rhedden
Sr. Member
I haven't had a thing worth posting in Today's Finds since some southwestern artifacts posted back in 2014 while I was living in Texas. I returned to the northeast in 2018, and I have hit many cellar holes with both my old White's Spectrum XLT and my new Nokta Simplex, but I just don't find anything good. There are a lot of cellar holes in eastern NY, but there are even more detectorists looking for them. The only old coin I have found since 2018 was a toasted Indian cent (or Flying Eagle perhaps?) that was an eyeball find in a dirt road after heavy rain. It's been a tough run without anything to post.
Today, I think I stumbled onto a good site (finally!). I was out hunting mushrooms with the Simplex in my backpack, and I just randomly came across a broken ceramic pitcher up on the mountain... then a plate... then some window glass. I did not think there was a house site up there, but a small cellar hole says otherwise. This one is really remote, so it had a chance to be a virgin site.
My hopes were quickly dashed when I saw the pieces of iron lying on the lip of the cellar, and a 4 ft. deep hole excavated by bottle diggers. The broken bottle fragments they left place the site in the late 1800s - Karl Hutter, New York (beer bottle) and F. Hoyt, Perfumer, Philadelphia were some of the embossed fragments from 1880s-1890s bottles. I even found their broken shovel with my detector a few minutes later.
Looks like they hit the place many years ago, as the shovel was pretty well rusted.
The good news is that it looks like they didn't bring their detectors. I found these two relics a couple inches deep at most. One is a suspender clasp with some decayed leather still inside it. The other may be a bottle stopper or something related to horse tack (?). Both gave obvious "dig me!!!!" signals, and they were in an open area that was easy to detect, so I have to assume that the site has not been cleaned out.
I also located a possible trash pit that was screaming with iron, which had broken glass and pottery on top of it. About 75 feet away was a likely privy site, a small square marked off by stones and iron signals. There may be some bottles to be dug, even if there are no more detector finds.
Sadly, I had to scramble due to insane numbers of mosquitoes and yet another cloudburst moving in. I did manage to scoop a handful of black trumpet mushrooms just as I left, which were growing out of the moss on the lip of the cellar. No detector needed!
Anyway, I'm excited to get back to this site and hit it again once the bugs die off.
Today, I think I stumbled onto a good site (finally!). I was out hunting mushrooms with the Simplex in my backpack, and I just randomly came across a broken ceramic pitcher up on the mountain... then a plate... then some window glass. I did not think there was a house site up there, but a small cellar hole says otherwise. This one is really remote, so it had a chance to be a virgin site.
My hopes were quickly dashed when I saw the pieces of iron lying on the lip of the cellar, and a 4 ft. deep hole excavated by bottle diggers. The broken bottle fragments they left place the site in the late 1800s - Karl Hutter, New York (beer bottle) and F. Hoyt, Perfumer, Philadelphia were some of the embossed fragments from 1880s-1890s bottles. I even found their broken shovel with my detector a few minutes later.
Looks like they hit the place many years ago, as the shovel was pretty well rusted.The good news is that it looks like they didn't bring their detectors. I found these two relics a couple inches deep at most. One is a suspender clasp with some decayed leather still inside it. The other may be a bottle stopper or something related to horse tack (?). Both gave obvious "dig me!!!!" signals, and they were in an open area that was easy to detect, so I have to assume that the site has not been cleaned out.
I also located a possible trash pit that was screaming with iron, which had broken glass and pottery on top of it. About 75 feet away was a likely privy site, a small square marked off by stones and iron signals. There may be some bottles to be dug, even if there are no more detector finds.
Sadly, I had to scramble due to insane numbers of mosquitoes and yet another cloudburst moving in. I did manage to scoop a handful of black trumpet mushrooms just as I left, which were growing out of the moss on the lip of the cellar. No detector needed!
Anyway, I'm excited to get back to this site and hit it again once the bugs die off.
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