Thursday, December 10, 2015

12/10/15 Report - Out-Of-The-Way Cut Beach. Gun Flints. Comparing October To November.


Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.


Nice Old Out-Of-The-Way Beach.

Remember the day I ran out of batteries?  This is the direction I was headed then.  I went back Wednesday to do some scouting because I didn't have time to do much detecting because of another commitment.

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Here is a neat story on some very early gun flints
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Archaeologists have revealed the results of a 15-year archaeological investigation into a tiny Scottish island, including the discovery of the earliest gun flints discovered in Britain, representing the first evidence of armed skirmishes on a Clan stronghold in the Hebrides.

Here is the link for the article.

http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art542730-clan-gun-flints-dun-eistean-hebrides

Did you know you can sometimes tell the nationality of a gun flint from the color and shape?  You can.

Timothy McGuire's book An Identification Guide to Recovered Colonial and Revolutionary War Artifacts has a bunch of illustrations that show the differences.

I really like gun flints - probably because the first one I found I didn't recognize quick enough and I still regret it.  It could still be out there on a steep hillside on a Caribbean Island along with the rusted gun cock that was dug right beside it.  That is one of those things that taught me a lesson about how important it can be to quickly identify things in the field.

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As promised, I am going to compare the October poll results with the November poll results.

The blog polls showed that 7 people found one or more cobs or treasure coins the last couple weeks of November, while only two reported finding cobs in the October poll even though the October poll had many more participants.  There were cob finds in October that I knew of that were not reported in the poll.  I suspect the same thing happened in November.

As percentages, only 1.5 percent of the respondents who reported detecting the Treasure Coast during last two weeks of October found cobs.  18% of the November respondents found cobs.  That is a big difference.  The last half of November was evidently a lot better than October for finding cobs.

In October about 10 percent of the respondents found artifacts.  In November it was more like 23 percent.  It appears that November was much better than October for finding artifacts too.

In summary, while there was a big difference in the total number of respondents for the two polls that I do not know how to account for both October and November produced both cobs and artifacts, but goind by the numbers, November was a much more productive period.

The surf will be decreasing and remaining small for a few days  I am going do decrease my beach detecting conditions rating back to a "1."  There may be a few left overs to be found anyhow.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net