6/7/20 Report - Meaning and Folding of Burial Flags. Being Prepared for Larger and Different Kinds of Finds. Cristobal.

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

Source: http://wvutoday-archive.wvu.edu/resources/1/1251677894.jpg

With the current controversy regarding showing respect for the flag, I thought it would be helpful to actually look at some of the symbolism and significance of burial flags and memorial flags for veterans.

Here is an excerpt from one site.


Here is how to understand the flag that laid upon it and is surrendered to so many widows and widowers: Do you know that at military funerals, the 21-gun salute stands for the sum of the numbers in the year 1776?

Have you ever noticed that the honor guard pays meticulous attention to correctly folding the United States of America Flag 13 times? You probably thought it was to symbolize the original 13 colonies, but we learn something new every day.

To understand what the flag draped coffin really means.

• The 1st fold of the flag is a symbol of life.
• The 2nd fold is a symbol of the belief in eternal life...

Etc.

Here is that link for more.

http://www.lanesboroamericanlegion.org/meaning-of-the-flag-draped-coffin.html

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A few days ago I started a series of posts on mistakes I've made after finding an object.  The first one that I discussed was having a hole in your pocket or goodie bag resulting in finds being lost before getting them home, and the second mistake that I already discussed was damaging an object during recovery, for example hitting it with your scoop or digger.   I'll discuss the third mistake today, which as to do with bottle finds.

Before starting with that new mistake though, I just remembered another example that fits in with the hole in pocket or bag mistake.  One day there were a lot of fossils on the beach - some of them being large. A few of them were a foot long, and some were heavy.  It was an unusual occasion.  I've only seen so many and such large fossils on the beach that one time in many years.

I wasn't planning on hunting fossils that day and had never found so many.  As a result, I got caught unprepared.  It caught me by surprise and all I had with me to use was some plastic shopping bags. Not only were some of the fossils large, but some were also pointed.

As I gathered fossils like a kid picking up Easter eggs, I stuffed them into my bag, which eventually broke, and some of the fossils came out as I walked far down the beach.  I lost some good fossils before I discovered that one of my bags broke.  I learned from that experience that it is a good idea to have some large and sturdy bag or container with me.  A back pack, big sturdy bucket or something like that can come in very handy.

Think about it.  If you ever come across that treasure chest or cache of silver bar that you always dreamed of finding, how are you going to carry it?   It won't fit in your pocket, and if you plan to come back for it later, you might be disappointed about how that works out.  It isn't like you are out in a remote location where there are no other people or where there are no tides or waves or anything.  The beach is not a good place to leave finds with the hope of retrieving them later.  A big heavy duty bag, bucket or container might save you.

Obviously you can't be prepared for every situation, but you might keep things in your car that might come in handy.   I have a large (about three by four feet) heavy duty bag  that I keep in the trunk of my car.  I've carried some big heavy stuff in that bag, but there are times when even that would not do the job.  You might not always need something like that, but you don't want to lose your best find just because you weren't prepared for something bigger or heavier than you expected to find.

Now I'll get back to the mistake that I planned to discuss today.  It is related - not having some materials for padding or packing fragile items.

One of the great things about treasure hunting, is that you never know what you might find.  The first time I found some good old bottles was after Hurricane Andrew.  That was my first experience collecting old bottles. I was metal detecting, when I noticed some old bottles rolling in the surf.  I took a look at some of them, and they were embossed and appeared to be old.  I didn't know much of anything about old bottles at the time, but decided to collect them.  Of course, that wasn't what I was thinking of doing when I went metal detecting that day, so I was totally unprepared to carry back a lot of old bottles.  I found some old plastic bags laying in the trash along the beach and used those.  They worked on that occasion.  I sold some of those bottles but still have a few of them.

Plastic bags aren't great for carrying old bottles or other breakable items though.  One day when I found some good bottles, I had a couple plastic bags along with me, and filled two or three bags.  I had two bags in one hand.  When I walked the bags would swing, and so eventually the two bags clashed together and my best bottle got broke.

Here is one way to find out which is your best bottle -  it is always the one that breaks.  If two bottles clash together, the best one will break.   That is my experience.  When the two swinging bags came together, the bottom corner of one bottle hit the weakest spot of the best bottle and broke the best bottle.   It was an pre-1900 Busch beer bottle.  I never again found one that old.

Plastic bags are easy to carry in your pocket and can come in handy, but they aren't good for carrying  heavy, sharp, or fragile items.  If you get caught in an unexpected situation and only have some plastic bags for carrying fragile finds, you can do what I learned to do - pad or pack the fragile items with something.  I've found, for example, that seaweed can be used to pad bottles.

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Cristobal is hitting the north Gulf coast.  According to the NHC...

We'll have a small surf and big tides on the Treasure Coast.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

4/19/20 Report - Top Discoeries of The 2010s. Mysterious Clay Head. Things To Do While Waiting.

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

Source: See TheGuardian.com link below.

TheGuardian.com lists the ten most significant discoveries of the 2010s as determine by the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England.   The discovering include the following.

Where Richard III was laid to rest.  He was under a car park in Leicester.

What food the Bronze Age population of Fens ate.

Steps taken by villagers to prevent corpses from rising from the dead.

The discovery of a Bronze Age settlement in Cambridgehire.

The discovery of the Elizabethan playhouse where Shakespeare's Hamlet Premiered.

Excavation of the shipwreck of the London that blew up in 1655.

A rabbit bone that shows that rabbits (native to Spain and France) arrived in England 1000 years earlier than previously thought.

An Anglo-Saxon burial site containing over 80 wooden coffins.

An early Roman settlement in Yorkshire.

And new radiocarbon dating that method that immensely vastly improves accuracy.

Here is the link to the article, which provides links to many of the individual stories.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/28/richard-iii-and-a-roman-rabbit-the-finds-of-the-decade


---

.. Almost four decades later scientists returned to the mystery of this man from the Tagar culture which is known for its elaborate funeral rites, for example the use of large pit-crypts containing some 200 bodies which were set ablaze. 

As scientist Dr Elga Vadetskaya had observed, the heads of the dead were covered in clay, moulding a new face on the skull, and often covering the clay face with gypsum. 

So the expectation was - in deploying new technology on the man’s death mask - that the bones inside, though small fragments, would be human.

But they were not...

There was a ram's skull inside.

Unique case.

Here is the link for more about that.

https://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/mystery-of-unique-2100-year-old-human-clay-head-found-in-ancient-crematorium-with-a-rams-skull-inside/


---

There is always plenty to do.  Research sites or finds.  Clean finds.

Work on your equipment. Get to know it a little better.  You can always do air tests, or get out in the yard.

You can also improve your equipment.  Strengthen weak points.  Make a new scoop, or just handy modifications.

Be sure you have batteries or whatever you need and that everything is in good order.

It sounds like South Carolina is scheduled to open up next week.  I would expect us to be not far behind.

Anyone trying to figure out when the Florida beaches might be opened might be interested in the Florida COVID statistics, which can be found using the following link.

https://floridadisaster.org/globalassets/covid19/dailies/covid-19-data---daily-report-2020-04-18-1639.pdf.

St. Lucie County shows 202 COVID cases, for example.  And I think it was something like 56 hospitalizations.  Of the hospitalized, about a quarter died.

I have serious questions about the data, but it is all we have.

With a forty year career in Health Information Management, my wife would like to be able to get this data in a spreadsheet.  Any quick tips.  Can we find it in spreadsheet form, or easily convert it to spreadsheet?

By the way, of the Florida COVID cases, a good percentage are confirmed travel related, and there is another big percentage that are unconfirmed but possible travel related.  Of the travel related cases in St. Lucie the vast majority are NY/NJ.

----

The opening of Jacksonville beach attracted a lot of attention around the country, being applauded by one side and described as an absolute horror by the other.

You'll see some photos taken from an angle to make the beaches look totally packed, and other photos that show good spacing.  Photos can lie too.  I was thinking of posting a site that shows photos illustrating optical illusions, but it didn't occur to me how relevant that was until just now.  I'll have to look that up again.

The surf is small right now, so it isn't like we're missing any big opportunity.

Be safe,
TreasureGuide@comcast.ent

7/8/19 Report - Another Old Button for ID. Prisoner of War Camps in Florida During WWII. Megalodon Tooth Find. Viking Boat Burials.

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

Unidentified Button Find.

As you can see, this button has a crown on the front and the back is too corroded to show much of anything.

I haven't done the research on it yet, and would appreciate any help.

I had a cup with old button finds that had accumulated over the years.  Unfortunately I didn't label them, so I don't know when or where they were found.

The button I posted yesterday has the words "EXTRA FEIN" on the back.  In German that means extra fine. I thought it might have been produced in Germany for another country because I didn't think it was very likely that I would have found a German button, but I guess it is possible.  Susan E. thought it might be a WW II German button but hadn't found the exact one yet.

I started wondering where I might have found a German WW II button.  The first thing I thought of was the German spies that came ashore during WW II, but it seems extremely unlikely that would be the source.  It seems more likely to me that someone just lost a souvenir or something.

Then I remembered that I used to do a lot of metal detecting down south in an area where there was a WW II prisoner of war camp.  I found some lists of Florida WW II prisoner of war camps, and there were a few, but they didn't list any in the area that I was thinking of, so I started wondering if I remembered that correctly.  Finally I found that I was right about that.

Since the 1920's, the Detroit-based Miami Beach Heights Corporation (headed by industrialists Robert C. Graham, Walter O. Briggs, and C.T. Fisher) owned 245 acres of undeveloped, partially swampy land that stretched from the bay to the Atlantic. Mr. Graham assumed the duties as the developer for Bal Harbour. In the 1930's, city planners Harland Bartholomew & Associates were called in to design the Village. The company made several plans and they were submitted for review to Miami Beach Heights. In 1940, World War II began and the plans were put on hold. As a goodwill gesture to the government, Robert C. Graham rented the land to the United States Air Corps for $1 per year. The Air Corps used this land to train their soldiers and established a Prisoner of War camp. The ocean front area was used as a rifle range and the barracks were set up on the west side of Collins Avenue. The camp for prisoners was located where the Bal Harbour Shops are presently... 

(Source: https://activerain.com/blogsview/484718/the-history-of-bal-harbour--florida----paradise-found----miami--fl-33154)

I used to spend a lot of time hunting in that area.  If the button I posted yesterday is a German WWII button, there is a very good chance that is where I found it.

While doing the research I learned a lot.  Did you know, there were over 425,000 prisoners of war in the United States during WW II?

I found a few Florida POW camps listed on Wikipedia.  The Bal Harbour camp was not in that list or other lists that I saw.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_prisoner-of-war_camps_in_the_United_States

Once again I'll remind you to keep good records of your finds.

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A middle school girl stumbled upon a buried treasure while spending her spring break on a beach in North Carolina.

Avery Fauth and her family love to scour the sand for shark teeth whenever they’re on a beach. But Fauth attributes her recent prehistoric find — a megalodon shark tooth — on North Topsail Beach to luck...

Here is the link.

https://nypost.com/2019/04/19/girl-finds-megalodon-shark-tooth-buried-in-sand-at-beach/?utm_source=zergnet.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zergnet_4028701

---

Source: click2houston.com.

See link below.

Two Viking burial boats are being uncovered in Sweden.


In this sort of burial, the person was placed along with his or her riches in a boat that was then put into the ground.

The archaeologists also found a sword, an ornate comb, a spear and part of a shield in the intact boat.

The identity of the man remains unknown.

The other of the two boats did not hold up as well.  It was probably damaged during work on the land in the 16th century....

It's been 50 years since the last burial ship was found in Sweden...


Here is the link.


https://www.click2houston.com/lifestyle/2-rare-viking-burial-boats-uncovered-in-sweden


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Expect continued small surf on the Treasure Coast for at least another week or so.

Let me know if you find any information on the buttons I posed yesterday and today.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/13/19 Report - 2019 Salvage Season Off To Great Start: Gold Reliquary Found. Mel Fisher Days Coming.

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

Bones Uncovered In Dunes

Source: See VeroNews link below.

A skeleton was uncovered in the dunes by a construction company and gold was found under water nearby

The bones are thought to be old, but there were no buttons or any associated artifacts.  The skeleton will be studied before the age is determined.

You might recall we had some discussion in this blog about the relative absence of known 1715 Fleet burials.  This one might or might not be.  Perhaps that will be determined.

Source: Same VeroNews link below.

The 2019 Treasure Coast salvage season is off to a great start.  Back a week or so ago I posted pictures of salvage boats working near Turtle Trail, and some great finds were made.

Most interesting is an encrusted gold object, thought to be a reliquary, found at the Corrigan's site by Maritime Research Recovery's vessel, Capitana, on  June 4th, 2019.

Here is the link for those two stories.

http://veronews.com/2019/06/13/a-week-of-discoveries-sunken-treasures-and-human-remains/

MRR is working under contract with Queen's Jewels LLC.  The Capitana is one of three vessels operated by Maritime Research Recovery, LLC.

Other reliquaries have been found on Treasure Coast wreck sites, including one found some years ago near Douglass Beach.  Here are links for more information on that one, including research by author and researcher, Laura Strolia.

https://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/2014/08/83114-report-more-on-1715-fleet.html

 https://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/2014/08/81414-report-treasure-coast-gold.html

The Sea Reaper and Seatrepid, also operated by MRR, are also making good finds, including a nice piece of Kang Hsi porcelain and musket balls.

Here is the link to the MRR web site that shows the finds.

https://www.mrronline.com/single-post/GoldReligiousArtifact

Thanks to DJ for pointing that out to me.

The MRRonline web site mentions that the reliquary bears the symbol "IHS."  You will find the same letters on many religious pendants that you will find.

Here is an explanation from the Catholic Herald.

Early scribes would abbreviate the sacred names of Jesus by using the first two letters of the name, or the first and last letters, with a line over the letters. For example, the Greek letters Chi-Rho (which looks like our English X and P) was an abbreviation for the name "Christ." Likewise, I (iota) and H (eta) are the first two Greek letters for "Jesus." Sometime in the second century, the third letter, S (sigma), was added, thereby rendering IHS. These Christograms, such as XP or IHS, served as secret codes, whereby inscribed on a tomb, they indicated a deceased Christian, or on a doorpost, a Christian home. 

If you ever saw Christmas written as Xmas, you might have wondered about that. Some people object to that abbreviation saying that "Xmas" takes Christ out of Christmas, however the X represents the Greek letter Chi, also being the first letter of the name of Christ and having that significance.

Similarly, you might know of the Christian fish symbol that you'll see on the back of some cars.

Ichthus, or in koine Greek, ἰχθύς which means "fish," is an acrostic from “ Ίησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ “, (Iēsous Christos, Theou Yios, Sōtēr), which translates into English as “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour”.

---

Mel Fisher Days will be July 11 - 13 this year in Key West.

Events will include tours of the Fisher private conservation laboratory.

For more information see

http://melfisherdays.melfisher.com/

---

The weather has been good for salvage work but not so good for beach hunting.  I have plans to metal detect an inland site when I get a chance.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

2/11/18 Report - Everglades Treasures and Treasure Coast Burial Site: Ole Timer Talk.

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

John Brooks Beach Saturday Afternoon.

It is a beautiful weekend. I don't think I ever saw more people on the beaches around Fort Pierce.  The Fort Pierce beach parking lots were jammed.  There should be some new modern items out there after all of the beach traffic.

What a beautiful joyful Sunday morning!

---

Yesterday I posted some of Southern Digger's email to me.  Today I'll post more of the same email.  It tells about a large collection of silver coins obtained from Florida Everglades sites.  Here is what he said.

: ... That collection filled about fifty 8 X 12 inch Riker cases. The viewing was so private that I was not allowed to note the address or location and I was never given the names of the collection owner. That did not bother me. Just to view and study it was a vast education which helped me in later years on seeking sites in the deep woods of the everglades--that is, on privately owned land. 

I know the collection I saw came from lands now under state and Federal laws and are off-limits. Moreso, I have heard that people who ignored these boundaries were arrested; severely fined; and, sometimes imprisoned for trespassing and digging these sites. I won't go into detail how the collection was obtained, but it involved the Caloosa Indians, Mendenez's Gold, and later European contact which evidence showed was on wild and hidden places of tribal ceremony -- I might add, on land which had not enforced government restrictions at the time it was discovered. 

In fact, when young and hunting in the glades it was not uncommon to enter a hammock from five to twenty miles from the nearest dirt access road and find a cabin and a few occupants living free off the land. Maintaining food from gardens and hunting; and, water from makeshift cisterns. The Federalization of the Big Cypress and other parts of the everglades ended this by the late-1960's.

The collection included finds that dated from early European contact--including rare glass beads which were identified to date back to Portugal from the fourteenth century; it contained gold beads up to 3/4" long and 1/4" or thereabouts diameter. Some silver coinage was hammered into breastplates with stick-figure artwork of deer being chased by stick figure Florida Indians pursuing the game. On some of these, you can still make out the stretched/hammered outline of the original coin enought that you could determine what type of coin was used to make it. I recall being bold enough to ask if I could photograph at least part of the collection, but of course, was refused. 

This treasure was not obtained from one site--but rather from several sites and much hard work and much time camping in the glades away from the comforts of society. Referring back to the coins--I saw they were of Spanish. English and American origin--the latest dating to the 1830's indicating Seminole and Spanish Indian influence and use of sites which date back to pre-Mendez era and of course, prehistoric. Most likely, some of these items were obtained from beached shipwrecks and shipwreck survivors. Many of the coins were in part defaced. Scratch marks in the head of Liberty or the King, which indicate hatchet marks; and scratches on the throat indicating the obvious.

Southern Digger also emphasized that there is a lot that was not reported and much of what is published is often twisted.

On the question of 1715 Fleet burials, which I've mentioned a few times recently, Southern Digger said,  At the Disney site on the Treasure Coast--before the structures were built--was a raised dune near and just north of the old beach access. When that was scraped back by construction, an archaeologist representing Disney stated to me that they found a grave which was believed to be a shipwreck victim as they recovered a ring with it. Also, they found an anchor in the dunes. Of course, I did not know the source and just regarded it as here-say. Perhaps research of published State records can prove such finds were actually recovered.

Southern Digger has long been involved in South Florida archaeology.  Thanks for sharing S. D.

---

The wind picked up Sunday morning, but was coming from a southerly direction.  Everything else is pretty much unchanged.  The tides will increase a little again in a few days, while the surf continues to run around two to four feet.

May you find peace within,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

3/21/14 Report - Artifacts of Historic Battle Between Spanish and Native Americans, Colonial Silver Spoon & Clay Shaman

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

Olive Jar Sherds Found in the Midwest.

Five years after the sinking of the 1715 Fleet along the Treasure Coast a historic battle between the Spanish and Native Americans took place in what is now Nebraska.

The battle was known but these sherds are among the first artifacts giving evidence of the battle.  The Spanish jars are thought to be loot resulting from the battle.

The battle ended the incursion of the Spanish eastward into the US from Mexico.

Here is some information from the article that might help you tell the difference between early Spanish sherds and Native American sherds.

... analysis revealed important similarities among the samples, like granite-based sand that had been added to the pottery mixture, unlike indigenous ceramics made using natural clays, and telltale horizontal “throwing marks” that are still visible on the vessels’ interiors.

“Olive jars were thrown on a potters wheel, a forming technique unknown in the New World,” Hill said. “The parallel throwing marks on the exterior of the olive jar sherds are evidence of this technique.”

Here is the link for more on this historic battle and the artifacts.

http://westerndigs.org/first-evidence-found-of-storied-battle-that-stopped-spains-eastward-expansion/

This 1500-year-old shaman sculpture was found guarding bodies in a burial shaft in Mexico.

The square shaft, which is around one-and-a-half metres deep, is thought to date to between 300 AD and 600AD and leads to an underground vault measuring approximately two metres squared, containing bones of either one or two individuals...

Here is the source link.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2581154/Ancient-shaman-discovered-Mexican-tomb-1-500-year-old-sculpture-guarding-bodies-underground-shaft.html



How much is a silver American colonial spoon worth?   Of course that depends upon a lot of things.

The spoon shown here was offered for nearly $223,000.

Source: Kovels Komments
Link below.

Here is what Kovels Komments says about the spoon.

A marrow spoon attributed to silversmiths Daniel Henchman and Nathaniel Hurd will be for sale at an antiques fair in England in April. Asking price: almost a quarter million dollars. The spoon has a cast 3-D hand at the end of the handle and a scalloped bowl. It's dated 1766-68. The high price is based on the quality of the silver work and the spoon's history (provenance), proven by the engraved words "John Wentworth Esq to Thomas Smith." Wentworth was the wealthy British Colonial governor of New Hampshire from 1767 to 1775, and Smith, also important in the Colonies, was his friend. It is suggested that the hand on the spoon's shaft represented their friendship. Recorded high prices for other pieces of antique American silver have been $708,000 for a coffeepot (c.1770-1775) by Paul Revere Jr. that sold in 2004; $775,750 for a wine cup (c.1660) made by John Hull and Robert Sanderson Jr. that sold in 1993; and a punch bowl by Cornelius Kierstede (c.1700-1710) for $5,906,500 that sold in 2010.

http://www.kovels.com/news-news-news/american-colonial-silver-spoon-offered-for-222-848.html?utm_source=Listrak&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=http%3a%2f%2fwww.kovels.com%2fnews-news-news%2famerican-colonial-silver-spoon-offered-for-222-848.html&utm_campaign=Kovels+Komments%3a+Banana+Sticker+Collectors+Alert

The word for the day is "adaptability."

On the Treasure Coast we have around a four foot surf.  It isn't too much different than yesterday.  Still a lot of tourists on the beach.  

There are new modern gold jewelry beach finds.  I'll show some in future posts.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net