Barb Wire Revisted

Last summer, I did the analysis of all my barb wire samples.  The results of which, show that there is a lot of variety in the barb wire that was used by the Kern County Land Company and their successors.

The ones I was able to identify based on the Hagemeier guide:

The wire itself is not the only artefact is produced during the construction and maintenance of a barb wire fence line. It could also include the securing method (fencing clip, nails, wire, ect) and the remnants of the spool, such as the spool handles pictured here:

Barb Wire

Perhaps if I actually write something, even if short I will get back into the swing of things.

Currently trying to figure out all of my barb wire typologies. I live and breath the Harold Hagemeier Barbed Wire Encyclopedia. I thought barb wire was pretty bland, but the more you look at it the more you see there is HUGE amount of variety. It is a huge help. To give you an idea of how many when Hagemeier observed between 1853 and 1959 there were about 450 patents taken out of barbed wire in the USA. That is quite a few, and does not include foreign patents (no idea on this one).

Identification is not easy either. The one pictured above was identified by me as a Glidden Long and Short point barb and by a pro as a Glidden Viscous Long Barb. Guess we will get there in the end.

Cattle Squisher

In the field the students affectionately called one of the features a Cattle Squisher. I giggled at the time, "knowing" it was actually called a Squeeze Chute, but I am the one who has been schooled. Squeeze chute may be a more modern name in the United States. As early agriculture station brochures found in the Internet Archive suggest a variety of names including squeeze chute, cattle crush, AND cattle squisher.

Normally I do not suggest using Wikipedia a location of source material, but whomever had done the historical section of the article Livestock Crush has done a lot of work. There are various images of historical crushs (or travail in French). Some are situated outside of blacksmith shops.


My favourite image from Wikipedia:

"2008.04.18.VorrichtungZumBeschlagenVonOchsen.DorfmuseumMoenchhof.33" by Anton-kurt - Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org

 

Up San Emigdio Canyon, at Dominguez Flat is the location of the early settlement. An early 1900 description includes in the list a blacksmith shop. So far archaeologist have not been able to find the supposed blacksmith shop. Perhaps if they find the old location of a crush / squeeze chute, as used for shoeing both horse and ox, the shop could be relocated. Something to think about for latter.

Helping with Older Stuff

My husband is also doing his PhD at the same time. Even though I also had a ton of work to do, his thesis is due at the end of the month. As any good partner, I am helping him out a bit.

Generally, incised stones are the stuff of my other half, but in the last few days, I have seen some VERY cool artefacts. Which is a big thing for me to say, as I have spent the last four years tuning out anything to do with incised stones beyond polite conversation. Your head can only retain so much information, and I feel very selective about what I retain. I need all I can for my own work, even then I often forget things.

One of the interesting things I have observes is the use of one of his caves during the contemporary period by native peoples. In the volume they are glossed over because they contain 'modern' artefacts. In one is a label for a bag of tobacco dated between 1880 and 1960, within a cache of some very amazing artefacts. YET there is no mention of continued use of the cave during the early historic period! Granted the cave was excavated in the 1970s, but that is no excuse! 

I could rant on for ages, but I think I will pin that for latter.

Gratuitous Incised Stone picture from the Monograph from one of the sites my husband is studying.

Rules for Artefacts

During 2014 fieldwork we had a reoccuring problem with the camera. Great camera, great people but still had great big problems. At one point the view finder was obscured so I took of the lens and a small black piece of platic fell out. Ever after everyone had great difficulty in focusing, both with auto-focus and manual focus. Landscape image were generally okay, but artefact pictures not so much.

For example:

 Very useful. Some blurry images you can still used, at least to an extent, to create line art of the artefacts. Blurry images cannot help you diagnostically though, that is why it is so very important to also do a field drawing of recorded artefacts.

Well done for Jeff and all the crew (Gwen, Chris, and Chloe) for sticking to it and making these wonderful and important conponents of the archaeological record. Thank you.

The Sunkist Fruit Sticker

As far as artefacts go a fruit sticker, found on one of the sites from the 2014 field season, is probably the youngest I have ever looked up. They have been in use since the 1990s.

During my childhood my family liked to line up the sticker on the side of the refrigerator, creating a timeline of the different fruits we ate through a particular period. My mother would wipe the slate, so to speak, frequently, but we continued the practice well into the time we left home and returned for extra rations from the supermarket of mom.

I digress.

I learned quite a lot from this little sticker. Firstly, what those numbers under the barcode present, a livelong question only answered today because I finally took the time to find out. The numbers are product look-up codes and represent a standardized number for all fruits and vegetables. The number for a variant of a particular fruit is the same no matter the location, California or Georgia. The International Federation for Produce Standards has taken the codes even further, meaning a product code will be the same in the United States as it is in the United Kingdom.

The above sticker gives the product code number of 4383 which represents the Minneola variety of a tangelo. Minneola is on the sticker, as is USA, but I had first assumed that was its place of origin (it is from the USA). A tangelo is a 3 to 3.5 inch cross between a grapefruit and a tangerine. According to Sunkist they are in production from December to March. Our fieldwork commenced in April, which means the sticker is only a couple of months old.