Evidence for Five-String Banjo in the early 1700s!?
Added 2018-10-11 23:34:43 +0000 UTCIn 1985 a bridge and tuning peg were recovered from an early 18th century stratum at the bottom of a well. The bridge appears to have five slots, indicating that it may have been used on an early 5-stringed banjo.
"The bridge appears to be hand carved with irregularly spaced notches of varying depths. The bridge has four clear notches for strings with a possible fifth notch barely visible where a section of the bridge has broken off (see the left side of the bridge in Figure 1). The tuning peg also appears to be hand carved and has a groove in which to run a string. Since these two objects were found within the same level of the well, an assumption has been made that they are from the same instrument."
Comments
That's where my wife wants mine.
Ken Taylor
2018-10-13 17:00:03 +0000 UTCBottom of a well, huh? I wonder what the story is there. Pretty cool stuff.
Joe
2018-10-12 19:52:58 +0000 UTCI'm just relieved they didn't find any humans thrown down that well.
Clifton Hicks
2018-10-12 16:15:46 +0000 UTCWhen you get frustrated while trying to learn to plan the banjo, throwing it down a well seems like a logical thing to do!
Justin Hoffmann
2018-10-12 11:43:28 +0000 UTCI'd also like to note that master North Carolina luthier Ryan Navey (of Carolina Banjo Co.) pointed out to me the hilarious cliche' of someone actually throwing a banjo down a well...
Clifton Hicks
2018-10-12 01:34:06 +0000 UTCIt's actually not in the least bit surprising that the artifacts went unnoticed for so long. I worked for several years in my university's archaeology lab and then another year in a federal lab and artifact storage facility. I'd say 90% of archaeologists do not have a basic grasp of banjo history and/or musical instruments in general. It says somewhere on that website that the researchers actually did consult banjo experts Greg Adams and Pete Ross in 2015--I guess by then they'd finally realized that something interesting was going on in that old well.
Clifton Hicks
2018-10-12 01:32:08 +0000 UTCThat is wild stuff... these artifacts had little attention for almost 3 decades (according to the article)…
Justin Hoffmann
2018-10-12 01:13:04 +0000 UTCThanks for posting such a great find!
John Welborn
2018-10-12 00:16:19 +0000 UTC
