June 7, 2026 Sweep of a Construction Zone Today I am back at what is now a construction site. This is the area where we did a group hunt last year. See: June 21, 2025 - An Exceptional Group Hunt . Also see: July 20, 2025 - Mark’s and Roger’s Excellent Adventure . Ground was broken to extend a road earlier this spring but being an active work site I stayed clear. It has rained a lot recently and the workers are not here so I thought this to be a perfect opportunity to metal detect along the earth works and piles of soil. Well funny how something that seems so easy from the comfort of your armchair can actually be a whole lot harder than expected. Metal detecting at a vertical angle, up and down a 6 foot pile of soil, is quite a challenge. Your muscles and shoulders get sore real quick as this is not a movement that detectorists would be using very often and certainly not for a sustained period of time. I switched my sweeping from the right side to the left side and then both hands and then a break and then I started all over again. Was it worth it? The short answer is yes. The earth piles represent an opportunity to find items that would otherwise be lost forever once the road is built. The detector did pick up buried items but I also picked out quite a few artifacts that were sitting on the surface. There had been quite a bit of rain fall and that washed and exposed numerous artifacts as confirmed by the amount of glass and ceramic that I picked up. The best piece found was a white quartz (albeit broken) arrowhead. White quartz is easily found and was a common material used by aboriginal residents of the plains. The belt buckle is probably horse tack. The four-hole button was also a surface find. What surprised me were the two large nuts that still contain a broken bolt. I can’t imagine what that would have been tied to. The nearby railroad comes to mind. The partial brick is a very early brick type, thus very old. There is also a brown chert type rock that may possibly have been knapped at some point in time. I’m going to have an expert look at that piece to confirm or negate what it is. Sometimes a rock is just a rock. Roger References: https://rocksminerals.flexiblelearning.auckland.ac.nz/rocks/ch ert.html