French gunflints at British sites?

[Daniel Holland]

Hi all,

My first time posting in the group, but I am hoping that someone may be able to assist.

I am a post-graduate student at the University of Notre Dame completing an MPhil. My project is an historical archaeological study looking at the first British settlement at Augusta here in Western Australia (May, 1830). My research focus relates around the acquisition of knowledge, learning, adaptation etc. in a new settlement (e.g. Marcy Rockman's Landscape Learning Model). 

Excavation of two sites took place in December 2016 and I am in the middle of writing results up for the thesis.

I came across what I think are two spent French gunflints (due to their honey/blonde colour and retouch on sides and heel- although the shape looks similar to British gunflints due to their squarer heel which is a little confusing), which I also believe may have been used as fire-flints due to wear which was also seen in the study by Buscaglia, Alberti, and Alvarez (2016) (e.g. polyfunctionality of artefacts). 

The difficulty I am having is trying to locate comparative examples where French gunflints have been found at British sites for this period- most were of course produced in Britain after the Napoleonic war. I believe that if these are French that the individual in question could have obtained them from French whalers who were in the area during the period (they were trading with American whalers also).

Is anyone able to shed any light on whether these are in fact likely to be French gunflints, and, whether anyone has come across research where French gunflints have been found at British sites for this period?

Pictures are included below (lower surface left/upper surface right), the pictures are not the greatest, so they look a little dark. When held up to the light they are a translucent honey colour:

[Richard Morrison]

Daniel
We found a similar gunflint to yours, similar in size, colour and shape (although not sure about the similarity of the section profile) on a 1977 excavation, directed by Maureen Byrne, on the Port Arthur Prisoners Barracks site which was occupied from 1830.
Dr Rhys Jones, who was visiting at the time, commented that the flint was similar to that found at Dagenham on the Thames.
Some relatively recent work by honours students (from the University of Sydney supervised by Martin Gibbs) has been done on the artefacts and material from that excavation but not sure whether this item was analysed in that process.
It seems most likely that this artefact derived from the British military present during the convict era of the site.
Contact with the Port Arthur archaeologists may be useful if you wish to pursue this.
Richard Morrison

Sent from my iPhone

> On 17 Apr 2018, at 1:11 pm, Daniel Holland <daniel.ho...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> h

[Daniel Holland]

Hi Richard

Thank you for the info, I will look into this further.

Daniel

[David Roe]

Dear Daniel,

Richard's extraordinary memory at work again!!  

Yes, the flints from the first prisoners barracks at Port Arthur were considered by Caiti Dircks in her thesis (available at: https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/10172); we could provide additional illustrations of the material but this will take a little time to organise.  

Gunflints were also recovered from a context in excavations of the commissariat store:  

I'll email you shortly with a copy of the draft report.  Richard Tuffin did the work and remembers the flints being identified as English based on their colour; apparently English gunflint quarries were limited in number and the colours of flints from them can be diagnostic.

Let me know if we can be of further help; contact me off-list at Davi...@portarthur.org.au,

Regards

David

David Roe

Archaeology Manager, Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority.

[Rhys Booth]

Hi Daniel,

I've done some work on conflict archaeology in the British colonies of the Pacific, Vic-Ballarat, and Plymouth in New Zealand. I was extremely surprised at the amount of variation in the origins of many of the munitions (and domestic artifacts) found at one particular site 

(Warea Redoubt) which was manned predominantly by local militia. Date wise we were looking at 1863-1880's. Several munitions were from France, and further afield Europe, one round in Ballarat could have been from a French carbine but other U.S guns also used that particular caliber. 

Hope this helps a little.

Rhys Booth. 

[Daniel Holland]

Hi Rhys

 

Thanks for this information, much appreciated.

 

Cheers

 

Daniel

 

 

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