The premier episode of the 11th season of The Curse of Oak Island aired tonight with a two hour special on the History channel.
Leading up to the premier they showed a series of recap episodes over the last month.
Top 10 Ancient Structures
Top 10 Treasure Theories
Top Moments from Season Ten
Top Ten Finds of Season Ten
They also showed a few episodes in the last week to help set the stage for the premier.
Tonight in the premier they talked about the different projects that they were going to start working on. The Garden Shaft will be a bit delayed as they wait for permits again. However, they started a drilling program again to help gather more information as to how to expand the Garden Shaft.
They also talked about some of the technology that they will be working with again this year.
They seem to have a good mix of technology and investigation techniques lined up for the year.
It is good to see them again go back to tried and true archaeological procedures that better find out what has happened in the past.
One of the archaeological focuses will be the old well and also the circular stone structure on Lot 5.
Excavation started in the area of the old stone structure with the discovery of some old pottery and also a metal object found by metal detecting.
Metal detecting of course is another big part of the search again with Gary detecting on Lot 5, including the stone structure area.
The first core drilling in the Money Pit area found some soft areas which may point to a tunnel or void. They will continue to drill cores as they try to determine where the precious metal signatures are coming from in the area.
In the second core which was drilled in the Baby Blob area they again found a possible tunnel or chamber.
In the lab they looked at the item found in the area of the circular stone structure. It was highly encrusted but they were able to see that it was an iron spike and a ring for attaching something.
Gary and Rick went metal detecting on Lot 5 and found three old coins. This was the part of the premier shown in the preview yesterday.
Analysis of the coins in the lab possibly point to a Roman origin for one of them and French for another one.
A fourth coin was found on Lot 5 and they decided to bring in a numismatic expert to take a look at all of them. The expert came to the lab and showed that the third coin maybe a Tudor era English coin and that the one that the metal analysis showed as being Roman may have been from the first couple of centuries AD. The coin with the French metal analysis was possibly from India. The fourth coin had a bit more detail and the images pointed to it being a Roman coin even several centuries older than the first Roman coin.
We must remember however that coins did have mobility in ancient times so they may have traveled with sailors around the world.
This really points to the importance of the more scientific approach that they have been using recently.
Also, this made me think of an archaeologist looking at my home way in the future. The archaeologist would find Roman coins from the same time periods and also coins from all over the word in contemporary times and even some older US coins that I have collected through the years.
While waiting for permits to investigate a structure that they believe is a dam, they went on an off shore dive to gather more information about underwater structures that may be related. They found some pottery and other items near some large rocks but were unable to retrieve them without the proper permits.
In recent satellite pictures on Google Maps you can see the activity is some of the areas mentioned above. It will be interesting to see what this activity is. I have used screen shots from Google Maps to illustrate the post.
The operations at the site will probably have been completed by the time the season premiers tonight, however I have heard that there is still activity going on at the island this month. For them to stay this late in the year they must have some very good reason to stay.
What will they find this year? Will they find the slippery treasure and finally wrap up the show?
Steven
WwRI – Written with Real Intelligence
Braman's Wanderings 