Bill D. (VA)
Silver Member
After hitting it hard with major pit digs the previous 2 days I was wondering if I could muster the energy and motivation to do it one more time. The cold and wet weather on Sunday didn’t help matters, but Dan and I decided to brave the elements. Our primary mission was to do some serious digging where Dan had discovered an early pit in our first trip to this site. After carting all of our gear the ½ mile back to the site we hunkered down and pulled quite a few artifacts from the charcoal-laden pit. At that point I realized my camera battery was dead and I didn’t get to take any field pics as I like to do. Won’t let that happen again. Anyway, the pit produced a wide variety of pottery ranging from 1600s tin-glazed earthenware to early 1800s feathered edge. A number of very interesting brass and iron items were also uncovered including a possible candle snuffer and another huge lock. We also found what appears to be a possible pipe stem made out of bone, but we could be way off base on that. We spent 2-3 hours excavating and backfilling, and moved on to a little detecting. By then it was starting to rain, and it had gotten colder plus the wind had picked up making it very uncomfortable, but we kept at it. Last time there the knoll next to the pit had produced a bunch of buttons plus 3 pieces of silver I was fortunate to walk over. We were still making a number of finds at this spot, but not quite the quantity as last time which was expected. However, I was able to pull the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] Va halfpenny we’ve dug on top of the knoll, and this one was in good shape too for a field coin. Later in the afternoon we decided to wander over to an adjacent field which is also part of the property. This field also had a couple of pronounced knolls that looked interesting. As soon as we walked up the first knoll we saw what every colonial relic hunter dreams about – large chunks of black glass, pottery and pipe stems laying everywhere in the bare dirt. As we started hunting the finds were a little slow at first with just a few buttons. But while we were hunting alternating rows Dan quickly walked over 2 cut pieces of silver in succession, and later added a one reale which evened us up in the pursuit of the “silver king” title. We continued to find buttons and buckle pieces until we had to leave and drop off a relic case for the owner before it got dark. We’re quite excited about coming back and tight grids are definitely in order for the next visit as I’m sure we left a lot of nice relics and coins in the ground. This ended my marathon 3-day digging and detecting adventure, and I put in a total of about 22 hard hours not to mention the 7-8 hours of driving back and forth from the sites. But I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
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