Lives and Legacies

Tag: wild man

  • Horror Artifacts of Ferry Farm: Myth, Disease, Vampires, and Dolls

    With Halloween just around the corner, we thought we would take our readers behind the scenes to look at some of the creepiest and macabre artifacts we have uncovered at Ferry Farm. Some may seem like obvious choices, but others have hidden connections and meanings. Be sure to let us know your favorite in the poll at the end.

    Bartmann Jug: The Wild Man and Witchcraft

                This jug may look familiar to those who enjoy visiting Colonial sites. Made predominantly in Germany during the 16th and 17th centuries, these pieces of salt-glazed stoneware proved incredibly popular. Known as Bartmann Jugs, all pieces share the presence of a bearded face on the neck of the vessel. Some have additional designs, such as crests, on the body. The face lends the name to the jug as “Bartmann” translates from German to “bearded man.” Still, this begs the question of who the face belongs to?

    Bartmann Jugs
    Remnants of Bartmann Jug

                The bearded face depicts a figure known as the Wild Man. A character from Northern European folklore of the 14th-16th centuries, Wild Men reportedly flourished in remote, alpine regions. In characterization, Wild Men are similar to the satyrs and fauns of Greco-Roman tradition. They are covered in hair, hence the bearded face, and wear no clothes. The popular depiction of Wild Men began in the late Middle Ages when the figure became secular. They thus appeared in all art forms with males and females being depicted. The somewhat exaggerated face on the Bartmann Jug speaks the Wild Man’s untamed nature.

    Wild Man by Martin Schongauer, 1480s

                Aside from Wild Men, Bartmann Jugs have a role in witchcraft. At a time of religious turmoil and witch hunts, England saw a rise in the use of witch bottles in the 1600s. These bottles were white magic in nature and supposedly protected against black magic. Bartmann Jugs account for most witch bottles from this period and the abnormal face may have factored in to its use. To make a witch bottle, one filled the vessel with items such as nails, human hair, fingernail clippings, heart-shaped pieces of cloth, pins, and urine before sealing it. The bottle was then buried or submerged near the area it protected. No Bartmann witch bottles have been found in the America, but the Mathers of Massachusetts wrote about witch bottles in the late 1600s. Could ours have served such a purpose?

    X-Ray of Bartmann Witch Bottle

    Civil War Medicine

                Just the thought of Civil War medicine is typically enough to conjure scenes of horror, so this simple glass bottle may seem a bit disappointing. However, things are rarely what they seem. We recovered this artifact from a Civil War trench and quickly became interested in what it originally held. Scientific analysis of the remaining residue revealed that the bottle served a medicinal role and once contained liquid mercury. As mercury is known as extremely dangerous, this may come as a shock. Why would anyone have mercury on their person and how could it be medicinal? Believe it or not, mercury once served as a cure-all in the medical world and it was only in 20th century that its dangers were fully accepted. Those who used mercury medicinally viewed the topical burning, sweating, excess saliva, and diarrhea it produced as signs of successfully purging their body of their affliction. In reality, it was their body trying to rid itself of the mercury.

    Mercury Bottle

    As a cure all, people utilized mercury for all sorts of afflictions and pest control. Common uses in a Civil War camp may have included treatment for head lice, bed bugs, skin sores and lacerations, as well as parasitic infections. The most terrifying of all, however, would have been syphilis. The dominant strain of this disease is sexually transmitted, and was often ripe in military camps. A disease that did not kill quickly, a person could live with syphilis for years as it slowly ate away at the body. As it progressed, the afflicted would note rashes, open sores, and growths or bumps on their body. Neurological problems could occur and the loss of your nose was not uncommon. As the disease stayed with you until death, it had time to impact the skeleton, most notably leaving pitting on the skull, potentially an eaten away nose cavity, and other signs of deterioration. Overall, a horrible way to go and a wicked good topic for this blog.

    For further reading on this artifact and the scientific analysis, you can read a previous blog on it here.

    Dracula’s Jewelry

                Mourning jewelry became extremely popular during the mid to late 1800s. While pieces came in many forms, they mainly reflected somber colors, like black, or carried something of the deceased’s, such as hair. The rise in this trend first derived from Queen Victoria’s endless mourning for her husband Prince Albert in the United Kingdom. Her mourning set a fashion trend and, with the number of deaths that occurred in the American Civil War, Americans had a reason to adopt it. Alongside the somber tone of jewelry, the period approached the topic of death with a rise in the macabre, séances, and horror.

    Mourning Jewelry

                At Ferry Farm, we have uncovered a single piece of mourning jewelry, which connects to one of the most famous Gothic novels and literary monsters of all time, DRACULA! This small piece may have once been set in a necklace or bracelet and belonged to someone who inhabited the property or visited after the war. While that is all very interesting, I am sure you want to know where the King of Horror fits in. The answer lies in the material. The pendant is made of jet, which accounted for much of the 1800s’ mourning jewelry. Sources of jet exist in various parts of Europe and the American Southwest, but the most prosperous jet production existed in Whitby, England during Victorian times.

    A seaside, port town in the north of England, Whitby is noted for the ruins of an impressive abbey that dominate the landscape. Fans of Bram Stoker’s novel will recognize the town as the location where Count Dracula first arrives in England, and Whitby Abbey even appears in the novel. Stoker wrote much of the book in Whitby, and he reportedly first came across the story of Vlad the Impaler in the local library. Today, Whitby embraces its vampiric legacy (they currently hold the record for the largest gathering of vampires at 1,369 people) and the jet business has seen a resurgence in popularity by aligning itself with this tourist draw. So what do you think of our piece? We highly recommend it for lovers of death, horror, and literature. Please note: Vampire not included.

    Whitby Abbey

    Creepy Dolls

                It goes without saying the most people find dolls creepy. They frequently feature in ghost stories and many serve as the malevolent force in horror movies. Here at Ferry Farm, I am not sure which is worse, finding a full doll or severed doll parts.

                With people living on the property through the 1990s, we have plenty of potential to uncover dolls. In fact, we found a severed doll hand this summer that we previously featured as a #FridayFind. Other parts include ceramic legs, broken arms, heads, and faces. Perhaps this is the most obvious choice for a scary artifact blog, but, then again, dolls will never stop being creepy.

    Creepy Doll Parts

    Emma Schlauder (she/her/hers)

    Research Archaeologist

  • Bartmann Bottle: The Coolest Thing We’ve Ever Found

    We excavate hundreds of artifacts every day during the field season at George Washington’s Ferry Farm and occasionally one or two really stand out.  For me, the most interesting artifacts uncovered during the past few years are fragments of a Bartmann Jug.  The combination of an animated human face and fascinating symbolism makes this particular ceramic vessel unique among the hundreds of other vessels excavated from our archaeological site.  Just imagine the excavator’s surprise when the intense bearded face emerges as the dirt gets brushed off. That intense face and the story behind it make this object, in my view, the coolest thing we’ve ever found.

    Bartmann Bottle (1)

    The bottle itself would have had a solid sturdy base and a round, bulbous body with a cylindrical mouth.  It may have had a pewter lid, but these rarely survive archaeologically.  Pewter was fairly valuable and would have been melted down and reused after the vessel was broken, rather than discarded with the rest of it.  The bottle was medium sized, holding approximately a liter of low-alcohol beverage such as beer or cider.  The face of the bottle itself features a raised applied decoration known as a sprig mold, which is made by pressing wet clay into a mold, letting it dry to a point where it could be peeled out of the mold, and then attaching it to the unfired bottle.

    Establishing when the bottle was actually manufactured can be challenging for these vessels.  They were produced in Germany between 1550 and 1770.  The British Navigation Acts made foreign imports increasingly rare in the colonies after the early 18th century.  Knowing that the make-up of the ceramic body and glaze is German lets up narrow down the dates for this bottle to the early years of the 18th century.  It is decidedly part of the pre-Washington era material culture here are Ferry Farm.

    Bartmann Bottle (3)

    When looking at these bottles with their somewhat grotesque faces, one can’t help but wonder why people decorated their drinking vessels this way for some two hundred years?  What did it mean to their culture?

    These Bartmann Bottles were not just made in Germany. They were also shaped by German culture.  Their molded faces were sometimes elaborate and detailed and sometimes crudely executed. They were always male and always sported a large bushy beard.  This references German folklore’s “wild man of the woods.”  He was thought to live just beyond the bounds of civilization and run feral in the wilderness, living almost like an animal.  Perhaps rather appropriate to adorn a container of alcohol with?  However, these bottles were also widely exported. When they were brought to England, they became divorced from this folklore context.  Subsequently, the English created their own story about what the face on these Bartmann Bottles meant.

    Bartmann Bottle (2)

    In England around 1634, the bottles began to be called Bellarmines after Cardinal Robert Bellarmine.  Superficially, the wild face was said to resemble him. On a deeper level, the name was used as a way to mock the Catholic Church and its wider anti-protestant movement that Cardinal Bellarmine headlined.  This is following the monumental split of England from papal control and its moves farther towards Protestantism.   The colonists who brought this bottle to the new world thought of themselves as English so, if they gave any thought to the grimacing man who adorned their bottle of beer, they would have likely seen the figure as Bellarmine.

    This fascinating and drastic change in meaning as the object moves from culture to culture combined with the striking human features is what makes it, in my view, the coolest thing we’ve ever found.

    Lauren Jones, Archaeologist
    Archaeology Lab Technician