Metallurgic Analysis of Slag Samples from a Seventeenth-Century Blacksmith Shop in Ferryland, Newfoundland

Excavation of a blacksmith shop at Ferryland, Newfoundland, revealed an almost complete stone forge, a blacksmith's vise, a hammer, shears, files, several examples of iron tools in for repair and a variety of other material culture dating from the first half of the seventeenth century. Included in this deposit was a large accumulation of slag (a by-product of blacksmithing) and a heavily concreted mass of forge clinker, dirt and iron fragments surrounding the area that once held the anvil. A metallurgical analysis of the slag can help us to ascertain aspects of productivity and the quality of work that the blacksmiths produced. The iron and soil concretion proved to be informative in terms of the small finds. Included in this mass was a wooden tuning peg preserved in tire corrosion layer. This artifact, in addition to the many shards of bottle glass, indicates a secondary use of die forge as a place of relaxation and merriment. From a conservation perspective, one of the challenges for this feature was the stabilization of large sections of concreted soil and dirt and the numerous diagnostic smithing tools. These objects required hours of chemical and mechanical cleaning. In addition, scientific analysis, including x-radiography and wavelength dispersive x-ray fluorescence (XRF), revealed physical attributes and chemical composition of the objects studied. Slag originating from both the smithy and another early seventeenth-century deposit, sixty metres from the first, was analysed for chemical composition by XRF. The results were used to determine if the slag from both areas are of the same chemical composition. If this is not the case, then it suggests that there was anotiier blacksmith shop operating at Ferryland during the first half of the seventeenth century. The chemical analysis could be used as a baseline or reference point for researchers examining slag from other blacksmith sites. The Ferryland Blacksmith Shop The community of Ferryland is located on Newfoundland's Peninsula approximately eighty kilometres south of St John's. In 1621 George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, sent a group of twelve men, including Captain Edward Wynne, to begin construction on the colony of Avalon at Ferryland. In Wynne's correspondence to Calvert, July 28,1622, he makes particular reference to the colony's forge that hath been finished this five weeks. Another letter dated August 17,1622, states that there were two blacksmiths, Thomas Wilson and John Prater, working at Ferryland. These are the only two documentary references to a blacksmith shop at Ferryland and therefore we must rely on the archaeological record to develop a more complete picture of the early operations of this forge. Initial test excavations, in 1984, uncovered portions of the forge, but it was not until 1994, when financial and conservation support was made available, that complete excavation was possible. These excavations revealed that the early blacksmith shop was constructed directiy into the side of a hill that flanks much of the original colony. By digging into the hillside, the colonists were able to reclaim previously void or waste ground, on which to build the forge and use the same earth to generate new land along the shoreline. The wooden walls of the blacksmith shop were positioned directly against the subsoil, with the exception of die front wall, and the total dimensions of the building measured 3.5 metres by 5.25 metres. The central feature of this structure was a well-preserved rectangular stone forge (Fig. 1). Artifactual remains within the shop revealed that the blacksmiths performed a variety of tasks including gunsmithing, locksmithing, coppersmithing and farriering as well as blacksmithing.

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