Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Ancient Ring Showing Goddess Minerva. |
A teenager hiking in northern Israel unexpectedly discovered an 1,800-year-old ring adorned with an engraving of a Roman goddess holding a sword and spear.
The ring, which appears to be made of bronze, depicts Minerva, the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena, wearing only a helmet. Minerva, who was popular in the region during the Roman period, was "considered, among other things, as the goddess of war and military strategy, and also as the goddess of wisdom," Nir Distelfeld, inspector at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) Theft Prevention Unit, and Eitan Klein, of the IAA's Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery, said in a statement.
Yair Whiteson, a 13-year-old, found the ring while hiking with his father in Haifa. The two were walking near an ancient quarry on Mount Carmel when Yair, who likes to collect interesting rocks and fossils, noticed a "small green item" on the ground...
You can't cover the entire beach with a metal detector. Where you put your coil is about the most important thing and will to a large extent determine your success.
As you might know, the first factor in my formula for metal detecting success is location. That applies at the macro and just as much at the micro level. In other words, the beach you select is important but just as important is the part of parts of the selected beach you cover with your coil. that is where your ability to read the beach comes in.
People who use discrimination often say they do it to save time by not digging a lot of junk. I understand that. It can be a good strategy, but it seems to me, and this depends to some extent upon the individual, that discrimination may not save as much time as you think.
I've seen some videos showing people using discrimination in its various forms and counted the amount of time they spend on the process of discriminating. They pass the coil back and forth over the target and watch the numbers trying to get a good reading and make a decision whether to dig or not dig. They often spend so much time on that process that it would have been quicker to just dig the target and look at it. I know that not everybody wastes so much time on that, but the process does take some amount of time that negates any time savings. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it or that everyone wastes time doing it - just that the way some people do it, it takes time too. I get impatient watching detectorists try to figure out whether they will or will not dig a target and then take out a pinpointer and probe around with it for a while. I find myself thinking, just dig it.
Of course there are different situations and some of them call for discrimination, but for some of the most productive hunting, such as search for gold rings on a beach, for me, that kind of discrimination is a waste of time. I can't get into all the details now.
While discrimination is usually justified on the basis of time savings, there is actually more to it than that. There is also the physical effort and emotional disappointment of ending up with a piece of junk. Many people get frustrated by digging junk. And again, there are times to do it, though I spend many years using only detectors that did not even have discrimination. I still don't use it except for some occasions such as when I go junking.
On a beach, especially in the dry sand, it takes almost no time to scoop and sift targets. Improving target recovery skills is another way to save time.
Now here comes something very important to take into account. Discrimination is not perfect. I've shown that a lot of things that can affect a metal detector's signal. Those include the target position, surface area presented to the coil, target depth, target composition as well as other factors. Even the sweep speed of the coil can affect the reading.
It will depend to some extent upon the detector, type of target and operator, but there is an error factor. No detector will tell you everything you need to know to pick all the good targets and avoid all the junk. And the error factor is a very important consideration. You might be pleased to miss some junk, but you never know what you left in the ground. That is one of the biggest problems with discrimination. You never know about the fails. When you dig a target, you know for sure what it was, and you then know how your detector responded to that target in that situation. That is helpful. You also then know what was in that area, which in some cases is some of the best information you can gather concerning where to spend your time. I've written before about the information value of a junk targets. Junk targets help you track treasure. They provide part of the information about the area and what is there.
Back to the very important error rate. If you really want to know what the error rate is for different targets and different situations, you could do some tests. That is something I'd highly recommend. How does your detector react to different items, junk and good, including complex targets, ie watches, deep targets, targets laying at odd angles, etc. etc.
Here is a simplified illustration.
We can make it binary to make it simple enough to illustrate. You interpret either a good signal or junk signal, and the two possible outcomes are good target or junk target.
Again, this is a simplification,
You can change your dig/no-dig criteria, requiring more certainty and dig fewer targets
As you change your criteria as shown above. you'll dig fewer junk targets but also fewer good targets.
The horizontal line can be moved too. You can raise it to illustrate the presence of fewer good targets relative to junk or lower it to illustrate more good targets relative to junk.
Of course, you could decrease discrimination and dig more junk and get more good targets. There is an optimal level that could be determined if you knew the actual number of good and junk targets. You can estimate that. Your estimation can be improved as you test the area and gather information.
The ratio of good to junk targets is an important factor, but so also is the value of suspected targets. For example, if you knew there were escudos in an area of high trash (maybe you just saw one dug by another detectorist), you'd probably be more willing to dig more trash and intensify your search for that very desirable target. You wouldn't want to miss anything. What I'm talking about is doing it strategically. As you can tell, I believe there is always an error factor, or to put it in other words, an amount of uncertainty, to take into account.
I could go on with this forever, but probably still not convince everyone, and that is ok. All I ask is that you consider these possibilities. I think there is a good chance you will benefit even if you do not accept it all.
I'm never happy with my treatment of such complex topics. I can't do a complete job on a vast topic like this in a single post. I'll have to leave it at that.
The illustrations are just conceptual tools to help you visualize the trade-offs.
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No coincidence that the elitists select a new leader at the same time the U.S. flag is taken down and replaced by another.
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Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net.