Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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Quickly, one of the volunteers, who use metal detectors to locate artifacts and guide excavations, located a nine-pound cannonball hidden underneath a walking path. “He was so excited,” says Sivilich. “But he was the man of the day for about five minutes.” Bill Hermstedt, a long-time volunteer and charter member of BRAVO, also found something new—a bayonet. And then another. The signal from the detector told him that there was a lot more metal down there.
When archaeologists methodically opened the ground, they found a cache of 30 bayonets, stacked together—a remarkable find for a Revolutionary War encampment.
Though the bayonets stand out among the artifacts discovered at this site, the archaeologists and BRAVO volunteers made other intriguing finds there as well. There was a musket ball that had been turned into a die with Roman numerals on its faces, and a particularly rare U.S.A. uniform button featuring stylized lettering and the year 1777. Only a handful of other such buttons have been found in the archaeological record...
Here is the link to read more about that.
A Stash of 30 Hidden Bayonets Was Discovered in Valley Forge - Atlas Obscura
On land sites you are more likely to find groups of items gathered as they were buried. It doesn't happen much on the beach.
This reminds me very much of the railroad site I spent time on last summer, and the groups of sythe blades and spike hammer heads that were buried together in tight arrangements.
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For more than 20 years the group has been working to excavate artifacts at this Revolutionary War battlefield, and in the past they have gone out with metal detectors, mapped the objects they found, washed the finds, and put them in storage or on display at the visitor’s center. But this time, Dan Sivilich, the organization’s president, asked the crew to try a different strategy. They donned surgical gloves, and instead of washing the artifacts, they extracted them from the earth and placed them directly in polyethylene bags.
Sivilich, the author of Musket Ball and Small Shot Identification, is an expert in Revolutionary War artillery, and if the crew found anything of interest, his plan was to send the artifacts off for protein residue analysis. When he examined the latest finds, he found two pieces of canister shot with intriguing patterns on them. Each one looked like it had been blasted through fabric. This could indicate that they had passed through a uniform and injured or killed a person...
In other words, it was in some ways pure luck that this piece of shot was even tested. But it remains the first to hold traces of human blood. The other find, with the deeper weave pattern, retained the impression after cleaning, but did not test positive for blood. Sivilich believes it may have gone through a soldier’s haversack and hit hard against a pewter plate or mug that he was carrying.
Right now the artifacts are in storage at the battlefield, but BRAVO hopes they’ll be put on display, perhaps next to another piece of shot that has the shape of a tooth clearly impressed into it. “It hit someone’s tooth and went out their head,” says Sivilich. “It’s one of the ones that people hate to look at but can’t look away.” It is likely that many of the 1,200 or so musket balls that BRAVO has found on the battlefield once held some trace of blood. But since those artifacts have already been handled and washed, it’s impossible to know.
This Revolutionary War Shot Still Has Traces of Human Blood on It - Atlas Obscura
How many times have you dug a musket ball or shot and neglected to think about its purpose or the history behind it? Lead might the thicker than blood, but blood is deeper. Think of the life behind the object. In this case, they were discovered intimately connected.
I am one that hesitates to clean items. I like to have the history left on it when I can, even if it includes dirt and corrosion. I'd rather have as much of its history as possible, even if the object isn't as pretty that way. Once you clean an object, you will never be able to unclean it.
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Nothing significant on the weather map, and only small surf for the next few days.
Have a blessed fourth,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net