Worked glass

[hvs]

Ive always picked up old glass looking for any evidence of it being knapped.. Today i think i finally found a piece. Looks like the bottom of a old green bottle turned into a scraper.. Hard to see in the picture but what do u guys think.?


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[hvs]

Found a few rough points today also..

[Torrey]

Hello - It looks like it might be a musket flint with damage to one edge.  Regards, Torrey

[hvs]

Its definitely the bottom of a glass bottle not flint.. Thanks though

[gregszybala]

It sure looks like it unless it says Coca Cola
Nice couple of finds too.

[waterglass]

I am a  bottle collecter as well as an arrowhead collector. That glass is old. It looks 1870-1890.

[OnewiththewilD]

the points are cool, but im not sure the glass piece is a N.A. artifact. i know in some parts of the country they did knap glass for a short period, but i would think in yer area they had plenty of access to metal goods and wouldnt have had to rely on glass.just a thought.

[SDhunter]

Sure looks knapped to me.

[sneakygroundbuzzard]

that glass is  definitely knapped
very well could have been used s a scraper
not sure if its a NA artifact or not
  on a side note, a lot of modern knappers when they are first learning work glass to get through the learning curve
some use old glass as it seems to work better than the newer stuff,plus its easier to see the flake pattern on the older stuff because of the color n the glass

[tomclark]

I've found a lot of worked, patinated glass from Woodland midden sites that had occupations Spanish through the Seminole Wars to present.  The flakes were done on patinated glass like yours.   I assumed it was later Seminole indians or later fishermen or fish rancho workers that needed a quick tool.  Sweet example!

[hvs]

Thanks guys.. The site i found this on is a multi culture site i find lots of woodland era points and also colonial artifact like pipe stems,etc. Under the context this was found.I dont believe a modern knapper had anything to do with it..  Thanks for the pictures Tom..

[shartis]

Those are all nice hvs! Still looking for my first worked piece of glass.

[painshill]

A high degree of caution is required when assessing broken glass to assign it as having been worked into an artefact. The topic is on my list of things to add to the Information Centre, but in the meantime, you may find this discussion paper useful:

http://www.deldot.gov/archaeology/bloomsbury/pdf/18_making.pdf

A short quote from the paper:
This experiment indicates that flaked edge modification can be produced on broken glass as a result of human activity other than use as a tool or modification for use as a tool, and that the modification is patterned and can be identified in the archaeological record. As a result, we concluded that any similar fragments from the Bloomsbury excavation were most likely not intentionally produced tools or even tools produced by use, but rather evidence of other activities which, while certainly cultural, did not include the deliberate use or modification of glass fragments.
Of the 178 edge-modified fragments included in the analysis, 170 proved to have modifications resembling the experimental fragments.

[will dawes]

Hvs im in maine and i have an arrowhead base wich was made of dark root beer colored  glass i found it at a midden in stueben maine mine is pretty worn by the water but the same day my uncle found what we called a cerimonial glass point in the habitation site near the midden it was about 7 inchs long and made of the same glss i believed for years that they were obsidian but afew years ago i read about how trade ships would load up glass balast blocks if they had a light load to even out the ship often when unloading and reloading the balast would be sent to shore for future use and natives traded and for it or simply took it the points im certian now to have been balast glass my uncle has since passed away and his collection long since sold off  unfortunatly id like you to have seen this thing as for your piece as a collector and knapper ITS A SCRAPER ;-) and a darn cool one at that glass artifacts are among the most rare in my opinion solely due to the narrow window of time they were produced in thanks for sharing

[painshill]

wildo420 wrote:

Hvs im in maine and i have an arrowhead base wich was made of dark root beer colored  glass i found it at a midden in stueben maine mine is pretty worn by the water but the same day my uncle found what we called a cerimonial glass point in the habitation site near the midden it was about 7 inchs long and made of the same glss i believed for years that they were obsidian but afew years ago i read about how trade ships would load up glass balast blocks if they had a light load to even out the ship often when unloading and reloading the balast would be sent to shore for future use and natives traded and for it or simply took it the points im certian now to have been balast glass my uncle has since passed away and his collection long since sold off  unfortunatly id like you to have seen this thing as for your piece as a collector and knapper ITS A SCRAPER ;-) and a darn cool one at that glass artifacts are among the most rare in my opinion solely due to the narrow window of time they were produced in thanks for sharing

  You’re touching on some particular areas of interest and research for me here, so I’m afraid I have to take issue with some of that. I’d love you to prove me wrong, but I don’t think you will find any documented instance of “glass blocks” being used for ballast on merchant ships in the trading era.
Initially, ballast was unwanted rubble – often rough flint cobbles and arisings from flint-mining operations for example. Also old bricks – mostly broken or defective. Those kinds of materials were dumped, but frequently salvaged for re-use. Also, tradeable and saleable materials were used as ballast since manufacturers found they could negotiate a good price for getting such cargoes to America on otherwise empty ships and the ship-owner could get at least some income from the voyage. Glass trade beads were shipped in enormous quantity, as were clay pipes. In later times, salt-glazed earthenware was a popular ballast cargo – frequently in the form of utilitarian items such as jugs, plates and ink-bottles. But glass blocks? I don’t think so.
Unwanted busted up slag-glass and furnace clinker, full of impurities might well have been part of the rubble-ballast but not anything useable as glass. That would have been re-melted and re-used at  the plant that produced it. The only commodity items produced as glass blocks in significant quantity were those used as “vault lights”. Originally, these were set into the upper decks of ships to provide light below (and had a prismatic shape). In the 1840’s (patented by Thaddeus Hyatt of Kansas in 1845), they began to be used in sidewalks, set into iron covers, to provide light into basement areas (and usually had a cylindrical shape). In both cases the glass was originally clear and virtually colourless, but often develops a  strong purple colour as a result of years of exposure to UV light and the effect that has on the manganese dioxide added to the glass to obscure other colours created by impurities. By these times, America was producing its own glass and these kinds of items would not have been imported from Europe – let alone as ballast.