Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
During the 1940s several young boys were roaming along the shoreline of a peninsula jutting into Pensacola Bay. They had learned how to find artifacts. The railroad crews would come down the line on occasion and dig out the banks to protect the tracks. When it rained the kids would scour the exposed banks for artifacts. On one day, they found a coin which dated to the time of the Tristan de Luna colony. One the kids Harry Bonifay, found it. The coin and the area are figured in the next few pages. Sixty something years later marine archeologists found two shipwrecks of the period just offshore from the same shoreline...
That paragraph and the following photo came from this web site.
Archeology Ink | Spanish Artifacts - A Research Journal by Caleb Curren, Archeologist
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| Glass Trade Beads From 16th Century Spanish Site. |
The same web site provides a variety of other photos of artifacts as well as much more information. You'll probably want to see it.
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I recently got interested in researching my marble finds and talked about some of them the past two days. When you think of marbles you might not think they are anything special, but not all marbles are you fathers marbles. Marbles are among the oldest game pieces and are found in the archaeological record as early as during Roman times.
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| Source: See magwv.com link. |
Jumping down a few paragraphs in the same article....
Here is that link if you want to read more about that.
Origin of The Game of Marbles (magwv.com)
Here are a couple excerpts from an archaeologic resource.
The game of marbles is perhaps the most universal and oldest human pastime ever devised. This research covers American toy marbles primarily from the 1920-30s. The purpose of this research project is to give background information and specifically focus on the identification of marbles found in Southern California and San Diego, placing them within a historical context...
The types of marbles found in San Diego Archaeological Center’s collections span from the transformative period of clay and stone-based marbles to glass marbles. This project reviews six non-glass and five glass basic marble types to help familiarize students and researchers with marbles found locally in Southern California...
And here is that link. Don't miss the video at the end.
Historic Toy Marbles – San Diego Archaeological Center (sandiegoarchaeology.org)
The following site discusses marbles as diagnostic artifacts.
Here is that link.
Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland
Many of the oldest marbles were made of clay, agate or stone, but some were made of glass. The collecting community is more interested in modern marbles, which means they can be more valuable than older marbles, but the oldest marbles, which can be centuries old, can provide diagnostic clues that you won't want to miss.
Besides being game pieces, marbles were used in Codd bottles for the closure. One of the interesting things I read, was how poor children would repurpose the marbles from those bottles.
Marbles, of course, were also used for other purposes. Some were drilled for decoration and jewelry, for example.
I didn't expect to spend so much time on marbles, but not only can they be valuable finds, they can also provide important clues to metal detecting sites.
As you probably know, I appreciate and find a very wide variety of types of items - non-metallic as well as metallic. What I recently learned about marbles has once again expanded my consciousness of the world that surrounds me.
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
The tides have flattened. The surf predictions aren't very exciting at this point either.
The first step to finding something is knowing that it exists and being able to recognize it when you see it.
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net