Artifacts - Bag it and Tag it!

I am always amazed at the number and quality of finds in the world of the metal detecting hobbyist! Coins, artifacts, and who-knows-what come up everywhere; spoons, tokens, hardware, bullets and shotgun shell remains to name a few. All very impressive sleuthing by folks that take history seriously and bring many inorganic remains of a previous people back into the public domain. People who were going about their everyday lives, without an inkling that people of the future, 100 or 150 or even 200 or 500 years in the future would be interested in the mundane aspects of their technology and lives.

One thing I have in common with archaeologists is being conscious of an artifact's context with the environment it is recovered in. Most metal detecting hobbyists, and bottle collectors are NOT interested in context; they are more impressed with the object itself, more than they are interested in the precise location and orientation of the object. Or even in general terms. This is a shame, because, archaeologists are correct when they say the object's piece of the puzzle, or context, is lost forever once it is removed from it's resting place. 

Simple, home-made tools: computer-printed in and cm scale and North reference on the handle of a cleaning brush

Fun is fun and I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but I've seen literally thousands of items of all kinds, including lead musket balls, pieces of Spanish armor, and Seminole copper adornments, end up on display. However, not one of those item's locations, orientation, depth found, weight or pictures of it "in situ" were recorded. They are artifacts to be amazed at, but their story has been erased with the shove of a trowel, and yanked from history, it's narrative or origin never to be recovered.

Handheld GPS unit, or the GPS app in your phone will give you geo location data

Now, metal detecting, the hobby, as more and more and more "I'm new to the hobby!!!" people enter the ranks, is becoming more and more and more competitive. Newbies asking online about the "best" places to hunt, are more and more and more being met with crickets chirping in the background and a lonely blinking cursor. And many of the old guard are looking for new happy hunting grounds, as most of the "easy" finds have been vacuumed up in previous years, when metal detecting was not as well known or practiced, using machines that were expensive, and users that would not talk about anything involved.

computer-printed size reference scale on my Garrett Pro Pointer II

So, here we have a perfect foil for the act of documenting metal detecting finds, even for the important or amazing looking artifacts that may tell us something new about the history of that very ground that hobbyist is digging in! Take the time to record it and it's location would seem to be inadvisable in the competitive scheme of things; what if someone finds my "secret" spot??? What if archaeologists come in and make it off-limits to us??? What if an asteroid hits the Earth and we have no more places to hunt???

Keeping a record of significant finds is not a liability, it is an asset! No one is asking you to take out an ad and publicize your find...it is your find, pure and simple. However, one day, when your young son or daughter or even grandchildren, wander over to you with it, and ask "What's THIS Grandpa?" what are you gonna' say? Maybe you'll say, "I don't know, let's take it to the museum and find out!"

Use a simple and cheap, pocket rolling ruler for depth measurements

Once there, you'll pull out the dusty record of the find; geographic location, picture of it in the dig, the orientation to north, a size reference, ruler or scale of some kind, the date and time you found it, and the object itself. The museum thinks it may be a piece of bronze steam boat hardware, and a local archaeologist decides to visit the location of your find, the shore of a small river, using your record of the object's orientation, locates rotted wooden pilings in the mud. Apparently there was an unknown steamboat wharf and trading post at this location...forever unknown if it was not for YOUR find!

I think keeping records of significant finds will label us all as responsible metal detecting hobbyists, and not the looters of history we are sometimes made out to be. The tools to do so are not expensive and the work involved is minimal. If only we'll just do it! Time will tell if it was worth the effort or not.