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| Wednesday Morning at Fort Pierce Beach. |
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| Junk Beside Unfilled Hole Photo by Mark G. |
Here is an email I received from Mark G.
Thanks for sharing Mark.
And leaving unfilled holes at the beach doesn't do the hobby any good. There are those that would like to prohibit metal detecting and they don't need any excuses.
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In a recent post, I recommended checking out an online free archaeology journal called Archaeology Ink. The journal focuses on Spanish colonial archaeology in the U.S. South. The web site seems to be relatively new but presents a number of good articles on topics such as the Luna and De Soto expeditions and settlements. I recommended that you at least browse the journal if you are interested at all in Spanish Colonial history in the U.S.
Today I'll give you a few brief excerpts from journal articles.
One article addresses the subject of battle between the Spanish and the indigenous tribes, the effectiveness of the long bow against the Spanish and the how wounded Spanish soldiers could receive financial help.
Indian in Body Paint, ca. 1585 of a Carolina Algonquians, with a long bow as tall as himself, and quiver on the left hip.
One account says that an arrow would easily pierce the Spaniards defensive gear including chain mail, however the article also says that the indigenous learned to aim at arms and legs, rather than the protected chests of the Spanish troops. That doesn't seem to me to go together.
Here is one excerpt from the article about the longbow and the damage it caused.
Thus, it was that in one of the skirmishes which the Spaniards had with the Indians of Apalache, the Camp Master Luis de Moscoso was struck in the right side by an arrow which penetrated a leather jacket and the hauberk (chain mail) which he wore underneath as well…The arrow had continued through a quilted doublet and wounded him, though not fatally since it came at a slant.
Here is the link to that article.
Archeology Ink | Luna Articles - A Research Journal by Caleb Curren, Archeologist
In another article on the site...
In 2015, 19 years later, a local man found a sample of Spanish artifacts dating to the 1500s on a residential construction site on the East Pensacola Heights Site. He took his finds to UWF and within a very short period of time UWF proclaimed that they had definitely found the Luna Settlement Site. They then went to the media with their claim. UWF is still claiming that the site is the Luna Settlement Site despite a significant lack of definitive archeological data to support their claim. UWF has certainly found more Spanish artifacts dating from the 1500s but they were found with a majority of Native artifacts. Once again, it confirms previous investigations that the site is a Native village that had contacts with various Spanish incursions into the area during the 1500s. UWF has thus far failed to prove that the site is the actual Luna Expedition Spanish settlement...
The University of West Florida (UWF) has deliberately downplayed this fact since finding Spanish artifacts at the site dating from the 1500s, claiming that the site is the Luna Colony site. In doing so, they have put their credibility in jeopardy. The Spanish documents of the Luna Expedition never mentioned a Native village at their colony site. Remarkably, UWF has attempted to explain away the Mississippian pottery as brought to the site by interior Spanish expeditions into Alabama...
Here is the link if you want to read more about that.
And below is a map from the journal that shows the UWF proposed Luna site as well as several places I've detected in the past when I was frequently in the Pensacola area for consulting work at the Navy station.
I had some interesting detecting at Milton (at the top of the map), for one example, as well as several of the ocean and bay beaches in the area.
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There was a time when I was doing a lot of detecting for modern jewelry. Early on in my detecting I hunted the towel line a good bit, but one place that was very productive was around the beach chairs.
The chairs will normally have some metal and be hard to detect around. Not only does the metal in the chairs cause problems, but it is hard to get your coil in and around the tight spots. I found that the beach chairs would often provide a lot of coins as well as some jewelry. In the old days, they also produced a lot of hotel keys.
I got pretty good at detecting around the chairs. You can learn to detect there despite the false signals caused by the metal in the chairs. It is like learning to detect along a chain link fence. Don't sweep to and from the metal, but along with it whenever that is possible. You'll get a signal from the metal, but also any objects. You'll learn to detect the signal among the noise.
In the case of beach chairs that often remain in the same spot a lot, coins and jewelry can accumulate. That is one place you'll find more pairs of earrings. Other places you'll most often find a single lost earring, but around the chairs, the ladies will often take both off and they slip or get dropped on the sand without anyone realizing it.
Also, occasionally someone will drag a chair from its usual location, leaving a nice space to detect where things might have accumulated for some time.
Of course, you'll also have to deal with the usual small metal trash, but I'd rather detect the beach chairs than a towel line, even though both can be productive.
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| Surf Chart from SurfGuru for Fort Pierce Area. |
Expect a little increase in the Treasure Coast surf this week but not much.