Friday 18 January 2013

Depth Advantage: Massive Gold Detector Find in Searched-Out Area


An  unidentified Australian metal detector user astonished experts last week by unearthing a gold nugget weighing 5.5kg  and worth USD $315,000 near the town of Ballarat in the  state of Victoria. The nugget was lying 60cm underground.
Local gold experts say gold has been prospected in the area for decades, but no such discovery had been made before. "I have been a prospector and dealer for two decades, and cannot remember the last time a nugget over 100 ounces (2.8kg) has been found locally," said Cordell Kent, owner of the Ballarat Mining Exchange Gold Shop. "It's extremely significant as a mineral specimen. We are 162 years into a gold rush and Ballarat is still producing nuggets - it's unheard of." [...] He told Australian media the prospector had been using a state-of-the-art metal detector, which meant he was able to find the gold relatively deep underground in an area which had been searched many times in the past
Yet British archaeologists continue to underestimate the significance of these state-of-the-art detectors now available and those still being developed for policies on artefact hunting and collecting.


'Australian amateur prospector finds massive gold nugget', BBC News 17 January 2013

Vignette: Aussie tekkie


2 comments:

David Gill said...

For a discussion of why depth is important see here.

Anonymous said...

But of course depth is important only insofar as it relates to plough soil depth.

While the latter hasn't increased since that paper was written (and may in fact have decreased), the depth to which detectors can reach increased dramatically just after that publication.

For me, the juxtaposition of detectors capable of reaching to 24 inches with this table of ploughing depths http://farmingforum.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=6860 illustrates a problem that is yet to be acknowledged, still less to be addressed.

 
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