Posted on 02/17/2016 12:40:01 PM PST by Bodleian_Girl
Amateur archaeologist Tom Garner had time to kill and took a drive along Pensacola Bay in the Florida Panhandle. Spying a newly cleared lot, he poked about, hoping to find artifacts from the city's rich history dating back centuries to the Spanish explorers.
Garner stumbled upon some shards of 16th Spanish pottery.
"There it was, artifacts from the 16th century lying on the ground," said Garner, a history buff whose discovery has made him a celebrity in archaeological circles.
Experts have confirmed the find as the site of the long-lost land settlement of a doomed 1559 Spanish expedition to the Gulf Coast led by Tristan de Luna. The discovery bolsters Pensacola's claim as the first European settlement in the modern-day United States, six years before the Spanish reached St. Augustine on Florida's Atlantic seaboard. The expedition was scuttled by a hurricane in September 1559, shortly after the fleet arrived in Pensacola. Five ships sank.
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
“It would be so neat to find stuff like that...”
As long as you find it on someone else’s property! I hope it didn’t screw the landowner over too much what with further exploration, research, turning it into a National Monument or whatever.
Maybe he could leave part of the basement with a dirt floor with some pottery stuck in there and charge for tours!?
It WOULD be really cool though. One thing to find something so hold, but to find something of a “lost colony”!
:’) I liked it, and best of all, it’s a great example of FReeper work!
The discovery bolsters Pensacola’s claim as the first European settlement in the modern-day United States, six years before the Spanish reached St. Augustine on Florida’s Atlantic seaboard.
BTTT!
I have found fossils, mineral specimens, Indian artifacts, century old bottles, a few coins, and some gem material (and on drilling rigs, quite a bit of oil).
The trick is to not prejudice yourself, and see what there is, rather than look for one thing and end up ignoring others.
Sometimes, the treasure is in the looking, not the finding--if nothing else, the experience is pretty neat.
WOW!!! Bump
The oldest coin I ever found was a US shield nickel, and that was in pretty rough shape. I have never been overseas, so I haven't had a shot at the really ancient stuff from the cradle of Western Civilization.
I found a pottery making site once, where there were little balls of fired pottery clay, shell tempered, and a pretty common material in the local native pottery. The other piece I found in that bunch was a 'squish' where someone had just squished some pottery mixture and thrown it into the fire.
I could see a couple of people sitting by the fire, shooting the breeze and idly rolling bits of clay into little balls and throwing them in, and finally getting bored and squeezing the last bit and throwing it in too...
A few years later, working on an archaeological crew in Virginia, one of the crew sat on a large, flat rock, that just seemed like a good place to sit. As the rock was shaped, the comfortable way to sit was facing almost due north. They scuffed their feet and literally kicked up a pile of flake debris.
Needless to say, a grid went up, and the site was excavated. Among thousands of flakes from toolmaking were the halves of three broken bifaces (stone tools worked down, but not completed), and an odd half.
In one of the squares, to the west of the north/south line the other half was found, about 30 feet out.
('Rats! That's the fourth one I broke today!')
The guy who found the other half, sat on the rock and under the watchful eye of the crew, threw that broken half of that biface--and it landed back in the square. (Apparently, the thrower was right handed, too).
While not of "great religious significance", the look on the faces of the team in the field school was neat as they realized that these had been people, subject to the same wants, frustrations, needs, and desires as any other people down the ages; that immutable earthly force, human nature still applied.
After that, they looked at their surroundings with a new eye. Where would I want to camp? Where would be a good spot for a village? What trail would I take? and we had a great season.
Great story, thanks for posting!
I found a wholly intact, Woodland era Pre-Cherokee piece of pottery in a rock shelter 30+ years ago while messing around in the woods. Archaeologists dated it between 500 BC to 500 AD.
Donated it to a college archaeology dept. several years ago.
“The property owners then granted the university a five-day window, Nov. 6-10, to excavate about half an acre of land before construction of their new home commenced. The archaeologists and students conducted 69 shovel tests and discovered sherds of ceramics such as cookware, tableware and olive jars undisturbed beneath the ground surface.”
“Maybe he could leave part of the basement with a dirt floor with some pottery stuck in there and charge for tours!?”
Did some construction work on a house once that was sited on the edge of a sapphire and ruby ore body. There are several tourist type panning mines now but in the hay-day of the early 1900’s Tiffany’s had a mine there.
When the owner excavated the house footings he found enough gem quality ruby to pay for the entire house.
I would have put in a big pool too!
Spanish had a settlement in Georgia in 1526.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Miguel_de_Gualdape
VERY brief, but, there.
I have seen coinage from this settlement. A friend owns land on the mainland near St. Catherine’s, and, they found the coin in the yard.
Well said. So many people walk the same spot and only the guy with the open mind sees it.
Graham Hancock is kind of a bomb thrower but I like the way he presses that button of the imagination. He doesn’t come out of thin air either. He works from some sort of unexplained discovery.
We met Mel years ago in Key West. He loved to talk and wanted me to go in with him. At the time my wife was expecting our first so I decided not to. I did, however, start buying Pieces of Eight whenever I found a nice one. Sure am glad I did at least that.
It kind of hit me in the gut when I heard that Mel died. I really liked the guy as I'm sure you did too.
Cheers, and happy hunting!
Years ago, my late father had a house at the Jersey shore on a tidal creek 10 miles from Atlantic City. He had an elongated rounded rock shaped something like an Idaho potato, which he kept on the heating stove and put by his feet on cold nights. Now years later I think it may have been an Indian corn grinding stone or something like that.
:’) It would be nice if he’d passed it down, eh?
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