11/17/18 Report - Remnants of Old Dock Near Fort Anne. Indian River Lagoon History. Trash and Treasure. Lucky Penny.

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

Source: See KayakingKSC.com link below.

You've heard it said that one man's trash is another man's treasure.  That is especially true if you hunt old bottles or are an archaeologist, but it is true for many others too.

I was reading a post on an archaeology web site and the author mentioned that it was odd that at one archaeological site the owner of the homestead stored his trash on his land instead of having it hauled away.  I can only assume that that was written by a millennial or younger person who never lived in the country.  Where I grew up we always buried our garbage on our property.  Everybody had a trash pile.  Most dug a hole so that what remained after the trash was burned was buried.  Rural areas didn't have garbage pickup and neither did the Treasure Coast at one time.

I didn't find out when trash pickup began on the Treasure Coast, but from what I've seen along the Indian River lagoon, it wasn't until maybe the fifties or sixties along there.  Maybe someone can tell me when it was.

If you walk along the banks of the Indian River today, you'll find a lot of old bottles (many more than would have simply been thrown away by boaters or travelers).  You will also find the remains of old trash or burn piles.  Some are still very evident and continue to get washed out whenever there is erosion.

I've talked before about the signs of treasure.  Some of the first signs that you'll often see are pot shards, which tend to remain visible on top of the ground for decades or centuries.

Trash can be one very promising sign of the possible presence of treasure.  The treasure we dig today is what was left behind by the peoples of the past.  Discarded or lost bits can tell you a lot.

When people talk about the history of Florida, they usually only go back a few centuries, but Florida has a very ancient and important past.  I found one very good post about the history of the Indian River Lagoon, including the photo above, on the Kayaking the Kennedy Space Center web site.  Here is the link.

https://www.kayakingksc.com/History-of-the-Indian-River-Lagoon.html

Not only does that post show the remnants of a dock near the Seminar War Fort Anne and the old blockhouse, but it also provides information about the even older history of the lagoon.  Here are a few facts from the KayakingKSC post that demonstrate why the ancient history of the lagoon area is so important.


Jaw dropping facts:

**168 individuals recovered from the mortuary pond. Latest dating is between 7,210 years and 7,320 years “before present”

**Woven fabrics- the oldest-known in the world.

**Brain matter in skulls- DNA was extracted

**DNA results: Rare Haplogroup X –

X is one of the five haplogroups found in the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Now that is some pretty impressive history.


Here are a few interesting facts on the history of trash from garbagemanday.org (full link below).

3000 B.C. – The first landfill is developed when Knossos, Crete digs large holes for refuse. Garbage is dumped and filled with dirt at various levels.

1388 – The English Parliament bans dumping of waste in ditches and public waterways.

1551 – The first recorded use of packaging: German papermaker Andreas Bernhart begins placing his paper in wrappers labeled with his name and address.

Around 1757 Ben Franklin started the first street cleaning service and encouraged the public to dig pits to dispose of their waste. We were even smart enough to melt down a statue of King George III and use it as ammunition against his armies.

In 1885 America built its first incinerator on Governors Island, New York. The Big Apple also developed the nations first comprehensive system for garbage management. We even tried Austria’s waste reduction plants which compress organic grease, oils and by-products from waste. Although, they were quickly vetoed due to nasty odors.

For more about garbage: http://www.garbagemanday.org/history-of-the-garbage-man/

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Mounted 1958 Wheat Penny Find.

This is not exactly a holed coin, but close to it.  The mounting is minimal, and I couldn't find anything special about the coin.  I looked closely at both sides to find anything special and it just looks like a regular wheat penny.  It is in very nice condition except for the discolouring, but I had to wonder why someone would mount it.  It is nicely, although inexpensively, mounted.  Perhaps the date was significant, or it was a lucky penny, or a gift.

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On the Treasure Coast the tides are flat.  From the look of the wind this morning, I would suspect that there are some scallops and perhaps some very small cuts on some of the beaches.

Here are the surf predictions for the next few days.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

5/15/17 Report - In The Dumps. A Different Type of Jewelry Find.

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

Where I came from you could put out the garbage, but it was going to stay where you put it.  It wasn't going to disappear.  There was no garbage pickup service.  That is the way it was in rural areas.

Things stayed where you left them until they were reused, buried, rusted away or just piled up.

It was that way even on the Treasure Coast back in the day.  As I've said before, the people that lived along the Indian River threw there junk over the bank into the river.  Much of it is still there.

Farmers didn't throw away much.  They kept it in case it came in handy some day. If they needed to fix something, they usually found something laying around that they could use.

There was old stuff in the barn, in the shed and in the field.  But what about real garbage?

Organic materials like food scraps became animal food or fertilizer.  The dog got the bones.  None of it went to waste.

What about papers?  They were used too.  Maybe to start a fire or line a dog pen or the bottom of a chicken coop.

There were some things that went to waste, but not many.  Bottles and tin cans might get thrown into a valley or dip and piled up over time.  My dad buried those.

I know where some of those old bottle dumps were and could probably go back and dig them up.  Not many people would know about those dumps today.  They are hidden out there waiting to be found. That is one advantage of being older and knowing something about what went on in days gone by.

Old folks from the area can be a good research resource.  They're usually happy to talk.

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High Relief Cameo In Silver Find.

I've written about all kinds of jewelry finds in the past, but here is a different one.  It is a high-relief cameo mounted in a silver setting.

There are cheap cameos and then there are the more expensive hand-carved cameos.  The one shown above is not one of the common cheap ones.  It was carved in Italy,  which I learned after some research.

Nice hand-carved cameos run from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars.  The setting is silver and made so the cameo can be worn as either a brooch or pendant.

Back of Same Piece

As you might be able to see, the piece is marked Italy and sterling (upper left), and the sculpture signed the piece by carving his name into the back of the shell.  The signature seems to be Fraterno.

From what I've read, it is probably Sardonyx shell.

I found the following description online.

The creative process for the cameo begins where the shell divers appropriately select specimens from 90 to 100 feet below the water's surface. The divers' harvest journeys to the shops of craftsmen in Torre del Greco, where the artist painstakingly searches for sea shells free of flaws and cracks. A new dimension of artistic skill and aesthetic appeal was added to cameo carving when it was discovered that many stones - and later, shells - were made of different colored layers. This allowed the artist to create a striking contrast between the raised (relief) layer and the flat (background) layer. Unlike our competitors who use modern machinery to assist in the initial stages of the process, our master craftsman performs the intricate details still carved by hand.

The individual piece to engrave is mounted with tree sap on a wooden stick. After sketching a picture of what he intends to carve, the engraving begins using steel burins. The goldsmith work is strictly hand-made and the techniques used are part of the most remarkable Neapolitan and Italian artistic tradition. Gold frames, like cameos themselves, are created in all shapes and sizes, the most popular being the oval. A gold metal ribbon (bezel or gallery wire) is wrapped around the perimeter and folded over the edge of each single cameo. In this fashion no two can be exactly alike in their curvature, thickness and contour. The bezel is then surrounded by the most decorative part of the frame: gold-moldings, twisted ribbons, double wire braids, mixed ropes, strings of pearls, hallow-cane, etc., and embellished with filigree patterns, or diamond settings.

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Beach conditions remained unchanged.  I hope to get out to do a little hunting this week.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net