Ye Pleasant Mount: 1989 1990 Excavations - Open site which ...

Clothing Artifacts
A variety of clothing artifacts was found. These include items of iron, brass, pewter,
and glass. Selected examples are illustrated in Figures 14 through 18.
Eighteen buttons were recovered from Trader Point. Sixteen buttons (7 pewter and 9
brass) were found in the midden while two were found in feature contexts. One gold-gilt
decorative brass button was found in Feature 18. The diagnostic buttons are summarized
in Table 10. The Trader Point button assemblage includes colonial types recognized by
Stanley South from his excavations at Brunswick Town, North Carolina including South's
Type 1,3,4,6,7, and 10. Other types were identified corresponding to Olsen's Type A,
B, C, and E. The button age range places the occupation of the site between 1726 and
1812, although several types found on the site were outdated by the American Revolution
(Olsen 1963; South 1977; Stone 1979). The age of the buttons is consistent with the
known occupation date for the site. Nearly all of the buttons are associated with the upper
midden zone. One brass cufflink with a molded geometric design also was found. With
the possible exception of the Union Jack example, all of the buttons found at Mount
Pleasant were intended for civilian use. As pointed out by Ivers (1984), rangers usually
were outfitted in civilian clothing and this is bourne out by the clothing related artifacts
recovered from Trader Point. The military regalia that one would expect on a British
colonial military site is absent at Mount Pleasant.
Five iron and three brass buckles were found in midden contexts. Two were
eighteenth-century style shoe buckles, while the third may have been a small harness
buckle. The brass buckles include one cast example that has a royal crown motif as
illustrated in Figure 17j. Iron clothing buckles generally were used by poorer classes,
while brass, tinned brass, and silver buckles were used by the middle and upper classes.
Buckles were a frequent trade item with the Indians. Iron buckles have been found in
historic Creek and Yuchi burials on the Chattahoochee River towns in Georgia and
Alabama (Willey and Sears 1953; Huscher 1958).
Twenty glass beads were found in the midden, while none were recovered from
features. Glass beads were used in trade and are sensitive markers for dating the period of
site occupation. The glass beads from Mount' Pleasant found in the 1989 season were
analyzed by Marvin T. Smith, a noted authority on glass trade beads. Smith's analysis is
presented in Appendix I. Smith recognized two classes of beads based on differences in
their manufacturing techniques. There were eight types ofdrawn cane necklace beads and
six types of wire wound beads. The fourteen bead types defined by Smith are listed in
Table 11. Date estimates based on the small sample ofbeads from Mount Pleasant ranged
from 1725 to 1738, closely paralleling the dates identified for the clay tobacco pipes found
in the area.
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