Here is a great story from my friend Dave Peterson:
Hurray for Hoards!By Dave J. Peterson
Have you ever searched for a cache?
If so, you know that a hidden store of valued goods is extremely hard to find, and an actual cache recovery a very rare treasure hunting event. I think the finding of a valued hoard is about the most exciting episode a treasure hunter can hope for. Amazingly, I have had the good fortune of finding two hoards in less than a week! You can imagine my great delight at unearthing two collections in so short a time. The first accumulation probably is a common hoard for the area of Europe we were searching. The second cache is so rare that I have seen no equivalent objects in museums in the United States or Europe.
The treasure hunting excursion that resulted in two hoards in one week began at a U.S. Army base in West Germany. My son, nephew, and I made arrangements to meet two German treasure hunters at the front gate of the army post. Our party assembled and we discussed various treasure hunting ventures for the coming week. We agreed on the ultimate destination of the flea market at Vienna, Austria, because we wished to rummage through the market, looking for treasure hunting related bargains. We decided on some sites we could search along the way.
We arrived at our first destination near an abandoned castle in ruins, parked our camping van, and organized our equipment. The search location was about a one-mile walk, so each hunter carefully stowed in a backpack the appropriate equipment for an allday search. We each started for the agreed upon locality by different routes. My colleagues took rather direct courses to the hunt area, but I decided to range through the surrounding hills and arrive by a longer passage. I unlimbered my Garrett Master Hunter 7 and began detecting on the way to the assembly zone.
After random detecting for a time, I entered a rather small, obscure ravine leading off a little used dirt road and continued my searching. As the detector's searchcoil passed over a pile of rocks, a joyously loud sound emitted from my headphones. I surmised that a large portion of metal was beneath the rocks. I began removing rocks slowly, because I suspected some sort of hoard was hidden under the stones. I wanted to cherish an remember each second of the recovery. because cache finding is such a rare rreasure hunting occurence and truly a TH'er's peak experience.
As each stone was uprooted, the cause of my detector's long and loud signal began to unfold. The first object to come into view was a WWII Nazi Sturmgewehr 44 machine pistol! More shifting of rocks revealed all sorts of gun barrels, bolts, and ammunition. I could contain myself myself no longer to the slow rock-removing pace and quickened my efforts into a frenzied exertion! It seemed I had located the burial place of a number of WWII Nazi military arms. Hearing a sound in the distance, I investigated and found my son detecting in the vicinity. I called him over to help excavate the remaining cache contents, a task he enthusiastically endorsed. We succeeded in removing all the metal items from their hiding place. We had quite a number of WWII Nazi weapons and an early 1800s double barrel shotgun. All the weapons were heavily rusted, and the barrels were sawed in half, with the exception of a pistol which was intacr and rusted tight into a socked position. Later in the day we saved the items that we considered the best and returned the rest to their rocky, forested grave.
We rounded up our other TH'er friends to let them view the arms and speculate as to who buried the weapons and why. The most plausible theory that emerged was this: After WWII it was illegal for anyone to own weapons of any kind in this area. Apparently a person or group of people had weapons and had to get rid of them. The barrels were cut into halfs to render the guns useless. The arms were then transported to a remote area of a forest and hidden.
The hoard of WWII Nazi weapons was the best find of the day. Although greatly rusted and inoperative, they were valued highly by my fellow TH'ers. During the remainder of the trip, these guns were a constant subject of negotiation when other good artifacts were found and my friends wished to trade with me. At the end of the trip I did trade because I didn't wish to risk taking even rusted ubworkable arms aboard an aircraft.
Several days later our group was again heading through rough country toward a site, but I decided to search on a very prominent hilltop instead. I struggled t,o gain the summit, put together the Garrett, and had at it,
I searched fruitlessly for several hours until I got a large, loud signal. This sound was not as dramatic as the Nazi weapons cache sound, but still mighty enough to get me excited all over again! I got my paratrooper shovel and started working.
After one foot deep I uncovered a gray object about five inches long and of a peculiar shape. I knew it was something good. but what? Even in my agitated state of finding a neat object, I remembered to check the hole again. Behold, I received yet another signal! More investigation produced an object just like the first piece. I determined by the heavy weight of the objects and a scratch through the heavy patina that these items were made of lead.
When the TH'ers assembled at the end of our hunting period. I displayed my finds to the gathering, hoping someone could identify what I had found. The group was stunned at my good fortune of finding still another hoard. My items were positively identified as being in the shape of a Celtic axes were always made of bronze and cast in a rock or bronze mold. My palstaves were shaped similar to those of the middle Bronze Age, which dated them well over 3000 years old! The thick patina indicated that the axes were indeed ancient. But lead is a soft metal. too soft for use as an ax. Why would these ax shapes be cast of lead?
I think the following hypothesis is sensible: In ancient times all metals were rare and extremely valuable. Perhaps a metal worker living near the hill had many bits and pieces of lead in a collection. The metal worker probably had a mold for making the common bronze axes. The person simply melted the lead and used the mold to form the two valuable larger pieces, which were easier to handle than many odd bits of lead. Celts often buried valued objets in sacred places for spiritual reasons. Perhaps the axes were some sort of religious offering.
One thing is certain though: lead, 3000-year-old Celtic palstaves are unique. I have seen a number of bronze Celtic palstaves of varying ages in museums, but never cast of lead. Bronze palstaves, though scarce, are occasionally found by European detectorists. A bronze palstave often sells for a minimum of $500. We have no idea how to value the lead ones because the lead axes I found may be the only known ones in the world. My European treasure hunter friend is finding the best museum home for the axes, because a good museum is the most appropriate place for them.
Finding two hoards in a short period certainly convinces me to be an advocate of the cache hunting aspect of treasure hunting. However, searching for caches requires a lot of patience. When I was moving about looking for a hoard, my friends were concentrating on a single site and finding good items one by one. Still, I like the notion of hitting the "big time" in one fell swoop. So hurrah for hoards! I can't wait to assemble my red-hot hoard hunter and find the next one!
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