Rings

Hello!

This one's a picture-heavy post!  Remember, you can click on any pictures to see them full-size.

Hello to all our visitors around the world - we've had a lot of international visits lately.  Only fitting, I suppose, considering how globally diverse the La Salle expedition was.  I plan to do another post on that at some point, but meanwhile you can check out one of my earlier posts with a map of the global connections on the La Salle expedition.

Today I'm going to talk about the last set of artifacts we did: the iconographic finger rings.  There are more than 1500 brass rings in the Belle collection, with 16 different designs.

Here's one of the rings now.  I feel like a 17th century gentleman with this kind of fancy accessorizing.

Most of the rings have religious designs, which led to the name "Jesuit ring" for quite a while.  They've been found in small numbers across several archaeological sites around North America, always associated with the French.  It wasn't until the Belle excavation that a large number was found, allowing further scholarship.  One of the immediate results is that we're no longer calling them Jesuit rings, since the La Salle expedition had no Jesuit involvement.  Instead, they're iconographic rings - rings with icons.

That first ring is a "Type 1A" design.  Even though the design looks like it says IXXI, it's actually an interlocked A and M, standing for Auspice Maria - under the protection of Mary.  This is the emblem of the Society of Saint Sulpice, a society with which La Salle was associated, and which sent priests to Texas on the expedition.

This is a Type 3 ring - "Christ as a Young Man".  You can barely see the halo lines around the head.

This third ring is a Type 6 design.  It's an "IHS" ring, which stands for the first three letters of Jesus's name in Greek (ΙΗΣΟΥΣ) - that Σ is an S in English.  The three arrows under the IHS represent the nails of the crucifixion.  While this is the symbol of the Jesuit order (properly called the Society of Jesus), it's not only associated with them.  This is the most prevalent design in the collection - we've got hundreds of these, mostly found in the one large intact box of rings and other trade goods.

See, there are a lot of IHS rings!  This is only one bag out of many.  We're putting all these rings into their own bags and trays.

I don't have the time or space to show examples of all 13 designs, but that should be enough to give a nice taste of the ring collection.  You can always write us if you have more particular questions.

Finally, there were a couple non-iconographic rings that have settings for gems or glass.  Here's one now:

That's all for this week - as always, thanks for reading, and feel free to speak up with questions!

Bells and rings and samples, oh my!

Things have been busy here between installing new air conditioning, starting to reopen the construction-impacted Kenedy gallery, and, of course the ever-present Belle inventory.  Of course, I only work on that last one, but it's enough!

I know I said I'd come back with the sound the bells make, but I haven't found an easy way to record that.  Maybe I'll surprise you with it one week.  The bells are now all cataloged and bagged - there are just about 1500 of them in our cabinets, plus those that are on display in the museums around the state.

Next up would be the finger rings ("iconographic" or "Jesuit" rings), but we're putting that off for a bit in pursuit of another project... samples.

When Belle was excavated, there were lots of mystery materials and sediments.  Most of those were bagged up for later examination.  Some have been examined, but some others have not.  They're in about 10 big boxes, plus 8 buckets.  The goal now is to look at see what we have, and how much of it there is.  For example, the buckets are all full of pitch, which is tree resin that the sailors used to waterproof and seal wood on board Belle.  I sailed on sailing ships for a number of years, and that smell is something that still pervades the wooden ship world.  It's something that would have been an integral part of life aboard Belle, so it's kind of nice that I get to smell it now.

There's also lots of sand, mud, and pieces of "stuff" that was around the wreck, along with some film canisters of liquid from the ceramics we talked about a few weeks ago.  These bags are all getting old (16 years in some cases!), and some are starting to leak, which makes the lab smell foul.  Some of this stuff wasn't so nice 330 years ago, and the years might not have been kind.  What a mess!

I'll try to update with some pictures next week.

Anything you guys want to know about Belle?  Ask away in the comments section.