1/14/12 Report - When in Doubt, Don't Throw It Out

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

Yesterday I mentioned discoveries at Little Salt Spring and gave a link to one story about that. As a result, I got an email from Al C. telling me the following.

There is a book, The man who rode sharks, about a guy named Bill Royal who was probably the first to dive those springs and found lots of human remains there. The story is about how he tried to get the scientific community interested and could not. Several other unrelated stories about cave diving in its beginning and fossil hunting. I think its on Amazon. Good read.

Thanks once again for the contributions of the readers of this blog.


On this side of the peninsula, we have some sites that provide evidence of habitation that predates the pyramids. There is one up in Brevard County. The Brevard County Museum tells the story of the Windover People and an archaeological dig in Titusville.

http://nbbd.com/godo/BrevardMuseum/WindoverPeople/index.html


And, of course, right here in north Vero we have the famous carved Mammoth bone that dates back 12 to possibly 20,000 years. It was found by local collector, James Kennedy. I've written about that in this blog before.

Here is another link to that story.

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/25/137549198/florida-fossil-hunter-gets-credit-for-big-find

If you read that article, you'll see that the famous bone with the carving sat in a box under James' sink for a long time before he took it out one day and noticed the carving. That is something that is relevant to any detectorist.

Don't be quick to discard finds. Even if they don't look like anything much interesting at the time.

I know that many good artifacts have been dug and thrown away on the beach, sometimes to be found later by another detectorist. Or sometimes eye-balled by a beach comber.

When an item is dug, it is usually not clean. It can be covered by sand, dirt, conglomerate, corrosion, patina, or whatever. That means that not everything will be obvious.

Other items might not be covered, but might not be correctly identified or thoroughly inspected by the finder while in the field.

I've been on the beach at times when the wind and sand was blowing and the rain coming down so hard that I could barely see anything.

And there have been things that I didn't correctly identify or recognize when I picked them up on the beach.

All of that said, if there is any doubt, keep an item until you can clean it and inspect it properly.

One of my favorite finds sat in a box with a bunch of heavily corroded and encrusted coins long before I found out what it really was.

I only discovered that it was an old medallion when I started to clean those old coins. After some of the encrustation came off, I could see that it wasn't a coin at all. That medallion was found at least a couple of years before I discovered what it really was.

Don't take the time in the field to try to analyze or identify all of your items. Again, if their is any doubt, take the time to properly clean and inspect any objects that might possibly hold a surprise.

I don't know how many times I've been wrong about items like that. Quite a few.

When you have a hot spot, you want to dig as fast as possible. That is not the time to inspect items. You can quickly lose your hot spot in a variety of ways. An incoming tide for example. Or a change in weather.

I've mentioned this before, but I was digging a real hot spot in the water one evening when a weather front came through. I saw the clouds come over. And the wind and waves increased suddenly. It was also getting dark. I then left my hot spot, in which there was a good target on at least every square foot spread over a large area, and I know that I had only covered a small part of the area. I had hunted the same place the previous two days with the same results. I spent about four hours per hunt. I should have hunted longer.

Anyhow, after the evening when the front came through, I returned the next day, and everything was gone. What was an almost an endless hot spot, was now covered by sand. I couldn't find a single target there. That just goes to show how quickly things can disappear on a beach or in the shallow water. And that is why I don't take a lot of time to inspect items in the field.

My main point, is keep items until you can properly clean, inspect and research them. Don't attempt to do that all in the field. Field time is for detecting and digging.

Of course you want to look at what you are digging enough to get some information about what you are digging. But you can't do it all in the field, for the reasons that I've just explained.

You'll also find that over the years you'll learn more and be better able to identify and interpret your finds.

Sometimes it has been years before I learned the true identity of some finds. This past year, I think I have finally correctly identified some things that I've had for years.

Of course not everything turns out to be something significant. Very often you'll learn that an item is nothing worth keeping. But keeping a piece of trash for a while won't hurt anything, but you'll regret throwing something nice away by mistake.

If you've been hunting for any length of time and if you are like me, I'll bet you have already made that mistake at least once. And when you throw something away, you probably will never see it again.

That leads to additional subjects like cleaning items and keeping good records, but I'll quit there for today. I'll just say that if you don't keep good records, and find that you have a really nice find, you'll want to know where it came from. Unless you keep good records that can easily be forgotten.


The wind is still from north/northwest as a new cold front comes through. The seas will pick up a little this weekend. Not enough to do a great deal of good.

From the predictions, I'm expecting three to six foot swells this weekend. And from the current wind direction, there could be some scattered small cuts, but nothing that will change my beach conditions rating from a level 1 (poor).

There might be a few spots worth checking, but they'll probably be scattered, at best.


Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net