Lead tag (Mediterranean origin)

About This Artifact

A small lead artefact recovered by Gary Drayton from Smith's Cove during Season 7, found near the wooden wharf structure that the team was exposing within the steel cofferdam. Dr. Chris McFarlane of the University of New Brunswick conducted laser ablation analysis on the piece, the same technique previously used on the lead cross from Smith's Cove and the Lot 21 lead artefact. The results showed impure lead with approximately two percent tin and two percent antimony, the highest tin ratio McFarlane had encountered in any sample he had tested.

Using his database of over six thousand European lead ore isotope measurements, McFarlane determined the lead was not of North American origin. The isotope signature was most consistent with sources in the western Mediterranean, specifically Italy, France, or Spain. This placed the tag in the same broad geographic region as the lead cross, whose isotopes matched medieval mining deposits in the Montagne Noire of southern France, and the Lot 21 artefact, whose lead came from the identical ore body. The accumulation of Mediterranean-origin lead artefacts across Smith's Cove points to a pattern of European activity at the site predating British settlement of the Mahone Bay area.

The composition of the tag, with its elevated tin and antimony content, distinguishes it from the purer lead of the cross and the Lot 21 piece. Tin and antimony are commonly found as impurities in lead ores from specific Mediterranean deposits and can serve as a chemical fingerprint narrowing the source region. The tag's proximity to the wharf structure, where crib spikes, the massive iron hinge, and the slipway timbers were also recovered, places it within the concentration of pre-1795 artefacts that have defined Smith's Cove as one of the most archaeologically significant areas on the island.