Page 127 - The Hunt - Spring 2021

touch something that’s been lost for hundreds of years,” says Karl Kuerner III. “It connects you with history,”
The Kuerner family has been in the Chadds Ford, Pa., area since Karl’s grandparents first rented a farm on Ring Road in 1926, finally purchasing it in 1940. The property was made internationally famous by the paintings of Andrew Wyeth, so Karl and his father deeded it to the Brandywine River Museum of Art in 1999. “We live in the heart of history,” says Kuerner, himself an artist. “My father and I used to go looking for arrowheads in the area after the farmers plowed their fields, especially after a rain.”
Scattered across the fields, they discovered musket balls from the 1777 Battle of the Brandywine that raged through the Chadds Ford area. “We also found drills, pestles and pounding stones,” he says.
Like the Kuerners, most casual treasure hunters scan the ground as they walk the land where First Americans once lived, traverse
You can hold an artifact in your hands. And in most cases, you can keep it as a souvenir.
“It’s amazing to be the first person to touch something that’s been lost for hundreds of years,” says Karl Kuerner III.
centuries-old battlefields, or comb areas where old buildings have been razed or fallen into neglect. Prime pickings are often found where the ground has been disturbed by plows,
bulldozers or other mechanical equipment. Many amateurs get involved as volunteers
or students in archeological excavations. Even in urban areas, old open wells or privy pits were used as dumping grounds for unwanted or damaged household items in previous centuries. In farming areas, small ravines
were filled with garbage. Few people know the buried secrets of Delaware and nearby Pennsylvania as well as Lu Ann De Cunzo, a professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware who specializes in the preservation and interpretation of the cultural histories
of the Mid-Atlantic region in the 17th-19th centuries. “I’ve been working with students for about 40 years, and lots of the focus has been on regional archeology,” says De Cunzo.
Often in conjunction with local organizations and governments, she supervises their field work and follow-up lab studies. Most recently, she’s been in the historical area of New Castle, Del., founded by the Swedes in 1651, along with the Coleman Farm just
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