Friday, January 19, 2018
Vocabulary envy
Latest item at KSHS is not especially old:
Now we're circling back to techniques for forming graphic shapes!
** This stone is so beautiful that I'm surprised it isn't used for jewelry! ... EDIT: It is.
This gunflint was recovered during excavations in 2014 of the Adair Cabin site, home of Reverend Samuel and Florella Brown Adair and their family, in Osawatomie, Kansas. Osawatomie and the Adairs were much involved with the abolitionist movement during the "Bleeding Kansas" years. Gunflints were used to generate a spark in a flintlock musket or pistol and as strike-a-lights for lighting a fire. This gunflint was quarried and manufactured in France, as is indicated by it's honey-yellow or blonde color. The square gunflint has one dorsal arriss.Arriss? I enjoy reading these archeology items for the terminology. The digital world is starved for jargon; new devices get acronyms, and variations just add more letters to the acronyms. (ROM, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM. RAM, DRAM, SDRAM, DDR1-SDRAM.) Techniques for forming graphic shapes and specialized programming structures are also nameless. No lively metaphors. In earlier times electronic work had a rich vocabulary for types of circuits, ways of building a radio, and variations on parts. All gone in the digital era. Googling arriss leads to a detailed discussion of gunflint classifications, and sure enough the flint under discussion looks nearly identical to the KSHS specimen. Honey-colored, translucent**, with one dorsal arris, which means it's French.
Yes, it is indeed a gunflint (and, since it’s prismatic, not a gunspall). It’s a typical form for the mid-late 1700’s onwards and it has been used… as evidenced by the semi-circular impact damage on the heel, created by the cap-screw of the gun-hammer. It’s what De Lotbiniere proposed as “Type 4”, characterised by having a single dorsal arris.Arris seems to be the proper spelling, and the term was formerly common among stone-cutters, as in this passage from an 1828 'Popular and Practical Treatise on Masonry':
Now we're circling back to techniques for forming graphic shapes!
** This stone is so beautiful that I'm surprised it isn't used for jewelry! ... EDIT: It is.Labels: Language update
¶ 3:46 AM
