An Archaeology of Tools: The Tool Collections of the Davistown Museum

An Archaeology of Tools: The Tool Collection of the Davistown Museum describes its ever-expanding inventory of hand tools, which includes historically important tools from many sources. The tools in the museum exhibition and Tools Teach education program serve as a primary resource for information about the diversity of tool- and steelmaking strategies and techniques before and during the Industrial Revolution. They provide information about the locations of the manufacturers of the tools used by American artisans from the colonial period until the late 19th century. The museum collection is the source of many of the images included in the publication Tools Teach: An Iconography of American Hand Tools, which explores the tool forms of early American industries and the classic period of American toolmaking that followed. Many of the tools in the museum collection are also illustrated and discussed in other texts in the museum’s Hand Tools in History publication series. Most tools are available, often for hands-on inspection, to museum visitors and students participating in the museum’s Tools Teach School Tool Loan Program.