Copper shards (decorative box)

About This Artifact

The Copper Shards (Decorative Box) were recovered from the Lot 5 excavation on Oak Island during Season 11 of the Lagina excavation. The fragments came from the same round stone feature that has produced Venetian glass beads, Roman coins, ornate buttons, and a 14th-century lead barter token.

In Season 11 Episode 11, "Plugged Up" (January 23, 2024), Alex Lagina sifted thin decorative copper fragments from spoils excavated at Lot 5. The fragility of the material suggested ornamental rather than structural use. During the same dig sequence, Fiona Steele recovered a flat copper piece pierced by three rivets that appeared to be decorative hardware from a trunk or chest lid.

In Season 11 Episode 12, "Digging Back In" (January 30, 2024), blacksmithing expert Carmen Legge of the Ross Farm Museum examined the copper fragments in the Oak Island lab. He identified a rounded, tapered piece bearing a pattern as having come from a small jewelry chest. Iron pieces recovered with the copper fragments were identified as box straps rather than barrel hoops, supporting the interpretation of a chest or small storage container rather than a cask. Emma Culligan performed X-ray fluorescence analysis on the iron components and reported lead sitting on top of one piece, a characteristic that, in Culligan's assessment, is common in English-manufactured iron from the 1600s through the early 1700s.

Alex Lagina observed that the resulting date range aligned with the theory presented to the team by Scott Clarke connecting Lot 5 to Sir William Phips, the English colonial governor who recovered substantial treasure from the wreck of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de la Concepción in 1687.

The shards have not been laboratory dated independently, and the precise origin of the decorative box they came from has not been determined. The interpretation rests on Carmen Legge's visual identification of the chest pattern and Emma Culligan's XRF characterization of the associated iron.