Revolutionary War and an Amsterdam Privy: The Remarkable Background of a Rhode Island Ship Token

In 2008 the City of Amsterdam Office for Monuments & Archaeology (BMA) excavated a remarkable find from a late 18th-century privy in Amsterdam’s city centre that can be directly linked to the American Revolutionary War, a 1779 Rhode Island Ship Token. Approximately twenty-five examples of this token are known worldwide, but none of them come from an archaeological context. From this Amsterdam find one can examine these tokens from an entirely new aspect, namely the socio-economic context of the owner as well as the period in which the token was used. The Rhode Island Ship Token was a British propaganda piece ridiculing the weakness of the Americans in 1778 and distributed in the Netherlands to create negative views of the American revolutionaries to discourage the Dutch from intervening in the Anglo-American conflict. Whether the artifact from the privy expressed its owner’s political preferences or was simply a curiosity will remain unknown. What we do know is that with the outbreak of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in 1780, the tokens had become worthless and that this particular piece ended in a cesspit after a final use as a clothing ornament, a counter for card games, or possibly even as a child’s toy

Insight into the 17th-Century Bead Industry of Middelburg, the Netherlands

During the first half of the 17th century, several beadmaking establishments operated in the city of Middelburg in the southwestern corner of the Netherlands. Bead wasters recovered from several find sites in the old part of the city reveal the diversity of the product line which featured beads decorated with straight and spiral stripes. Several chevron types were also produced. There are similarities with wasters found at contemporary beadmaking sites in Amsterdam, indicating that both production centers made similar bead varieties. Few of the bead varieties represented have correlatives in the areas of North America that were under Dutch control, leaving one guessing what market the Middelburg beads were destined for. In that the city was a major center for the Dutch East India Company, it may be that their market was in that part of the world. Unfortunately, comparative material from South and Southeast Asia is currently lacking

De middeleeuwse bouwgeschiedenis van de Amsterdamse Sint-Anthonispoort. De Waag op de Nieuwmarkt nader onderzocht

Waag on Nieuwmarkt was built as a city gate and later transformed into a weigh house. The numerous descriptions of the history of the building are nearly exclusively based on written sources. Building-historical research was lacking. On the basis of a memorial stone with the year 1488 it was assumed that the gate had been built in connection with the construction of the Amsterdam city wall during the eighties and nineties of the fi fteenth century. However, a further search in the records, building-historical research, and typological research provided new views on the actual construction date of St Anthonispoort, the various phases in which it proves to have been built, and on late medieval defensive works in Amsterdam. Due to the city extension of 1425, in which Geldersekade, Kloveniersburgwal and Singel were excavated, the fourteenth-century gates were no longer situated on the edge of the city and new gates were required. On the basis of sources in the records, St Anthonispoort proves to have existed in 1466, but possibly already in 1462 or 1456. The fifteenth-century city gates Haarlemmerpoort and Regulierspoort and a few brick walls also appear in records dating from before the building of the city wall. After the city fi re of 1452 a few towers were built at the urgent request of Philip the Good, but it is not clear if the fi rst appearance of St Anthonis blockhouse in 1462 is related to this work. Documents show that in 1451 the defensive importance of fourteenth-century St Olofspoort had decreased - probably because of the existence of St Anthonispoort - but that the outermost defensive works were not completely trusted yet. St Anthonispoort consists of a main gate and a front gate. There are differences between the lower part and the upper part of the main gate. An abrupt rejuvenation took place and the brickwork below differs from the brickwork above as regards the existence of string courses, bond, colour and probably also brick formats. The presence of remains of battlements in the transitions of the brickwork in the towers St Eloystoren and Schutterstoren proves that in an earlier phase the main gate was a smaller gate with battlemented towers. The medieval forerunner of the present Metselaarstoren is still partly present and shows a resemblance with the rest of the main gate and was probably also part of the earlier small main gate. There are also differences in the brickwork of the main gate and the front gate as regards colour, brick formats (22 x 10-10.5 x 5.5-6 cm and a ten-layer measure of 69.5-70 cm in the main gate versus 19.5-20 x 9.3-10 x 4.3-4.7 cm and a ten-layer measure of 56-59 cm in the front gate) and the distance between the string courses (twenty to twenty-seven layers of bricks in the main gate, versus ten to eleven in the front gate). It occurred more often that front gates were added to existing gates, as for instance around 1482 in Spaarnwouderpoort in Haarlem, of which the front gate strongly resembles that of St Anthonispoort. It is likely that the extension of St Anthonispoort in 1488 concerned the addition of the front gate, but is not clear whether the raising of the main gate and the construction of the front gate took place simultaneously. The conclusion that St Anthonispoort is older than the city wall throws new light on the Amsterdam defensive works in the fi fteenth century, which before the construction of this wall appear to have been more extensive than is often thought

Rattles, Toys and Miniature Artefacts:Archaeological Insights into Childhood and Children’s Identities at Vlooienburg, Amsterdam ca. 1600‐1800

Archaeological excavations of more than 100 cesspits in the Vlooienburg neighbourhood in Amsterdam in 1980-81 produced several find assemblages, containing significant amounts of objects which can be related to childhood. Miniature artefacts, gaming pieces, toys, rattles and other finds that were recovered from the site help us to shed light on the position of children and the processes of their socialization within the Vlooienburg community between ca. 1600 and 1800. The first goal of this paper is to disclose the child-related archaeological data from Vlooienburg in order to contribute to the archaeological and historical study of children’s identities in the past. The second goal is to enrich our understanding of the care for children in the 17th and 18th century. In order to do so, this paper will first discuss the artefacts related to babies and toddlers, followed by the investigation of toys and play time for children of an older age. A specific element within the analysis of the toys will be the study of the many miniature artefacts that were uncovered during the Vlooienburg excavations. They make up a significant part of this study due to their role in children’s games, in which daily adult life and routine was mimicked by children, encouraging their socio-cultural development