Dorchester Pot

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scientific American article about Dorchester pot. Note the tongue-in-cheek reference to "Tubal Cain" (תובל קין), who was said to be the first blacksmith (Genesis 4:19-24)

The Dorchester Pot was a metal vase, which was recovered in two pieces after an explosion used to break up rock at Meeting House Hill, in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1852. According to text reprinted by Anonymous (1852) from the Boston Transcript, a local paper, in the June 5, 1852 Scientific American, the two pieces of the Dorchester Pot were found, not in situ within local bedrock, but loose among debris thrown out by the explosion. Apparently, it was inferred from the locations of the two pieces of this pot among the explosion debris that this pot had been blasted from solid puddingstone (conglomerate), which is part of the Roxbury conglomerate, from about 15 feet below the surface of Meeting House Hill (Anonymous 1852).

The bell-shaped vessel about was described as being about 4.5 inches (11.5 cm) high, 6.5 inches (16.5 cm) in diameter as the base and 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) in diameter at the top. The body of this object was said to resemble zinc alloyed with silver in color. It reportedly exhibited floral designs on its side and a wreath or vine design around its lower part, which were both inlaid with silver (Anonymous 1852).

PureInsight (2006) also provides, without any attribution, a picture of an unknown object from an unknown source, which is used to illustrate what they apparently believe the Dorchester Pot looked like, as well as an age of 100,000 years. Anonymous (1852), the primary source of information about this object, provides neither any picture of nor age estimate for the Dorchester Pot.

A web page created by archaeologists Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews and James Doeser with the stated goal of examining "fringe" archaeology identifies the object as "clearly a candlestick of obviously Victorian style" [1]; they presumably base this identification on the unsourced photograph of the Dorchester Pot mentioned above.