A few of you have asked why i haven't posted something in a while or what have you and George been up to lately ? you guys still detecting??
well George and i are still active and volunteering with the joint collaboration of the Pequot Indian Museum and the Federal Parks and Recreation Department . this makes our 3rd year now and i think we have enough time into it to recieve our archaeological secret decoder badges lol lol . for the last few weeks we have been training new college students from the university of Connecticut (UCONN) that are working toward their school credits . we have given class presentations in the basic workings and physics of metal detecting and also given them some field work or hands on type training on the various machines that the museum has purchased these last couple of years. they're a great energenic and enthusiastic bunch to work with , it has been a lot of fun , laughs and they catch on very fast. the machines we've been showing them are the Whites dfx (3) , tdi sl and the Minelab e-trac . field work has been out at an old 17th century Indian villiage , there they have been finding iron and brass items and even glass beads and pottery shards from their use of metal detectors and practicing their traditional test pit digging and sifting methods.
this is a small group i was showing on the TDI SL
George showing how the etrac works and finding targets with the inline probe.
(I know ... George as a teacher strikes me as rather funny too rofl lol but he did a great job ||
heres a student sifting the dirt dug from a test pit
yesterday however we were called to go to a new area , the place is known as the Denison Homestead Museum which was the house of one Captain George Denison .
heres a link to alittle more info on the museum and George Denison
http://denisonhomestead.org/
and some more on the palisade archaeological hunt later on next month
http://denisonhomestead.org/venture-...the-palisades/
it is on the National Historic Registry and is strictly off limits and illegal to metal detecting (thats right ... its nice to have connectionslol lol) Captain Denison was the commander of the first Connecticut horse mounted Dragoons back in the late 1660's and lead them into battle against the Indian uprising during the King Phillip's War in 1670's.
the original home was built in the mid 1600's with a wooden palisade around it , it was later burnt to the ground and the newer 1717 house built roughly on that same site .
George and i were asked to assist the students in the back of the property as they were searching with detectors for evidence of the original house's barn , particularly looking for horse related items and to do some detecting around that same area to. the students recovered and recorded lots of older type nails as well as George and I , George also picked up a very old button it looked like it might be a tombac type but we'll know for sure in about a week. I had the finds of the day though as i found a couple of 17th century horse shoe pieces (they might even go together to form one whole shoe) , these types of early shoes are different than the type you see today.
We will be back here and also to the area George found the brass conical point last year and my ax head .
and hopefully detecting on the King Philip's War battle site soon , i'll keep you that might be interested updated about our where abouts and if we get any opportunityies to do our usual celler hunting. happy hunting all.
Dan
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Originally Posted by Sheik Yerbooty link=topic=10291.msg114015#msg114015 date=1339364867
History is awesome isn't it? |
oom Baby or whatever that show's tag line is that just gets me going every time I hear it.....can't believe I just brought it up myself, ugh!
, we also found out the students had been at work all week in the is area but really didn't find much to take note of. so we trained till about noon time and then the whole field team went on lunch , George decided to break with them and did some socializing 
lol . i took advantage and grabbed my TDI and headed to a staked out area and immediately went to work 
, i soon hear a great low conductive target 
. excited i recovered a shotgun shell 
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it and place the shell at the base of the stick and move on with the detector . the next target signal was somewhat similar but i recover a lead fragment , a good sign as the lead looks very chalky white under the brownish dirt ( a good indicator it has some age to it) . again i 
its deep , very old looking from the lead patina and i casually walk over to where the archies , students and George are at to show Dr. McBride . as he's explaining something to the group George sees me walk up and knows by the look on my face and says uh oh what did you find now , i say something your not going to find sitting on your butt , mister and give the lead piece to Kevin . he give it a good look and says thats a nice ball and looks like the right size and the patina is very good , he shows the group of now very interested students and Coinnut says to everyone thats Dan's way of saying lunchtime is over lol rofl. for the next few hours i was detecting and either tweaking or fixing some of the machines ( dfx's) for the group . i did also find a great old 1 piece button that to me looked atleast mid to early 1700's but was told by Dr. Mc Bride is could very well be from the 1637 expedition ( jokingly he says to me hey did you find the other half lol lol i laughed and said oh yeah rofl rofl) , i can't tell you how great it is to unearth something almost 400 years old from a moment in history. it really makes you wonder , just think your the first person to hold and touch this item since 1637 
. George and i feel very fortunate about our unique role at the hunts , we seem to have a free range to hunt ( while everyone else has to remain in a certain areas) , we are the detector advisors , tech specialists and have an ear to the top archaeologists in charge who like to hear our ideas and thoughts about certain aspects of this project. George and i were very happy that the field team felt it was a very productive day , the best they had all week .