Seamy Treasure Hunting

[palani]

Nice to know treasure hunters still know where to look.

Quite a while back my father used to search for lost items in the latrines of Ft Huachuca in Arizona. While he did find some small things that dropped out of pockets he stated for the record "a 150 year old latrine still smells like p*ss".

Around El Moro fort in San Juan the same thing. Those 16th century Spanish soldiers on duty would lose things when they dropped trousers. People would dig around the guard towers to find old 'treasure'.



http://news.yahoo.com/down-drain-lost-items-reveal-roman-bath-activities-172335947.html

Down the Drain: Lost Items Reveal Roman Bath Activities


Ever go swimming with rings on your fingers or hoops in your ears only to find your jewelry had vanished after your dip?

If so, you've got something in common with ancient Romans.

A new study of objects lost down the drains in the bathhouses from the Roman Empire reveals that people got up to all sorts of things in these gathering places. They bathed, of course, but they also adorned themselves with trinkets, snacked on finger foods and even did needlework.

"For the Romans, the baths weren't just a place to get clean, but this larger social center where a variety of activities were taking place," said study researcher Alissa Whitmore, a doctoral candidate in archaeology at the University of Iowa

Down the drain

In the Roman Empire era, baths proliferated all over Europe for both military and civilian use. Many were quite ornate, with huge colonnades, decorative mosaics and pools ranging in temperature from frigid to steamy.

Ancient texts give some clues as to the variety of activities that took place in bathhouses, Whitmore said, but the texts are maddeningly vague on some details. So Whitmore turned to the concrete evidence: objects found in the floor and pool drains of the ruins of baths.

This early plumbing offers good insights, Whitmore told LiveScience, because it fairly certainly contains items lost or thrown away during the era of bathing. The Romans eventually abandoned the majority of their baths, leaving the structures to crumble, she said. Squatters moved in, leaving behind objects on floors and in other spots that wouldn't represent the items used when the baths were still functioning.

[madfranks]

I'm a hobby metal detectorist, and the reasons many detectorists hit the beaches is because people lose their jewelery in the sand and water. No matter where you're hunting, if you're looking for accidental drops or spills, it's a good idea to look around areas with water.

[palani]

I have plats of around 8 counties around us. These plats are around 130 years old and show as dots the locations of all the houses. Practically every 40 acres used to have a house on it. Now it is every 200 acres or so.

So comparison between present day plats and these old ones will show many locations that are now open fields that used to have house and other buildings. Metal detecting around these will turn up square nails, old door knobs and other metal debris. The oldest site we metal detected used to be a small town in 1840 with around 6 houses. Now it is a cornfield.

In the southwest in ghost towns you look around foundations of old houses. The miners used to bring back specimens and would throw them near the foundations.

Probably the best luck we had was sifting through an old mine tailing pile. The mine used to be run by Tiffany around 1900. Got some pretty good turquoise samples ... around 10 lbs worth.

[Ponce]

Best place for me was in Venice CA around the monkey bars on the beach... grown ups that wanted to show off for their families would loose all their change that I would pick up early the next morning.....on the sand people would sit down and the loose change would fall all at once in the san and I would find a "nest" of coins.........when it was crowded people would throw coins as I walked along to see if I would find them and when I did I would give them back to them because is was not an honest find...also they would pay me a dollar to find loose keys.......the good old days.

V

[madfranks]

on the sand people would sit down and the loose change would fall all at once in the san and I would find a "nest" of coins

Yep, we call those "pocket spills". I once found a pocket spill of old indian head cents outside an old cemetery, and a spill of three silver half dollars. Also once while detecting the beachfront of a local reservoir a panicked couple approached me saying the husband lost his platinum wedding band and if I could help them. Well, turns out they were swimming off of a pier where the water was well over 10' deep, so I couldn't help them, neither me nor my detector are waterproof, ha ha.

[palani]

Excellent spot is old taverns and dancehalls out in the country. Seems people are especially prone to losing things when they are tanked.

[joboo]

General rule from my experience is anywhere a lot of people were for a relatively short period of time, or where fewer numbers of people existed for long periods of time. Best case is a lot of people over a long duration, but those areas usually now built up with concrete, and very busy.

Anywhere people adjusted their clothing/belongings is game. Beach areas in the water are interesting because cold water shrinks hands, and rings slip off.