Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com
Source: See LincolnshireLive link below.
A metal detectorist has amazed experts after finding an incredibly rare Roman artifact in a Lincolnshire field.
Jason Price, from Grantham, was searching in a field near lesasingham when he unearthed a colourful horse brooch.
The 48-year-old, who is an armed forces veteran, was left gobsmacked by the find, which one local expert says has rewritten the understandings of Roman brooches.
It seems to me that in the past several years archaeologists have come to view detectorists less antagonistically - at least in the press. Back then it seemed like detectorists were always called looters or something. It seems a little better to me now. I think it is at least partly because detectorists now have a voice such as this blog.
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Al C. sent me the following email and photos.
As always, thank you for the blog. I look forward to reading it every day.
When I saw the weather coming a couple weeks ago I tried to fire up my old Soverign and she finally gave up. I think I had that machine for almost 20 years. Made some great finds with it.
So I bought a Equinox. I have only used it once in a very trashy spot that had some construction going on and found the Mercury dime and Barber quarter. It was tough hunting. I plan to investigate the notch discrimination some and try more soon.
I also cant remember if I sent you a picture of the silver rings before. I found it years ago maybe a 100 yards north of where the stairs used to go up to Chucks Steak House. I also found two half reales at the same time/area.
I always wondered if it was ship wreck era. There are no markings on it. No way to tell I guess. I always think about it when the conversation of silver rings and the 1715 ships comes up.
Coins Found By Al C. In A Trashy Area Using His New Equinox.
Photo by Al C.
Intertwined Silver Rings Found by Al C.
Photo by Al C.
Thanks for writing Al. Nice finds. Congratulations.
I've found a few sets of intertwined rings but unfortunately at this time don't have the foggiest idea where. They aren't marked either. One set has one silver, one gold and one other ring. None have markings. I think I have one set that has more than three rings intertwined - I think five.
Here is the one set I had handy. They look much like yours.
I might be lucky enough to have some records that tell me when those were found.
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Brian B. sent me the following email and link.
Hello.. Still enjoy your great reads daily. Hope all is swell and glad to see you have a bit of free time as of late on the shores. Ran across a Jan good read as might be a dupe to you but if not, it's a good recap about the latest battles over treasure finds. Thanks Brian
Below is the lead to the article and the link.
A Shipwreck Off Florida’s Coast Pits Archaeologists Against Treasure Hunters
The discovery of a legendary wreck raises questions about who should control sunken riches
Mr. Owens did some very extensive research and names a variety of possibilities but ends without being able to answer the question concluding, "Perhaps in the end, the story was not about the burier of the hoard, rather, as Kagins described it, about John and Mary discovering the fabled pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Then he quotes Prentice Mulford saying, "It is mysterious Providence that impels any poor fellow to dig his pile, bury it for safe keeping, and then go off and die in some out of the way place without being able to leave any will and testament as to the exact hole where his savings lay."
--- ... Led by archaeologist Carlos León, the team has logged 681 shipwrecks off Cuba, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Bermuda, the Bahamas and the US Atlantic coast.
Its inventory runs from the sinking of the Santa María to July 1898, when the Spanish destroyer Plutón was hit by a US boat off Cuba, heralding the end of the Spanish-American War and the twilight of Spain’s imperial age...
It found that 91.2% of ships were sunk by severe weather – mainly tropical storms and hurricanes – 4.3% ran on to reefs or had other navigational problems, and 1.4% were lost to naval engagements with British, Dutch or US ships. A mere 0.8% were sunk in pirate attacks...
Archaeologists have located the remains of fewer than a quarter of the 681 vessels on the inventory to date...
I heard somebody say that fewer people carry change these days. I think he was talking about coins, but I think people are carrying less paper money too. They simply don't pay with cash very often.
If people are carrying less money, it only stands to reason that they would lose less money. That mean fewer easy targets for the coin shooter and require some changes in detecting strategies. It might mean focusing on older coins rather than coins that were recently lost.
I suspect it won't be long before people quit carrying money altogether. They can pay with a card, smart phone, or some newer way. The end of money won't mean the end of metal detecting though. There will be older coins that haven't been found yet, but as the numbers of those dwindle, detectorist will probably focus more on relics or other kinds of targets such as nuggets, meteorites or lost smart phones. The reduction or elimination of physical money definitely has implications for detectorists as well as metal detector designers. Another change might be increased targeting of non-metallic objects, including paper money.
I enjoy eye-balling, which is mostly about non-metallic targets. Many years ago when I was in school, one day our gym class went out to pick up trash on the football field. I found a dollar bill under the bleachers. That is my earliest memory of finding paper money. I still occasionally target paper money, and as with metal detecting, there are strategies.
One thing I've successfully done is visit fair grounds or other busy event locations early in the morning and check the fence rows on the down-wind side of the site. I've done that several times with some degree of success.
One place you can find paper money on the beach is in the sea weed line. Also I know where there is one place in the water in front of a busy resort where there is a shallow water dip that collects paper money. There have also been several times when I was detecting in the water and seen a bill come floating by. So far my biggest paper money finds have been twenties.
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I happened to see an old episode of the TV show River Monsters, and the fellow was catchting Bull sharks in the Indian River Lagoon at Fort Pierce. He also seemed to spend a lot of time down by the power plant.
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The Treasure Coast is having a one foot surf and very small tides. Those conditions make for easy water detecting.
Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Detectorist Working North of Sebastian Inlet.
Photo submitted by Darrel S.
Thanks for the photo Darrel.
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MACKINAW CITY, MI - Excavators at Colonial Michilimackinac uncovered a 250-year-old piece of trade silver earlier this week; their second big find this summer.
According to Dr. Lynn Evans, curator of archaeology at Mackinac State Historic Parks, the triangle-shaped artifact has a small hole in it, which means it was likely part of an earring or pendent worn around 1765...
Source: See mlive.com link below.
This might make you think of the posts I did on Seminole and Calusa silver artifacts. This item wouldn't be associated with either of those groups, but it is said to be trade silver. It seems to me this item could easily be misinterpreted. It is a simple geometric shape and could be used in a variety of ways. It could even be a left over scrap or part of something that had no particular function at the time it was lost.
After reading most of the article, I did something I don't usually do: I read some of the comments. I don't know what happens to people when they are sitting at a keyboard and faced with the opportunity to type something, but in a lot of cases it isn't pretty. It makes you wonder about the state of our civilization and hope for the future. I think you know what I'm talking about. I can't even describe it.
Anyhow, there were a few comments that I thought were illustrative or otherwise interesting. Someone commented that it could be part of a fishing lure. You might not think so if it is really silver. On the other hand, I can imagine circumstances when a person might use a random piece of shiny silver for something like that even if it was previously or subsequently used in other ways. We might go to the store or order the precise part that was designed for a very specific purpose, but people in the past, and some of the more handy and creative people of today, might save any miscellaneous piece of material and use it in any multitude of ways. If you wanted to be creative and think of all the ways this piece could be used, I'm sure you could come up with at least a few.
I always remember one item that was dug up during an archaeological excavation of what was described as a slave quarters and the item an archaeologist said was one thing ( I think they said it was a tobacco pipe ) turned out to be one of those small toys from a box of Cracker Jacks.
It can be difficult to interpret finds - even when they are found in context. It is easy to be wrong.
Lets say there is a range of possible uses for an artifact. For example, a triangular piece of metal, like the one shown above, could be used as a pendant, or it might be used to attract fish, or it might be used as a screw driver, or to scour a line in wood or cut leather, or if shined up to reflect light, to signal someone on a distant hill. I think you get my point.
There is a range of possibilities. To any interpreter, some of those possibilities would seem more likely than others. If you assigned probabilities to each of the possibilities, you might say something like you feel that there is a 75% chance that it is a pendant, for example, and maybe a 2% chance that it was used to reflect light and send signals. In general you might expect a bell shaped curve something like the following.
The vertical axis would represent the probability that an item is a certain thing. There might be a relatively high probability that the item is a pendant. Items like that would fall at about the center of the curve above. But there are other possibilities, some of which might be considered to be much less likely. They would be either far left or right on the curve. (Maybe the curve should be cut in half.)
I am just thinking at the keyboard, so I apologize for the lack of refinement and poor explanation.
It must be something like medicine. You go to the doctor and present symptoms X, Y and Z, so the easy diagnosis is something common, like the flu, yet symptoms X, Y and Z might also indicate something very rare. The tendency would be to over-diagnose the most likely illness and under-diagnose rare diseases.
Undoubtedly archaeologists and treasure hunters tend to identify finds according to what seems most likely or probable. That makes sense, but in the process some interpretations are overlooked or too quickly dismissed. That would result in a narrowing and heightening of the curve.
I hope you get what I am saying, and I apologize for trying to put it out there before I thought it out more completely.
There were other comments to the mlive.com article that were interesting. A couple people said something like that they were out at the dig site last week and dropped the item. One person jokingly said that, and then said they would appreciate having the lost item returned.
While those people might have been joking, they make an important point. Sites can always be contaminated. And odd things can be found where you'd never expect to find them. Some kid might take a thousand year old fossil or hundred year old coin from dad's collection and drop it in the school yard. Just because an item is old doesn't mean it was lost a long time ago.
Another point is that there are people who will try to claim things they did not lose. It happens. I've seen people try to claim a diamond ring or gold chain they did not lose. I've talked about that before, and you have to be careful. Don't provide a full description until you know you have the real owner. Ask them for the inscription inside the ring or something to prove ownership. That is one reason the picture that I posted of the lady wearing the lost cross pendant was important. It helped prove ownership.
Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Fort Pierce Area Beach This Morning Before Low Tide.
I went out to one Fort Pierce area swimming beach this morning to see what was going on. I checked the dry sand first. I could tell it had been heavily hunted, as has been the case for at least the past couple of years. It is detected frequently and thoroughly - probably multiple times a day. Of the targets in the dry sand the vast majority were bottle caps, although they were relatively few. Some detectorists at that beach are in the habit of removing the trash, and overall it is pretty clean.
I did find one big spill of coins (couple dollars worth) in the dry sand and one small 9K band that was hidden under three bottle caps.
I could tell that there were a lot of people at the beach this weekend. You could see where the crowds were. They covered the beach farther north and south than usual.
If you want to detect the dry sand at the popular swimming beaches this summer, you might want to go when the crowds are just beginning to leave. If you wait too long, most things will already be picked up by other detectorists.
The coins I found in the dry sand were all really recent drops - still nice and shiny. Even the coins I found in the wet sand were still nice and shiny.
As you might expect, the shallow water conditions were not good. Neither were conditions for finding old things. Sand has been accumulating in the shallow water and on the beach fronts for months now.
Fort Pierce Area Beach This Morning Before Low Tide.
There is one tropical disturbance way out in the ocean to keep track of.
Source: nhc.noa.gov
On the Treasure Coast don't expect any changes real soon. A one foot surf is predicted for several more days.
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The late president John F Kennedy’s rosary beads – valued at up to $400,000 (€356,000) – failed to sell at auction in New York last month.
In this centenary year of his birth, mementoes associated with JFK continue to attract intense interest but, for once, bidders baulked at the steep estimate ($300,000-$400,000). The rosary, described by auctioneers Christie’s as “one of the most important and personal possessions” of America’s first Catholic president, had “impeccable providence”, having been later given by JFK “to his best friend and special assistant, David Powers”.
Following his death, his family discovered a hidden cache of mementoes
The rosary beads are made of onyx (a black, semi-precious stone) and are attached to a silver crucifix with the name “John F Kennedy” engraved on the reverse. The decade beads are connected to the antiphon beads by a silver circle containing an image of the Holy Spirit inside of a triangle...
It might have done better if it showed heavy wear from use or there was a photo of him with it.
Yesterday I added a new post to the blog. It will help us get an idea of how many people depend a lot upon intuition, which was also the subject of my post yesterday.
I hope you'll take the time to respond to the post.
