Crow
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- Jan 28, 2005
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- #61
In 2014, and archeologist with a metal detector picked up the first of the mysterious coins in a meadow on Aquidneck Island that was once the site of a colonial township.
"You never field-clean a coin, because you could damage it," he said. "I had to run to my car and get a big bottle of water… the mud came off, and I saw this Arabic script on the coin and I was amazed, because I knew exactly where it'd come from," he said. "I was aware that the American colonies had been bases of operation for piracy in the late 17th century."
Studies of the Arabic writing on the coin showed it had been minted in Yemen in southern Arabia in 1693, just a few years before the pirate attack on the Ganj-i-sawai. Another 13 have been found, mostly by metal detectorists, but the latest in 2018 by archaeologists in Connecticut; two Ottoman Turkish silver coins thought to be from the same hoard have also been unearthed in the region.
Bailey the discoverer has carefully studied each of the discoveries, while researching historical sources about the pirates who might have brought the coins to the Americas; and in 2017, some of his work was published in the Colonial Newsletter, a research journal published by the American Numismatic Society.
you can see pictures of his find below.
Crow
"You never field-clean a coin, because you could damage it," he said. "I had to run to my car and get a big bottle of water… the mud came off, and I saw this Arabic script on the coin and I was amazed, because I knew exactly where it'd come from," he said. "I was aware that the American colonies had been bases of operation for piracy in the late 17th century."
Studies of the Arabic writing on the coin showed it had been minted in Yemen in southern Arabia in 1693, just a few years before the pirate attack on the Ganj-i-sawai. Another 13 have been found, mostly by metal detectorists, but the latest in 2018 by archaeologists in Connecticut; two Ottoman Turkish silver coins thought to be from the same hoard have also been unearthed in the region.
Bailey the discoverer has carefully studied each of the discoveries, while researching historical sources about the pirates who might have brought the coins to the Americas; and in 2017, some of his work was published in the Colonial Newsletter, a research journal published by the American Numismatic Society.
you can see pictures of his find below.
Crow