Artifact of the Week Series: Tough as Nails!

Thus far, nails are among the most noteworthy artifacts from our excavations. They were excavated in nearly every Test Pit on the northwest area of Turpin’s Island. Produced since the Antiquity, nails play a key role in the conception of an incredible variety of structures and items.

Fig. 1 The three types of nails: hand-wrought nail, machine-cut nail, and wire nail.

Iron nails crafted during the 400 years of human occupation of Turpin’s Island, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, can be grouped into three main types (left to right in the picture): the hand-wrought nail, the machine-cut nail, and the wire nail.

The hand-wrought nails, individually handcrafted by blacksmiths, were the only type produced from the beginning of nail making until the early nineteenth century. They typically have a “rose head” that was shaped with heading tools, and four facets with similar width. During the Colonial period, hand-wrought nails were very valuable due to the necessary craftsmanship to produce them.

Introduced at the end of the eighteenth century, machine-cut nails were a major innovation of the American Industrial Revolution. These nails were cut from a heated sheet iron pressed by a heavy roll. Then, the spikes were gathered, and the heads were shaped by hand, until the complete mechanisation of the process around 1815. Therefore, cut nail head shapes vary depending on the technique used. For instance, our cut nail has a forged head, which was the production technique in use between 1790 and 1820. Cut nail shanks have a superior width than their thickness this the main way to identify them.

A progressive transition was made to wire nails until they became the standard in 1890. They were manufactured by drawing a wire through a holed draw plate, which shapes the wire into a nail without reducing its strength. Depending on the mould, different head shapes would be created, although they were usually flat and round. This is the type of nails we still use today; they are only made with more modern equipment. 

Both hand-wrought and machine-cut nails were found in the second layer of Test Pit 45, which is the same layer where the whiteware ceramic sherd of last week’s post was found! The wrought nail is bent because it was removed with a gooseneck wrecking bar. Hence, it is related to demolition action. As for the wire nail, it was unearthed in the third layer of Test Pit 46. It is the Turpin’s house occupation layer, which was built in 1895. The wire nail could then be a lost nail related to the construction of the house or simply to everyday use.

References :

Abdelbar, M et Roshdy Elsakhry, A. (2024). Archaeometallurgical characterization of Greco-Roman copper-based and iron nails from Tel Abu Seify, North Sinai, Egypt. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, vol.59, 1 to 18. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X24004437?via%3Dihub

Buchardt, Jørgen. The Wire Nails Revolution: The History 1898-2000. Museum Vestfyn. https://www.burchardt.name/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/The_wire_nails_revolution.pdf

Mathieu, Jean-Philip. (2022). The cut nail: A revolutionary technological innovation. Ingenium. https://ingeniumcanada.org/channel/articles/the-cut-nail-a-revolutionary-technological

Nelson, Lee H. Nail chronology:  as an aid to dating old buildings. National Park Service. https://npshistory.com/publications/nail-chronology.pdf

Noël Hume, I. (1970). A guide to artifacts of colonial America. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Author: Raphaëlle Gascon