Season of the Spoons

Detectorist’s are no strangers to finding eating utensils, after all, folks didn’t use plastic flatware in the “olden days”, but if I find another *$#%! spoon….OMG.

Oh, of course the signal is great, and then you pull out the spoon, and mutter “another friggin’ spoon”, out loud to yourself.

It’s just a lowly spoon–not even a silver spoon, just a crappy silver plated nickel utensil to stick in a box with all the other crappy flatware you’ve found.

The only time, other than if its silver, that a spoon, (or fork or knife) has any value, is at the end of a skunky day, when you’re looking through your pouch of measly finds and you spy that lowly spoon.  Suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a bad day after all… because at least you found a spoon.

I used to find the occasional eating utensil, hopefully examine it for hallmarks or a manufacturer to date it or the site, but then I would trash them with all my other worthless metal goodies.

This past season however, the friggin’ spoons are everywhere. While doing my usual “check & chuck”, I realized the spoons were taking over. I had already chucked a bunch of the fabulous flatware earlier in the season, yet the spoons kept coming.

I thought it must be a sign, but a sign of what?

Was the universe hinting that I needed to run my dishwasher?

Was my man trying to send me subliminal spooning messages?

Did our ancestors eat nothing but pudding?

Wandering thoughts aside, I decided that although it was a little late in the season, and I had already discarded a bunch of them, that for the remainder of the season, I would keep all the utensils I found and tally them.

New mission in sight, I actually started hoping I would find spoons. This was lucky for me since almost every site I hunted afterwards produced at least one spoon, or piece of a spoon.

In addition to my sudden spoon splendor, my buddies were also finding spoons. Not wanting to reveal my ridiculous new mission, I didn’t tally their totals, however, they seemed to be hot on the spoon trail as well.

I’ve got no great conclusion or hypothesis for this story, other than a firm belief that our predecessors were knife and fork challenged. And for the record: Fork tally: 3 , Knife tally:  1 , Spoon tally ; 39, not including the ones I previously threw away.

Happy Hunting!