Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Ten-Foot Long Beam Found by Kurt R. |
DJ found the beam shown below back about a month ago at Pepper Park after a few days of rough surf. One of the interesting things about that beam is that it has a broken treenail in it.
Beam found by DJ (left).
Trennel or trennel being pointed out (right).
Wikipedia says, A treenail, also trenail, trennel, or trunnel, is a wooden peg, pin, or dowel used to fasten pieces of wood together, especially in timber frames, covered bridges, wooden shipbuilding and boat building. It is driven into a hole bored through two (or more) pieces of structural wood (mortise and tenon).
I also read that treenails, or trennals, were commonly used until around the 1780s.
Maybe these beams come from the same source and got uncovered last month during the rough surf.
Below is an example of a shipwreck beam with trennals. This photo was snipped from a USF video of a shipwreck found near Jacksonville.
I really hope someone can help us out here. I know DJ and Kurt would like the information, and I'd certainly like to learn a little something about the subject.
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Yesterday I wrote about cannon aprons, but the discussion was about more than cannon aprons. It was also about investigating artifacts in general.
Here is an excerpt from the Schnitzer thesis that I referenced yesterday.
As Knappett (2005:1) states: It is perhaps surprising…that archaeology, while developing ever more sophisticated methodologies for artifact study, has not yet constructed similarly sophisticated theoretical models for understanding the roles of artifacts in human societies. So complex and daunting is such a task that it must inevitably be interdisciplinary in its scope, drawing upon cognitive science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and history.
Theory is important in all sciences because it provides a way to organize data in a meaningful way. Theories can be hypothetical or predictive. They are the overarching abstractions that form conceptual frameworks for scientific research. Archaeology is, in its strongest applications, an interdisciplinary science, and many of its theories are drawn from interdisciplinary concepts. The study of the QAR cannon aprons is no exception. According to Trigger (2006), “It is a fundamental tenet of science that nothing is significant by itself but only in relation to hypotheses; hence only theories can explain phenomena.” The goal of this project is to explain the “phenomena” that are the QAR cannon aprons using a blend of material culture theory and an adaptation of behavioral archaeology theory, as conceptualized by Michael Schiffer in the 1970’s.
Here is that link again.
http://thescholarship.ecu.edu/bitstream/handle/10342/3842/Schnitzer_ecu_0600M_10612.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y )
So what does that have to do with metal detecting?
I don't expect myself or anyone who reads this to turn into an archaeologist, but as detectorists we do find items that we want to know more about, and we can learn a lot from how the professionals investigate artifacts.
I encourage all detectorists to take a disciplined systematic approach to hunting and artifact identification. I've had a few posts on that type of thing lately.
If you have an idea - a theory - it will help you assimilate the information and make predictions. It will also help you develop hypotheses that can be tested. That will help advance your understanding.
The piece of lead that I found was not hugely interesting by itself, but since it caused me to do additional research, I learned a lot from the research. I learned about cannon aprons, but also about some other things.
I've always said that a find is more than a find. Gaining more knowledge about a find not only makes the find more interesting, but it will sometimes point you to additional finds.
I didn't really think much about the lead find until I happened upon the cannon apron literature and saw pictures of other pieces that looked similar I could have missed some interesting features of that find, and I will be studying that piece more in the near future.
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Don't forget the Treasure Hunter's Cookout Saturday.
You can find the details by using the following link.
http://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/2019/04/42419-report-treasure-hunters-cookout.html
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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
