DIGS O' THE DAY (2006-01-05): AN ODE TO NAKED DIRT, RETURN TO "INDIAN HEAD ALLEY"
lordmarcovan
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DIGS O' THE DAY (2006-01-05, PART ONE): RURAL RELIC HUNTING AND AN ODE TO "NAKED DIRT"
Today's outing was to be my first time out with a detector in more than four months. It was a far nicer day to be outdoors than it had been on the steamy summer night when I'd last hunted, in August of 2005. It was sunny with blue skies, and the temperature was 73 degrees. Fall and winter are my favorite times of year to be outdoors here in the Deep South. Spring's all right, but the heat, humidity, and insects make an early appearance. I just like the cool weather, and today I planned to be outside in it for as long as possible.
I went to a rural site in the Crescent area of McIntosh County, GA, in hopes of finding some pre-Civil War relics and maybe an early coin. The bushwhacking, rugged relic hunters here are often the folks who get the really sweet coins. Though I am primarily a coinshooter, I learned a trick or two from these South Georgia relic boys, and while old coins are my primary goal, I'm always happy to dig some fascinating old relics, too.
All relic hunters try to track down old homesites. Up north, they look for abandoned cellar holes, when all other traces of an old house have long disappeared. Here in coastal Georgia, there's seldom any such thing as a cellar hole, because the ground's usually too close to the water table for anyone to have dug cellars or basements.
We have a slightly different bag of tricks. Here there's a lot of timber grown for the paper industry, so every once in a while the trees are cut and the ground is exposed before new trees are planted. There is also lots of land being bulldozed for new development. One way or another, I look for what I affectionately call "Nekkid Dirt". There's nothing like some good old naked dirt, if you live an older area. Follow those bulldozers, or get permission to hunt those farmers' fields when they're fallow, folks. Naked dirt is a beautiful thing! Not only is the digging easier, but you can pick up nonmetallic artifacts like pottery, clay pipe stems, marbles, bottles, arrowheads, and so on, if your eye is sharp. Furthermore, in naked dirt you can get a rough idea of what you've hunted and what you haven't, by looking at your own tracks.
When searching for likely relic hunting sites, we walk a naked dirt site and look for bits of oyster shell, in an area otherwise devoid of shell- it's usually a sign that people were once there. Sometimes those concentrations of shell can lead you to prehistoric Indian sites, too. High ground near rivers is good land for relic hunting. What's good real estate today has often been good real estate for thousands of years. Prior to the railroads, rivers served as the major transportation arteries in much of this nation, particularly here in the Low Country. Roads were primitive or nonexistent, so high ground near rivers is almost always good. It's not unusual to find prehistoric Indian sites, colonial era sites, and antebellum plantation sites all overlapping one another in a small area, sometimes all exposed or even jumbled together by the earthmoving that precedes most modern construction.
A small, loose concentration of oyster shell in an otherwise shell-free sand road:
If we're lucky enough to find naked dirt in a likely area, and there are concentrations of oyster shells, the next things to look for are bits of pottery or old glass. Sometimes you will find both prehistoric and colonial or antebellum pottery on the same spot. In fact, shortly after taking the picture above, I did find one small piece of plain earthenware Indian pottery, but old porcelain and glass is what to look for if you're going to be detecting for metal relics. The Indians here didn't use much (if any) metal, and there's not much stone to speak of in our sandy, coastal soil. So white bits of shell and pottery tend to stand out well in the dirt, particularly after it's rained.
Though I suppose it's practically impossible to date plain white pottery sherds without laboratory analysis, pieces with a pattern can usually tell you how old your homesite is. This particular site has yielded much early 19th century pottery in the past, and some pieces that could date to the late 18th century. So-called "black" glass is another thing to look for. It's actually a dark, olive green when held up to the light. Bits of old clay tobacco pipe stems are often found on old sites like this. Usually white in color, they might resemble small bones at first glance, with their cylindrical, tubular shape and the hole running lengthwise through them.
Early 19th century pottery sherds:
You can even often tell when other relic hunters have been there before you. An old broad hoe was right on the surface, by the side of the road. Another detectorist had obviously found it and left it there, since my last visit. These big old hoes are common finds on old plantation sites here- the slaves used them to till the fields.
A 19th century broad hoe, dug and abandoned by a previous relic hunter:
I hunted the Crescent relic site and some of the sand roads up there for an hour or two, but the homesite indicated by the shells and pottery in the pictures above has long been picked over by lots of relic hunters with big coils, so the pickings are slim indeed, unless one wishes to hack into the underbrush, which is not my idea of fun. My first detector target of 2006 proved to be a 175- to 200-year-old artifact, all right, but unfortunately it was just a rusty square-headed nail that crumbled away in my hand. The roads through this area are used by modern hunters, so aluminum cans are a problem- I dug at least a dozen of them. Ugh. One hot signal I thought was going to be a can proved otherwise- my pulse quickened when I saw a fair-sized, reddish-brown coin pop out of the dirt. It was only a 1967 clad quarter, though, stained brown by the soil, as they usually are.
Unfortunately, today I got "skunked". I struck out completely, in other words- I don't mean I literally had a skunk encounter. I suppose that could happen one of these days, though. Getting skunked (figuratively, and perhaps literally, too) is always a danger on these rural relic hunting sites. When you score, it's usually something really neat, and when you strike out, you strike out miserably. It's usually one or the other- in my case, mostly the latter. But visions of early large cents and Capped Bust silver coins dance in my head, luring me out to the country for some rural hunting now and again. I have seen some truly remarkable coins that were found by local relic hunters.
I was tired of relic hunting for the day, so I left the site and headed homeward with very little to show for my efforts but a few stray bits of pottery, a rusty nail, and a modern quarter. Alas, it appeared I was skunked again. But the day's hunting wasn't finished yet. I decided to head back to Brunswick and do some coinshooting in one of the parks- I was determined to bag an old coin on such a pleasant, unseasonably mild day, even if I had to stay out until after dark to do it.
DIGS O' THE DAY (2006-01-05, PART TWO): RETURN TO "INDIAN HEAD ALLEY"
After a rather fruitless relic hunting expedition in rural McIntosh County in the morning, I decided to switch to more urban coinshooting, and to try my Troy Shadow X2 with its bigger coil out in one of the parks in my home town. I drove back to Glynn County and the city of Brunswick, to hit one of my favorite parks- Halifax Square. By now it was late afternoon and the sun was getting lower in the sky. Though Halifax and all the major squares in Brunswick have been pounded for at least 25 years by detectorists, I thought I would try my Troy Shadow X2 out there, since it has a larger (10.5") coil, and I was hoping to find some deep coins I might have overlooked in the past. I set out to hunt in a part of the park that I'd first hunted back in 1983 or 1984 with an old TR type detector. I've since covered it many times over with more modern detectors. I've nicknamed it "Indian Head Alley", since it has produced a fair number of Indian cents for me over the years, some of them quite nice.
Part of "Indian Head Alley" in Halifax Square:
Practically all of the easier coin signals were gone years ago. Today I was digging tiny targets like buckshot and deep .22 shells and lots of bullets. Most of the signals were "iffy" and hard to get a good pinpoint or repeat signal on. I dug a few, though. About half I had to give up as "phantoms"- they were that iffy. (Dig to China, nothing there, then the signal quits. Dang, I hate it when that happens.)
Digging in "Indian Head Alley":
One signal was iffy but clear enough that I could tell there was definitely something there, probably down deep. But the signal sounded so poor I walked away.
Four or five paces away, a little voice in my head said,
"Hey, man, you're out here to find that deep, overlooked stuff, right? So why are you wimping out on some of these signals? What's the matter with you? Afraid of a little digging and root hacking?"
So I went back found the iffy signal again.
And I dug. And hacked through some roots (relatively small ones in this hole- not so bad). Heaps of fallen acorns crunched beneath my knees. It seems like the live oaks gave us a bumper crop of them this year.
Eight or nine inches down, I got a good probe signal when my electronic pinpointer sounded off at the bottom of the hole. As soon as I stirred the point of the probe in the dirt at the bottom of the hole, I saw that magical round coin shape pop out, then fall back under. So I scooped up the loose dirt from the hole and swung it over the coil of my detector, which was lying nearby.
BEEP! A loud, clear signal now. In my hand.
Ahh, I do love that moment of truth. You know when a coin comes from the bottom of an eight- to nine-inch deep hole in a proven spot like Indian Head Alley, it's going to be old. The last Indian cent I'd dug there was at least five and a half inches down.
Thank you, Little Voice In My Head. I should listen to you more often.
I just brought up a coin from eight or nine inches! Look at the tip of my knife:
Rubbing the loose soil off the coin, I could see... an Indian Head!
An 1881 Indian cent sees the light of day, for the first time in a century or so:
Many of the Indian cents I've found in this area were deep, from the 1880's, and many were in fairly high grade. This one was deep and from the 1880's, but it had seen some circulation and probably would grade Good (G4), so it may have been lost around the turn of the last century. It's not the most spectacular find, but it put a big grin on my face. It's also an encouraging sign that there are other goodies sleeping deep beneath some of those overhunted hotspots. Deeper coins like this are elusive game and it takes patience and concentration to bag one, but it's always a nice feeling. This is my 39th Indian cent and the 285th "keeper" coin in my "Digger's Diary" album.
~RWS
INDEX OF DIG STORIES
Today's outing was to be my first time out with a detector in more than four months. It was a far nicer day to be outdoors than it had been on the steamy summer night when I'd last hunted, in August of 2005. It was sunny with blue skies, and the temperature was 73 degrees. Fall and winter are my favorite times of year to be outdoors here in the Deep South. Spring's all right, but the heat, humidity, and insects make an early appearance. I just like the cool weather, and today I planned to be outside in it for as long as possible.
I went to a rural site in the Crescent area of McIntosh County, GA, in hopes of finding some pre-Civil War relics and maybe an early coin. The bushwhacking, rugged relic hunters here are often the folks who get the really sweet coins. Though I am primarily a coinshooter, I learned a trick or two from these South Georgia relic boys, and while old coins are my primary goal, I'm always happy to dig some fascinating old relics, too.
All relic hunters try to track down old homesites. Up north, they look for abandoned cellar holes, when all other traces of an old house have long disappeared. Here in coastal Georgia, there's seldom any such thing as a cellar hole, because the ground's usually too close to the water table for anyone to have dug cellars or basements.
We have a slightly different bag of tricks. Here there's a lot of timber grown for the paper industry, so every once in a while the trees are cut and the ground is exposed before new trees are planted. There is also lots of land being bulldozed for new development. One way or another, I look for what I affectionately call "Nekkid Dirt". There's nothing like some good old naked dirt, if you live an older area. Follow those bulldozers, or get permission to hunt those farmers' fields when they're fallow, folks. Naked dirt is a beautiful thing! Not only is the digging easier, but you can pick up nonmetallic artifacts like pottery, clay pipe stems, marbles, bottles, arrowheads, and so on, if your eye is sharp. Furthermore, in naked dirt you can get a rough idea of what you've hunted and what you haven't, by looking at your own tracks.
When searching for likely relic hunting sites, we walk a naked dirt site and look for bits of oyster shell, in an area otherwise devoid of shell- it's usually a sign that people were once there. Sometimes those concentrations of shell can lead you to prehistoric Indian sites, too. High ground near rivers is good land for relic hunting. What's good real estate today has often been good real estate for thousands of years. Prior to the railroads, rivers served as the major transportation arteries in much of this nation, particularly here in the Low Country. Roads were primitive or nonexistent, so high ground near rivers is almost always good. It's not unusual to find prehistoric Indian sites, colonial era sites, and antebellum plantation sites all overlapping one another in a small area, sometimes all exposed or even jumbled together by the earthmoving that precedes most modern construction.
A small, loose concentration of oyster shell in an otherwise shell-free sand road:
If we're lucky enough to find naked dirt in a likely area, and there are concentrations of oyster shells, the next things to look for are bits of pottery or old glass. Sometimes you will find both prehistoric and colonial or antebellum pottery on the same spot. In fact, shortly after taking the picture above, I did find one small piece of plain earthenware Indian pottery, but old porcelain and glass is what to look for if you're going to be detecting for metal relics. The Indians here didn't use much (if any) metal, and there's not much stone to speak of in our sandy, coastal soil. So white bits of shell and pottery tend to stand out well in the dirt, particularly after it's rained.
Though I suppose it's practically impossible to date plain white pottery sherds without laboratory analysis, pieces with a pattern can usually tell you how old your homesite is. This particular site has yielded much early 19th century pottery in the past, and some pieces that could date to the late 18th century. So-called "black" glass is another thing to look for. It's actually a dark, olive green when held up to the light. Bits of old clay tobacco pipe stems are often found on old sites like this. Usually white in color, they might resemble small bones at first glance, with their cylindrical, tubular shape and the hole running lengthwise through them.
Early 19th century pottery sherds:
You can even often tell when other relic hunters have been there before you. An old broad hoe was right on the surface, by the side of the road. Another detectorist had obviously found it and left it there, since my last visit. These big old hoes are common finds on old plantation sites here- the slaves used them to till the fields.
A 19th century broad hoe, dug and abandoned by a previous relic hunter:
I hunted the Crescent relic site and some of the sand roads up there for an hour or two, but the homesite indicated by the shells and pottery in the pictures above has long been picked over by lots of relic hunters with big coils, so the pickings are slim indeed, unless one wishes to hack into the underbrush, which is not my idea of fun. My first detector target of 2006 proved to be a 175- to 200-year-old artifact, all right, but unfortunately it was just a rusty square-headed nail that crumbled away in my hand. The roads through this area are used by modern hunters, so aluminum cans are a problem- I dug at least a dozen of them. Ugh. One hot signal I thought was going to be a can proved otherwise- my pulse quickened when I saw a fair-sized, reddish-brown coin pop out of the dirt. It was only a 1967 clad quarter, though, stained brown by the soil, as they usually are.
Unfortunately, today I got "skunked". I struck out completely, in other words- I don't mean I literally had a skunk encounter. I suppose that could happen one of these days, though. Getting skunked (figuratively, and perhaps literally, too) is always a danger on these rural relic hunting sites. When you score, it's usually something really neat, and when you strike out, you strike out miserably. It's usually one or the other- in my case, mostly the latter. But visions of early large cents and Capped Bust silver coins dance in my head, luring me out to the country for some rural hunting now and again. I have seen some truly remarkable coins that were found by local relic hunters.
I was tired of relic hunting for the day, so I left the site and headed homeward with very little to show for my efforts but a few stray bits of pottery, a rusty nail, and a modern quarter. Alas, it appeared I was skunked again. But the day's hunting wasn't finished yet. I decided to head back to Brunswick and do some coinshooting in one of the parks- I was determined to bag an old coin on such a pleasant, unseasonably mild day, even if I had to stay out until after dark to do it.
DIGS O' THE DAY (2006-01-05, PART TWO): RETURN TO "INDIAN HEAD ALLEY"
After a rather fruitless relic hunting expedition in rural McIntosh County in the morning, I decided to switch to more urban coinshooting, and to try my Troy Shadow X2 with its bigger coil out in one of the parks in my home town. I drove back to Glynn County and the city of Brunswick, to hit one of my favorite parks- Halifax Square. By now it was late afternoon and the sun was getting lower in the sky. Though Halifax and all the major squares in Brunswick have been pounded for at least 25 years by detectorists, I thought I would try my Troy Shadow X2 out there, since it has a larger (10.5") coil, and I was hoping to find some deep coins I might have overlooked in the past. I set out to hunt in a part of the park that I'd first hunted back in 1983 or 1984 with an old TR type detector. I've since covered it many times over with more modern detectors. I've nicknamed it "Indian Head Alley", since it has produced a fair number of Indian cents for me over the years, some of them quite nice.
Part of "Indian Head Alley" in Halifax Square:
Practically all of the easier coin signals were gone years ago. Today I was digging tiny targets like buckshot and deep .22 shells and lots of bullets. Most of the signals were "iffy" and hard to get a good pinpoint or repeat signal on. I dug a few, though. About half I had to give up as "phantoms"- they were that iffy. (Dig to China, nothing there, then the signal quits. Dang, I hate it when that happens.)
Digging in "Indian Head Alley":
One signal was iffy but clear enough that I could tell there was definitely something there, probably down deep. But the signal sounded so poor I walked away.
Four or five paces away, a little voice in my head said,
"Hey, man, you're out here to find that deep, overlooked stuff, right? So why are you wimping out on some of these signals? What's the matter with you? Afraid of a little digging and root hacking?"
So I went back found the iffy signal again.
And I dug. And hacked through some roots (relatively small ones in this hole- not so bad). Heaps of fallen acorns crunched beneath my knees. It seems like the live oaks gave us a bumper crop of them this year.
Eight or nine inches down, I got a good probe signal when my electronic pinpointer sounded off at the bottom of the hole. As soon as I stirred the point of the probe in the dirt at the bottom of the hole, I saw that magical round coin shape pop out, then fall back under. So I scooped up the loose dirt from the hole and swung it over the coil of my detector, which was lying nearby.
BEEP! A loud, clear signal now. In my hand.
Ahh, I do love that moment of truth. You know when a coin comes from the bottom of an eight- to nine-inch deep hole in a proven spot like Indian Head Alley, it's going to be old. The last Indian cent I'd dug there was at least five and a half inches down.
Thank you, Little Voice In My Head. I should listen to you more often.
I just brought up a coin from eight or nine inches! Look at the tip of my knife:
Rubbing the loose soil off the coin, I could see... an Indian Head!
An 1881 Indian cent sees the light of day, for the first time in a century or so:
Many of the Indian cents I've found in this area were deep, from the 1880's, and many were in fairly high grade. This one was deep and from the 1880's, but it had seen some circulation and probably would grade Good (G4), so it may have been lost around the turn of the last century. It's not the most spectacular find, but it put a big grin on my face. It's also an encouraging sign that there are other goodies sleeping deep beneath some of those overhunted hotspots. Deeper coins like this are elusive game and it takes patience and concentration to bag one, but it's always a nice feeling. This is my 39th Indian cent and the 285th "keeper" coin in my "Digger's Diary" album.
~RWS
INDEX OF DIG STORIES
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