About This Artifact
Hand-cut square nails recovered from multiple locations on Oak Island. Square nails, also called rosehead nails for the distinctive shape left by the blacksmith's hammer, were the standard fastener in North America from the colonial period through the mid-19th century, when machine-cut wire nails replaced them. Their presence is a general indicator of pre-industrial construction, though they cannot be dated precisely without additional context.
Square nails have been found in the Money Pit spoils, at Smith's Cove, on the Samuel Ball properties, in the swamp pathway, and at the Lot 5 stone features. During Season 4, Gary Drayton recovered a hammered iron object with a square nail hole punched through it from the GAL-1 spoils, which he connected to the same pre-1795 construction activity evidenced by other artifacts from the area. During Season 11, Laird Niven examined a handwrought rosehead nail extracted from a timber in the Garden Shaft tunnel and dated it to the 1600s to 1700s based on its construction.
The distribution of square nails across virtually every investigated area of the island confirmed that large-scale construction using hand-forged hardware occurred at multiple locations. When combined with the crib spikes Carmen Legge dated to the mid-1600s and the ring bolts he dated to the 1600s to 1760, the nails formed part of a consistent picture of organized building activity spanning at least a century before the Money Pit's official discovery.
Historical Context
Gary Drayton
Where It Was Found
Found at Lot 5 — Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada.
