Morning walk in the rain netted a Bonaza!

Airborne80

Bronze Member
Mar 23, 2005
1,020
6
Northern Virginia
Detector(s) used
Whites XLT Classic
Teknetics Delta 4000
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Charlie and I hit the river at low tide and walked it in a pretty heavy rain this morning. On our first pass we found nothing. On the way back things took a positive turn. First.... I saw this broken trade or CW pipe just barley protruding from a large clump of clay about a foot into the river. It was a miracle that I saw it at all. When I picked up the clump, it fell apart and all I had was the piece of pipe. I did recover the clump and checked it for the stem with negative results. You can clearly see the letters, "T.D." on the face of the pipe. Next..... and only about ten feet from the pipe, I see a piece of white quartz showing through the water about a foot out. I had actually seen it on my first pass but thought it was just a rock and passed it up. Now, from a new angle, I could see that it had been worked and when I picked it up.... it had knife written all over it. Very cool piece of white quartz and the edge is still pretty darn sharp. Speaking of knives...... if anyone has a clue as how to sage this, please give me your thoughts.

The rest are flakes, a possible fishing point and two tools that I believe are scrapers. I don't have room to post the possible scrapers here, so I may post them later. Thanks for looking and as always, I hope that you are all doing well and building your collections. Stay safe.
 

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Upvote 0
hello nice find! just a bit of info on your clay pipe the letters t.d stands for "Thomas Dormer" he made pipes from 1755 into nineteenth century. i found one here in bangor maine last week with the stem still on it. hope this helps ya some. "god bless" ben & colleen.
 

Some really good finds. I am waiting for the rivers in my are to receed. Too much rain this year.
 

Cool stuff for sure!

HH

Lonewolfe
 

bottlecap4t2 said:
hello nice find! just a bit of info on your clay pipe the letters t.d stands for "Thomas Dormer" he made pipes from 1755 into nineteenth century. i found one here in bangor maine last week with the stem still on it. hope this helps ya some. "god bless" ben & colleen.

Hello B & C :D Thank you for taking the time to provide the info on the pipe. That is a huge help and is greatly appreciate. Congrats on your latest pipe find :icon_thumleft: I have found hundreds of stems and fragments but never one in as good as shape as the one I posted here.... let alone a whole one! Wow. I believe that it will happen one day because the broken pipes and this one included, all wash up in the same area. I have a feeling that a box or many boxes of them fell off of a ship while being unloaded. Who knows? Thanks again and Stay safe!
 

rjw4law said:
Some really good finds. I am waiting for the rivers in my are to receed. Too much rain this year.

Thank you and yes... low rivers are a good thing sometimes :wink: I am lucky in that the river in my area is a tidal basin so I just watch for low tide and rarely come up empty with Indian artifacts. Good luck and stay safe
 

if you find a whole clay pipe please post a pic me and the wife would like to see it. it sounds like you hit yourself a honypot i would be detecting it to death lol. what part of the country are you in "airborne80" you are very right about an old ship might have lost those clay pipes as they would import them from all around the world by ship back then. good luck and "god bless" ben & colleen.
 

bottlecap4t2 said:
if you find a whole clay pipe please post a pic me and the wife would like to see it. it sounds like you hit yourself a honypot i would be detecting it to death lol. what part of the country are you in "airborne80" you are very right about an old ship might have lost those clay pipes as they would import them from all around the world by ship back then. good luck and "god bless" ben & colleen.

Will do. I am in Northern Virginia and this is a spot that saw heavy ship activity. There is always something washing up with the tide. Its a no metal detecting zone or believe me... I would be swinging the ring every day :D Thanks again.
 

I'm by no means an expert on Indian artifacts, but I believe the quartz is a
hide scraper. Your more crude pieces are either works that were in progress,
or possibly very very old tools. Some of the earlier pieces are thousands of
years old, and were quite crude in comparison to the more modern pieces.
Nice finds!

Slabman
 

Slabman said:
I'm by no means an expert on Indian artifacts, but I believe the quartz is a
hide scraper. Your more crude pieces are either works that were in progress,
or possibly very very old tools. Some of the earlier pieces are thousands of
years old, and were quite crude in comparison to the more modern pieces.
Nice finds!

Slabman

Thanks for your thoughts on this brother. You are right on target. Since this posting, a friend sent a photo of the bottom item that I thought was a scraper to an expert in a Museum who identified it as a prehistoric Axe! He also believes that the others are as you say.... broken or incomplete prehistoric tools. The axe is between five and eight thousand years old. how cool is t hat :D Thanks again for your thoughts and now.... I am heading back to the same spot for another look before dark.
 

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