The Curse of Oak Island team may have finally found evidence of long-term habitation on Lot 5 and directly linked the site with the Money Pit and the Garden Shaft.
The guys have long struggled to find evidence on the island that suggests treasure depositors had lived and worked there for the extended period necessary to create the Money Pit. On last night’s show, they may have cracked the riddle.
The archaeologists have spent the last few weeks examining a stone structure found under a circular depression on Lot 5. The structure increasingly looks like a super large complex that could have housed multiple people.
Last night, archaeologist Jamie Kouba encountered what she thought may have been a crude mortar at the site. Jack Begley remembered finding similar material in the spoils pulled out of the Money Pit, so the guys sent it to archaeometallurgist Emma Culligan for analysis and comparison.
Emma put the soil/mortar substance into an X-ray diffraction device to analyze its chemical composition, and she came back with some exciting news. The substance is not a mortar, but she did describe it as “artificial soil,” and she said it matched exactly to samples taken throughout the Money Pit area and Garden Shaft.
That essentially means the work done on Lot 5 could have been done by the same people who buried the treasure in the Money Pit area. And don’t forget, the Lot 5 structures appear to have been deliberately concealed.
Dates from Oak Island artifacts indicate ancient activity at Lot 5 and Garden Shaft
The dates appear to tally too. So far, on Lot 5, they’ve found a 14th-century barter token, two 16th-century Venetian glass beads, and a series of work tools and pottery dating back to the 17th century.
Meanwhile, the team learned the results from Carbon-14 dating on the wood sample pulled up last week below the Garden Shaft at 95 feet. The guys suspect this wood comes from a tunnel running into the Baby Blob.
Well, Craig Tester told his delighted colleagues that the date range with the highest probability was from 1631 to 1684! The quantity of artifacts from the 17th century keeps mounting up at both Lot 5 and the Garden Shaft.
This lends more credence to the theory that 17th-century English privateer William Phipps buried looted treasure from a sunken Spanish galleon on the island during this time.
Oak Island team also keeps digging at the swamp and in the Money Pit area
Elsewhere on Oak Island, the borehole drill team continued their search for the Chappell Vault in the H.8 caisson hole area, initially dug back in 2017.
After pulling up some watery silt at about 200 feet, geologist Terry Matheson suspected they had hit the collapsed plug from the six-year-old H.8 caisson, which means they could be close to the mysterious object encountered back in 2017 that they thought might be the Chappell Vault.
They also recovered a chunk of metal, which Terry speculated might have come from the elusive vault.
Meanwhile, Billy Gerhardt and Gary Drayton continued to find a whole lot of nothing at the swamp. Well, Billy did suspect he had encountered another raised platform or steps, but nothing has been confirmed. Yet.
Marty Lagina pointed out last night that they almost always find something interesting in the swamp, and they have only dug up less than 10 percent of the area, which is an incredible statistic and shows how much potential there could be in the marshy land.
The Curse of Oak Island airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on History.
Your doing a Fantastic Job Keep on Keep on There is most likely an abundance of Items in the swamp The more you clear and the deeper you go the better it gets…..