4/8/23 Report - First Century Roman Nails. Lightning Type Bottle Closure. Big Surf Predicted For Monday.

 

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

See source link below.

Then, in the summer of 1960 a surprising discovery was made— a hoard of nearly a million iron nails.

Weighing almost ten tons, the iron nails were found buried in a pit, twelve feet deep, and covered by six feet of gravel. These extreme burial measures were likely to prevent the local Scottish tribes from finding the iron and reusing it for weapons. Iron rarely survives from antiquity, but since the hoard was buried as one big mass, the outer nails corroded forming a protective crust that preserved the internal core.

The nails were excavated and sent to the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland in Edinburgh and then transferred to Colville’s, a steelworks, to be counted, measured, and studied. There were at least 875,428 nails ranging from 2 ½ inches to 15 inches long—the hoard likely contained over a million nails originally...

The bulk of the nail hoard, it would seem, had been recycled. However, during the 1990s and early 2000s, many more Inchtuthil nails showed up in some bizarre venues—department stores, mail order, and newspaper advertisements, suggesting that at least some of the nails were not recycled after all...

Here is the link.

From Ancient Scotland to Online Auctions: A Tale of Roman Nails | Getty Iris

You probably noted the connection to Easter.

I thought it was interesting what happened to the hoard after its discovery.

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Although most bottles won't be detected by a metal detector, you can detect some.  They might hqve a metal top or closure.  Above you see a bottle with what is called a Lightning closure.  

There is a rubber stopper held by a heavy wire that can be used to hold the stopper in place or open the bottle.  This one is still in good shape.  It was eroded out of the bank.  Had it been in the water, there is a good chance that the wire bail would have rusted away.

The type of closure was used mostly on beer and soda bottles, and also fruit canning jars.

Dating notes:  In general, Lightning-type closures were popular on soda and beer bottles between the late 1870s to at least National Prohibition in 1920.  After that time use was limited on beverage bottles; the crown cap dominated by then.  The peak of use on soda bottles was the mid-1870s to early 1890s though some use was made at least until 1911 (Elliott & Gould 1988).  For beer bottles, where this closure was as dominant as the Hutchinson closure was for soda bottles, the peak use period was wider than for sodas - about 1880 to the early 1910s (Feldhaus 1986; Elliott & Gould 1988).   Source (sha.org).

This particular bottle is a little bit of an enigma for me.  It was manufactured by the Hazel Atlas company and appears to me to be a later bottle than suggested by the paragraph above.  

My father worked as a youth in a Hazel Atlas plant packing bottles in the late 1930s, so when I find one of those, I always have to wonder if my dad might have packed it.  

In this case, I'm not sure of the date.  There seem to be contradicting indicators and information.

The Hazel Atlas Glass company was formed in 1902 out of a merger between the Atlas Company (circa 1880's) and the Hazel Company...

Hazel Atlas was so successful in their production, that they were the only Glass Company and one of the few publicly traded Companies in the USA to pay a stock dividend during all the depression years. Source: Hazel Atlas History (hazelatlasglass.com)

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Sourec: MagicSeaWeed.com.

I usually the post the Fort Pierce MagicSeaWeed surf predictions chart.  The chart for other areas are usually not significantly different.  

I checked both the Sebastian and Jupiter predictions today, and they all show a 7 - 11 foot surf for Monday.  The time of low tide is just a little different, but also not vey much.  Just a few minutes.

Good Feast of Unleavend Bread.

TreasureGuide@comcast.net