10/31/19 Report - A Variety of Nice Finds From Brevard and Indian River County. More on Spikes. Bigger Surf Coming.

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

Items Found At Radar Site at Melborne Beach by TM

Photo by TM.

I received an email from TM and photos of some of his finds that came from Brevard and Indian River Counties.


I’ve been detecting the south Brevard and north Indian River county beaches for about a year and a half now.

Found many items and try to clean my share of trash up.

Just thought I’d share a few things. 

Also I really enjoy the treasure beaches report.

TM's finds included those in the photo above and the four following photos.  Each is labeled with the location of the find.  Really a nice and varied group, including some really great finds.

Ring Found North of Bonsteel Beach.

Bracelet Recently Found Near Seagrape Beach Access

Clovis Point Found North of Sebastian Inlet.

Congratulations TM. Great finds! Thanks much for sharing. The Clovis point would be somewhere around ten thousand years old. Now that is an old find. From Wikipedia: The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture, named for distinct stone tools found in close association with Pleistocene fauna at Blackwater Locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1920s and 1930s. It appears around 11,500–11,000 uncalibrated radiocarbon years before present at the end of the last glacial period, and is characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools. Archaeologists' most precise determinations at present suggest this radiocarbon age is equal to roughly 13,200 to 12,900 calendar years ago. Clovis people are considered to be the ancestors of most of the indigenous cultures of the Americas. You might enjoy reading more about the Clovis culture. Here is a good link. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-clovis-point-and-the-discovery-of-americas-first-culture-3825828/ ---


The past few days I talked a little about Troy's chisel or spike find. At this point, I think the overwhelming consensus is that it is a broken spike. That is my opinion and the opinion of others that I've heard from. If you think about it, I suspect there are hundreds of shipwreck spikes out there for every old chisel. I've discussed some of the reasons for concluding that it is a spike, and posted some of the reader's thoughts that I've received on the subject. I just received an email from Jerry P., who also believes the find is a spike. Jerry also included some photos of those that he has found.

Spikes Found by Jerry P.

Photo by Jerry P.

Notice in particular the broken spike that looks very much like Troy's. I still haven't found the particular examples I was looking for. I wanted to take a close look at the break. I did look at the break on some others. I don't know how good the photos are yet. I haven't uploaded them yet. Also, notice the bent one. I plan on talking more about how they get bent and broken in the future. What do you think about that. I have some ideas, but I'd think it would take a lot of force to break a spike like that. I hope to talk about that more in the future. How do you think spikes get bent or broken? Troy sent me a closer photo of the top of his find.

Find and photo by Troy C.

That gives a better view. Thanks Troy. I was going to upload some photos that I took but found out I have to recharge the camera battery. First the upload utility was giving me trouble, and now the battery runs down. Sheesh. I get back into that topic, maybe tomorrow. One thing I've noticed, especially with broken bronze spikes, is how smooth the break can be. --- I'm just going to tell you about the surf instead of wasting any more time trying to upload the image. Expect a 4 - 6 foot surf on Friday and Saturday. You'll have to look it up yourself. I also asked TM if he could provide any more info on his finds. Happy hunting, Treasureguide@comcast.net

7/28/18 Report - Metal Detecting Wet Sand on Beach. Mystery Find. Before Clovis? .

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

Mystery Object.

This is about the size of a quarter and made of a light metal such as aluminum.  I don't know what it is and would appreciate any ideas or information you might be able to provide.  I think it might be a token, but can't find any remaining design on it.  Could be just a washer or something, but I'm leaning more towards token.

That is a triangular hole in the middle.

---

In the 1920s, archaeologists dug up a trove of ancient artifacts near Clovis, New Mexico. What humans had known about their past was changed forever. These artifacts were the oldest man-made objects found on the Western Hemisphere, and the discovery led to a theory that the first humans to set foot in the Americas did so around about 13,000 years ago, and that they made and used tools like the ones found near Clovis.

Now a group of archaeologists from Texas State University are offering some of the most convincing evidence yet to challenge this “Clovis First” theory. They’ve recently discovered about 150,000 artifacts near at the Gault Archaeological Site near Killeen, Texas. What they’ve found could change what we know about the timeline of human history...

Here is the link for more about that.

http://www.texasstandard.org/stories/archaeologists-say-humans-may-have-come-to-texas-earlier-than-previously-thought/

I never trusted archaeological dating techniques too much anyhow.

Just a reminder - arrow heads and other stone or shell artifacts occasionally show up on Treasure Coast beaches.  I've shown a few in the past.

---

I once talked to a guy at the beach who was using a very high end gold detector.  He told me that the detector detected deeper when he walked along the beach north/south than when he walked in and out from the water.  He said he thought it had something to do with the magnetic fields.  He was observing something real, but it had nothing to do with the earth's magnetic fields.

On another occasion a guy using an Excalibur saw me using an Excalibur detector in the wet sand and shallow moving wate and asked to see what settings I was using.  A lot of people don't know how to detect in the wet sand.  This fellow was undoubtedly using discrimination mode and getting false signals when he was in the wet sand area.

I was using what I almost always used when detecting the beach with my Excalibur.  I used maximum sensitivity and pinpoint rather than discrimination mode.

What the first man was missing was the fact that as the salt water covers and recedes from the beach, it creates bands of mineralization.  Most of the dry beach in Florida has almost no mineralization, except where you have black sand.  But the ocean is salt water and the water and wet sand is mineralized.

When you are in the wet sand area, you have bands of mineralization.  The detector has to adjust to the different levels of mineralization.  If you are walking along the waterline, when you swing the coil, your coil crosses those bands of mineralization.  As your detector attempts to adjust, you will lose some sensitivity.  It can also cause false signals.

If you walk in and out from the water, your sweeps are not crossing the bands of changing mineralization so much.  You are sweeping with the bands instead of across them.  Therefore your detector does not have to adjust to so many changes.  That reduces false signals caused by changes in mineralization and gives what appears to be an increase in sensitivity and depth of detecting.

There are a variety of methods for dealing with the changing mineralization in the wet sand zone.  One is to decrease your detectors sensitivity.  Another is to increase discrimination.  And another is to ground balance your detector to the salt water, if your detector has that capability.

Decreasing sensitivity or increasing discrimination can both have negative effects.  You don't want to do either of those any more than necessary.  You have to weigh the positive and negatives of each method.  Your choice will be in part determined by the type of detector you use.

Another approach is to use all metals or pinpoint mode.  That is what I did more than anything else.  

In pinpoint or all-metals mode you can hear the changes in mineralization, especially at the line where the most recent water stopped, however you can learn to tell the difference between the sound caused by mineralization and a real target - most of the time.  If a target is deep or real small, it is more difficult, so you might lose some borderline targets that way, but not much, and you'll do better than with most other approaches.

With a detector like the ATX you can ground balance out the salt water mineralization and do very well.  Still, if you want every last bit of depth, use non-motion mode.  You'll hear some of the salt mineralization, but you'll still get that last bit of sensitivity to deep and small targets.  Non-motion mode in wet sand takes a bit of practice, but it works well once you master it.

I sometimes test and compare the different modes or approaches.  Go over an area with one mode and take out all targets and then use the other mode.  I've done that enough that I know how the different modes compare.  Of course you have to master each mode in order to make good comparisons.

---

There is no significant weather in the Atlantic right now.  We still have a two to three foot surf and moderate tides.