Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report
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The Berlanga Cup was found in four pieces. (Image credit: Roberto De Pablo) |
The cup was discovered in Berlanga de Duero, a municipality in central Spain, nearly 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) from the storied Roman defensive wall that protected the northern frontier of the empire in the second century. The hemispheric "Berlanga Cup" is about 4.5 inches (11.4 centimeters) wide and around 3.2 inches (8.1 cm) tall. It features colorful enameled designs and a Latin inscription that mentions four forts.
"The cup is a small representation of a functional vessel called a Roman trulla — a bronze or clay cup with a handle used to drink water," Jesus Garcia Sanchez, an archaeologist at the Archaeological Institute of Mérida in Spain and co-author of the new study, told Live Science in an email. "It is not only crafted with metals, but also expensive enamels, and later on customized...
An analysis of the cup revealed it was bronze — largely copper and tin — with a substantial addition of lead that likely came from mines in northern England. These findings strongly suggest the cup was made by a local artisan near Hadrian's Wall between A.D. 124 and 199, the researchers said. But how the cup ended up in Spain is a bit of a mystery...
Here is the link for more about that.
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Here are a few miscellaneous finds that will help me illustrate some of the benefits of using a good jeweler's loop or coin microscope to inspect finds for small details.
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| A Few Miscellaneous Finds. |
A quick look is not always enough. Sometimes a little magnification will reveal what you didn't something you didn't notice at first.
Above are four miscellaneous finds that might or might not be what they seem at first site.
I'll start with the most obvious. In the upper right corner, you see one of the older style pulltabs. Or is it?
Closer inspection with a coin microscope reveals the following mark.
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| Sterling Marked Silver Pulltab. |
But you can aslo see what might appear to be FPUA, but it is really an incompletely stamped ERLI from another attempt to stamp the item STERLING. It is, in fact, silver.
The tem to the left of that, which might look a little like a broken stone, pot shard or fossilized wood is actually fossilized bone.
The real structure is is easily seen under microscope, as shown below.
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| Broken Fossil Bone Cross Section. |
You can see the porous marrow structure inside.
The piece of copper beside seems to have some marks on it. I thought I saw what looks a little like Muntz mark on it. You can see what appears to be two parallel curved line near the corner next to the shard, but closer inspection shows that is not what the mark is at all.
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| Lines on Piece of Copper. |
Under magnification, I could see that the lines were actually not parallel at all, which would be the case for the Muntz mark.
Below is an example of an actual Muntz metal find along with a copy of the mark on paper.
Muntz metal was a new nautical sheathing invented in 1832 by adding tin to copper to replace the older copper sheathing.
The shard is a blue and white oriental design which might be thought to look like Kang-Hsi, which has been found on 1715 wreck sites blue on white shards are common and most are not the more valuable Kang-Hsi, which was transported from China on the Manilla galleons before being loaded onto some 1715 ships.
Here is the shard under magnification.
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| Closer Inspection of Shard. |
That looks nothing like the Kang-Hsi (or Kangxi) that I've seen. This piece shows no brush strokes or variations in color intensity. It appears to be applied rather than hand panted. There are many other signs, but I'll get into that more some other time. It is a topic that deserves a post of its own. I've done post on that topic in the past, but I try to improve posts as I learn more.
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That was the most exciting Kentucky Derby I've ever seen. Amazing. And a real long shot.
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| Surf Chart from SurfGuru.com. |
From Saturday to Sunday the wind switched. We are now having more of a north wind.
As you can see, Tuesday the surf will increase a little.
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net.