The realities of Artifact Hunting... The cold hard truth

[The Chairman]

Do you pick it up or leave because of the law? Yeah right!!

I probably wouldn't post about it anywhere. I might really want to.

Case in point, before I knew about the law I had picked up some Native American pins off the bottom of the Santa Fe river. When I found out about it, I had already posted about them on social media. Ergo, I made sure they went to a real native American. Why? They had just busted a bunch of guys for posting about their finds on FB. Mind you, they bulldozed a site on state lands, but why take the chance?

 

[Calabash Digger]

Yeah, I follow the laws even though I strongly disagree with some of them. Hypothetically on a side note the gold coin would be missing after I passed by ! Just joking... I would NEVER set foot on State Land Artifact hunting ..They would throw the book at you...

 

[Robbyg]

I think one of the things that makes artifact hunting so frustrating is that most of it seems to be a lot deeper into the ground than most of us expect and therefore out of range of most metal detectors. I base this on my experience as a teen when I purchased a Whites underwater Metal detector with my summer earnings. I did at least 30 dives with that thing and found nothing but junk and sometimes dead coral rock remnants that had what looked like rusted metal bits staining them.

Then one day my Dad was building a swimming pool out in our backyard and after every few hours when the front loader driver would stop and take a break I would swoop in and scour the tail ends and the excavation with my metal detector looking for anything interesting. Most of the times it was just bits of metal trash but..

On the second day when he had dug down about 5 feet I checked again and my detector went off, so I just casually dug down about 6 inches and low and behold I found a British Soldiers belt buckle with inscriptions and a musket round dent in it! I was flipping excited as hell and dug around for hours looking for more but found nothing, not even a piece of a shoe, bone or anything else. I am not sure if someone was wearing it when it got hit or if they had put it up on tree for target practice, all I know was that it was not a grave. As the years have passed and I look at my own property I can visually see markers on my fence walls getting covered by dirt and grass. If I dig down 5-6" I can see the first coat of paint I put on the fence 20 years ago.

It's very subtle but the rain and wind carried dust really covers stuff over. I would bet 270+ years ago that Belt Buckle was probably just lying under the high grass. I would not even want to speculate on how much coral growth and sand will accumulated over a 250 year period but I bet its a lot.

 

[Ghost95]

Florida's laws are pretty dumb and were a knee jerk reaction to people doing lots of damage while "recreationally" looking for "artifacts" which are mainly lost or purposely discarded items like trash. They were destroying actual archeological sites and burial mounds and selling what they found. Instead of punishing the few the state made blanket laws that made criminals out of anyone who kicked up an Arrowhead or old bottle.

As it stands now, if I drop a 1971 quarter in the surf and someone comes along and finds it with a metal detector a few days later, they are breaking the law if they recover it because there is no way to prove that it hasn't been in the ground for 50 years. Stupid yes, but still the law. Stupid laws can ruin a person's life.

 

[Robbyg]

Florida's laws are pretty dumb and were a knee jerk reaction to people doing lots of damage while "recreationally" looking for "artifacts" which are mainly lost or purposely discarded items like trash. They were destroying actual archeological sites and burial mounds and selling what they found. Instead of punishing the few the state made blanket laws that made criminals out of anyone who kicked up an Arrowhead or old bottle.

As it stands now, if I drop a 1971 quarter in the surf and someone comes along and finds it with a metal detector a few days later, they are breaking the law if they recover it because there is no way to prove that it hasn't been in the ground for 50 years. Stupid yes, but still the law. Stupid laws can ruin a person's life.

I think it's more like dishonest people can ruin life for everyone.
Common sense died a long time ago! Today if you put a sensible law into place the Lawyers pick it apart and exploit all the loop holes. Often times the only solution to the Lawyer issue is to just Ban something completely. I remember a time when conning an old person was one of the most shameful acts one could commit. Today people high five each other and think the conman is brilliant.

 

[Ghost95]

I think it's more like dishonest people can ruin life for everyone.
Common sense died a long time ago! Today if you put a sensible law into place the Lawyers pick it apart and exploit all the loop holes. Often times the only solution to the Lawyer issue is to just Ban something completely. I remember a time when conning an old person was one of the most shameful acts one could commit. Today people high five each other and think the conman is brilliant.

Yeah, as humans overall, we've really earned the asteroid that's headed our way.