10/23/19 Report - Ship of Plundered Booty Salvaged. Statues Thrown in River. Pontius Pilate's Road.

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

More than 200 years after its devastating wreck, marine archaeologists have recovered gold jewelry, cookware, and chess pieces from the remains of the ship that belonged to Lord Elgin, researchers in Greece announced this week.

In 1802, a large double-masted ship called the Mentor set sail with treasure looted from Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin. It was heading from Greece toward Malta, intending to land in the UK, but the brig sank after crashing into rocks off the coast of Avlemonas on the island of Kythera. It took with it the entirety of the plundered booty, which included some 17 boxes filled with antiquities—the most famous of which were the Elgin Marbles, looted from the Parthenon...

Here is the link for more about that.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/shipwreck-discovery-lord-elgin-1680415

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Controversial statues were removed from a church and thrown into the Tigres River.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-controversial-amazon-synod-statue-siezed-and-thrown-into-the-tiber-river-full-video

This article and the video can help you think about why and how various types of items end up in a body of water.  Sometimes it is intentional and sometimes not.  And why did the fellow select that particular spot to discard them?  How can you identify the most likely spots where items might be lost?  How did the fellow in the video choose the spot where he stopped to dump the statues?

If you think about those types of things, you might get some clues on where to search.  Some magnet fishing from that spot might be profitable.

In this case, it was a controversial statue.  In other cases, items might be discarded during war, after crimes, general mischief or simple accident.

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I got a note from one reader in Colorado about a beautiful 1944 wheat penny just found in change.  He wondered if finds like that might be from theft.  I think that is one way, but I there are other ways.  Sometimes things get passed down and the new owners don't have the same appreciation for the items or sometimes after collecting for a while, people find out that the items are not worth a great deal and have trouble selling them and just decide to spend them.  And sometimes it might be accident.  I know that one time I spent an old silver coin by accident after it accidentally got mixed in with other more modern finds.  Can you think of other reasons for older coins to be found in circulation?  Let me know.

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Archaeologists have unearthed a "lost" road in Jerusalem that was likely constructed by Pontius Pilate, the Roman who presided over the trial and execution of Jesus Christ.

Excavations revealed more than 100 coins beneath the street dating between 17 AD and 31 AD, meaning it would have been built during the famous Roman's rule.

Archaeologists first discovered the road in 1894, but they were unable to pinpoint the date of its construction...

Here is the link for more about that.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a29536844/pontius-pilate-lost-road/

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Don't you wish someone would send a dictionary to the media and pundits who can't seem to accurately read or interpret an English sentence.  I get so tired of reading that somebody said X, Y or  Z, when it is clearly not accurate.  Or do they simply think they can fool us?

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It is getting late in the year to still be so hot and muggy.  I wish it would cool off.

A new system popped up down by the Yucatan.

Source: nhc.noaa.gov

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com

We are going to get a bump in the surf  Friday and Saturday.

I know a lot of people got discouraged this year with Dorian and all of the high surf but getting very little erosion.  There was a lot of excitement and anticipation but very little to show for it after wards.  You can't allow yourself to get discouraged though.  Sometimes you have to adapt and do things differently for a while.  Patience and persistence are necessary, but adaptability and creativity also help.  Sometimes you have to check out new places and maybe go a little farther to hunt than you'd prefer.  When things aren't producing at your normal sites sometimes it is a good thing because it forces you to do something new or different.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

12/5/18 Report - Policarpa On Dug Coin. George Washington Silver Dollar Throw. Puzzling Use of New Tech. Ring Bearing Name of Pontius Pilate.

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

Dug Columbian Coin Showing a Lady - Not Liberty.

I've been talking about coins showing Lady Liberty.  Here is a coin showing a lady with a very different look.  She appears to be bound.  She is not Lady Liberty.  She is known as Policarpa Salavarrieta.

From Wikipedia:  Policarpa Salavarrieta, also known as "La Pola," was a Neogranadine seamstress who spied for the Revolutionary Forces during the Spanish Reconquista of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. She was captured by Spanish Royalists and ultimately executed for high treason. The Day of the Colombian Woman is on "her" day. She is now considered a heroine of the independence of Colombia.

• 
  

• Born: Jan 26, 1795 · Guaduas, Colombia
• Died: Nov 14, 1817 · Bogotá, Colombia
• Parents: Joaquín Salavarrieta · Mariana de Ríos
• Buried: Church of San Agustín

Coins often portray historical figures.  Sometimes they are presidents or other admired or respected people.  The image is not only meant to portray and honor the person, but also to convey a message and inspire people.  Even when the image is of a actual person, there are often myths that come to surround the person.

One story that you might have heard is that George Washington, as a young man, threw a silver dollar across the Potomac.  The story is meant to illustrate his strength, but is it true.  There is some disagreement on that.  Here is what one web site says.

But alas, his famous coin toss is apparently not the whole truth. This popular myth is often told to illustrate his strength, but the river was not the Potomac (about a mile wide) nor was it the Delaware. Looking at his childhood homestead, perhaps it was the Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg, Virginia. According to myth, Washington threw a piece of slate, about the size and shape of a dollar, not a actual silver dollar. This account took place according to Martha Washington's grandson, George Washington Parke Custis. While the story has never been verified, historians concede that the feat is a possibility. At the site of the Washington family homestead, the Rappahannock measures only 250 feet across, an impressive but not impossible throwing distance.

Moreover, there were no US silver dollars available when Washington was a young man.

Source: https://www.ngccoin.com/boards/topic/123308-did-george-washington-really-throw-a-silver-dollar-across-the-potomac-river/

Whether he actually threw a coin (silver dollar or not) across a specific river is not really the point, I guess, but you should realize that representations are not always literally true and that myths are often added to the image of historical people and events.

I'll have more to say about that in the near future as it relates to treasure hunting.  I also plan to talk about the psychology of meaning and how to interpret signs and symbols.

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Just because a technology is available doesn't mean it should be used or that it will be used correctly. New technologies can seem promising, but if you don't use it well, it won't do you much good.

Ground penetrating radar has been around a while now.  In fact it was invented in the 1920s, but it wasn't used much until the 1970s when the military began exploring its use for finding mines, buried weapons, tunnels etc.  In recent years it has been used more frequently by archaeologists and treasure hunters.

The selection of the best technology for the job depends upon a variety of factors.  Using a golf analogy, there are times when you would chose a putter and times when you would use a driver.     

On one TV show (Oak Island) the EM61 metal detector was used on a strip of rocky land.  There seemed to be no strategy other than seeing what might be found.  Maybe they didn't know if the system might be useful and just wanted to explore using it a little.  If that was the case I can understand it to some extent.  But what was strange to me, was that after the EM61 "got a hit" then the CTX 3030 was used to detect the target before retrieval.  In each case that they showed, the target detected by the EM61 was also detected by the metal detector.  Again, that doesn't make much sense to me unless you are simply trying to find out how the EM61 works or how to use it.  I already talked about this to some extent in a previous post.

NOTE: I originally referred to the EM61 as a GPR system.  I am told that it is actually a metal detector, so I corrected the references in the above paragraph.   Thanks to Jorge Y. for pointing out that mistake.

Here is a link for information about the EM61.

http://www.geonics.com/html/em61-mk2.html

On the other TV program, a GPR system detected a very large area of disturbed earth, where it appeared there might have been a large object buried or uncovered in the past.  After scanning the ground with the GPR and detecting the large area of disturbed earth, the switched to using a Garrett ATX on the same ground.  That made no sense to me either.

The fellow using the ATX found what you'd expect to find around a mid 20th century building -  some bottle caps, pull-tabs, etc., and eventually a coin.  That had nothing to do with the GPR scan.  It seemed they ignored the large and deep area of disturbed earth,.  I don't really get that strategy either.

Not only did they seem to ignore the area detected by the GPR system, but the ATX was a bad choice for that situation too.  Although I am not generally a big fan of a lot of discrimination, for what they seemed to be doing, I would have chosen another type of metal detector.

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To the very short list of clues about Pilate as a historical figure, archaeologists have added one more: a 2,000-year-old copper alloy ring bearing his name.

The ring was discovered in the late 1960s, one of thousands of artifacts found in the excavation of Herodium, an ancient fortress and palace south of Bethlehem, in the West Bank. But it was not until recently that researchers, analyzing those objects with advanced photography, were able to decipher the ring’s inscription.

It reads “of Pilates,” in Greek letters set around a picture of a wine vessel known as a krater, and is said by archaeologists to be only the second artifact from his time ever found with his name. Kraters are a common image in artifacts of that time and place...

The article continues:

The report says it is unlikely that the ring belonged to Pilate, in part because such simple rings usually belonged to soldiers and lesser officials, not to someone as wealthy and powerful as a prefect.

“We think it implausible that a prefect would have used a simple, all-metal, copper-alloy personal sealing ring with a motif that was already a well-known Jewish motif in Judea before and during his rule,” it says...

Here is the link if you want to read the rest of the article.

https://www.geopost247.com/2018/11/pontius-pilates-name-is-found-on-2000-year-old-ring/


There is a good lesson.  The authors didn't try to jump to conclusion that the ring was Pilate's simply because his name was inscribed in it.  They considered other things and came up with a more reasonable conclusion.

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It looks like the surf will increase a little by the weekend.  Not much else going on.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net