Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| 5.15 Karat Brown Diamond Found by 12-year-old Photo from The Christian Post See link with story below. |
Here is a nice academic thesis on Second Seminole War fort sites. It is full of good information on Florida history and artifacts from the period.
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1951&context=etd
This study presents a lot that will be of interest to anyone anybody interested in Florida history including a brief segment on how to identify the age of a site from the type of nails found.
It shows some maps too.
Nails are often one of the most common finds on old detecting sites. It is convenient that you can tell something of the age of the site from the nails.
Along the beaches, large concentrations of old nails have been found in the dunes or on the beach as the dunes erode where there were once camp fires.
That is another good reason to not use discrimination too much. Iron objects such as nails can be good clues.
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| Illustration from University of Vermont Historic Preservation Program http://www.uvm.edu/~histpres/203/nails.html |
The study referenced above refers to the "Fort Pierce Collection," which is a large collection of artifacts from the old fort of Fort Pierce. That study contains a lot of photos of artifacts, including a very good collection of military buttons. It can be found by using the ninth link down in my reference list of links found to the left of this post on the first page of this blog.
It is really worth looking through and is one of the better collections of metal artifacts from the period.
Always study dug artifacts when you get a chance. I wish I would have recognized things that I've seen in the field in the past that I did not recognize at the time. As one example, when hunting on a Carribbean Island years ago, I didn't recognize the first gun flint that I found or the twisted piece of metal that was right beside it. I now know that the twisted piece of rusted metal was the hammer that held the gun flint. Things like that are important clues that can tell you a lot about a site.
Another thing to watch for are any changes that become visible during extreme weather. They are finding a lot of new archaeological sites during a severe drought in England and Wales.
You can see some of the new historic sites identified from the air in the photo gallery. You can see where old structures were located.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-23628630
A 12-year-old boy found a 5-karat plus diamond in the Crater of Diamonds State Park.
http://xfinity.comcast.net/video/Boy-finds-huge-diamond-at-state-park/41752643823/Comcast/Today_in_Video/?cid=hero_sf_TIV
You might know the story of pig-farmer John Huddlestone. One day farmer John noticed something sparkling in the dirt of his pig farm. Not knowing what it was, he picked it up and kept it for a while and eventually sent it to a gemologist in New York. It turns out the shiny stone was a diamond. John sold the first diamond real cheap, but before the story is over, farmer John's pig farm turned into a diamond mine now know as the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. That story has a great lesson and has been the subject of sermons for a long time.
Good things can pop up where you don't expect them.
Could it be that something in the muck and mire of your life could turn out to be your diamond mine?
You can visit Crater of Diamonds State Park and do some prospecting of your own for a small fee. Sounds like fun to me.
I was recently talking about genealogy research as a good method for finding detecting sites. Ancestry.com has a free two-week trial period. You might want to give it a try.
On the Treasure Coast we're stuck in a summer pattern. The wind continues from the east/southeast. The surf today is still around two feet, and will be about the same, maybe decreasing just a touch the next few days.
There is a tropical depression down below Cuba, but it doesn't appear to be headed this direction.
I strongly recommend studying the two Seminole War period articles that I mentioned today. You'll want to be able to recognize the identity and age of artifacts like that if you happen to come across them in the field. A few will be seen on the beaches from time to time.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
