Bill D. (VA)
Silver Member
My good friend and hunting partner Dan and I got in another couple of short 1/2 day hunts at our new colonial site recently. This place is continuing to produce finds from the mid-1600s to the early 1800s, and has been especially hot on buttons as we've dug nearly 150 between us in about 16 hours of hunting there. But after digging 6 colonial coins in our first 2 trips we've been skunked in that department the last 2 outings. Yesterday it was starting to get a little harder to put our coils over a keeper, plus the ground was a little on the funky side and played a few tricks on us. In spite of those difficulties I got lucky and pulled a first for me by recovering a complete and undamaged 17th century latten "trifid" spoon complete with maker's mark from about 14" down. These style spoons were generally manufactured between 1650 and 1700, but I believe this is an early one. I was reading in my reference book ("Old Base Metal Spoons" - thanks Casper!) that up to 1660 only a mark in the spoon bowl was used, and thereafter 2 or 3 markings were added on the back of the stem. Since my spoon doesn't have any marks on the stem I'm going to assume it dates to about 1650-1660. The maker's mark is one I've seen before with the 3 spoons(?) or lobes along with the maker's initials "SN". According to my book the original list of latten spoon makers was lost many years ago so there's no way to ascertain the maker's name. Regardless, I'm very happy with this find and it's probably the best recovery I've made at this site so far as it's a rare feat to dig a complete trifid spoon. Dan and I also spent a while yesterday probing and digging a little more in the pit that produced some large milk pan shards the last time out, and a nice mallet bottle spout was recovered yesterday as well. We believe the area sloping away from the huge debris field is a broad and shallow dump with no real concentration of trash. But with a little patience and hard work I'm sure we can make some nice random recoveries from this area.
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Congrats again,
In my book I think something like this belongs up top myself as it would be one of the first of it's type & has the age factor going for it.But like a lot of other things I've seen on here most don't understand.Until you told them to go dig one here in the states.
