Cache Hunting - Discovering A Hoard of Silver Hammered Coins (Story 14)
Harvesting All Coins Out of "Coin-Spread" in the Field
Next time came around only a week later. The landscape got greener as the Spring was now in full swing. In this phase of cache hunting process, Misha and I had to recover all coins from the "coin-spread," if there was one, determine its shape and then pinpoint the cache's core.
Since Misha already scanned the spot with XLT and found only two coins a week ago, I began to do the same with my Explorer while Misha was searching the area around.
Misha Searching for More Coins
As soon as I started detecting the spot in a circular pattern, I received a "pull-tab" signal. It is common to find the modern non-ferrous junk such as pull-tabs, beer cans, bottle crown-caps, aluminum wire, etc. dropped by the farm tractor operators in the fields.
To my surprise, a brass jetton, circa 17th century, showed up in the hole. These brass jettons were produced by the Western-European merchants to substitute real coins in trade. For some unknown reason, most of such jettons usually have holes in them just like this one.
In a minute, I got a better surprise: I received a weak signal of a soft and high-pitched tone. Without a doubt I knew that now I got a silver hammered coin! To my satisfaction, a silver piece gleamed to me from the dirt.
1547-1584 1 Kopeck, Czar Ivan IV Vasiljevich
The spot did not have any cultural layer - no brick fragments, no pottery, no dark soil, however, a few iron nails were present here and there in the ground. In cases like this, a couple of any iron junk objects should be dug up and examined in order to either determine or confirm the age of the site. So I unearthed two pieces of small iron square nails which turned out to be as old as the hammered coins and allowed me to assume that a small shed, not a dwelling, stood here 500 years ago.
Iron Square Nails Were Present at This Spot
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