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Dating 1900s Sites Via Hills Brothers Coffee Cans


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You may have noticed when digging around old cabins or campsites that Hills Brothers coffee cans are pretty common. It turns out they can be used to get a rough idea of when the site was in use by noting slight differences in the designs of the cans over time. It was so useful in Alaska that BLM put together a booklet showing can designs from 1900 - 1963 that they could use as an aid in dating Alaska cabin sites. You can download it for free at https://www.blm.gov/style/medialib/blm/ak/aktest/ofr.Par.57416.File.dat/CoffeeCanFieldBook_web.pdf

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I made a fairly comprehensive video on dating sites via tin cans in general, not just coffee cans, last year. If anyone is interested. For some reason it got almost no views but it's a real useful skill to have for research to be able to date the various different kinds of cans you find out there so maybe people outside the gold prospecting realm can get some use out of it?

 

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12 hours ago, jasong said:

I made a fairly comprehensive video on dating sites via tin cans in general...

Excellent video, and of course appropriate to many branches of metal detecting.  I always try and determine the age of finds, not only because, as mentioned in the video, to improve one's knowledge -- leading to improved quality of finds -- but also because I enjoy history.  Sometimes we're lucky enough to have dates (besides on coins), often patent dates.  Most of the time, as in the video, it comes down to figuring out when an item was in common use.

One of my favorite trash finds in parks is the ring-and-beavertail pulltab, which dates its loss to the 1965-75 time window (as Jason mentions).  Because older detectors weren't so good at discrimination, these should have been dug up back in the 70's-80's and even 90's.  Even with today's detectors, because the r&b pulltab shapes vary (with bending and broken off parts) the ID can vary enough to overlap coins, especially if you're in a site which might have the full range of 19th Century US coinage.  Bottom line is if you find trash others should have found, then either you're doing something different (and better) than what they did, or they haven't even been there.  Win-win!

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Staying with the can theme, here are some circa 1855-65 French sardine cans from California gold rush camps, similar cans also turn up on Civil War sites, notice soldered-on brass labels and jagged knife opened tops.

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Love the Napoleon the 3rd on the tin this guy had an ego problem.................he struck gazillions of coins.........

tin 1 :Les sables d olonne

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Sables-d'Olonne

 

tin 2: la rochelle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Rochelle

 

 

The brands seems to have disappear....................

 

RR

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