Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| 1500s Juana & Carlos cob found in Florida. From Curren's archeologyink.com article. |
I found an exceptionally good article on first contact Spanish artifacts. By "first contact" I now mean artifacts of the DeSoto and de Luna expeditions dating back to the 1500s.
The article is located on archeologyink.com, a web site created by a commercial archaeologist, Caleb Curren. His enlightened attitude and willingness to share is refreshing.
The article shows a nice variety of coins and artifacts found in Florida and Alabama from the first contact period.
Here is the link. It is a PDF file, so you'll have to wait while it downloads.
http://archeologyink.com/Spanishartifacts.pdf
Here is one particularly instructive paragraph from the above referenced article.
During the 1940s several young boys were roaming along the shoreline of a
peninsula jutting into Pensacola Bay . They had learned how to find artifacts.
The railroad crews would come down the line on occasion and dig out the banks
to protect the tracks. When it rained the kids would scour the exposed banks for
artifacts. On one day, they found a coin which dated to the time of the Tristan de
Luna colony. One the kids Harry Bonifay, found it. The coin and the area are
figured in the next few pages. Sixty something years later marine archaeologists
found two shipwrecks of the period just offshore from the same shoreline.
The two boys knew two things that I often mention. First, check any excavations for older items that might have been buried. And second, rain or any type of erosion can be a big help.
Heavy wind is all it takes to expose coins and other things, especially on beaches, and most especially on busy beaches that have a fine grained sand.
If you eye-ball coins or old items after a rain or wind storm, go get your detector. When items are exposed, there will almost always be more that remain buried in the same area.
You can quickly scan way more area visually than you can cover with a detector. I often do a visual scan before getting my detector.
Here is a link to more of Caleb Curren's articles. I think you'll find more articles that you want to read.
http://www.archeologyink.com/Articles.htm
The Treasure Coast Beaches are still poor. Seas are running 2 - 3 feet. Don't expect much change for a few days.
The wind is now from the southeast and will remain from the south for a while.
Can you believe, the remains of Nadine are still hanging around out there in the North Atlantic. There is a new low pressure area coming off of Africa that has a 30% chance of forming into a cyclone in the next 48 hours. It isn't too late in the season for a hurricane yet.
We often get a good Northeaster in October or November.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
