Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
As you know I cover a wide variety of topics. Once in a while I get on a particular topic and stick to it for a while before changing again. For a few weeks I was on the weather and developing beach conditions. Sometimes I'll be on beach dynamics or treasure coins, or metal detectors or strategies techniques or equipment. Sometimes even things like fossils, sea glass or Native American artifacts.
Lately I've been talking about one 8-mile stretch of beach that I detected a lot in the past. I'll talk a little more about that today, particularly two of the better modern jewelry beaches.
The first I described as "a very narrow swimming beach where a lot of people crowded on nice days. It produced a lot of good quality jewelry on a regular basis." The jewelry finds were generally good quality and seemed to be a good representative sample of what the people wore there.
On the other hand, there was another jewelry beach that I described as " a good hole. It was in front of an active high-scale resort. Not as many items as in zone 1, but higher quality. Some very good finds came from there even though there was known competition. I believe that it was resort staff. A fellow stood and watched me working the water one day and left cursing when he saw me dig a gold chain in very shallow water. I could tell that a lot of my finds from there were not the easy finds and were things somebody could easily miss."
The things I found there were not things that were easy to detect. The average and large size things never appeared. It was always a very thin gold ring with a good gem, or a small gold chain, or something else that might easily be missed by the detector. Finds were not frequent but they were good. There was no junk and very few coins.
If you carefully analyze what is being found or not found, you can tell a lot about a site and modify how you hunt accordingly. Since I knew there were very few junk targets and few big targets, I could really pump up the sensitivity turn off discrimination and hunt slow and listen for the small signals. Overall, it was very productive hunting.
Once I was traveling on business and stopped at a roadside beach with a couple picnic tables near Pensacola. There were four posts marking out a square area in front of the picnic tables. I started hunting found the are within the square marked by the posts thoroughly cleaned out so I moved just outside the square area and found three gold rings in a very short time. Whoever was working that area on a regular basis, worked the square but left the area just outside the square untouched.
My point is to carefully analyze finds and junk to determine what is going on and then make adjustments. The competition can actually help you out if you figure out how to take advantage of what they are or aren't doing.
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Monday was Columbus Day, and as you would expect, in response to any mention of a celebrated historic or national cultural event that at one time played any roll in fostering national identity, we are treated to a parade of contrary boring poorly-thought-out incessantly-repetitious emotion-driven arguments by dissenters for their "favorite" group, skin color, nationality, ideology or whatever. I am all in favor of presenting "the other side." In fact I highly recommend and encourage exactly that. I only want the argument to be thorough, consistent and justified by something other than myth, repetition and emotion.
Victim-hood attracts sympathy. I understand that, but being a victim does not automatically make you right. It does not grant merit.
The Spanish ( or Europeans or Whites - however you want to define your favorite group or your favorite hate group) conquistadors did terrible things. I am not defending that at all. However, the Maya and Aztec, foe example, appeared to have little aversion to violence, human sacrifice, war, slavery, or territorial expansion, all of which existed in the New World before Columbus arrived.
The difference is not that one group was evil and the other inherently good. The big difference came down to the fact that one group was more successful in effecting the evil in their heart. I have no reason to believe that if the Aztecs, for example, had the ships, army and war technology to project power overseas, that they would develop a non-violent non-aggressive culture and limit the evil they would do. I see no reason to believe that if they had the power to project domination that they would not have done the same thing to North America and Europe and we might be speaking some strange language today.
I accept that the more powerful group is responsible for the greater damage done, but not having the ability to do more damage hardly makes you a better person. It was not that one group was completely good and the other completely evil. No group is completely good or evil - especially not any group defined by such superficial simplistic things as skin color, ancestry, race, national identity or culture. We have to learn to look at things in less simplistic terms, and we need to start looking at people as individuals - not just group members. We need to get over this obsession with skin color, race and nationality. No person is perfect. Neither are groups.
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The poll is progressing nicely. Not much longer to get your responses in. I know that some people have not responded because I know of some finds in areas that still have zero votes.
Please respond before it is too late. I think this is one of my more interesting polls.
Thanks!
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Compared to September there isn't much excitement. The surf isn't huge, yet it isn't real small now.
I haven't been able to get out lately, but hope you have.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
