7/31/18 Report - Invasion Currency of World War II. Wildfires Uncover Tons of Artifacts.

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

1944 AMC

Other Side of Same Bill

Do you know what this is?  I didn't.  I thought it was fifty french francs.  That is what it  looks like, but it was actually made in the U. S.  It is one example of Allied Military Currency.

Military currencies are issued strictly for the use of troops; they are prepared by a (military) power or Government and declared by the overall commander to be legal tender for use by civilian and/or military personnel as prescribed in the areas occupied by its forces . ‘Military Currency’ should be of a distinctive design so as to be able to distinguish it from the national (i.e. official) currency of the country concerned, but it may be denominated in the monetary unit of either .

In the frame of the overall preparation for the invasion of German-occupied Western Europe, the Allies planned to print and issue special currency, denominated “French” currency, (aka “Invasion Notes”, or “Invasion Currency” ), which were supposed to help support scarce and devaluated current French banknotes and serve as a means of payment by Allied troops and citizens stationed in France . It should be noted that the above type of Allied currency had already been introduced in Italy in 1943 .

This ‘Allied Military Currency’ (aka AMC) was printed in the United States under strict security conditions by the Forbes Lithograph Manufacturing Company, Boston, Massachusetts and transported to Britain . For D-DAY, 19 trucks were required to deliver 3 billion French Francs, which were needed to change the British money held by American servicemen into French Military Currency and to cover a partial payment of US$ 4.03 per serviceman ! It should be noted that prior to D-Day, Allied servicemen also received, apart from the new ‘Invasion Currency’ current French banknotes, in circulation on the continent .

Source: See Skynet link below.

Here is the link for more about Allied Military Currency.

http://users.skynet.be/jeeper/currency.html

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Source: See CBC link below.

Wildfires have exposed camps, paths and artifacts in Canada.

"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity," Perry marvels. "What the fire has done for us is it's eliminated all that vegetation on top and, wow, can we see stuff."

Suddenly, the size and scope of more than 250 Blackfoot camps are visible.

Archeologists knew most of them were here, but have never had such clear and direct access to what the Blackfoot people left behind at these camps within the last 300 years.

"We're finding so much that we're starting to rewrite what we thought we knew about Waterton history and Indigenous camp history," Perry says... Here is the link for more about that.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/kenow-fire-blackfoot-archeology-sites-1.4765349

Anything that can cause a change in the landscape can reveal treasure.  On the beach, it is often erosion.

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Yesterday I posted a link, and I didn't remember who sent it to me.  It was Brain B.  Thanks Brian!

That's all I have time for today.

I'm still watching for something to pop up in the Atlantic that will improved beach conditions, but nothing yet.

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.

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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.

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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.

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