7/16/23 Report - Treasure Coast Mystery Find for ID. Emanuel Point: Village, De Luna Camp and Shipwrecks.

 

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

Treasure Coast Mystery Find by Dan K.

Dan K. sent the above find photo and following email.

Good Evening,

I’m a big fan of your blog and wanted to share the below item found on a treasure coast beach, heavily encrusted before I cleaned it off a bit. I’m curious to know if you have seen one before or have any thoughts what it may be or the age of the item. Thanks!

Daniel

I asked Dan if he could send additional information such s the size and metal of the object. Anyone know what this is? It looks familiar to me, but I can't place it right off. Hopefully we'll get a little more info soon.

Notice the holes in the hands.  I think this one should be fairly easy, but at this point I can't identify it.

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I have been listing sites where Spanish coins were found in Florida.  Yesterday I didn't, but I'll get back to that today.  Recently I talked about a few find sites from the north Gulf Coast/Florida Panhandle area.  There are a couple very important sites from up there that I thought about skipping because I've already talked about them in the past and many people already know about them.  I decided to include them, just to be thorough and for those who might need an introduction or refresher.

One important archaeological site is at Emanuel Point where precontact there was a large indigenous village.  It appears that a De Luna camp site is within that area, and just offshore from that are three shipwrecks  dated to 1559.

Back in March of this year I posted the following excerpt.

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... 

The source of that excerpt is Archeology Ink | Spanish Artifacts - A Research Journal by Caleb Curren, Archeologist.  

You will find coin photos my previous post.  Here is that link.  Treasure Beaches Report: Pt. 2. (2020 and Beyond). : 3/27/23 Report - Spanish Artifacts From A Florida Site. Marbles In The Archaeological Record. (tbr2020.blogspot.com)

Maritime field investigations by UWF, including continuing survey and excavations, have mainly focused on the six ships that were lost during a hurricane that hit Pensacola Bay in September 1559. The Luna expedition included 1,500 soldiers, colonists, slaves and Aztec Indians who traveled in 11 ships from Veracruz, Mexico, to Pensacola to begin the Spanish colonization of the northern Gulf Coast. The hurricane hit Pensacola one month after they arrived, sinking many of their ships and devastating their food supplies. After two years, the remnants of the colony were rescued by Spanish ships and returned to Mexico...

The Luna settlement in Pensacola lasted from 1559 to 1561, which predates the Spanish settlement in St. Augustine, Florida, by six years, and the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, by 48 years.

Here is the source link for that.   UWF archaeology program discovers third shipwreck from Luna fleet - University of West Florida Newsroom

Here are two links for information about Emanuel Point I and II.

Emanuel Point 1 (1559) – The Nautical Archaeology Digital Library (shiplib.org)

Emanuel Point 2 (1559) – The Nautical Archaeology Digital Library (shiplib.org)

A third and smaller wreck was also found.

Here is a report that seems to be critical of the UWF work on Emanuel Point sites.

Emanuel-Point-Burial-Mounds.pdf (archeologyink.com)

It is interesting how sites are originally discovered (very often accidentally or by amateurs) and then explored more thoroughly over the years and decades.

I don't want to spend any more time on that one today, but it is another area where the early Charles and Johanna coins were discovered.

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I've noticed lately that too many articles publish public domain or stock photos rather than pictures of the specific item referred to in the article.  There are times when that is not a problem, but it can be a problem when the item shown in the public domain picture differs in some significant way from the actual item.  When you look at a photo that accompanies an article, check to see if the photo shows the actual items discussed in the article.

I was reading an article about on old bronze age comb and gold hair ring that was excavated.  The actual excavated comb had eight tines.  The photo that accompanied the article, was in great shape.  It looked like it had never been buried.  The comb in the photo had at least twice as many tines as the one discussed in the article  The photo did not show the excavated comb discussed in the article.  You might not notice that kind of thing unless you carefully check.  Don't assume that when you read an article accompanied by a photo, that the photo shows the actual item discussed in the article.  I'll be more careful about that in the future.

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The remnants of Don are still out in the Atlantic, but according to windy.com we will be having a small surf and small waves for at least another week.

Good hunting,

TreassureGuide@comcast.net