Wednesday, May 15, 2019

5/15/19 Report - River Boat Parts Exposed by Low Water. My Favorite Beaches From My Days In South Florida.


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

Riverboat Parts Exposed During Low Water.
Source: See link below.


Take a walk along the Yukon River in Whitehorse these days, and you might spot things you rarely see — historical objects and structures that are typically well hidden under water or ice.
"Like, there's a log cradle here, or a crib, that was used to support sternwheelers when they were hauled out of the river in the winter," said Yukon government archeologist Ty Heffner, as he walked along the riverbank.
Water in the Yukon River system is very low this spring. Vast gravel bars flank the stream in many areas, and Heffner says lots of artifacts can now be seen in the mud and rocks.
That might include anything from old rusty nails and wooden logs and planks, to iron fixtures...
The article also states that some of the items you can now see along the river could be of historical significance.  I guess that might be true, but I wonder what kind of significance or how significant they might be.  It seems that archaeologists like to make everything over a few years old into something significant.  That makes it easy to make "significant" discoveries.
But how much can those items really add to the body of knowledge?  They already know there were steamers on the river, and they probably know a lot about those steamers and the stories of those steamers.  So what information can those parts add?  There might be some earth-shaking new information in them, but I really doubt it.


For me, there is a difference between interesting and significant.  Sure, you can study the  items and perhaps learn something from them, just like we do here all the time, but will it really add anything to the body of archaeological knowledge?  That is just a question.
I also wonder if whatever might be learned from those items will ever benefit the public.  Will the items be seen by the public, and will the results be published for the public.  In the mean time, the items rust and deteriorate.

Lowered water levels can always reveal interesting things, just like erosion.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukon-river-historic-artifacts-1.513459
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I woke up thinking this morning about my earlier days of metal detecting.  I was living in Hollywood when I really got started, and hunted coins at first.

My first serious detector was a White's that I got from a Sears catalog.  I sent it back for some reason and got a Fisher Aquanaut.  In one year with the fisher I found enough value coins to pay for the Fisher, just counting the face value of the coins.  As I recall, that was about $640.

Like a lot of things, I was pretty intense with my new hobby, and tried to see what I could accomplish.

I was living in Hollywood, so that was the beach I went to most at first.  It later became a beach that I would visit when I didn't have much time to go somewhere else.  There were a lot of targets there, and a lot of jewelry, but the targets weren't high value targets.  The gold rings were mostly bands without gem stones, and mostly 10K instead of something better.

Anyhow I was thinking about the locations I hunted.  Hollywood was the most frequent because it was closest to my home, but I spent a lot of time on beaches ranging from Key Biscayne to Fort Lauderdale.

A lot of the beaches down there were crammed with people, and I suppose they still are.

My favorites were Key Bicayne, North Miami Beach, Bal Harbour, Hallandale, and Fort Lauderdale.

There were a lot of good areas to choose from, and I'd hit one heavy for a while when it was producing and then focus more on another when things changed.  To rank my all-time favorite from back then, it would be Bal Harbour.

I occasionally went down the Keys, and of course up to the Treasure Coast.

I enjoyed Jupiter when the banks were eroding.  Virginia Key was also real good at times.

I had enough places to choose from that I would pick the one that was producing at the time.

There were specific spots that produced frequently.  At Fort Lauderdale, there were three spots that I liked to work.

I had jobs that allowed me time to get out and I detected almost everyday back then.  Both university teaching and consulting allowed time to get out.  Even when I traveled on business I took my detector and always like detecting in the Pensacola area and the lakes in the Minneapolis area.  There was a good bit of silver in the lakes, but not a lot of gold.

There was some good hunting at John Lloyd park for a short while.  I hit fifteen rings there in a four hour period one day.  I think that was the  number.  Maybe it was thirteen, but it was a lot.  I think I have a photo of that day's finds somewhere.  I understand that you can't detect there anymore.

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Concerning the little vase referred to as a medicine bottle in the article I referred to yesterday, Bruce B. said he,  ... happened to see the first photo of a so-called medicine bottle. I say that because I happen to own some bottles just like it, but what they are are dollhouse vases, which the Spanish made for the female children of noble families throughout Europe as furnishings for their dollhouses. At least that's what it appears to be.  

Thanks Bruce.

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net