6/27/21 Report - Dating a Detecting Site. Shipwreck Found. Information Processing. Rust. Storm Activity.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

A large and remarkably intact wreck has been found.

As scientists slowly piece together the puzzle of its past, there is increasing evidence to suggest the vessel could be the remains of the 1762 Beaumont, a 900-tonne French merchant ship which was later bought by a private individual, renamed the Lyon and used in the American Revolution.

If so, the team says it would be the only shipwreck with an intact hull built by the French East India Company left in the world.

The French East India Company was founded in 1664 as an imperial commercial enterprise to compete with English and Dutch trading firms in what is today east Asia.

While the evidence is currently only circumstantial, it is “compelling”, archaeologist Dr Christopher Waters, of the National Parks Authority, tells Observer....

Here is the link.

Archaeologists hail discovery of colossal centuries-old ship in dockyard - Antigua Observer Newspaper

===

    0                                        100

Number of Coins of Each Date

You can attempt to estimate the date of a site from the dug items.  If you have a large sample of dated coins, such as those from the Treasure Coast shipwreck beaches, you might be able to get pretty specific, but other times a site might present only a few examples that have such specific information.  Often you'll just have estimates of date ranges, and those ranges can be wide.

Just for illustration purposes, I selected data from table 6.5 from Alan Craig's book, Spanish Colonial Silver Coins in the Florida Collection (copyright 2000).  That particular table includes only dated silver Mexico-minted coins with a visible assayer's initial.  I didn't include all of the dates in the table simply because I thought this subset was sufficient for present purposes.

The chart shows that there were over 100 coins dated 1714.  There were also a lot of 1715 dated coins, and smaller number of 1713 coins.

This sample shows a distribution that suggests a single big event.  And we know what that event was.  It was the sinking of the 1715 Fleet.  There were no coins from the sample dated after 1715.  You can see how the coins from years prior to the sailing showed an increase up to the peak of 1714.  This illustrates how the date distribution of finds can point to a single large event.  Of course it is not likely you'll find such a large sample of finds with specific dates.  More often the date range will be larger and the dates of individual items will be more uncertain.

There are times when you finds might indicate multiple large events or a steady deposition covering a longer period of time.  Lets say there was another shipwreck in the same area that contributed coins from a few years later.  You might then see two peaks on the chart, but things could get much more confusing if that wreck carried coins that were not so closely related to the departure date of the ship.  Then you might see a lot of overlap and a much more uncertain situation.  Often you will be dealing with artifacts that could have a date range of a decade or more, and on sites that were used over the centuries, but perhaps peaks indicating significant events.  

It can be useful to mentally chart the dates or date ranges of the items you find at a site and try to associate items with time periods even if you do not have such a lot of specific dates to work from.

I think the chart for the Indian River Ridge site that I've been detecting so much would look something like this.

It appears that some railroad related event took place in the early 1900s, then there was a period of very little activity on the site followed by an increase in modern junk beginning somewhere around the early 1970s.  So far that is how it looks to me, but there is are a lot of finds still in the ground.  Maybe something surprising will turn up.  I'm interested in the non-metallic items as well as if there are any old coins on the lot and how deep they might be.  As I showed in my post, the lantern lens provided some good information.

As inconsequential as that particular example might seem, it does illustrate a conceptual process that I think you might find useful for evaluating some sites.  A site might be dominated by one or two major events but show activity from pre-Columbian times up to the present.

The picture of what happened on my site continues to become more clear but I am still far from done.  It continues to produce many finds.  

I missed a few days because of rain, but below are my Saturday morning finds.

Saturday Morning Finds.

As usual, I also dug a lot of rust, nails, wire, etc., which was thrown away.  It seems like I will never get this site cleaned out, but at least it is close to home and I can go over and detect it whenever I have a little spare time.  It keeps me interested and I've learned a lot from the exercise.  If I was only interested in gold, silver or valuables, I would probably pass up on this site.  There are much better places to hunt for that kind of thing, but if I did that, I'd never learn some of the valuable lessons I learned from working this site.

---

I could use one of these.  There is so much junk on the site I've been working, it would be a big help, but I hate carrying more equipment around.

I found a lot of circles and semi-circles of rust on the ground,  When I stuck my magnet in, I got a lot of the kind of thing shown below.  

It takes a while to get rid of a single rust circles with my small magnet. 

Rust chips and slivers or old nails and wire were found in circles and semi-circles.  The circles of rust had a diameter of something over a foot.  I concluded that those circles are where wooden kegs rusted away or were emptied out.  The presence and location of numerous barrel hoops and wires supported that theory, which helped me better visualize what went on there.

That is one kind of clue that would have remained hidden if I used discrimination and ignored the many small bits of rust and iron.

For me, a site is not cleaned out until it is cleaned out.

---

You've probably heard it said that "there is an exception to every rule, including this one."  When it comes down to it, anything that can be said is a generalization.  We live in a cookie cutter world.  It is impossible to encounter the world "as it is" in all of its raw majesty.  Our perceptual system immediately filters and organizes the raw sensory input, and then the mind selects, categorizes, evaluates, fits and molds it.   The result is that we look at things and see only what has been manipulated into something useable.  We distort the world by molding it into something we can mentally manage.  Unfiltered raw data can't be managed or used to advantage.

We continually simplify.  There is no way to talk about a thing without reducing it.  Everything has to be stuffed into words, categories and concepts.  

Jnana yogis attempt to encounter Being as it is.  It isn't easy.  By our own perceptual and mental process we see a forest where there are trees that our mind groups together, and we see trees where there are various shades of what we categorize as green, brown, etc.  It is very much a creative process - no passive observer here.  We are built to organize sensory input and can't help it.  It takes a lot of training for people to see things in a cultural manner.

Race is a good example.  How do you define it?  There are no satisfactory objective definitions. There is no test for race.  Race is nothing more than a social construct. Skin color does not reliably discriminate.  Genetics do not.  Self-identification is possibly the best measure, but is nothing more than a subjective personal decision.  It is only what someone says it is.  It results in circular reasoning - not validation. 

To see a person as a member of a racial group does violence to their individuality.  It reduces and despiritualizes.  That is how slavery was justified.  That is what the Marxist are doing at precisely the time when humanity was making great progress.  Still, progress is being made while evil riles against it.  

I didn't intend to talk about race, but it provides a great illustration of what I was going to talk about.  The way we process information is the same no matter what you are talking about.  It applies just as well to interpreting finds or figuring out a site.  It will help you to understand how you process information.

An objective attitude provides many benefits.  It provides rules and a methodology for a more shared reality.  It enables communicate and supports harmony rather than than giving in to a disjointed cacophony of clashing subjectivities.

It doesn't matter if you are talking about metal detecting, treasure hunting, or anything else, it helps to understand yourself and how you gather information and come to conclusions.

---

Once again I recommend operational definitions, not only for science, but also for personal mental clarity and communication.   Operationalism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

---

Source: nhc.noaa.gov

Looks like we could be getting a little storm activity before long.  

The tides are nice and big now, and the surf is expected to be up to five feet Monday.

Keep watching.

Happy hunting,

Treasureguide@comcast.net