Adec Preview Generated PDF File - The Sydney eScholarship ...

All three coins were minted prior to 1800, and as a result are of little use in
establishing a date for the Chinaman's Well site.
8.1.7h Opium-related Artefacts
These items were recovered from widely separated locations at
Chinaman's Well. The opium pipe bowl this is not closely provenanced,
having been handed to myself as the top to a soy sauce bottle by Harry
Blore on an initial site visit. It has, however, been provenanced as coming
from a location at least 73 meters east of the origin, and more than 30
meters south.
Opium Cans
(refer photograph 22)
Items 699, 703, 727 and 746 are two top or base pieces, the sides and
one reinforcing or lid flange strip, representing but one opium can. The lid
or base dimensions are 72mm by 44mm and the sides are 82mm high.
When compared to cans reported by Ritchie (1988:378) these dimensions
are dissimilar, Ritchie reporting only one size - 6.6cm by 4.1cm, with a
height of 9.5cm.
Both top or base pieces have a cartouche impression, one being 'coffin
shape' the other rectangular. The 'coffin shape' cartouche on item 727 is
similar to one reported by Ritchie (1988:381,2), but the rectangular one on
item 746 differs from his illustrations.
Opium Pipe Bowl
(refer photograph 23)
Item 629 is an octagonal shaped rust-brown stoneware opium pipe bowl
with no stem. Although this item was almost certainly manufactured without
a stem, removal of the stem to allow attachment to a metal connector and
perhaps facilitating cleaning was a common practice (Wylie and Fike (in
Wegars, 1993:269» . Two Chinese characters are impressed into one of
the octagon faces, and it measures 47.5mm across the flats of the
smoking surface. The shape is not recorded in Wegars, although a very
similar ten-sided bowl is shown therein (Wegars 1988:276, b).
8.1.7i Glass
Although glass is the predominant material both numerically and by weight
in the artefact assemblage from Chinaman's Well, much of it has been
regarded as non-diagnostic for my purposes. Some items, however, are
quite important, and are discussed below.