Bone Buttons and Button Blank
Title
Bone Buttons and Button Blank
Description
Students, almshouse residents, and homemakers all crafted buttons out of cleaned cow bones. The carving required few tools and little skill. The incomplete button blank on the center of this board still shows a fragment of the larger bone from which it was carved.
Creator
Lucy Davis
Source
Recovered from excavation prior to construction of Rutgers-Camden dormitory at 330 Cooper Street, Camden, N.J.
Publisher
Rutgers University-Camden
Date
Late 1800s; photograph, July 2018
Contributor
Lucy Davis (Graduate Student, American Material Culture, Spring 2018); photograph by Jacob Lechner.
Rights
Collection of Rutgers-Camden Center for the Art
Relation
Affleck, Richard, George Cress, Ingrid Weubber, Rebecca White, Kimberly Morrell, and Thomas Kutys. Phase II and Data-Recovery Archaeological Excavations of the Smith-Maskell Site Cooper Street Development Camden, New Jersey. Archaeological Excavation Report, Burlington: URS Corporation.
Format
Bone buttons on cardboard backing.
Collection
Citation
Lucy Davis, “Bone Buttons and Button Blank,” Learning From Cooper Street, accessed April 25, 2024, https://omeka.camden.rutgers.edu/items/show/18.