Brutal hunt: high heat and humidity where the finds didn't justify

[MangoAve]

Saturday there was a bit of on/off rain but I could have gotten out... After last week's ordeal I was given a specific time to be home, and it was incorrect. Just have to make up for it the next few days. Sunday I went up to the mass of cellar holes I know about and went specifically to the one where I pulled up a few buckles. There were a total of four (and a half) cellars that I hit along the same road. This time I tried to hit it harder, much harder, but I didn't get the luck. I did pull up a few what's it's tho that I hope to get identified. There is one ring that is oval for some reason. As you can see, this area must be big for canning because I pulled up another three jar lids with the porcelain inserts. I have no idea what the half circle item is, and it is large. It was found somewhere at the base of a tree between the cellar and the road. I believe it was the middle tree for the pic of the smaller cellar. Out back I might have spotted a cabin site. There was a rectangular outline of stones, no depression, a bunch of iron nail targets, and it definitely wasn't a barn. The barns were across the street built into the hillside. Back by that area I pulled up a piece that brass but with high copper content. It reminds me of a crown but there is a reason why it has the "teeth" on it. As the pic of cellar was taken facing the road, to the far right partially up the hill is where I got the cap/escutcheon. Man is it large and it rang above a silver dollar VDI.


The second cellar I had to take a panoramic pic of. Look at it closely and see how immense it really was. I got some brass plate with the specific cut-out in the middle. I have seen one of these before but I can't remember where to even try and identify it myself. In the all finds pic there is a log splitting wedge I found out front. I even noticed this pathway and a single step stone. There was a planting trowel unearthed there. In the far back I got some huge nails. One is in great shape.


Cellar number three had a fresh bike/walking path so there wasn't much pulled from there. Cellar number four I actually didn't find. I did locate the well. There were a few areas with some iron and there was an area with a depression, but given how none of the holes in the area are filled or gone... this depression wouldn't have been it. It looked more like the place where they would park the carriage/buggy. Yet, even tho there should have been a cellar close to the spot were the carriages were parked and it wasn't there. I only found blackberry bushes.

Any ideas on the brass band with the teeth, or plate with cut-out, or semi-circle piece? The larger oval ring would be a bonus. Boy does it suck to read a good VDI for those and pull up an iron ring.

[OxShoeDrew]

Jim, the plate with cut-out is a boot heel plate. To the right of the three nails looks to be a lantern piece. The track is deer
Nice stone work on that foundation. Nice pics too!

[Isaac]

Nice boot heel plate!!!!! I'd swing around that last site if I were you... if there's no visible cellar it could be a cabin site and the chimney rocks could be buried... congrats

[MangoAve]

Jim, the plate with cut-out is a boot heel plate. To the right of the three nails looks to be a lantern piece. The track is deer
Nice stone work on that foundation. Nice pics too!

Hey, I knew it looked familiar. My first heel plate. Amazing how I can comment on a post about whether or not one if from the CW based upon the heart or clover or cross design but I didn't recognize this piece. Lol. Are you thinking that big "escutcheon" would be either the base or the top to the lantern? I could easily see a lantern put slightly up the hill outside like a lamp post light. Drew, I was hunting wabbit, not deer. Lol. Jk I was looking for Bambi. That foundation looked like it had two center chimneys and for some reason the left side of basement was separated. I wonder if it was possible they had a root cellar as part of cellar hole. Or it could have been an addition.

[MangoAve]

Nice boot heel plate!!!!! I'd swing around that last site if I were you... if there's no visible cellar it could be a cabin site and the chimney rocks could be buried... congrats

Thanks Isaac. I am not so sure on the last place being a cabin site. But being hard to find, it might be worth a second look. I drew up what I could on the maps to show a bit. They are not to scale and are somewhat crude but they depict the features of each place as much as I could. #2-4 were done today. The first pic is the map of entire area covered that day pretty much taken from the old map. I had to add the orange border to kinda separate them a bit cuz the scale changes with no border it plays tricks. In #2 in the top corner is where I got the large nails. Opposite corner was heel plate. The green line in #3 is a hiking trail or biking trail (or extremely heavily traveled animal path). There was also a mound of dirt and rocks inside the 'L' shape. This hole actually had a missing block somewhere. And the other L shape to it is a depression like where they parked carriages.

Cellar #4 the town changed the intersection of the road just a bit. It looks as if they dug out an area near the intersection to use the dirt. There was a ton of modern trash there (shot gun shells, cans) and a mangled truck was in there somewhere. Pieces of it were buried. Maybe a late 60's pickup. There was another strange deep depression on the opposite side of the road. Judging from the first map how a barn can be cut into a hillside... I would say it could be a barn, but it's not. Not unless they took the foundation rocks from this large barn AND the cellar sometime after the 1860's. I drew what I could of the rock wall. It is a little sparse in areas but there was a definitive corner 'plot'. The long depression parallel to the road was open and there were all these blackberry bushes but it to me looked as the area where heavy equipment might have been at one point in the past while work was done. Public works equipment. There were two 'out of place' trees near by there, or they looked older even tho the trunks weren't that big. The bottom corner line is the edge of a hill.