paleomaxx
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- Aug 14, 2016
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As usual with my best spots, I stumbled on this site virtually by chance! I can't do deep woods cellar holes at the moment due to hunting season so I've been following up on long shots next to existing roads. None of the maps had anything in this particular spot, but it was a little flat area next to a road and a stream which is always worth trying. There was a small depression, but the forest around here is full of natural sinkholes and there were zero foundation stones poking out of the walls so it didn't look promising at first.
I circled it once without any strong signals, but scattered iron tones were around so I dug after a higher sounding one. That ended up being a very crusty pewter button in the hole with a rosehead nail; that's a good sign!
A foot away was a low tone that ended up being a small tombac. At this point I was sure I was onto something so I did a tight grid around the depression and finally got a nice strong tone which was a rat-tail pewter spoon bowl!
The targets were sparse and spread apart very evenly which tells me the site wasn't occupied for very long. The buttons are universally 18th century:
Some nicely engraved tombacs, cast pewter, one bone-backed gilt button, and half of a blowhole button so definitely an early spot for the area!
There was one section towards the river that could have been the trash pit. I say that because the targets were extremely deep and it was the only spot that I found any sort of relic concentration, but even that was only a half dozen or so. This included two full Georgian period shoe buckles, one brass and one iron.
I was chasing after a deep iron signal in the same spot and I ended up pulling out a rod stuck between some roots. Fortunately I spotted the handle of a spoon sticking out of the sidewall, and to my surprise it belonged to a full rat-tail pewter spoon!
It cracked a little during the extraction (seriously, this was 12 inches down between a half dozen roots), but remarkably it's still intact and actually pretty solid. I never find these whole and the books place the height of rat-tail spoon manufacturing between 1710 and 1740 so this is a very old spoon!
There were only two coins, one a toasted copper, but the other was a modestly well-preserved 1787 Connecticut Copper:
Pretty sure it's a Miller 36-I.1 which is R-5 (Rare), but it's definitely not my best preserved CT copper.
I found one mystery piece that I'm hoping someone recognizes and can identify. It's a long, rolled brass tube that has regular holes along the seam; almost like it was stitched together, but it's thick and sturdy brass sheet so it doesn't bend or flex at all. It tapers slightly from one end to the other too.
Very odd, and I don't have any solid guesses about what it was from.
I had circled the foundation about a dozen times and I had only found those twenty or so pieces and I couldn't believe that I had found everything. It was getting late, but I wanted at least one more find so I did another sweep and got a very faint and crummy tone from right under a tree at the edge of the hole. I knew it would be a pain getting it out, but I went for it anyway. After some hacking and cursing I teased out another small pewter button, but this one was a bit different from the other two:
Yup, Revolutionary War pewter USA button!!! Now that's the way to end a hunt!
I put it in a bag with some dirt and called it a day!
The USA was pretty clear in the field, but pewters don't always look as good after the dirt comes off. Fortunately this one was very solid with only the slightest of edge crumbling so I might have got away without a glue coating, but I did it anyways to be careful.
I think it turned out pretty well; definitely a keeper and a perfect display button.
Awesome site, awesome pieces of history, and a really good day! Gotta love it when those long shots pay off.
I circled it once without any strong signals, but scattered iron tones were around so I dug after a higher sounding one. That ended up being a very crusty pewter button in the hole with a rosehead nail; that's a good sign!
A foot away was a low tone that ended up being a small tombac. At this point I was sure I was onto something so I did a tight grid around the depression and finally got a nice strong tone which was a rat-tail pewter spoon bowl!
The targets were sparse and spread apart very evenly which tells me the site wasn't occupied for very long. The buttons are universally 18th century:
Some nicely engraved tombacs, cast pewter, one bone-backed gilt button, and half of a blowhole button so definitely an early spot for the area!
There was one section towards the river that could have been the trash pit. I say that because the targets were extremely deep and it was the only spot that I found any sort of relic concentration, but even that was only a half dozen or so. This included two full Georgian period shoe buckles, one brass and one iron.
I was chasing after a deep iron signal in the same spot and I ended up pulling out a rod stuck between some roots. Fortunately I spotted the handle of a spoon sticking out of the sidewall, and to my surprise it belonged to a full rat-tail pewter spoon!
It cracked a little during the extraction (seriously, this was 12 inches down between a half dozen roots), but remarkably it's still intact and actually pretty solid. I never find these whole and the books place the height of rat-tail spoon manufacturing between 1710 and 1740 so this is a very old spoon!
There were only two coins, one a toasted copper, but the other was a modestly well-preserved 1787 Connecticut Copper:
Pretty sure it's a Miller 36-I.1 which is R-5 (Rare), but it's definitely not my best preserved CT copper.
I found one mystery piece that I'm hoping someone recognizes and can identify. It's a long, rolled brass tube that has regular holes along the seam; almost like it was stitched together, but it's thick and sturdy brass sheet so it doesn't bend or flex at all. It tapers slightly from one end to the other too.
Very odd, and I don't have any solid guesses about what it was from.
I had circled the foundation about a dozen times and I had only found those twenty or so pieces and I couldn't believe that I had found everything. It was getting late, but I wanted at least one more find so I did another sweep and got a very faint and crummy tone from right under a tree at the edge of the hole. I knew it would be a pain getting it out, but I went for it anyway. After some hacking and cursing I teased out another small pewter button, but this one was a bit different from the other two:
Yup, Revolutionary War pewter USA button!!!
Now that's the way to end a hunt!I put it in a bag with some dirt and called it a day!
The USA was pretty clear in the field, but pewters don't always look as good after the dirt comes off. Fortunately this one was very solid with only the slightest of edge crumbling so I might have got away without a glue coating, but I did it anyways to be careful.
I think it turned out pretty well; definitely a keeper and a perfect display button.
Awesome site, awesome pieces of history, and a really good day! Gotta love it when those long shots pay off.
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