Bill D. (VA)
Silver Member
Team Dan & Bill got out again over the weekend to make a return visit to our site that's recently produced a ton of buttons and other early artifacts. After dealing with some partially frozen ground for a couple hours we decided to check out the adjacent woods which quickly sloped down to a nice spring stream. We started noticing a lot of iron as soon as we entered the woods, but decided to head down and check out the stream first. It was at the bottom of a narrow gorge and was loaded with smooth river rocks as well as plenty of huge scallop and clam shells which had been eroding into the stream from the steep bank. We also noticed a lot of brick as well as some black glass. Soon we were getting some large, deep iron signals and began to quickly pull out some interesting items. I started out with a little mini colonial plantation hoe that had an offset collar which was rather unique. I quickly followed that with a huge early, rectangular hoe in nice shape. Both of these items were 18-24" down and it was tough digging through all the rocks and shells to recover them. All this time Dan was working on his own deep iron signal, and ended up digging the best find from the stream which he'll tell you about in his post. I also recovered a colonial flat iron minus the handle and a giant iron bell with an intact but heavily corroded clapper. I definitely have my work cut out for me in the electrolysis department. I also recovered some iron pot frags as well as a large piece to the base of a colonial brazier. The pic below shows what the original brazier would have looked like.
We decided to end our hunt here so we could move on to check out a new site we had just gotten permission for. We knew from our research that a well-know CW home used to exist on this site, and we believed it dated back to colonial times as evidenced by our land patent study. As soon as I walked out into the field near the iron patch my first target was a large, high tone signal that I was sure would be junk. But I was quite shocked when I unearthed a sword belt plate with a great green patina, although it had been damaged by the plow. Not sure of the exact age of this item, so if any of you CW experts can help with that it would be appreciated. We hunted the site for about 3 hours, and the overall quantity of finds was a little disappointing. Plus, we hadn't been able to recover anything purely colonial which was puzzling. That was until near the end of the hunt when I was again surprised when a heavily clipped spanish cob revealed itself in the mud soup. It's not in the best shape and the details are not sharp, but I'll take it. The pic below shows the sloppy mudhole I pulled the cob from. Shortly thereafter we called it quits for the day, and started looking forward to returning to both sites again soon. Had a blast as usual Dan!
** Sorry for the random order of the pics but the system jumbled them up during upload (which seems to be a common problem).
We decided to end our hunt here so we could move on to check out a new site we had just gotten permission for. We knew from our research that a well-know CW home used to exist on this site, and we believed it dated back to colonial times as evidenced by our land patent study. As soon as I walked out into the field near the iron patch my first target was a large, high tone signal that I was sure would be junk. But I was quite shocked when I unearthed a sword belt plate with a great green patina, although it had been damaged by the plow. Not sure of the exact age of this item, so if any of you CW experts can help with that it would be appreciated. We hunted the site for about 3 hours, and the overall quantity of finds was a little disappointing. Plus, we hadn't been able to recover anything purely colonial which was puzzling. That was until near the end of the hunt when I was again surprised when a heavily clipped spanish cob revealed itself in the mud soup. It's not in the best shape and the details are not sharp, but I'll take it. The pic below shows the sloppy mudhole I pulled the cob from. Shortly thereafter we called it quits for the day, and started looking forward to returning to both sites again soon. Had a blast as usual Dan!
** Sorry for the random order of the pics but the system jumbled them up during upload (which seems to be a common problem).
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She would have been a beauty with that patina! I tried naming my photos starting with the number of the order I wanted them to appear: 1xxxx, 2xxxx, etc. It actually worked the one time I tried that.
. I'll say I'd be pretty stoked to get those in one hunt.
