Sand Glass Vial (VCU_3D_5010)

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The sand-filled glass vial was a key component of an eighteenth-century time-tracking device that had been lost at sea with the Betsy, a shipwrecked vessel discovered in the York River off the coast of Virginia. The remarkably well-preserved remains of the Betsy offered archaeologists a unique chance to study ship construction and furnishings from the 1700s in great detail. The vessel was one of several British ships deliberately sunk in 1781 as part of a strategic maneuver. For further information on this topic, readers can consult John Broadwater's 1992 publication, Shipwreck in a Swimming Pool: An Assessment of the Methodology and Technology Utilized on the Yorktown Shipwreck Archaeological Project, which appeared in Historical Archaeology, volume 26, issue 4, pages 26-46. This artifact was meticulously scanned using a high-resolution Go!Scan 50 at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources' archaeological curation facility in Richmond, Virginia. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources graciously granted permission for the model to be made available for non-commercial educational use.