Identifying fishing gear

Hooks, net weights, and line sinkers from rivers, lakes, and coasts.

Fishing leaves durable litter: copper-alloy and iron hooks (barbed, with flattened or looped line ends), lead line weights (rolled strips, pierced spheres), net sinkers (pierced stones, grooved pebbles, folded lead strips crimped over net cords), and fish spears (leisters) with barbed prongs.

Rolled lead net weights — small tubes crimped along a cord line — are among the commonest riverside finds and often medieval or later; pierced stone sinkers can be any age, so context does the dating. Distinguish loom weights (larger, usually clay or chalk, from weaving) by findspot and form.

Record weight, dimensions, and piercing/groove details; for hooks note barb form and how the line attached. Concentrations along a shore mark netting stations and fisheries worth mapping as a group rather than as scattered singles.

From the guide library inside Collectors Catalogues, a free app for cataloguing antiques and finds with honest, museum-grade records.

More on domestic objects

Identifying mirrors — Polished metal discs.

Identifying oil lamps — Nozzle, filling hole, and mold.

Identifying clay tobacco pipes — Bowl shape and heel marks.

Identifying agricultural tools — Sickles, billhooks, plough irons, and the seasons written in iron.

Identifying spindle whorls and loom weights — The flywheels and tensioners of home textile production.

Identifying styli and writing equipment — Iron pens, wax spatulas, and the tools of everyday literacy.

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