Musket Ball Research Articles

Piese de armament descoperite in orasul Caransebes (secolele XVI-XVII/XVIII). Consideratii preliminare

Systematic archaeological research in the medieval city of Caransebeş, started in 2017, led to several important discoveries. They come to complement the documentary sources or to confirm some realities mentioned by them. In addition to some problems related to the urban transformations of the 17th–18th centuries, but also to the presence of iron processing workshops, some fragments of weap‑ ons were also discovered (fragments of grenades, fragment of a battle hammer, cannonball, musket ball). Unfortunately, most of them are destroyed, but they come to show what weap‑ ons were used here on various occasions. If some of the weapons were destroyed as a result of the battles or the destruction of the fortress, others were very likely personal items of the city’s inhabitants (arrowheads), being discovered in the houses or near them as a result of the demolition. Documents from that time come to confirm what types of weapons were used in the fortifications of the Banate, and archaeological research has partially confirmed this information.

The death of King Charles XII of Sweden revisited.

The death of King Charles XII of Sweden has remained as a mystery for more than three centuries. Was he assassinated by his own men or killed by the enemy fire? Charles was killed by a projectile perforating his skull from left to right. In this study, we utilized a Synbone ballistic skull phantom and modern radiological imaging to clarify the factors behind the observed head injuries. We examined whether a musket ball fired from the enemy lines would be the most potential projectile. Our experiments with a leaden 19.5 mm musket ball demonstrated that at velocities of 200 to 250 m/s, it could cause similar type of injuries as observed in the remains of Charles . The radiological imaging supported the theory that the projectile was not a leaden but of some harder metal, as we could detect remnants of lead inside the wound channel unlike in Charles' case. In addition, our experiments showed that a 19.5mm musket ball produces max. 17mm hole into a felt material . The main evidence supporting 19.5 mm projectile size has been a 19-19.5mm bullet hole in a hat that Charles was wearing during his death. Additional experiments with a 25.4 mm steel ball produced approximately 20 mm hole in the felt. As our musket ball experiments also resulted in considerably smaller cranial injuries than those in Charles' case, we can conclude that the deadly projectile wasn't leaden and was more than 19.5 mm in diameter, potentially an iron cartouche ball that was shot from the enemy lines.

Guest Editor's Introduction

WE HAVE AN OUTSTANDING DOUBLE-ISSUE of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. Cate LiaBraaten has written a fascinating treatment on Progressive reformers and how they viewed even minutiae such as the layout of children's playgrounds as worthy of note. Playgrounds, Progressives believed, should include adult supervision of children's play, ideally activities that safeguarded them from the perceived social ills rampant in urban areas. The playground movement was part of broader reform efforts that touched park and landscape design.Roger Biles describes the calamitous deindustrialization of East St. Louis, once a thriving manufacturing center located at a railroad junction for multiple routes. The resulting collapse of the tax base rendered the city's administration unable to cope with looming bankruptcy and in 1990, the state government, under legendary governor James “Big Jim” Thompson, shepherded legislation through the General Assembly that permitted state supervision of city budgets in East St. Louis. Biles details the rationale behind that drastic loss of home rule, including the legislative machinations behind the passage of the enabling legislation, the Illinois Financially Distressed City Act, and he assesses the outcome.Lisa R. Lindell details the life and career of another Progressive reformer, Helen M. Bennett, who spent the majority of her career in Chicago after a stint as a teacher and school superintendent in Deadwood, South Dakota. Bennett was a passionate advocate of vocational guidance, what we know today as career counseling, for women. She argued that women could embrace many different career paths beyond the standard primary or secondary education teacher, the latter a path Lindell contends had gone stale and restrictive. She founded the Woman's World Fair in the 1920s to showcase the diverse opportunities for and achievements of women.Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein gives us the quixotic 1884 congressional run of Taylorville Republican attorney James M. Taylor. A native of Scotland, Taylor arrived in Illinois a mere seven years before the outbreak of hostilities between North and South and served honorably in the war, losing an arm to a musket ball in Georgia. He subsequently earned a law license and set up practice in Taylorville, becoming a staunch Republican, but his congressional contest in 1884 faced a formidable foe in longtime Democratic incumbent, William M. Springer. Schroeder-Lein deftly recreates the race and the historical context of 1884 politics.Finally, Patrick T. Reardon rescues the much-maligned Charles Yerkes, a hated financial baron, and salutes him for his devotion to the elevated train in Chicago and to the tube system in London.Many thanks to the outstanding historians who are featured in this issue and to Bob Sampson whose assistance with this project was immeasurably helpful.

War in the Peaceable Kingdom: The Kittanning Raid of 1756, by Brady Crytzer

<i>War in the Peaceable Kingdom: The Kittanning Raid of 1756</i>, by Brady Crytzer

The ballistics of seventeenth century musket balls

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the firing of seventeenth Century musket balls. Prior to this research, the main concerns with making range predictions were associated with the deformed shape of the musket balls affecting their drag coefficient and therefore their distance to ground impact. However, the distance due to bounce and roll after initial impact has been unknown. In this work, the distance travelled after the first ground impact greatly exceeded expectations, with the musket balls approximately doubling the distance to their final resting positions. From these findings the initial factors thought to have had high relevance to the final resting position of the musket ball (velocity variation and drag co-efficient) become less significant and factors such as ground hardness become more prominent. The knowledge gained during this investigation will allow more accurate information to be obtained on the firing positions of opposing forces during conflicts in the English Civil War.

Review: Musket Ball and Small Shot Identification: A Guide by Daniel M. Sivilich

Review: Musket Ball and Small Shot Identification: A Guide by Daniel M. Sivilich

“Buck and Ball”: Identification and interpretation of buckshot injuries to the pelvis from the War of 1812

During the War of 1812, the flintlock smoothbore musket represented a significant cause of injury and death. Putative musket ball and buckshot injuries were observed in the skeletal remains of individuals from the Smith's Knoll collection, comprised of soldiers killed during the battle of Stoney Creek (1813, Ontario, Canada). In order to confirm the identification of three impacts from buckshot ammunition in two innominates from this assemblage, faunal proxies were shot using a replica War of 1812 flintlock smoothbore musket and ammunition. Experimental research also aimed to evaluate whether the spacing of lesions could be related to impact characteristics such as projectile velocity as associated with range of fire. Significant differences in distance values for lesion spread were found between shots taken from distances of 9.14 and 18.29m (10 and 25yards), however, there was some overlap between the ranges for these distances. While the small distance between archaeological injuries suggests they are more likely to result from a shot taken at a closer range of fire, a shot from further away cannot be ruled out. The archaeological lesions display characteristics associated with musket injuries, and their sizes correspond specifically to the experimental injuries caused by buckshot ammunition. This represents the first identification of buckshot injuries in archaeological skeletal material.

THE DYNAMICS OF MERGING CLUSTERS: A MONTE CARLO SOLUTION APPLIED TO THE BULLET AND MUSKET BALL CLUSTERS

Merging galaxy clusters have become one of the most important probes of dark matter, providing evidence for dark matter over modified gravity and even constraints on the dark matter self-interaction cross-section. To properly constrain the dark matter cross-section it is necessary to understand the dynamics of the merger, as the inferred cross-section is a function of both the velocity of the collision and the observed time since collision. While the best understanding of merging system dynamics comes from N-body simulations, these are computationally intensive and often explore only a limited volume of the merger phase space allowed by observed parameter uncertainty. Simple analytic models exist but the assumptions of these methods invalidate their results near the collision time, plus error propagation of the highly correlated merger parameters is unfeasible. To address these weaknesses I develop a Monte Carlo method to discern the properties of dissociative mergers and propagate the uncertainty of the measured cluster parameters in an accurate and Bayesian manner. I introduce this method, verify it against an existing hydrodynamic N-body simulation, and apply it to two known dissociative mergers: 1ES 0657-558 (Bullet Cluster) and DLSCL J0916.2+2951 (Musket Ball Cluster). I find that this method surpasses existing analytic models - providing accurate (10% level) dynamic parameter and uncertainty estimates throughout the merger history. This coupled with minimal required a priori information (subcluster mass, redshift, and projected separation) and relatively fast computation (~6 CPU hours) makes this method ideal for large samples of dissociative merging clusters.

Fight club: a unique weapon in the wing of the solitaire,Pezophaps solitaria(Aves: Columbidae), an extinct flightless bird from Rodrigues, Mascarene Islands

The solitaire (Columbidae; Pezophaps solitaria) of Rodrigues was an extinct giant flightless pigeon and the sister taxon to the dodo (Columbidae; Raphus cucullatus) from neighbouring Mauritius. The appearance and behaviour of the solitaire was recorded in detail by two observers before it became extinct in the mid 1700s. They described a prominent wing structure termed the ‘musket ball’ (carpal knob), which was used as a weapon and to produce an audible signal by either sex in territorial combat. Our study of subfossil solitaire bones from cave localities shows that the carpal knob formed after skeletal maturity, and reached its greatest size in adult males. We describe the morphology of the carpal knob, including its histology in thin section. It is an outgrowth of the processus extensorius of the carpometacarpus, but differs morphologically from homologous structures in other bird taxa, and thus is unique in Aves. We also compare the pectoral and wing osteology of the solitaire with that of the dodo, which had a similar morphology, but lacked any bony outgrowths on the wing. Furthermore, we suggest some biological and environmental factors leading to the evolution of this remarkable and unique carpal weapon. © 2013 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2013, ••, ••‐••. ADDITIONAL KEYWORDS: bird behaviour ‐ intraspecific combat ‐ Pezophaps solitaria ‐ Raphus cucullatus ‐ sexual dimorphism ‐ territory.

The Civil War Days of Captain Charles D. Roush: Company B, 6th Pennsylvania Regiment Reserves

The Civil War diary of Capt. Charles Roush provides valuable insight into the life of a Union soldier who marched in 1861 and 1862 through the rolling hills of Maryland and Virginia, ending at the battle of South Mountain, where Roush was injured, just a couple of days prior to Antietam.His diary relates the dreariness of war. Disease was arguably a far more potent adversary than the Southern troops. Winter brought bad weather, much sickness, as well as McCellan’s infamous forced “promenade” through northern Virginia.In May 1862, after returning from a long march, Roush encountered two special visitors to his camp: the President and Secretary of War. Lincoln also appeared at Roush’s station a second time. Nevertheless, Roush quickly lost his interest for war. His diary relates that he was “opposed to a political abolition war.” His diary contained constant references to his poor health. At one point, he noted, “he had no provisions for 3 days.” In September Roush suffered the injury that ended his Civil War career. A musket ball struck him in the foot. Unbeknownst to Roush, the injury spared him from the rigors of the bloody battle of Antietam.

The Archaeology of Yukon Ice Patches: New Artifacts, Observations, and Insights

Since 1997, more than 207 archaeological objects and 1700 faunal remains have been recovered from 43 melting ice patches in the southern Yukon. The artifacts range in age from a 9000-year-old (calendar) dart shaft to a 19th-century musket ball. This paper provides an update on Yukon ice patch research and summary data on select areas of research conducted since 2003. More than 200 radiocarbon dates have been run on ice patch archaeological and faunal materials, and these data allow us to observe and comment on apparent temporal trends. Analysis undertaken since 2003 has improved our understanding of the development and maintenance of hunting technologies, including dart shaft design, wood selection, and point styles. Of particular interest is the description of three different techniques for the construction of throwing darts and the observation of stability in the hunting technology employed in the study area over seven millennia. Radiocarbon chronologies indicate that this period of stability was followed by an abrupt technological replacement of the throwing dart by the bow and arrow after 1200 BP.

A priori knowledge of the way the world works

Science is last place one might expect to find thought experiments. Thought experiments happen entirely in our minds, but science is supposed to tell us about how the world works. So how can something that happens entirely in our minds give us reason to believe anything about the nature of the world? This is the philosophical puzzle at the heart of James Robert Brown’s classic, The Laboratory of the Mind, now in its second edition. With two new chapters and extensive additions to two others, the single best introduction to the philosophical issues raised by thought experiments in science has just gotten better. Brown’s book can be usefully divided into three parts. Chapters 1–3 set forth the raw evidence that any theory of thought experiments must explain. These chapters introduce many examples of thought experiments and attempt to organize them in terms of how they work in science. Chapters 4 and 5 make the case for scientific Platonism. For Brown, thought experiments in science are successful because we are capable of acquiring a priori knowledge of the way the world works. Laws of nature are abstract objects that we have some sort of cognitive access to. The last three chapters, 6–8, display the power of Brown’s Platonism by applying it to scientific practice. This review will focus primarily on the first two parts of the book. The opening chapter offers a clear, patient and extremely valuable introduction to over a dozen important thought experiments. Chapters 2 and 3 set forth a perspicacious framework that taxonomizes thought experiments in terms of how they work epistemically in science. To understand the core of this taxonomy, it will be useful to begin with Brown’s favorite thought experiment. Galileo on Free Fall: Suppose, we attach a heavy cannon ball to a light musket ball and release them from a tower. If heavier bodies fall faster than lighter bodies, then the musket ball should

After Bullet comes Musket Ball

After Bullet comes Musket Ball

Evliya Celebi’s Description of the Removal of a Musket Ball From the Brain of a Habsburg Prince: An Interesting Excerpt From the “Seyahatname”

In the 17th century an Ottoman traveler, Evliya Celebi, was inspired by a dream to embark on a journey across the Ottoman Empire. He traveled far and wide across Europe and North Africa and wrote extensively about his adventures in the Seyahatname. The Seyahatname, or “Book of Travels,” is the longest and most detailed travel account in Islamic (if not world) literature. It is a vast panorama of the Ottoman world in the mid-17th century. This article is concerned with Celebi’s description of several surgeries that he claimed to have witnessed in Vienna during the year 1665. He describes several procedures, the first and most detailed of which is a fascinating brain operation that seems to be a highly unusual procedure for the time. His impressions of Central European medicine, as viewed by a Muslim from the East, offer an unexplored perspective. We examine what his description tells us about the perceptions and images of surgery and medicine.

Archaeological Investigation of Suriname Maroon Ancestral Communities

The following report outlines archaeological findings from two eighteenth-century Maroon ancestral settlements in Suriname, South America. Maroons are descendants of escaped slaves and their social development presents a unique perspective of African-Diaspora material culture. The initial objective of the archaeological research was to identify, survey and excavate ancestral settlements for artifacts depicting kin-group divisions and clustering and material culture resources. In August and September of 1997, members of the Maroon Heritage Research Project (MHRP) identified the Saramaka site, Kumako and Matawai site, Tuido located in the Suriname and Saramaka River basins, respectively (Figure 1). The location and general historical overview of each ancestral settlement was determined from the available body of literature on Suriname Maroons, more specifically, the Saramaka (Bos, 1998; Fermin, 1781; Goslinga, 1971, 1979, 1985; Green, 1974; Hoogbergen, 1990; Jackson, 1965; Khudabux, 1999; Klooster, 1997; Price, 1975, 1983a, 1983b, 1990, 1996; Price and Price, 1980, 1988, 1991, 1992, 2003; Stedman, 1796). The project progressed to collecting ethnohistorical accounts on the place names, and building liaisons with various Maroon governing bodies (notably, the then Saramaka paramount chief and the current Matawai paramount chief). All these avenues of inquiry generated questions about the settlements for village elders and key individuals in the Maroon social structure, who would later become integral to the overall success of the project. The field excursions were successful in that they led to the identification of both these settlements (see Figure 1). The discussion that follows describes the objectives designed for each archaeological site and subsequent excavation season. Saramaka Site, Kumako During the 1997 survey season, members of the MHRP crew were escorted to Kumako by a village elder who are the individuals most knowledgeable about the history of the site. The initial travel route and destination were pre-plotted and tracked with a hand-held GPS device and then mapped. Upon arrival at the general coordinates (4° 24' 50.0394 N latitude and 55° 27' 43.6206 W longitude), a rock structure was identified that still remains as a marker for the northernmost boundary of the site. The site sits at a mean elevation of 293 metres above sea level.1 Areas with surface artifact scatters were identified and recorded with a hand-held GPS device. Artifacts included a musket ball cache and fragments of ceramic pottery. The discovery of these items further substantiated the location of the site, but no excavation took place at this time. Excavation of the Kumako settlement began during the 2000 fall field season. Multiple goals were considered at this time. The first objective was to create a path through the forest to connect the Suriname River Valley with the Saramaka River Valley, passing either north or south of the Ebba Top Ridge. This path would allow for easier interior forest travel and ultimately foster simultaneous excavation at multiple sites. In addition, it would aid in the understanding of how early Saramakaans and Matawais may have used these same methods for strategic travel and communication between the major rivers. Although MHRP members were unable to create the forest path, some helpful and important information was gathered. First, it gave us a sense of the terrain, flora, fauna, and conditions of the interior forest. This area is no longer inhabited by humans due to its distance from major waterways. Secondly, some of the crew who made it to the Ebba Top peak were able to take GPS readings along the way. These GPS points allowed us to get a clearer idea of where Ebba Top was situated with regard to Kumako. Thirdly, along the way, both crews came across other potential sites - flat areas near water that appeared to have been cleared earlier in the history of the area. Moreover, we realized that clearing a path connecting the two river valleys was too impractical and labour intensive given the time frame with mainly student volunteers, forcing us to focus on excavation at one river valley per field season (personal communication from Becker, 2000). …

Admiral Lord Nelson's death: known and unknown – A historical review of the anatomy

Reviewing documents about Lord Admiral Nelson's wound inflicted at the Battle of Trafalgar and studying the collected data in connection with ballistics and human anatomy. Attempting to find out the actual cause of death of Lord Nelson as soon as 4 h postinjury by a musket ball. United Kingdom. (1) Review of the original report of Mr W Beatty, Lord Nelson's surgeon, on his examination of His Lordship's wound. (2) Investigating the course of the musket ball in connection with an atlas of human anatomy. (3) Investigating the course of the musket ball on a cadaver by RP (one of the authors). (4) Reviewing modern medical literature. The report of Mr Beatty suggested that division of a large branch of the pulmonary artery was the cause of Lord Nelson's early death. Assuming the left pulmonary artery was injured, anatomical studies based on atlases and dissection on a cadaver failed to support a simple straight-line course of the musket ball that could have divided the artery and damage the spinal cord on its path forward. The question remains open as to how the musket ball following a relatively straight-line trajectory by entering the body at the acromion, could have divided the left pulmonary artery and damaged the spinal cord later in its course. The mechanism needs further investigation.

Correction and Clarification: Factors Contributing to the Death of General Stonewall Jackson-Reply

My reference to bloodletting as a contributory cause of General Stonewall Jackson's death was incorrect. When I was a medical student, Dr Hunter McGuire, the great grandson of the surgeon (Dr Hunter Holmes McGuire) who cared for General Jackson, often lamented about the death of the Confederate general despite the best efforts of his forebear, who was a leader in American medicine. I assumed that the care included bleeding, commonly used as treatment at that time. The general sustained 3 musket ball wounds and, as Dr Turner points out, during evacuation from the battle scene was dropped from his litter. Jackson subsequently underwent surgical amputation of his left arm and developed right-sided pulmonary consolidation and effusion. The pulmonary complications have been attributed variously to pneumonia or pulmonary contusion or pulmonary embolism and were the immediate cause of death. General Jackson received cupping to the chest, but never received therapeutic bleeding

Ideal pain terminology is parsimonious, jargon-free, and scale-appropriate

H yperalgesia and allodynia are recognized in the earliest medical texts. Bonica, in an excellent historical survey [1], notes that cutaneous tenderness caused by non-noxious , .. stimulation was used by ancient physicians in Egypt, India, China and Greece as an aid in the diagnosis of painful disorders [of the viscera]. The year 1996 marks the, thousandth anniversary of Avicenna's (980-1038) taking up the study of medicine.Avicenna's monumental Canon enumerates 15 types of pain: boring, squeezing, corrosive, dull, tiring, heavy, cutting, irritating, itching, pricking, relaxinq, stabbing, tearing, pulling, and throbbing [12]. Bonica credits Morgagni in 1761 as the first to employ the word hyperesthesia to connote upper abdominal skin sensitivity in a patient with basilar pneumonia, a finding we would now call allodynia. By Morgagni's time, an abundance of words were at clinicians' disposal to describe every sort of pain and altered sensation.These words were harnessed to provide vivid reports-still unsurpassed-of syndromes such as left arm allodynia during angina and hyperalgesia and allodynia after a musket ball wound of the arm. Indeed, the pain descriptors in the McGillMelzack questionnaire were originally derived from patients' descriptions of their own pain. Yet pain terminology continues to generate controversy [4]. Sufficient imprecision, confusion, and frank conflict surround the use of pain terminology that Chaplan and Sorkin agonize over this sorry state of affairs. This commentary presents two arguments for abandoning the introduction of terms intended to be used by both preclinical scientists and clinicians and recommends instead that one strive for jargon-free description of a reality unfiltered by categories and expectations.

Encounters between Robins, and Euler and the Bernoullis; artillery and related subjects

Euler (1707–1783) was a close friend of the Bernoulli family, and John Bernoulli I as a result of not winning a French Academy prize offered for essays on the subject of Impact, published his effort—only to have it examined and worsted by criticism from a then young, unknown 20 year old, Benjamin Robins (1707–1751). This encounter probably led Robins to his work in ballistics, the ballistic pendulum for measuring musket ball speed and the writing of his New Principles of Gunnery, ultimately published in 1742. Euler (born in the same year as Robins), and presumably knowing of the latter scientific clash, seemingly became interested in artillery and the trajectories of projectiles. His first work is dated 1727, three months after Robins' critique of Bernoulli, but it was not published until many years afterwards. Also, through association with the St Petersburg Academy, by means of which Peter the Great intended to build up the Russian Navy and commerce, Euler likely developed his deep interest in naval science, tides, fire, meteorology and artillery. Robins' book was devoured by Euler and in 1745 he brought out his own book, in German, on The New Principles of Artillery, which contained a translation of Robins' book with sections containing “Anmerkung” (Remarks) which brought it up to several times the length of Robins' own book. Fortunately, the latter was translated from German into English by Hugh Brown and appeared in 1777. Almost nothing has been written by latter-day authors concerning the interaction of Robins and Euler, and somewhat the Bernoullis, apart from that of Truesdell and Scherrer. The latter's editorial and prefatory work on Robins is in German, as is all of Euler's writing in German, French or Latin. Truesdell's writings of interest to us are in English but are mostly confined to matters of fluid dynamics. The immediate aim of this paper is to make some of the details of the aforesaid interaction between Robins, Euler and the Bernoullis better known and to try to improve understanding of it, also casting light on some of the scientific questions of the mid-18th century.