3 small pieces-- can anyone date/ID approximately?

[coachbedford]

Three more pieces found in a California coastal town with Spanish history going back to the 1700's (not that the history stopped there). Button, some kind of ceramic shard with (shell??) coating, and a mystery lead piece. Regarding the lead piece, I assumed for years that it was an 1800s lead bullet but the obvious tell-tale signs (like the round ridging) aren't there. It might still be a REALLY mashed up bullet-- but I wonder if there is another possibility someone might think of? I have wondered if it might be some crude lead figurine carving?

As for the button, I can only take a wild estimation that it dates between 1820s (earliest) to 1940s (latest?) but I would love to date it to a more narrow time period. I simply cannot ID it from old metal button pics I have seen. And of course the back is cemented with crud covering any maker inscriptions.

As for the ceramic piece, is that a home-made kind of thing or were these manufactured somewhere during a certain period? Thanks!

 

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[coachbedford]

OP-- has anyone weighed in yet? (and do you talk to yourself much?)

 

[coachbedford]

Not yet, but I'm hopeful. And, sometimes.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

I've gotten rebuked for answering before anybody else... but since nobody has answered in the 31 hours since you posted the three mystery-objects, I think I can now speak up without objection.

The shell-like object is in actual fact not a piece of ceramic, but instead is a broken and weathered piece of a bivalve seashell, such as a scallop's shell.

The object which kinda-sorta resembles a deformed fired bullet appears to be a "dribblet" of fire-melted metal. We find similar melted-metal dribblets in places where household garbage was burned in a large fire, and also from where a house or other building burned down.

Your button is definitely a mid-20th-Century-to-now "Fashion" button, manufactured for use on fancy civilian coats and jackets (hence the term "Fashion" button). It has an ornate stamped sheetbrass front, with an iron/steel sheetmetal back. The particular form of back on your button is called a self-shank back, because the thread-loop was manufactured by machine-pressing the very center of the back outward, piercing it, and folding it into a tunnel shape for the sewing-thread to pass through. In other words, the thread-loop is an integral part of the back itself (hence the trem "self-shank back," instead of having a separately-manufactured loop attached to the back. The photos below show what your button's back looked like before it got rusted while it was in the ground. That form of self-shank back did not exist until the mid-20th-Century, and is still being made today.

 

[coachbedford]

Thanks-- and no objection to your jumping in! All your answers make sense, but darn, I was hoping the button was older. Would have made for a more interesting story considering the isolated canyon location where I found it.