Nail from U-shaped structure timber (Smith's Cove, Blankenship 1969-70)

About This Artifact

A single hand-forged nail was recovered by Dan Blankenship at Smith's Cove during the 1970 excavation, pulled from one of the loose-laying timbers found on top of the U-shaped structure. The find was documented as Item #9 in Blankenship's September 1970 inventory. His report noted that the nail had been forwarded to the Steel Company of Canada for analysis, with results pending at the time of writing. The published documentation does not include the eventual Stelco analysis. A separate Stelco report dated 19 November 1970 examined metal fragments recovered from Golder Borehole 201 at 84.5 to 86.5 feet depth and described them as friable fragments of wrought iron dating prior to 1800, but the report concerning the Smith's Cove nail itself does not appear in the surviving MacPhie compilation. The nail's position embedded in timber resting on the U-shaped structure indicates a construction or repair phase associated with the larger feature, rather than a chance loss. The U-shaped structure itself was later dendrochronologically dated by Dr. Colin Laroque to trees felled in 1769, while an oak peg from the same structure had earlier returned a Geochron radiocarbon result of approximately 860 AD (GX-1692, range 720-1000), reflecting the age of the wood rather than the felling date. If the Stelco analysis dated the nail to before 1800, the artefact would join the small body of pre-industrial wrought iron recovered from Smith's Cove, including the wrought iron scissors that the Smithsonian Institution identified as Spanish-American manufacture prior to the mid-nineteenth century, and the hand-forged framing square that STELCO estimated to predate 1783.