Tuesday, December 1, 2015

12/1/15 Report - Dune Erosion Book. Mining Silver For the Potosi Mint. Jamestown Archaeology. Civil War Button Find.


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

Civil War Button Found by Dan B.

About the Button

Yesterday I showed a couple button finds.  Here is another.  This one by Dan B.  Dan sent the photos and reference material.  This Civil War button is not from the Treasure Coast.  A great button find though.

Dan also has some inland finds that I haven't shown yet.

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Here is a book on dune erosion.  You can look at a preview of the book online.  Check out the erosion factors listed on page 12.  I've talked about most of them in this blog at some length at one time or another.

This is an academic book and isn't easy to understand, but if you are interested in understanding erosion you might want to take a look.

https://books.google.com/books?id=TXCQCfaL0DQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

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Have you ever thought about Potosi silver cobs and where they come from?  It is fascinating history. Here are a couple descriptions of how the silver was mined.

Rodrigo de Loaisa, described the typical weeklong stint in the mines: “The Indians enter these infernal pits by some leather ropes like staircases ... Once inside, they spend the whole week in there without emerging, working with tallow candles. They are in great danger inside there ... If 20 healthy Indians enter on Monday, half may emerge crippled on Saturday.”

According to another Spaniard, Alfonso Messia, Indian laborers descended hundreds of feet into the mines, “where the night is perpetual. It is always necessary to work by candlelight, with the air thick and evil-smelling, enclosed in the bowels of the earth.

The ascent and descent are highly dangerous, for they come up loaded with their sack of metal tied to their backs, taking fully four or five hours step by step, and if they make the slightest false step they may fall seven hundred feet.”

That is how the Treasure Coast beach cob that I showed the other day started.  It was a long journey from there to where it finally ended up in the Vero area.

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Here is an article on the archaeological dig going on at Jamestown.  It discusses some artifacts and religion in the colony.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/november-web-only/jamestown-religious-mystery.html

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I'm downgrading my Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions rating down to a 1.

There could still be a few leftovers out there.

The surf will be down to 1 or 2 feet by Friday.  It will then increase up to something like 4 - 6 feet for the weekend.

Watch the wind, which will be changing Thursday.  It will be coming from the north for a few days.

I'll be posting a poll soon to get an idea of how much was found in November.

Evidently the pictures for this post weren't showing up.  I hope they are working now.

Happy hunting
TreasureGuide@comcast.net