Book Review: the Urban Treasure Hunter - a Practical Handbook for Beginners

You don't have to be Indiana Jones to find treasure, even in a major city.

Have you been pondering purchase of a treasure detector offered with promises of buried riches on those White Electronics TV commercials that air all the time these days?

If so, get this book first. It's a worthwhile investment before laying out heavy bread for a metal detector, if only because Chaplain advises you on what kind of metal detector you might want.

Amazingly, Chaplain's hunting ground is New York City. Searching in the big city is his whole thrust in this book. With comments about how to deal with street toughs in the poorer and older parts of town, he gives you pause. But he's turned up some excellent treasures, photos and descriptions of which are scattered throughout the book which any would-be treasure hunter will find of value.

Chaplain describes how to search in the city, describes the range of treasures that can be found, even offers a chapter on analyzing a park as a potential hunting ground. He has quick courses on coins, bottles and insulators, and Native American artifacts. That's right, even New York City yields artifacts from pre-historic settlements.

There's a chapter on the law, a subject that can't be ignored when it comes to determining where and what you can hunt and what you can keep. A chapter on tools offers background on metal detectors and their capabilities, along with a quick-reference chart of tools you'll call on, with instructions offered on how to build a sifter for making sure you get the items that could otherwise get past you, like wampum beads.

Chaplain also places great emphasis on research which will point you in the direction of the places you want to search. A dissimilarity between an old city map and a more recent one might send you off to a site that other artifact hunters have missed.

He shows you how to read an archaeological report and discusses the potential of 100-year-old outhouses which often doubled as handy trash disposal chutes.