The Artifacts
The collection of objects from the Clay Bank cellar hole is important for a small number of rare items and because the deposit provided accurate dating for a much larger group of less impressive artifacts. Unfortunately, neither category included pieces that were of much help in establishing anything of the history of the property.
A small cannonball of the 3-pound type used by light fieldpieces of the minion class was found in the top of the sand stratum (D3) against the south face of the cellar. Guns of this caliber may well have been used during Bacon's Rebellion, and there might be some who would care to use the excavated ball to support the legend that Bacon died at Clay Bank. The ball, it has been argued, could have been left behind by Bacon's forces when they vacated the site in the fall of 1676. However, such a conjecture, based on so little evidence, can hardly be taken seriously.
The single clue pointing to a Porteus family association, the latten spoon with its presumed Scottish mark, hardly merits any more serious consideration than the cannonball. Somewhat more tenable, however, may be the suggestion furnished by two artifacts, that the cellar hole was in the vicinity of a cooper's workshop. The objects in question were a "chisel" (fig. 14, no. 7) used specifically for driving down barrel hoops, and a race knife (fig. 12, no. 3), a tool frequently used by coopers to mark the barrels. No documentary evidence has been found to indicate the presence of a cooper in the Second Precinct of Petsworth Parish in the late 17th century though the Vestry Book does contain an entry for October 4th, 1699, ordering an orphan to be indentured to a cooper in King and Queen County.[20]
Other tools from the Clay Bank cellar included spade and hoe blades, a large wedge, and a carpenter's chisel, a range of items that did nothing to support a coopering association, but which did tend to indicate that the artifacts might have come from a variety of sources.
The pottery included a high percentage of coarse earthenwares, among which were fragments of two, or possibly three, lead-glazed tygs and a similarly glazed cup (fig. 15, nos. 7, 8, and 9), all objects that would have been best suited either to a yeoman's household or to a tavern. The large quantity of tobacco-pipe fragments present might support the latter construction but the dearth of wine-bottle pieces does not. Numerous fragments of English delftware were found scattered through the filling from top to bottom, most of them in very poor condition. While none of the pieces was of particularly good quality, a medium-sized basin with crude chinoiserie decoration in blue, is of some importance. The vessel (fig. 15, no. 1) is of a form that is extremely rare from the 17th century, but which clearly was the ornamental ancestor of the common washbasins of the 18th century.[21]
In marked, and even staggering contrast to the assemblage of cheap and utilitarian earthenware, was the presence of a massive lead-glass stem from a "ceremonial" drinking glass or candlestick, a form undoubtedly made in London in the period 1685-1695 (fig. 10). Although the double-quatrefoil stem units and central melon knop are paralleled by existing glasses, the heavily gadrooned foot is seemingly unknown. This last feature gives the foot such weight that it has led Mr. R. J. Charleston, Keeper of Ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, to suggest that the stem may come from a candlestick (fig. 11) rather than from a large, covered glass. However, no parallels for such a candlestick are known.
One might be tempted to believe that a glass candlestick would be more likely to have been brought to 17th-century Virginia than would a seemingly pretentious, covered, "ceremonial" drinking-glass. But in 1732, Thomas Jones[22] of Williamsburg made a settlement upon his wife in case of his death, and among the possessions listed were "6 glass decanters, 6 glasses with covers...."[23] Covered glasses ceased to be popular after about 1720 when fashions in glass were turning from the icy sparkle of mass towards more delicate and lighter designs. It is possible, therefore, that the Jones' glass might have been of the general type indicated by the Clay Bank stem. But be this as it may, there is no doubt that the excavated stem is the finest piece of glass of its period yet discovered in America, and that it is sufficiently important to be able to add a paragraph to the history of English glass.
Other glass objects included the powdered remains of a small quatrefoil-stemmed wineglass, a form common in the period 1680-1700.[24] Like so many glasses of its type, the metal was singularly impermanent when buried in the ground, and little or nothing could be salvaged of it. Also present were fragments of at least seven wine bottles of the short-necked, squat-bodied forms of the late 17th century, as well as one fragment of a short-necked and everted-mouthed case bottle. A few fragments of cylindrical pharmaceutical bottles were also found as was a well-preserved bottle of similar metal but in wine-bottle shape (fig. 9 and fig. 15, no. 19). Such bottles are thought to have been used for oils and essences, and their manufacture seems to have been confined to the period about 1680-1720.
Tobacco-pipe fragments (fig. 16) were plentiful throughout the cellar fill and provided a useful range of bowl forms as well as a key to the dating of the deposit. All the bowls were of types common in the last years of the 17th century, a period in which the two English bowl styles of the second half of the century (one evolving with a spur and the other with a heel) merged together into the single spurred form of the 18th century.[25] In addition, the Clay Bank cellar contained examples of bowls with neither heel nor spur, a style never popular in England, and which seems to have been developed specifically for the American market initially copying the shape favored by the Indians.
No fewer than 648 stem fragments were recovered from the cellar and their stem-hole diameters, using J. C. Harrington's chart,[26] indicated a manufacture date in the period 1680-1710. Because pipes are considered to have had a short life, it is generally assumed that the dates of manufacture and deposition are not far apart. Other artifacts from the deposit, notably the large glass stem, the wine bottles, small wineglass and, of course, the pipe bowl shapes, together suggested a terminal date for the group within the period 1690-1700. Using the Binford formula,[27] the 648 stem fragments suggested a mean date of 1698. Experience has shown that the formula is likely to be accurate to three or four years either way on a sampling of that size.[28]
The presence of the same maker's initials, I·F, on pipe bowls at different levels of the cellar fill strongly pointed to a homogeneity of deposition. Although it is impossible to identify the owners of the initials with any certainty, it is worth noting that there was a Josiah Fox making pipes in Newcastle-under-Lyme in and after 1683 whose initials are the same as those most common in the Clay Bank cellar. The I·F mark was somewhat unusual in that it was impressed between two X's across the top of the stem (fig. 16, no. 11). All other marks, save one, were in the normal position, to left and right of the heels. These comprised W F (William Ferry, Marlborough, about 1700?), or perhaps W.P., II I (Henry Jones, London, 1688?)[29] and V R. The remaining mark, S A (fig. 16, no. 14) occurred on the bases of two bowls with neither heels nor spurs. From the oystershell layer south of the existing house came a bowl fragment ornamented with the name of a well-known Bristol pipe-making family, I TIPPET, in a raised cartouche on the side. This was probably Jacob Tippett whose name appeared in the Bristol Freedom Rolls in 1680.[30]
In addition to the few marked bowls, two stems were of interest in that they had been ground or pared down to enable the pipes to be used again, one being only 2¼ inches in length (fig. 16, nos. 12 and 13). Such frugality might be construed as being associated with a household of small means. Also present were a few brown stem fragments and part of one decorated bowl (fig. 8, no. 9) of Virginia, possibly Indian, manufacture.