Larger copper/bronze? arrow point/knife?

[history hunter]

Well, I promised to post this one a year ago, before my comp. went out. I found this in Wisconsin about 1980 or so,by a lake. It was down about 12"+ and had a long oval shaped deposit,( which I removed). You can still see the outline of the deposit on the side of artifact. My high school teacher,(that was teaching us about artifacts), didn't even want to see it at the time. If anybody can tell me more about it, I would appreciate it. Thanks for looking. HH

 

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[animoosh]

I live in an area with super high acidity and lots of minerals. Google NC piedmont soil ph. You will see that our soil has one of the highest levels of any place on earth. As mentioned above, silver can be removed in its raw form, and a simple wipe of the dirt cleans it. Same with old silver dimes that are found here. As for the copper, green. It tarnishes in veins on quartz. You may have something with the soil PH. Still, the copper artifacts found 20 miles north of me had no tarnish. Strange!

Is it possible the copper artifacts are a more pure form of copper? I'm not sure about the actual copper content in pennies. I know I have dug up large "cartwheel" English copper pennies here and they aren't the least bit green...and most of these date to the late 1700's. Weird!!

 

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[NC field hunter]

Is it possible the copper artifacts are a more pure form of copper? I'm not sure about the actual copper content in pennies. I know I have dug up large "cartwheel" English copper pennies here and they aren't the least bit green...and most of these date to the late 1700's. Weird!!

That was my first answer to the artifact thing. Then, I thought about it. My family owns land that has copper mines on it. The quartz that they blasted out of the mines have enough copper in it's veins to tarnish boulder sized clusters pure green. I'll try to get pics tomorrow. The copper in those veins would be raw, just like it is listed on the periodic table. I'm pretty sure old pennies are pure. Zinc ones are fairly new.

 

[animoosh]

NC field hunter,
Looking forward to the pics. we just might figure this green thing out yet! Nice pics of your hunt today...I'm jealous. It's 20 degrees below here today and 2 feet of snow on the ground. Relic hunting still 4 months away here.

 

[Glenn C]

I believe with my experience with copper. The copper artifact I have found go green then a layer or red then black. I have not found pieces here that are green coming out of the ground as this color seems to be more of the early stages of copper being in the ground. The kettle metal artifacts are green but only have been in the ground for 400 plus year instead of 3-9 thousand years old like archaic pieces.

 

[GatorBoy]

Seems correct. I've been looking at some archaic pieces this morning. And ended up comparing a piece I recovered from a site down here.

 

[animoosh]

Sounds plausible to me and definitely would explain why there's never green on the ancient pieces. Thanks!

 

[Glenn C]

Here is a photo of three pieces. The middle one was exposed to air and elements as it was laying on a hill side. The bottom piece is fresh out of the ground with no cleaning which has a black crust.
The awl at the top has been cleaned with HP. It was the first price I found and did not know it was archaic and cleaned it before realizing. Further cleaning would expose green.
I believe soil conditions becomes a factor in some cases.

 

[animoosh]

Some of my copper finds from the past couple of years. Note the almost total lack of green patina. These were all surface or in the water finds.

 

[animoosh]

Sorry about the chopped up posting with the pics....still learning!