A little change-of-pace colonial hunt

Bill D. (VA) · Jun 15, 2017

Yesterday I got an invite from my good buddy Stan to come up and do a little out-of-season colonial relic hunting at one of his awesome sites. This place, which dates as far back as the first half of the 17th century, has given up many amazing finds over the years. The beach is absolutely littered with early brick and black glass, and is packed full of small iron which always presents a challenge. We didn't make any killer finds, but did stumble across a small trash pit that had just recently started to erode out of the bank. As you can see in the photo, it only extends down about 3 feet and was located within 2 brick wall features, and I'm not exactly sure of their function (maybe a small ice house??). We didn't spend much time excavating it, but it was full of brick, oyster shells, pipe stems, pottery, early 1700s glass, and plenty of iron. My best finds were a heavily corroded axe and an iron stock lock, and both will be going for a swim in my electrolysis tank later today. Also shown is a complete early 1700s bottle that was recently found at this site, but unfortunately we could not bring one of those home. Thanks again Stan - that was the perfect remedy to cure my summer detecting doldrums.

metalev4 · Jun 19, 2017

I am glad you got an invite to that site Bill. Incredible history. Looking forward to see the iron cleaned up. Hopefully you guys make it back this summer to excavate the rest of that pit.