September 2008 Writing Slate By:
Patricia Samford,
MAC Lab Director
Archaeologists working on historic sites often find fragmented slate pencils once
used on writing slates. It is less typical to recover flat pieces
of the slate used as writing surfaces. Excavations at the site of
the Juvenile Justice Center in Baltimore City (18BC139), however,
yielded a slate whose educational function is quite clear.
Recovered
from a privy that was filled between 1815 and 1830, this slate was
scored front and back with a grid. Incised within the grid sections
were numbers from 1 to 72. The unworn, cleaner areas along the finished
top and side edges of the slate suggest it had originally been set
into a wooden frame. Although fragmentary, the slate’s original
dimensions were approximately 4 x 6 inches.
Because slate could easily be split into thin sheets, it was well suited
as a substitute for paper. Also more durable and economical than
paper, slate could be wiped clean and re-used indefinitely. Pencils
of soft slate, soapstone, pressed clay or chalk were used to write
on slate. Writing slate production was a big industry in Wales in
the nineteenth century and slates were available plain, or with
incised lines, grids, or even simple maps. Bound slate books, made
from thin, small (3" x 5") sheets of slate, were sometimes
used by adults in their workplaces.
Although the Oxford English Dictionary provides a date in the late fourteenth
century as the first reference to slate as a writing tool, the use
of slate in this fashion was not common until the eighteenth century
(Hall n.d.). Stationers were selling slates by the second half of
the eighteenth century, but there is no real evidence to support
their educational use by children until the nineteenth century (Hall
n.d.:6). Research suggests that Joseph Lancaster, an English proponent
of mass education, was at least partly responsible for the widespread
development of slate as an educational tool beginning in the early
nineteenth century (Hall n.d.).
References
Cited
Hall,
Nigel
n.d. The role of the slate in Lancesterian schools as evidenced
by their manuals and handbooks. Available at http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/westbury/paradigm/Hall.doc.
Back to Curator's Choice Archives. |
