Friday, November 15, 2019

11/15/19 Report - Some Small Junk Finds. Dating Nails. Modern Tin Found On Ancient Wreck.


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

Broken Small Possible Tack Or Other Connector.
Here is one find I was able to see after a little cleaning.  When I dug it all I saw was a small black lump, but a lot of the crust easily came off.   After getting a look at it, my first impression was that the top was brass but the stem looked iron.  That doesn't make much sense to me, and it might not be right.  I'll have to get it cleaned better.  That shouldn't take long.

It seems to be a tack or maybe a broken rivet or something.   Looks old, but no way to say at this point.  It was one of a few small pieces I found yesterday.  The shank is very square but broken.

I just happened to run across a nice web site on nails as clues to age.

Here is one of the diagrams from the site.


And here is the link for more information about that.


A couple other old small heavily-encrusted pieces I picked up yesterday included these two similar small pieces of what I think is lead - but very thin.  I'm pretty sure not they aren't aluminum.

Both pieces less than an inch at longest and very thin.



Nothing significant, but since it was the first time I used the Equinox in those types of conditions, I was happy to see it responding so well to small items in thick black sand.  In fact, I thought it handled the black sand very well in one of the standard modes. Some detectors I like to use in pin-point or all-metals mode in black sand - as odd as that might seem.

There is one piece that is starting to look like it might be silver and maybe a bit of a shield showing.  It definitely needs much more cleaning.

I'm sure there were some better finds, but I haven't received any more reports yet.

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Work on the new Reidi tee in central Tallinn yielded another surprising archaeological find recently, this one providing something of a riddle, ERR's Novaator science portal reports.

Workers found a buried wooden ship which archaeologists later determined dated from the end of the medieval period/beginning of the early modern era. Since musket shot was found in situ, the ship could not have been from any earlier than the dawn of the firearms era. Firearms were in common use in Europe by the fifteenth century.

However, tinned food was not in use at that time, which raises the question why a can with an expiry date from 1972 was found within the ship's structure...

Here is the link for the rest of that article.

https://news.err.ee/996439/reidi-tee-work-yields-puzzle-as-modern-tin-can-found-in-ancient-shipwreck

Things of different ages can get intermingled.

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Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

Today the surf was down, but, as you can see, it will be building again by Saturday.  I hope the fronts keep on coming.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net