11/12/14 Report - Inland Hunting Versus Beach Hunting, 2000 Year-Old Corded Pot Sherds Found

Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.

Find and photo by William M.

Here is a nice silver quarter find by William M.
He has been detecting off beach.  People do that more when beach conditions are not so good.

If you think about it, there is a lot more land in the U. S. than there is beach.  The beach is only a very narrow strip.

If you fly over the U. S. you'll see thousands of square miles of land that has not been detected or detected very little.

The main difference between beach hunting is the constant churn or turnover in the tidal area. 

There are a lot of differences between beach and inland hunting, but there are a lot of similarities too.

In future posts I'll talk about some of the differences and different strategies and techniques.  The biggest thing about working a beach is the sifting and sorting done by the water and waves.  The longer things are out there the more they will be sorted.  That means that you can hit it really good when you are able to get to where the gold has accumulated. 

When hunting dry land there can be accumulations too.  There are lakes, streams, etc. but there is erosion from rain too.  I hit one small area that held a good number of coins on an old path recently where the path narrowed.  There were steep cliffs on both sides of the path, and the path also got suddenly steeper and there were big tree roots sticking out.  I'd bet that a good bit of that concentration of coins was caused by people coming down the path slipping in rain or snow or tripping over the roots. 

In the near future, I'll probably be talking more about some of the similarities and differences between inland and beach hunting and the different strategies and techniques.



Pot Shards
 

Here are some finds from up north.  I said I'd show you some older stuff.  These are estimated to be up to between 2000 and 2500 years old.

You can see the chord marks.  They are all corded.  Some are tempered with limestone and some have bits of ground clamshells.



An Inside Surface.

Here are a couple of close-ups.

Keep your eyes open and be aware of non-metallic items that you might see.

These are from a large camp area on private property which has been investigated heavily by archaeologists.







An Outside Surface.

On the Treasure Coast it looks like we'll be having a one to two foot surf most of the time, with maybe a couple of days a foot bigger.  That won't really create good beach conditions.  It has really been a slow year for hunting older things on the Treasure Coast beaches.  It has got to change some time.  Don't fall asleep and miss it when it finally happens.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net





10/16/11 Report - Pot Shards and Mystery Object

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

Mystery Object Found This Weekend on the Treasure Coast.

I'll start with the whatzit first. It looks like it might be a seed. About three inches long it has one hole on the side you can see. If I turned it over, you would see two more holes spaced so that they look like eyes on the other side.

Maybe the three holes are something like the three spots on a coconut. It is unusually hard and might be fossilized. It sounds more like stone when tapped, but has the look of wood. It is not metal.

I've never noticed anything like this before, so I am curious, especially since it seems to be fossilized.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I always encourage detectorists to keep their eyes open for non-metallic items when they detect. As I've pointed out in the past, they can indicate where there might be other old items. I therefore call them signal finds.


In the photo below, the top shard looks more like those that I usually see - the coarse red-orange type. The bottom one is a cream color and has the remains of glazing where it was not worn off by tumbling in the surf. I think you can see the glazing in the photo.

The bottom of that pot would have been about 14 inches in diameter by my guess.

Two Pot Shards Found Yesterday on the Treasure Coast.


I'd like to locate any photos of other cream colored shipwreck pots or shards.

See my 3/31/11 post for some good references to shipwreck pottery.

I don't think people use the search box on this blog enough. You can search through three years of posts quickly and easily.

In the past I posted links to some pretty good references on Spanish Colonial shipwreck pottery.


You might know that objects were often buried with cornerstones. Here is a story about a missing cornerstone of one very important building that among other things probably contains historic documents.

Here is the link to that story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/nyregion/nobody-can-find-cornerstone-of-st-patricks-cathedral.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2

If you want to read more about cornerstone traditions, here is a link for that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone


It seems that a lot of uninformed people want to lump detectorists in with looters and grave robbers. That is very misleading. My most recent poll shows that.


The fact is, that of those who reported in this blog's most recent poll that they have found treasure artifacts, less than one in ten sold any artifacts.

And of those who reported finding treasure coins, less than 15% sold any treasure coins.

That is hardly the picture you get of the media and academic publications that would have us believe that detectorists are looting graves of tons of gems and gold to make big profits.

The fact is that the more common finds are pull tabs and clad coins. But of those who do find treasure, their motives seem to be much the same as the professional archaeologist who is interested in uncovering a piece of history. Too bad archaeology seems dead set on making enemies when they could just as easily make good friends of the people in this society who most share their interests and would be glad to support and participate with them in adding to the body of knowledge that would benefit all mankind.


Treasure Coast Beach Forecast and Conditions.

The wind is fairly strong this morning and coming out of the east. Seas will be around four feet. Conditions are now poor again, but may change soon.

Next weekend might bring higher seas again.

It seems the summer weather conditions are gone. That should help. We are now having fairly normal fall weather - as far as wind and waves go.

The combined effect of a few fronts coming through might result in better hunting conditions this winter.

There is a tropical disturbance down by Yucatan and one coming off of Africa again. Neither will impact us very much real soon.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net