Firearms Archaeology

[whitedog]

Around 1984, a man named Frank (who everyone called Trapper) came to work with an old Kentucky rifle to show me. Trapper told me that he and his wife Gail were visiting a Mexican merchant who made windchimes and other items from agate that his family mined in the mountains around their village. Gail went into one of the outbuildings or sheds where the man was storing his raw material. She noticed an old rifle that was standing up against the corner behind the door. Gail brought it to Trapper's attention and they asked the Mexican about it. The Mexican brought it out of the shed and handed it to Trapper, telling him that the rifle had been in the shed for as long as he could remember as a boy. However, he did know that it was with his family when they had originaly settled in that area and that the rifle had been brought south with them when their family had aquired the land under a grant in the late 1830's. Gail looked at a deed for the land that the man showed her. It certainly was original and dated from that time. The land had been aquired for payment to an ancestor for his military service in the army. I don't know what his rank was. The ancestor had been involved in putting down Mexican uprisings and had also fought against the Americans who had occupied what used to be "that part of Texas that used to be Mexico" That's all that Gail knows. Trapper is dead now, so if he knew of any additional information, it's gone. I can never know from where in Texas the rifle came. I don't even know if it was picked up off of a battlefield or if the ancestor had aquired it from another Mexican. The rifle's barrel has seven cuts on it that appear to have been delivered from roughly the same angle. The cuts are deep and are at an angle that suggests they could have been made with a heavy sword. The angle of the cuts are consistant with a scenario that suggests the rifles original owner held the rifle with the muzzle to the right and slightly upwards. The barrel's top flat facing the individual with the blade. All of the cuts were in the barrel and none of them were in the stock. The rifle has a silver front sight and a buckhorn rear sight. It's a flintlock with a gooseneck hamer and no roller on the frizzen. The bore is around 41 caliber. The top flat of the barrel has the words "H.E. LEMAN - LANCASTER PA." stamped into it. Henry Leman started making rifles in 1834. It has a rectangle brass patchbox. All of the metal furniture is of brass. The barrel is 47" long. Was the rifle used in the defense of the Alamo? No one can say. It appears however, if the information is accurate, that it certainly was from the area of Texas that was being contested in 1835 to 1836. That's all I have on it. The name of the Mexican village where the rifle was found is written down somewhere around here. If I can't find it, I'll call Gail again and get it from her. The rifle was given to me 23 years ago. I sold it to a man who's dead now. His son will sell it back to me for $2,500.00 , and I'm getting the money together little by little. I'm not rich by any means...sigh.

[Beagle]

I went to the Alamo forum and looked around. Very nice forum.
I've always been crazy about the Alamo story. I started an Alamo Archaeology thread here a while back.

I may drop in sometime.

[Minimalist]

Santa Ana made a big show of cleaning up the battle site by burning the bodies of the defenders. He would not have left their weapons lying around, however.

It is unlikely that he would have had any military use for the weapons of the defenders as his army used the British Brown Bess and thus had standardized ammunition. While any sort of systematic collecting of arms is not likely, except to throw them on the fire, it is certainly likely that individual Mexican soldiers may have picked up some souvenirs that caught their fancy.

Equally feasible since Santa Ana had only about 700 men with him by the time of San Jacinto, is that he had been forced to make numerous detachments in order to protect his LOC on his advance. The defeated troops at San Jacinto would have been in no position to retain their personal baggage but those who were not defeated would have been able to withdraw with whatever they could carry.

Thus it is still quite possible that numerous arms from the Alamo and Goliad were brought back to Mexico by the parts of the army which were not defeated at San Jacinto but how you prove that any particular weapon had such a history is beyond me.

[Beagle]

There were reports of looting in the aftermath of the battle. As you say, very normal.

If such a weapon existed anywhere, proven that is, it would be famous, and probably purchased by the state of Texas.

[Minimalist]

True enough.

[whitedog]

This knife is known as the Bart Moore Bowie. It was found in Mexico where it was being used to do all kinds of work in the hands of an old farmer who gave it to the current owners grandfather for $5.00 he owed him many, many years ago. The knife was kept in a barn or shed and has pitting all over the metal surfaces. This knife has been proven to have been made by James Black, who was a blacksmith in Arkansas. James Black was the man to whom is given the credit for making Jim Bowies knife. The Mexican told Mr. Moore's grandfather that it'd been obtained by him when he was a soldado who was involved in the assult on the Alamo. He said that he had picked it up off the ground next to a pile of burning bodies. The old Mexican was never told what it was thought to have been by Mr. Moore, who at the time, thought it a pretty good trade for the five dollars owed him. The knife is one of several known to still exist that were made by James black. The Musso Bowie is another. Could it be the knife that Jim Bowie had with him at the Alamo? Did it belong to another Alamo defender? The Frankling Mint was given permission by the current owner to make and market copies of the knife many years ago. Some of these copies are frequently seen on ebay.

[marduk]

Radiocarbon dating has confirmed that three wooden spears found in a coal mine in Schöningen, near Hannover, Germany, are the oldest complete hunting weapons ever found. Some 380,000 to 400,000 years old, the six- to 7.5-foot javelins were found in soil whose acids had been neutralized by a high concentration of chalk near the coal pit. They suggest that early man was able to hunt, and was not just a scavenger. The development of such weapons may have been crucial to the settling of Stone Age northern Europe, whose cold climate and short daylight hours limited hunting.

The spears show design and construction skills previously attributed only to modern humans. "They are really high tech," says Hartmut Thieme of the Institut für Denkmalpflege in Hannover, who discovered them while excavating in advance of a rotary shovel digger used in the mine. "They are made of very tough Picea [spruce] trunk and are similarly carved." Their frontal center of gravity suggests they were used as javelins, says Thieme he also stated "one of them had "property of Ug" carved on the handle"

http://www.archaeology.org/9705/newsbriefs/spears.html
beat that

[Charlie Hatchett]

he also stated "one of them had "property of Ug" carved on the handle"

Radiocarbon dating has confirmed that three wooden spears found in a coal mine in Schöningen, near Hannover, Germany, are the oldest complete hunting weapons ever found. Some 380,000 to 400,000 years old

Typo?

[marduk]

no typo no
not on archaeology.org

Thieme says the Schöningen discovery is important because it proves that the Clacton lance tip was not just a chance find and that spears were probably being made in large quantities

That early man hunted big game is supported by the recent discovery of a fossilized rhinoceros shoulder blade with a projectile wound at Boxgrove, England, dated to 500,000 years ago.

Thousands of pieces of horse, elephant, and deer bone were also found at Schöningen. The bones showed cut marks from stone flints found with grooved wooden tools that probably held the flints

and from this edition

Did Homo erectus take shop? An assemblage of 1.5-million-year-old stone hand axes unearthed in Tanzania says yes

http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/wood.html
now bear in mind that archaeology.org is the clubs news letter
wheres that leave the crap that some posters are spouting about a cover up

[Charlie Hatchett]

The "radiocarbon" dating threw me, though. I wonder if they meant radiometric?

These dates appear to be well beyond the 14C method's resolution.

[marduk]

Thermoluminescence (TL) and electron spin resonance (ESR) were used to date these artifacts
hey
archaeology.org got it facts wrong
oops
heres the lab that did the tests and they make it quite clear that it wasn't radio carbon dating that was used
http://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/files/projects.htm

trust you to notice charlie
this is your chance to get noticed by the mag
if I was you i'd immediately write to the editor and point out the error
this will get you noticed by Mark Rose
write to
letters@archaeology.org
while you're at it I suggest you tell him what you have been excavating and ask if he'd like you to submit an article
heres the contact details for the mag
http://www.archaeology.org/write/index.html
you da man you da man you da man

[Charlie Hatchett]

Thermoluminescence (TL) and electron spin resonance (ESR) were used to date these artifacts
hey
archaeology.org got it facts wrong
oops
heres the lab that did the tests and they make it quite clear that it wasn't radio carbon dating that was used
http://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/files/projects.htm
Laughing
trust you to notice charlie
this is your chance to get noticed by the mag
if I was you i'd immediately write to the editor and point out the error
this will get you noticed by Mark Rose
write to
letters@archaeology.org
while you're at it I suggest you tell him what you have been excavating and ask if he'd like you to submit an article
heres the contact details for the mag
http://www.archaeology.org/write/index.html
you da man you da man you da man

Well, that's what shocked me. These guys are meticulous in their editing.

Fricking sweet idea. It's worth a shot.

[marduk]

it certainly is
when you've been published in that magazine you can use it as an orthodox reference to back your claim when talking to the ahem...club who will then happily crawl over each other to validate your thesis in an attempt to get a mention in the follow up article

[Charlie Hatchett]

it certainly is
when you've been published in that magazine you can use it as an orthodox reference to back your claim when talking to the ahem...club who will then happily crawl over each other to validate your thesis in an attempt to get a mention in the follow up article

Hey, whatever. As long as the pros are talking about it.

My biggest challenge, being a long-winded sum-bitch, is to condense a story into one page, and less than a million images...

[marduk]

read a few of the articles at the site to get a feel of the type of format they accept