Determining the Location of Old Structures

shudson

Well, since I have to wait until spring before I can get out with my detector, and since I have to wait at least a week for some tresure hunting/detecting books to arrive, I've been spending my time planning a hunting excursion.

On this particular outing, one of the problems I face is that I'm not entirely sure where to start looking. I'm dealing with a roughly 1.5 km x 1 km area that at one point had a number of buildings in it maybe 300 years ago, but now it's empty.

Does anyone have any advice, or can anyone point me to a website or book that discusses maybe what to look for?

ASUtodd

Your public library will be key in finding old maps and pictures of the location.
Todd

shudson

Yeah, I should have mentioned this was a suspected pirate hideout back in the 1600's... I don't think I'll find much in the way of maps or pictures.

That said however, I do plan on raiding the provincial archives to find some other areas of interest!

millennium

My advice.......Find the largest trees on the lot ans look around them......Find trees that look out of place...such as a field full of pines and then three or four flowering plants/shrubs..Look for water.....on the lot....or the closest place that water exists... Look for trees that have wire wrapped around them 8-10 feet up in the trunk...or trees with a swollen circle around the trunk (old clothes lines that are long since gone)..Find the highest point on the property....As you sweep...start off diagonally and sweep the area, then step 5 feet over and return in the same angle, until you start finding nails...look for old pottery or broken glass...Just a few ideas...

ricko

Sounds like a real interesting site... lots of fun in store... keep us posted.. Cheers, RickO

DesertRat

Go to one of the websites offering satellite imaging of the area and look for perpendicular lines in the photos where walls, foundations, fences etc... once stood.


I started another thread here so as not to hijack this one but it shows what I was able to do with a little research. Now all I need is to get permission!! I titled the thread "Monolith revisited"

shudson

Great idea, DesertRat, I thought of that one too... unfortunately my first imagery search (Google Earth!) didn't produce any hi-res images. I'm off to the provincial archives this weekend and no doubt I'll find a ton of resources there.

I took a look at your Monolith revisited post as well... brilliant! Now THAT is how you research an area... good work!

shudson

One thing I did find out about the area though... it has a bog!! YAY!!

Call me crazy, but if you drop something on the ground you can just pick it up... but I'd imagine if you drop something in a bog, there's a good chance it's going to be hard to recover or outright lost.

That is, until some guy with a metal detector comes along some 350 years later! *crosses fingers*

lordmarcovan

Grass grows differently over buried structures. Sometimes the difference is visible to the naked eye if you know what you are looking for, often it isn't. This is why archaeologists often use infra-red photography and stuff like that.

Up north, they often look for old cellarholes in the woods. Down here in the coastal portion of the Deep South, we don't have cellars, due to our proximity to sea level and the water table. Here the way we look for vanished buildings is usually to follow the bulldozers in timber clearcuts and on construction sites, so we can look for surface clues like clusters of pottery sherds and oyster shells and clay pipestems and old glass. "Naked dirt" in some areas is more beautiful to me than a naked woman would be.

I would imagine this bare-earth surface spotting would also work to a degree on cultivated farm fields, though the surface artifacts might be more scattered there due to centuries of plowing activity.

If you have no cellarholes or brick chimney remnants or freshly-plowed "naked dirt" to assist you, but you're in a relatively low-trash, rural area that's fairly remote (and therefore somewhere without much modern trash), do this: run in all-metal mode and dig everything. You'll be able to notice the concentrations of targets. If iron nails start to become a problem, then add just the smallest amount of discrimination to knock 'em out, otherwise keep diggin' them, as those clusters of old square-headed nails are often signposts leading you to the old, vanished structures you wanna get close to.

I usually follow the "nail trail" in until they start getting frustrating, by which time I am usually close enough to the spot. Then I put the discriminator on 1 or 2 just to tune out the nails, and go to work.


PS- as far as good books go, the Ed Fedory "Relic Hunter" books are fun, and offer a few pointers here and there.

CROCKofCOINS

>>"Naked dirt" in some areas is more beautiful to me than a naked woman would be.<<


Well...humm...NEVER MIND.

Jerry

lordmarcovan