easily explained as concretion of iron oxide and sand. The "sandy" surface of castings are concave, not convex let alone stuck to the surface. 

 

No, the barrel hoops and the corroded metals were in one deep feature, the sandy rods in another.

 

However, the same rods were recovered in small quantities from other features on the site, though in ones and twos, not an assemblage of hundreds and hundreds.

 

To clarify, the feature with the rods also included other domestic artifacts, though not in great numbers. Given that artifacts are dispersed throughout the site, these artifacts could simply have been present in the sand excavated and replaced as part of burying these rods (as distinct from deposited into the pit as additional waste items).

4 minutes ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

Now that is interesting.  Mind if I forward this discussion to a Geology PHD I know? 

Please do.

[Purple Bullet]

Ah! So they are NOT metallic?! Maybe someone was a fulgurite collector.

[MattyG]

22 minutes ago, Purple Bullet said:

Ah! So they are NOT metallic?! Maybe someone was a fulgurite collector.

Unlike fulgurites I have seen, and all straight and, well, far too many I think.

I didn't suspect them of being metallic, just wondered if there could have been a connection with early forges and forging, given the other feature that may be forge related. We wondered if some waste product of sand casting.

 

But my knowledge of smithing is too low to have dismissed all possibility, so I thought I would reach out to the experts.

[Frosty]

From the one rod you broke I have to say they aren't iron of any kind except as a concretion. I don't know how they'd form as rods but if there were ever steel/iron in the centers it would be vividly obvious. It looks like the iron oxide concretion formed from the outside in. 

As a first conclusion I'd rule out artefacts. I could be wrong of course but I can't think of how to form something like those deliberately let alone in situ. 

That they're found primarily in a pit suggests they were found during the construction or perhaps demolition of the previous dwelling.

Now for funsies a little wild and crazy Frosty skyballing. Perhaps they are the result of water, acidified as it seeped through rotting wood, dissolving iron from nails used in the building and then dripped in discrete spots on the sandy surface under the house. As the carbolic acid, containing iron oxide, dilutes perking through the damp sand the iron deposits at the point the acid content becomes too weak to keep it in solution. Why would it all seem to deposit in such a concentrated area? To pick a number, the dissolved iron solution carries 3ppm iron. When it dilutes enough it drops the iron molecules. Following seeps reach the previous zone and the PPM ratio increases lowering the solutions ability to carry iron further so the iron is deposited. This is an amplification loop.  It forms a tube because the iron sand concretion is less permeable than the clean sand so it flows downwards more easily than outwards.  The result would be an apparent rust rod of cemented sand with a center region clear of rust perhaps cleaned of other discoloring impurities present in ambient soil by the weak acid solution. 

How's THAT for speculation?  Your head spinning yet?

Frosty The Lucky.

[George N. M.]

As described I doubt that they are artefacts of blacksmithing.  From a geologic standpoint they appear to be sand grains cemented together by some sort of iron oxide.  An examination of exactly what type of oxide might help in determining their origin.  I doubt they are fulgurites since there is no central hole which often is present and, as you say, there are too many of them.  Microscopic analysis to make sure there is no evidence of high temperature alteration/fusing of grains would definitely eliminate a lightnigh origin.

I don't think that it can be discounted that they are not of natural origin.  I have seen similar concretional and depositional features form around roots when the environmental conditions are just right.  I believe that it has something to do with the organic material, as it decays, creating an environment which promotes deposition of minerals which cement the sand grains.  I assume that they were found in scattered orientations rather than preferentially oriented in any particular direction.

This is pure speculation but might they be concretions which started as bits of iron wire or small nails which have completely corroded with the metal now dispersed throughout the concertion.

At the end of the day their origin and genesis may remain unknown.  There are some things in both geology and archaeology which cannot be presently explained satisfactorily.  Isn't the default description of anything that can't otherwise be described "ritual object?" ;-)

GNM

PS In case it is not obvious, I was a geologist earlier in my life but not so long ago that you would describe it as an "earlier incarnation." ;-)

PPS  I just read Frosty's speculation and that ties to my thought about orientation.  In his case they would have formed vertically but could later have been redistributed by human action such as excavation.

[Frosty]

A root cast brings something to mind George. If the acid were sulfuric rather carbolic might we be speculating about iron pyrite cemented sand rods? 

Frosty The Lucky.

[anvil]

It doesn't appear to me to be blacksmith related. In that era, as is the case today, scrap, or drop ended back at the "smelter" and not thrown away. So I doubt it was any kind of blacksmith shop. 

If you have a lot of those pieces then consider sacrificing one or so then burn off the rust/sand to actually see what the original material was. In a forge you can get it hot enough to remove the "gradoo" but not hot enough to hurt the metal, assuming it is ferrous.  

[Frosty]

The broken rod showed cemented sand through the center, "scrapping" my suggestion about using electrolysis to de-rust to base metal. I don't think there is iron other than the surface. 

Agreed about any 19th.c smithy not tossing even really small pieces of iron, it was just too valuable. Even if you had good ore close by smelting and refining by hammer is too labor intensive to ignore refined iron that only needs to be forge welded into useable size.

Frosty The Lucky.

[BillyBones]

From my expert analysis looks like some bits of rusty metal. 

Just kidding i am no expert at anything. I do however find this thread quite interesting. 

I  have a question. I would imagine that in archeology there have been found many 1000's of barrel hoops (just one example) i can see a few going to museums and being used in research and the like. What do they do with all the ones that are not needed for anything? Are they just stored away in a secret location next to the Ark, thrown away cause you do not need 5,000 barrel hoops from a single site, or do you archeologist keep them for some other nefarious ( ) purpose?  Anyway just wondering. 

[George N. M.]

Billy, I have heard of ancient masses of metal found by archaeologists just being hauled off for scrap because they were too large to be stored and samples were enough to be preserved for scientific purposed.  IIRC, there was a huge find of Roman nails found in Scotland that ended up that way.  I would have advocated for selling them off to touristas at 1 pound each as a fund raiser.  I would have bought one or a hundred.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[BillyBones]

Selling them would have been great. I would like to have a few myself. 

[MattyG]

21 hours ago, BillyBones said:

From my expert analysis looks like some bits of rusty metal. 

Just kidding i am no expert at anything. I do however find this thread quite interesting. 

I  have a question. I would imagine that in archeology there have been found many 1000's of barrel hoops (just one example) i can see a few going to museums and being used in research and the like. What do they do with all the ones that are not needed for anything? Are they just stored away in a secret location next to the Ark, thrown away cause you do not need 5,000 barrel hoops from a single site, or do you archeologist keep them for some other nefarious ( ) purpose?  Anyway just wondering. 

Well haven't you opened a can of worms. 

By law in Ontario the licenced archaeologist much preserve all artifacts on behalf of the King "in perpertuity." No need to look it up, perpetuity is a really long time.

All archaeology companies have storage facilities overflowing with artifacts, most of which ought to just be thrown out. How many sherds of red earthenware do we really need to store? Window glass? Bottle glass? Wire nails?

So, while most collections have large quantities of corroded metal stuff in their storage totes, large objects are actually just left in the field. At this site, we recorded the details and simply filled the pit back in, barrel hoops and all. Likely that isn't legal, but storing all that rusty stuff is expensive and, quite frankly, pointless.

Different situation for pre-contact artifacts, but most historics should just be recorded, samples photographed and then thrown out. 

[George N. M.]

When you close an excavation do you place any kind of message in the hole prior to refilling it to possibly inform any future folk that there had been a previous excavation there?

GNM