Material – Metal, copper alloy

Place of Origin – Unknown

This copper kettle lug attachment was recovered from a c.1670-1690s building on a private town lot in the Charles Towne settlement. The small looped brass lug allowed the kettle to be suspended over a fire on hooks or for the attachment of a bail handle.[i] A similar copper handle lug has been recovered from the early colonial contexts at Jamestown Virginia.[ii] Similarly shaped kettle lugs in both copper and iron have been found on late 16th to 18th century sites in eastern North America. The 1596 camp on Nova Zembla in Albany, New York recovered a Dutch domestic kettle that also has small looped brass lugs.[iii]

[i] Ivor Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America (Vintage Books, New York, NY 1991), 175.

[ii] John L. Cotter and J. Paul Hudson, New Discoveries at Jamestown: Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America (National Park Service, Washington D.C., 1957), 30-31.

[iii] James W. Bradley, Before Albany: An Archaeology of Native-Dutch Relations in the Capital Region 1600-1664 (The University of the State of New York, Albany, New York, 2006), 40; Jeffrey P. Brain, Tunica Treasure, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 71 (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1979), 164-165,174; John L. Cotter and J. Paul Hudson, New Discoveries at Jamestown: Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America (National Park Service, Washington D.C., 1957), 30-31; Michael S. Nassaney, An Archaeological Reconnaissance Survey to Locate Remains of Fort St. Joseph (20BE23) in Niles, Michigan, Archaeological Report No.22 (Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, 1999), 49,58.