Any novice searcher, when first entering the field, faces the question: “Where to look for treasures and old villages?” Simply walking blindly in any field you like means depriving yourself of search success in advance. Therefore, in this article I want to tell novice searchers and treasure hunters how to find a decent place to search without having antique map. I will describe two main ways that will help a beginner achieve at least initial success in finding a suitable place for excavation.

You can safely carry out the first way to search for villages and places of possible treasures right now, using the Google program - Planet Earth, the free version of which can be downloaded on the official website. So, first, let's list those places that are potentially interesting to us. First of all this detached houses and farmsteads, as well as places of ancient settlements, plowed mounds, which are not state-protected objects, it would be very nice to walk along the places of former river beds, since there could be areas for swimming and fishing, people sailing on boats could also lose various items.

Just like on Google Maps - Planet Earth, find an old farm or a separate house.

I answer this question using pre-prepared screenshots. Green circles highlight places where soil changes are visible. The lighter spots are the remains of destroyed and crushed adobe (clay brick) from which houses were previously built. To the left of the green circle you can notice a change in the soil towards a darker shade, this indicates that this place was properly fertilized before - apparently there was a vegetable garden.

How to find a place to search in a garden or vineyard?

Here the light spots are visible not on the bare plowed land, but in the vineyard. In such areas, it is somewhat more difficult to find the exact place where the old house was. Therefore, navigate using trees, bushes and other objects. There are also cases when such spots turned out to be not houses, but simply washouts and erosion of black soil, but in our business we cannot do without reconnaissance, so feel free to go out into the fields and wave the reel.

Textbook book "Where and how to look for gold. A practical guide"

How to find the site of an ancient settlement?

Places where there are ancient mounds demolished by archaeologists or local “aboriginals” can also become places of success. Agree that household items of ancient people could have been lost near the burials, and in the best case, you can count on finding an ancient settlement nearby. Do not dig up ancient mounds that are protected by law, as this is an article about ruin historical heritage countries. The photo shows what the mound demolished by archaeologists looks like:

Where else can you swing a metal detector coil?

In places where rivers or streams used to flow, you can try your luck, since people settled along the banks of the rivers, there was a constant flow of fresh water. Also, at any moment, a body of water can become a source of not only water, but also food, for this you just need to cast a fishing rod or net. Therefore, I show what the ancient river bed looks like on a Google map - Planet Earth:

As we have already found out, we need to pay attention to the places where people used to live. As a rule, artifacts of human activity are the remains of destroyed buildings: fragments of foundations, building bricks and tiles. If you see a place on a field where pieces of building stone, ceramics, dishes and glass are scattered, do not try to avoid such areas. Practice has proven that ancient coins and other antiques are found together with fragments of ancient ceramics.

Good luck to everyone on the mine, more fun swag and new positive impressions!

Based on Internet materials. The source is unclear. The author respond, he said it well :)

VIDEO. "Where to go for a cop." Working with cards.

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On the pages of this blog, I wrote quite a lot about the benefits of cards in our difficult, but interesting matter- treasure hunting. Thanks to maps, we learn about old villages, where they were located, how the street ran and when it existed and disappeared.

Using maps, we can even find places where no digger has gone before. So, last spring we found ourselves in an unbroken repair situation. On the PGM there was only a barely noticeable small square. But in fact, there actually turned out to be a settlement where the four of us did some good digging.

Thanks to maps we can make our own discoveries. After all, without them, you don’t know where to go, unless, of course, you talk with the local population or identify the tracts by the poplars that can be seen from afar.

In our time of heyday of the Internet, almost any maps, ancient or not, are easy to find and start working with them. In this article I will talk about some useful maps for coping, in particular those that I use myself.

Satellite images

I'll start with the newest cards. Satellite images are now of fairly good quality. From them we can see the current state of the place we are interested in. Is the field overgrown with forest, are there any houses left in the village, find out the way to the digging point. This is very detailed map, but it is difficult to see the change in heights. The terrain looks flat. The pictures have a detailed scale. By the way, if one service does not have a detailed, clear image of the desired area, you can find one from another. For example, if Google’s terrain is blurry, then Yandex’s will most likely be of excellent quality.

General Staff cards

Quite interesting cards too. They are intended for the military, as the name suggests. But they were also popular with topographers, surveyors, geologists, road workers, and others who work on the ground. All General Staff maps are similar: sheets of individual squares, divided into smaller squares. The scale is different. From 250 meters to 10 km in 1 cm. I heard a couple of times that there are also hundred meters, that is, 100 meters in 1 cm. At the same time, the maps of the General Staff have a very low error and can be used with great success on a GPS navigator for orientation and navigation, as well as finding places to dig and plotting routes. All villages are clearly indicated and it is written how many inhabitants there were at the time the maps were created, the order of the location of streets, roads, and mills is shown. I often use it myself, besides, the General Staff is loaded into Ozik on my phone.

Red Army maps

Maps of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. They are very similar to the General Staff, but they began to be created back in the 20s of the last century. Due to a lack of funds, people and opportunities, pre-revolutionary maps were taken as a basis. These cards have limited coverage. Namely, you can find maps of the Red Army only in the western part of our country. Not even Kirov region. Although, somewhere there was a mention that there are topographic maps older than the General Staff of our region. By the way, the inscription “Coordinate system 1942” is very often confused with the date of creation of this map. In reality this is not the case; here we are only informed about the coordinate system. And the date of shooting and release of the map is written in the upper right corner of the sheet. If the General Staff sheet was from 1942, then this would already be a map of the Red Army. According to the information I have, they were produced from 1925 to 1941. Scale from 250 m to 5 km in 1 cm. Having examined this map, it attracted me with its detail and relative antiquity. Even the smallest settlements are indicated on it. The number of yards is indicated. Definitely a great map for a search engine! But it’s a pity that it is not in our Vyatka region.

Schubert map

With your permission, a brief background. At the beginning of the 19th century, F. F. Schubert headed the corps of military topographers and under him a 10-verst map of the Western parts was created Russian Empire on 60 sheets. But for some reasons it turned out to be inconvenient for practical use. I had to start working on a new one. It began to be created under the leadership of P. A. Tuchkov, but in further work Schubert took over her. It covers the time period of almost the entire second half of the 19th century, starting in 1846. But the main work was done before 1863, when it amounted to 435 sheets. Further work continued at a similar pace. In 1886, 508 sheets were drawn. Basically, they used the already compiled ten-verst, only supplementing and clarifying it. Very good detail of objects. Literally everything you need is indicated: settlements, forests, rivers, roads, crossings, etc. There is even the nature of the relief. Its scale is 1 inch 3 versts or 1260 m in 1 cm. However, not all areas were drawn by Schubert. For example, Vyatka, alas, is not there.

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Strelbitsky Map

In the middle of the 19th century, I. A. Strelbitsky was part of the Military Topographical Department at the General Staff and was tasked with updating and supplementing the Special Map of the European Part of Russia. Strelbitsky supervised this work from 1865 to 1871. The new map consisted of 178 sheets and covered the European part of the country and parts of the adjacent western and southern provinces. The scale is very undetailed. There are 10 versts in 1 inch. And if we translate it in our manner, then 4200 m in 1 cm. In particular, this map was also used as the basis for creating maps of the Red Army. What to say about Strelbitsky’s map: there is a large error, only major roads and populated areas. It would be suitable, of course, as an overview map, but I don’t use it.

Mende Map

Its author is A.I. Mende. From 1849 to 1866, he led the work on creating a map in the central provinces of the Russian Empire. 40 surveyors and 8 officers of the Corps of Military Topographers worked to create this map. Its scale is 420 m in 1 cm. Very interesting map, but does not cover the entire European part of Russia. It's a shame... This is a boundary map with decent detail. Very similar to PGM.

PGM or General Survey Plan

The oldest map presented here and, despite its age, very accurate and detailed. The decree to create a general survey plan was given in 1796. Under Catherine the Great, mass land surveying began: the country's territory was divided into counties, and they were divided into dachas - plots of owners who had rights to these lands within certain boundaries. They were assigned numbers, and their decoding is given in the economic note, which was an addition to the plan for each province. The scale of the map is 1 or 2 versts per inch, which is the usual 420 meters per 1 cm. When applied to a modern map and when linking to satellites, you will encounter a difficulty - the error is quite large. After all, this is not a map tied to coordinates, but just a plan. But quite a detailed plan! From it you can get a lot of useful information for searching with a metal detector about the time the site appeared, its size at that time, the location of the street and houses, roads and highways. Churches and church lands were marked, on which markets and fairs could be located, since these territories were not subject to taxes. The map is very interesting and I use it. It’s suitable as an overview map: look, think and go. I don't see the point in tying her up. But to put it on modern satellite images still worth it! By the way, some sheets, due to their dilapidation, may not be well preserved and instead of the places of interest you will see a hole.

Thus, we have just looked at those cards that are mainly used by treasure hunters. There are also other cards, but more on them later.

Each map is good in its own way and brings its own specific benefit to the digger when planning digging sites and studying the history of his region. And you need to use the maps at the same time, mentally superimposing them on each other and comparing the terrain in the old and more new map. These maps are the history of our country.

Where can I download?

Yes, right here on this blog. I recently started uploading old maps. You can view and download them.

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Every experienced treasure hunter knows perfectly well that the main thing in modern metal detectors is depth and discrimination (discrimination is the ability to selectively search for desired objects and ignore unwanted ones), and a stable depth of discrimination (a metal detector “sees” a coin at a maximum of 40 cm, but in VDI it already has another meaning).
The operator already knows that there is the presence of unnecessary iron, which strives to be found and dug up. But is it really so bad that your metal detector found ferrous metal?
- I’ll tell you this interesting case further:
This happened this spring, when several treasure hunters who told me this story went to a place near Dnepropetrovsk, where there used to be a village that had long ago been erased from the face of modern maps. I will try to convey this story from the first person. Surnames and names have been changed at the request of treasure hunters.

At the end of the 19th century, when Nicholas II ruled in Russia, there lived a peasant named Pyotr Mikhailovich Kozeltsev, middle-aged, but he did not have enough health to work for the master with all his might, and he decided to start his own small farm. He set up a small mill and began grinding grain for the people. And so things went on, the grain was ground, and money went to Peter. In 1904, the revolution came, and the dispossession of the rich and wealthy kulaks began. Of course, the wave of dispossession did not reach my grandfather soon, since he lived on his own, and did not boast about his farming, did not mine expensively and did not hire workers. When the hands of the authorities reached Peter, they sent him to distant Siberia, where he died. Nobody knew where Pyotr Mikhailovich kept the money, but his grandfather once hinted in his letters that if anything happened, “don’t forget about the apple tree that you planted together.” When my grandfather passed away, no one went for the cache, and no one wanted to go to those places, it was painful and scary. So this story was forgotten.
I wondered where the money collected by the old man over many years of entrepreneurship went? We thought that the Soviet government had taken it away.
So my grandfather’s money would have been lying in the ground and would not have reached anyone if my father had not told this story to a treasure hunter friend, and he took it and checked the family legend, found old maps with this farm, took a metal detector and went there.

As Anton told us - the same treasure hunter who found the treasure, it turned out that there was no trace left of the farmstead in which about 30 - 40 people lived, but this is only at first glance, in Google Earth, when looking at the map, white spots from plowed lands were clearly visible foundations. Nobody knew the grandfather's address, but the grandfather said that they lived next to the post office. There were only two streets and about 10 courtyards on the farm, and digging everything up in a row (10 courtyards) seemed to be very difficult and time consuming, there was a lot of metal waste in the plots, but passion took its toll and they transgressed.
We decided on the search location, and it was decided to first check the areas for large targets, then, in case of failure, raise small ones as well. Next, Anton recalls, in the fourth hole we dig out a tin can about half a meter deep and voila! The treasure has been found! In a tin can there are 11 gold coins, 2 silver rubles, coppers and papers rotten from time to time.
IN rusty tin can, apparently, turned out to be the old man's treasure.

Such stories are not uncommon, and as it turns out, they are applicable to almost any farm or village that has gone through a period of revolution, anarchy, epidemics and other troubles. How to search farms, villages, etc. with maximum success? I will try to bring theory and practice together.

You found on old maps a farm or village that has not been on modern maps for a long time, or there is part of it, or the village has long moved to another place. Next, open the google earth program and look at your village in it. The easiest way to locate a village is along ravines, lakes, river turns and main roads, if any remain.
The village can now be located in a field, or in a forest, or even in water.
Next, we enter the coordinates of the center of the farm into the GPS navigator and use a printer to print out part of the map, how and where the farm was located (the direction of the buildings).

We got to the GPS point and found that at point (x) on the ground there were broken bricks, parts of the foundation, ceramics - which means the map and the binding did not fail.
Next, we determined where the garbage ends (indicated by a circle in the figure), where the main work will be. It is advisable to clean the area a little more than the end of the garbage (t).
We select the directions in which the cleaning will be carried out, it is advisable to choose a direction when the sun is on the side, the eyes are not blinded and you can calmly observe which brick or stone has gone.

To do a complete stripping, you need to make markings, taking into account the distance between passes (R), which depends on the sideways swing of your coil (in a plowed field, a shovel does this perfectly,
which you can and should drag along with you). If there is a body of water nearby, it is worth checking the shore (finds on the banks are usually in very poor condition, but they can also be used to judge the people from the farm and their pockets).

Cleaning for coins and treasures.
There are three ways to find the treasure:
The first is to use a coin and depth metal detector in pairs.
How many times have I heard such phrases: “they picked up coins from their heels in one place,” well, the treasure hunter collected them and was pleased, but didn’t think about why there were so many in one place? Or he thought about it, but moved on, satisfied with these finds, which significantly reduced the chance of ever finding a treasure that had been plowed open (usually, for some reason, there is an opinion about an open wallet).
Let's look at the following scheme - you find coins in the area (d, a, c, f), where you found the coins you put marks, preferably indicating the depth (sticks, mini holes, etc., you should also take into account the depth of the coins , the deeper the better), then look at the distance between them and whether there is a main line for plowing the treasure (W). The shorter the distance between finds, the more frequent the finds, the more accurately the estimated location of the treasure can be determined.
If the coins are located at a great distance from each other (more than 20 meters), then the probability of finding the treasure decreases greatly. Most likely these are “lost” coins, lost by chance near a tavern or road, etc. but we should not exclude the possibility that this is one of the coins that was caught by the tractor.

In the following figure we consider the situation when the farm was plowed:
If the container in which the coins are located is made of metal, then we will at least have a running response on the metal detector (two alloys, one for containers, the other for coins), which usually do not dig or only a “black” response.
(u) - the depth at which the tractor could catch the treasure during deep plowing (up to 50 cm) and accidentally remove a coin from it upon impact; the coin rose up (L) by several centimeters, but at the same time the treasure itself was moved from its place.
What the blood money was hidden in is a question of questions, usually in dishes, since it will maintain integrity and give volume. But here’s the question of the materials of the utensils - bury the treasure yourself in a clay pot, suddenly you need to get a couple of coins and you will be surprised to find that ceramics and a shovel are not compatible, hitting the jug with a shovel and then you’ll have to look for and count all your hard-earned money for a long time, so I do output - money, etc. wrapped in cloth. A person with money does not need to say that pottery cost a penny; 90% of the time after the first such laying, he will buy a metal container or use a wooden one, possibly with a metal lining.
Treasures are often found in pottery; a regular metal detector can “see” what is in it, but the possibility that there will be some kind of memorable “piece of iron” in the pot on top cannot be ruled out. Considering that 50% of the treasure was hidden in a metal container or wooden container, it makes sense to collect all the responses from ferrous metals at the plowing site.
If there is a plowing direction and depth marks, take a gap of 5 meters in all directions and make markings, taking into account the distance between passes (R).
Using a deep metal detector - everything is simple here, deep metal detectors do not see small targets (nails, fragments, cartridges, etc.) and do not discriminate, but there is a high chance of hitting a treasure or cache. For the operator, it is necessary to know well and be able to adjust the “deep detector” to the smallest targets at depths of up to a meter and take into account soil moisture (statistically, treasures were usually found at a depth of no more than one meter).
Use a coin metal detector - take as a basis the main line of plowing the treasure (W) and clean the area in the “all metals” mode, setting the metal detector to the maximum search depth (there is a chance to find the treasure without removing a layer of earth). Next, if the treasure is not found, you need to know exactly at what depth your metal detector can clearly “find” small coins (discrimination is no longer needed here), at the same depth, a meter wide, remove a layer of earth, if coins are found - again we make a plowing with a mark of the depth of occurrence.
To save time and effort, you can use both a depth gauge and a coin coin locally.

If you are engaged in research, local history or treasure hunting, you need to know what signs you can use to determine a place ancient settlement. Another important detail is that unauthorized excavations in such places are prohibited by law. We must try to compose detailed description random finds, places and report to the local history museum and archaeologists. Now this can be done on the Internet.

Terrain.

Ancient people most often settled on tracts with natural fences.These are high capes at the confluence of two rivers, islands that are not flooded during high water, natural elevations. Thus, they could see the approaching enemy in time, and the height gave them a combat advantage. And the river served as a natural fence, and also provided drinking water and food. Some rivers have changed their courses over time and settlements can often be found on small tributaries.

Often the site of an ancient settlement is surrounded by a ditch or rampart. Over time, the ditch became a small groove, and the shaft became a line of hillocks. Many fortifications are easy to read from the air. And now, with the ability to use such resources as satellite maps Google and Yandex, you can see this with your own eyes. There are corresponding maps on our website.

Soputka.

The main signs of the site of an ancient settlement are accompanying objects, objects and details of objects indicating archeology and, of course, fragments of ceramic products. This is ceramics with ornaments, varnished with a pattern, carelessly molded; on the scraps you can see inclusions of shells, river and sand, the presence of bubbles, porcelain with a double-sided pattern.

The depth of occurrence of accompanying parts of objects and ceramic fragments can vary from several tens of centimeters to several meters, depending on natural conditions terrain, soil composition. Another sign is a large accumulation of animal and fish bones mixed with ash, often in coastal ancient settlements, you can find bone products: jewelry, pens. It is possible to find ceramic and glass beads with simple designs. From building materials: limestone stone and non-standard sized bricks.

Continuity of cultures.

The Rostov region is characterized by cultural continuity in the choice of location for settlements and ancient settlements. Good places, there are few suitable for safe existence on the Don, still mostly steppes and ravines, and therefore, by excavating later settlements, it is possible to trace the earlier ones. And such key cities as Rostov-on-Don, Azov and Taganrog have an ancient and even pre-antique history.

Of course, the work of researchers and archaeologists together is currently rarely welcomed by anyone. Russian archeology is underfunded, and among scientists there are those who want to make money from the finds. But in the Rostov region there are also archaeologists and local historians and researchers of our region who have close contact and carry out joint reconnaissance on the ground.

Interesting site materials

There is no point in hiding that abandoned villages and other populated areas are the object of research for many people who are passionate about treasure hunting (and not only). There is a place for those who like attic searching to roam, to “ring through” the basements of abandoned houses, to explore wells, and much more. etc. Of course, the likelihood that your colleagues or local residents very high, but, nevertheless, there are no “knocked out places”.

Reasons that lead to the desertion of villages

Before starting to list the reasons, I would like to dwell on the terminology in more detail. There are two concepts - abandoned settlements and disappeared settlements.

Disappeared settlements are geographical objects that today have completely ceased to exist due to military actions, man-made and natural disasters, and time. In place of such points one can now see a forest, a field, a pond, anything, but not standing abandoned houses. This category of objects is also of interest to treasure hunters, but we are not talking about them now.

Abandoned villages precisely belong to the category of abandoned settlements, i.e. towns, villages, hamlets, etc., abandoned by residents. Unlike the disappeared settlements, the abandoned ones for the most part retain their architectural appearance, buildings and infrastructure, i.e. are in a state close to the time when locality was abandoned. So people left, why? A decline in economic activity, which we can see now, as people from villages tend to move to the city; wars; disasters of various types (Chernobyl and its environs); other conditions that make living in a given region inconvenient and unprofitable.

How to find abandoned villages?

Naturally, before heading headlong to the search site, it is necessary to prepare a theoretical basis, in simple words, to calculate these most likely places. A number of specific sources and tools will help us with this.

Today, one of the most accessible and fairly informative sources is Internet:

The second quite popular and accessible source- These are ordinary topographic maps. It would seem, how can they be useful? Yes, very simple. First of all, enough famous maps The General Staff has already marked both tracts and uninhabited villages. It is important to understand one thing here: a tract is not only an abandoned settlement, but simply any part of the area that is different from other areas of the surrounding area. And yet, on the site of the tract there may not be any village for a long time, but that’s okay, walk around with a metal detector among the holes, collect metal garbage, and then you’ll get lucky. Not everything is simple with non-residential villages either. They may not be completely uninhabited, but may be used, say, as summer cottages, or may be occupied illegally. In this case, I don’t see any point in doing anything, no one needs problems with the law, and the local population can be quite aggressive.

If you compare the same map of the General Staff and a more modern atlas, you can notice some differences. For example, there was a village in the forest on the General Staff, a road led to it and suddenly the road to more modern map disappeared, most likely, the residents left the village and began to bother with road repairs, etc.

The third source is local newspapers, local people, local museums. Communicate more with the natives, there will always be interesting topics for conversation, and in between, you can ask about the historical past of this region. What can locals tell you about? Yes, a lot of things, the location of the estate, the manor’s pond, where there are abandoned houses or even abandoned villages, etc.

Local media is also a fairly informative source. Moreover, now even the most provincial newspapers are trying/trying to get their own website, where they diligently post individual notes or even entire archives. Journalists travel a lot on their business and interview, including old-timers, who like to mention various interesting facts during their stories.

Don’t hesitate to visit provincial local history museums. Not only are their exhibitions often interesting, but a museum employee or guide can also tell you a lot of interesting things.