Pine Tar Kiln

About This Structure

A stone structure excavated on Lot 15 during Season 8 by archaeologists David MacInnes, Aaron Taylor, and Liz Michels under the broader supervision of Laird Niven. Blacksmithing expert Carmen Legge examined the structure during Season 8 Episode 1 and identified it as an English tar kiln dating from 1550 to 1620. In the following episode, Aaron Taylor voiced the team's confirmed conclusion that the feature was a pine tar kiln, and Laird Niven added that the kiln may have been linked to construction activity on Oak Island itself, noting that the tar fires could account for long-standing accounts of mysterious lights observed flickering on the island at night. Marty Lagina observed that an operation on this scale would have required government or military backing.

Pine tar kilns were stone or earthwork structures used to render pine wood into tar and pitch, materials with multiple applications in seventeenth-century shipbuilding, rope production, and waterproofing. The 1550 to 1620 dating placed the kiln well before the 1795 discovery of the Money Pit and within the period when European fishing and trading vessels were active along the coast of what is now Nova Scotia. Niven suggested the kiln may have been linked to construction activity on Oak Island itself, noting that the tar fires could account for the long-standing accounts of mysterious lights observed flickering on the island at night.

The kiln sits alongside other pre-discovery finds recovered from Lot 15, including a Chinese cash coin, two ox shoes identified by Carmen Legge as British winter shoes dating 1650 to 1750, and a ship's rigging axe head. The combined record from the lot reinforces the case for sustained activity on Oak Island during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.