Gold Prospecting - Fisher Labs F75 User Manual

Detecting Activities (continued)
Relic Hunting (continued)
Before you go relic hunting, obtain permission from the property owner. If you intend to
hunt on public land, check first with the administrator to make sure it's not illegal. Certain
kinds of sites, on both public and private land, are protected by law from relic hunting. If
there is a metal detecting club in your area, some of the members will probably know what
the laws are in that area and which sites are, and are not off, limits.
Relic hunting is most rewarding if you have an avid interest in history. In many cases, the
value of a relic is not the object itself, but the story it's a part of -- what historians call
context and archeologists call provenance. A few pieces of rusty metal can tell the story of
life in a specific place, or that of a specific family or person from hundreds of years ago.
They can capture our imagination and help to give context to our lives today.
The value and context of a find can be readily lost without proper documentation and
storage. Add finds to your collection with care. Take the trouble to understand the site you
are searching and keep track of where you find things. Describe exactly how and where
items where found. Consider including a sketch of the site with your finds. Organization
techniques might include storing together all finds from the same site. Alternatively, if you
have an interest in specific items, like buttons, make a button collection, and within that
collection, document the circumstances surrounding each button found. If your finds are
mixed together, without categorization or documentation, their context will be lost.
The ground balancing and Fe O bar graph features of the F75 can be used to map the soils
3 4
of a site. In this way you might determine which areas have been dug, backfilled, or
subjected to fire. This information in turn helps to reveal the history of the site.
To find promising sites to hunt, conduct research at your local library, look for clues in old
newspapers, and seek information on the internet. Where did buildings used to be? Which
have since been torn down? Where did people gather for public events like dances and
county fairs? Where did train and stage lines run? Where were the swimming holes? In
almost every town there is a historical society and museum of local history. Most
museums are grateful for anything they can put on display, and when you dig something
you cannot identify, the curator can often identify it for you. If you work closely with the
local historical society or museum, landowners will be more willing to grant you
permission to search their property.
Some of the most promising sites for relic hunting are places being cleared for
development. After the site is built on, whatever is in the ground will become inaccessible.
The property owner can often be persuaded that the site should be searched immediately
while it is still searchable.

Gold Prospecting

In the United States, gold is found in many places in the western states, Alaska, and in a
few localities in the Appalachians. The old saying "Gold is where you find it", means that
to find gold, you should look in areas where the yellow metal is known to be present.
34