Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report
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| St. Therese Medal Find. |
You probably won't learn everything about a find quickly. I've had finds sitting around for years before finally discovering something I never noticed before or finally figuring out what the item is.
I was looking at this find - a St. Therese medal and suddenly remembered that I had a book on St. Therese. I think it is the same St. Therese because of the flower on the medallion. She was known as Little Flower.
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| St.Therese Medallion on St. Therese Book. |
Notice the flowers on both the cover of the book and the medallion.
Here is a link for more about St. Therese.
Thérèse of Lisieux - Wikipedia
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| Large Celtic Cross. |
The Celtic Cross shown above is a fairly large and heavy cross - bigger than a pendant. I decided to look to see if it had seams and I notices something else. It was too small to read or even tell for sure that that there really were words, so fired up my microscopes to take a look. The area to be inspected is the edge of the lower vertical part of the cross. below is what I saw.
It seems to say "COLONIAL PEWTER." You can also see that there is indeed a seam.
It seems to be some sort of reproduction. I don't know if it is anything more than that. Maybe just a souvenir.
Here is a link for more about celtic cross.
Speaking of small, \below is another find. It is a very small chain that is as fine as thread and has no noticeable weight.
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| Very Small Thin Chain Find. |
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| Tab Marked 10K. |
The general point here is that a microscope or some form of good magnification is very helpful.
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One of the most momentous cross-cultural collisions occurred in the Caribbean in 1492, heralding a period of rapid change in both ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Worlds. During the early years of the colonial period, when new relationships were being established, material objects became active agents in the interactions between the indigenous Taíno and the Spanish. The Taíno gifted the Spanish with objects that had significance in their own world, in an attempt to enmesh the Spanish into Taíno socio-political and economic networks. In turn, Spanish objects entered into Taíno value systems. Glass and jet beads, mirrors and brass ornaments were integrated into prestigious objects, such as the two surviving Taíno cotton sculptures that form the focus of this paper: a belt in the collections of the Weltmuseum Wien and a composite sculpture in the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico ‘Luigi Pigorini’, Rome. These pieces offer a glimpse into how Old World exotics were reinterpreted and integrated into indigenous value systems during a period of cultural transition and change....
Here is the link for more of this article on early contact period artifacts and trade
It seems surprising to me how early the New World indigenous population picked up, employed and traded European artifacts that fit into their cultural values.
Another thing that surprises me is how many beads and items for glass and jet were brought to the New World very early on, yet they are very seldom found. Of course, they are the type of thing that would not be found by detectorists, either being small or made of materials that are not detected by metal detectors. Still, I've found a lot of non-metallic finds, some being very small, and have never really identified an item made of jet, which is an unfamiliar material to me. I might not recognize it if I picked it up. I did find one small gold bead. I told the story about how difficult that was. I was using the old Herb MacDonald modified nautilus, which detected the small gold bead, but even having the bead on the coil cover with a handful of sand, I had a very difficult time seeing the bead in the orangish sand. I kept moving it around on the coil and hearing it until finally I spotted it. I'm pretty sure I showed it before in an old post.
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| SurfGuru.com. |
Looks like a northwest wind and a northeast swell this morning. I'd expect that combination to push the water on the beach front to the south and move some sand. The surf isn't very big though.
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net