17th Century English Relic Discovered?! (Season 12) | The Curse of Oak Island

So is this a spoil smile?
Yeah, this is the latest one that Billy’s guys moved around. Craig Tester and metal detection expert Gary Dren arrive on Lot 4, located on the western side of the island. All of this stuff came from the round feature behind us.
Okay, they are continuing to search through more than 10 tons of spoils that were removed 1 year ago from a mysterious rounded stone feature located several yards to the east on Lot 5. A feature where, in addition to a mortar-like soil that may have come from more than 100 ft deep in the Money Pit area, the team has unearthed a number of stunning artifacts, including a fragment of a 17th-century English silver coin and a 14th-century lead barter token, which, like the lead cross that was discovered at Smith’s Cove in 2017, may be connected to the medieval order of the Knights Templar.
See what we’ve got waiting for us. Come back around.

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There, oh nice little signal here. Sounds good. That looks easy digging right in the rocks.
Yeah, we’ll start. Well, actually, it’s got to be on top of the rocks in the soil. It’s so small that once you hit it with your pinpointer…
Yeah, I’ll try to…
Pino. Oh, I moved it. Oh, I see it! Oh, wow. Look at that, it’s a nice little button, mate.
All right, look at that. Nice, very round. Does that mean anything to you?
Yeah, these rounded buttons were normally tunic buttons.
Okay, the loop’s still on it, is it?
Yeah.
Time period could be late 1600s to mid-1700s because it is a fancy button. This is unusual; we haven’t found any of those.
Yeah, a possible tunic or garment button. If Gary is correct that it may date back to the 17th century, could it be connected to the cut English coin that the team recently found in the spoils from the round feature on Lot 5? And perhaps also help identify who created the original Money Pit?
That’s a nice little button. Be interesting once they clean it up, what they see.
Yeah, I think we’ll put this in the bag. Another great little find. Whenever we find a button, I get excited because I know there’s a chance of getting some military insignia, which will hopefully help the archaeologists track down what has been happening on Lot 5 and hopefully the Money Pit.

Oh, nice little signal here, and it’s just there, mate.
Okay, sounds like a nonferrous.
AIP. It’s out.
Great sounding signal. Let’s see what we’ve got. What we got here, Craig?
That feels like lead. I think I know what that is.
Mate, I think that’s a coin weight.
Oh, really?
Yeah, that looks like an old coin weight. You see how it’s been sloped down on four sides? That’s what they used to do, slope them down and cut pieces off to weigh coins.
Okay, your average person wouldn’t have one of these, would it?
It would be someone kind of higher up, would have been the person like in charge of the payroll, I would imagine. That is an older style. I mean, coin weights go way, way back to Roman times, but they went out of fashion probably in the 1700s.
Okay, so this could be an old coin weight prior to modern coin minting processes. The weight of a coin would often vary. Coin weights were used by merchants as far back as 305 BC to ensure the true value of the coins they received as well as prevent counterfeiting.
Is it possible Gary and Craig found a lead coin weight? If so, might it have been used to divide up sums of treasure and perhaps be related to the high concentration of precious metals that have been detected in the Money Pit area?
That is really, really cool. Well, we’ll have to see what the archaeologists think of it.
Yeah, I’ll put it in the bag.
All right, mate, good digging.
Okay, all right, but you continue now. Hopefully we can find a gold coin.
Sounds good.

Hey, hey, hey, guys, how are you?
Hello. Good morning.
Morning.

Gary Drton joins Rick Lagina, archaeologist L. Nen, and archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan in the Oak Island lab. Rick and Gary are eager to hear Lired and Emma’s analysis of the button and possible lead weight that were found in the Lot 5 spoils just one day ago.
What about the button? Any info on the button?
Info on the button? I did do a CT scan, but that’s obscuring…
Yeah, the surface image earlier today.

Emma scanned both artifacts using the Skyscan 1273 CT scanner, a device which emits x-ray radiation to produce detailed three-dimensional images of objects. Additionally, she also scanned them with the X-ray fluorescent spectrometer or XRF to determine the elements that make up their composition.
It’s a copper-iron alloy, and it does have a high content of lead in it. No aluminum, so that’s good. There’s no severe indicators that it is modern.
Okay, good.
Yeah, so I would fit the composition to 1700s to early 1800s English.
So this is the best image I could get. I think what it says is it points more towards a gentleman than a farmer.
Again, yeah.
And that could tell us something about what the round feature was used for. We have a lot of questions left about the round feature. I think what we’re finding now supports several of the theories that tie the deposition of something on Oak Island by the British military. I feel that’s where the evidence we have on Lot 5 is leading us.
Okay, the next one?
Yeah, I think that’s probably the most interesting. What do you think that is?
It’s lead, it weighs 26.2g.
Gary thought it was a coin weight. Whenever you find a shaped piece of metal like this, especially if it’s bronze or lead, it’s usually a coin weight. Now, this is large, but I was thinking maybe it’s a weight for a large coin.
It would be a very large coin.
When you say very large coin, what…?
Well, the largest coins back in the day would have been gold. So start looking at big gold coins. Because that would be great—finding one of those on Lot 5.
Be a big coin.

Emma has a dissenting opinion about it.
Okay, so compositionally, I do think it’s modern. The phosphorus content is extremely high, and you don’t see that in lead alloys until mid-20th century.
However, I don’t… you know, lead isn’t my wheelhouse.
Yeah, wheelhouse.
So we have a conundrum, because I think the problem with it being modern is we’re not finding other modern artifacts on Lot 5. Really does look old. I mean, that looks really nice and old.
Yeah, I mean, lead was used for coin weights early on too, they earlier, and then replaced by brass.
Mhm.

So, in general, across the world, there seems to be a transition from lead coin weights to brass coin weights somewhere after 1066.
If we can prove that this trade weight is very old, it puts the other old coins we’re finding on Lot 5 into a more clear perspective.
Emma’s analysis is suggesting the lead weight is more recent than the archaeologists think, but this is a point where we need to consolidate the archaeology and the science together and come to a new understanding of what this artifact is.
So, I do think that it is an excellent candidate for laser ablation.
Great, that’s what I was going to say. It’s fantastic.

Laser ablation is a testing method that uses a high-powered laser to remove a microscopic sample from the surface of objects that are composed of lead. The sample is then analyzed to determine its specific isotope value, which can reveal not only where the object may have originated but also its approximate age.
I think we can follow this up in two ways—the laser ablation and finding an expert or experts to weigh in on this. It’s a very curious find. It feels right in your hand for some reason.
It’s up to you, Gary.
Yeah, well, we got to find some old stuff. We got to find some more stuff. I’m rooting for you guys.

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