Artifacts are key to understanding American history. These objects, created and used by people, offer insights into the past. Unlike textbooks, artifacts provide a tangible way to study history.
Anthropologist Daniel Miller notes that objects influence human actions and perceptions, shaping how people think about the world. Museum Director Elaine Gurian views artifacts as a portal into history, allowing stakeholders to debate their meanings and shape their collective memory. Artifacts bring history to life, making it tangible and real. Recognizing the complexity of artifacts means accepting that they carry multiple, sometimes conflicting, meanings.
Artifacts from the Smoky Mountain Relic Room serve as intersections of many stories with diverse meanings instead of isolated objects. Each artifact represents a point in history, allowing individuals to explore their use. Museums can capture the essence of artifacts by placing them in a historical context and using them as instruments to develop an understanding of the past.
Some ways to think about artifacts in history include understanding how they tell their own stories and how they connect people. Also, artifacts in history may mean many things, capture different moments, or reflect significant changes. These are perspectives that can enrich the collective understanding of history.
Metal detecting is an activity that helps individuals connect with history, uncover lost treasures, and spend more time outdoors. It is a highly accessible hobby for beginners, though there are a few things to know before starting.
First, individuals can choose from a broad range of metal detectors that offer a wide spectrum of settings and features. The three main settings to focus on are discrimination, sensitivity, and ground balance. Discrimination settings allow hobbyists to remove select metals from the detection field, such as iron so that the detector can hone in on rarer, more valuable metals.
Sensitivity settings allow the detector to search for metals at different depths; at higher sensitivity, detectors can find smaller objects at greater depths, yet they become more susceptible to interference. Finally, ground balance settings help mitigate false readings derived from certain minerals.
After choosing an appropriate instrument, individuals can select a terrain. It is not uncommon to see people using metal detectors at beaches, which often function as repositories for lost jewelry, coins, and older relics. Old homesteads are ideal hunting grounds for individuals prioritizing historical artifacts, though detectorists must ensure they have legal access to the property. Public parks, farmlands, and historical trails are great places to explore with metal detectors.
As detectorists expand their search areas and invest in more advanced detection equipment, they must continue to adhere to the rules of detecting. In addition to never using a metal detector on private property without permission, individuals should adhere to the “leave no trace” principle, which includes filling in any holes dug during an investigation. Detectorists interested in historical items must familiarize themselves with all laws governing historical preservation.
One of the unique items in the Smoky Mountain Relic Room is giant fossilized teeth from prehistoric megalodon sharks. An extinct species, Carcharocles megalodon, inhabited the earth from the early Miocene Epoch, around 23 million years ago, to the Pliocene Epoch, 2.6 million years ago. The earliest ancestors of homo sapiens arose 100,000 years after the megalodon went extinct.
One of the largest predators that ever existed, the megalodon, reached lengths between 15 and 18 meters, roughly three times the length of the largest great white shark. Its size was comparable to today’s whale sharks, slow-moving carpet sharks that rely on filter feeding. By contrast, the megalodon was an apex predator with a diet of large prey, including small dolphins and even humpback whales.
Enabling it to eat prey as large as whales, the megalodon’s jaw was between 2.7 to 3.4 meters long when fully opened. This would fit two average adult people laid side-by-side. Lining the jaw were 276 teeth, which gave it a bite force of up to 182,201 Newtons (N). By contrast, the maximal human bite force is 1,31N, while great whites have an 18,216N bite force. The shark’s diet is known by artifacts such as a fossilized whale rib bone that contains an embedded megacolon tooth tip.
Interestingly, scientists have changed depictions of megadolon over the decades. Paleontologists initially envisioned the species as looking like a super-sized great white shark. However, the prehistoric megalodon had a rostrum, or nose, much shorter than its contemporary counterpart. Its jaw was flatter as well, with an almost squashed appearance.
The pectoral fins were lengthy and could support the shark’s larger size and weight. There is no direct ancestral connection between the megalodon and the great white, with the prehistoric shark being the last of its lineage.
The fossil record of the megalodon is dominated by its teeth, and each shark goes through a set of teeth every two weeks. Across a full lifetime, this added up to as many as 40,000 teeth. With humans, teeth have approximately the same hardness as bone, which is coated in calcium phosphate mineral. By contrast, shark skeletons are made up of soft cartilage similar to that in the human ear and nose. This means that, unlike teeth, they rarely survived through the millennia.
The megalodon’s extinction is due to a changing climate, with cooling temperatures sending populations of many marine animals plummeting. As tiny organisms die off at the bottom of the food chain, intermediaries such as sea birds and turtles also go extinct.
The megalodon thrived in warm tropical waters without control over its internal body temperature. It could not follow prey to cooler waters that other fish adapted to (as with whale migrations to the Arctic). Great white and megalodon diets overlapped, and competition for scant food resources may have also contributed to the species’ decline.
Megalodon teeth are popular among collectors and are measured using the diagonal length, which extends from the root corner to the tip. Baby teeth can be as small as an inch long, while mature adult specimens typically range from four to five inches long. Extremely rare finds include seven-inch specimens valued in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Artifacts are human-made objects with historical or cultural significance. The attribute that gives an object importance is mostly determined by the culture of the society it comes from. These items help current generations understand what life was like during a particular time in history and what society valued.
Artifacts, particularly ancient items, are often in poor condition when unearthed. With time, they tend to deteriorate after being buried underground for centuries. Aged items may become brittle and easily crack or break. Also, poor storage may result in mold growth and the buildup of dirt and grime. This makes preserving and restoring damaged artifacts a worthy undertaking, as it forms part of maintaining the world’s history.
How long it takes to restore a damaged artifact varies depending on the item and the extent of the damage. However, because artifacts are often delicate objects, their restoration should only be handled by trained professional conservators. Besides, the variety of artifacts is very wide, and each may require a specialist depending on the object’s needs. For example, a paper conservator best handles an old and very rare paper artifact.
A common cause of artifact damage is humidity, water, and high-temperature exposure. Although sculptures, paintings, prints, photographs, drawings, and historic furniture may survive flooding and wind, the objects often get exposed to mold and mildew without being in a climate-controlled environment.
Science plays a growing role in artifact conservation. Depending on the specific needs to preserve cultural and historical materials, conservators and scientists sometimes use special adhesives to piece together the broken pieces. For example, Aquazol and water-soluble resins are widely used in damaged object repair.
Aquazol belongs to the thermoplastic polymers group, and its compounds are used to manufacture adhesives, fibers, coatings, films, and polymeric materials. Water-soluble resins and acrylic adhesives are also used, although it’s important to ensure that the resin doesn’t dissolve the original material. For example, during the restoration of a damaged King Tutankhamun sculpture in Egypt, it was covered in a “shiny black resin” for protection, as the original material is sensitive to many types of adhesives.
Technological advances are also impacting artifact restoration. In the past, a skilled artist was needed to make a reproduction or replica if a museum artifact got extensively damaged. Reproductions can be just as significant as the originals. They also allow more people to appreciate the artifacts.
Also, to preserve the often delicate and fragile original artifacts from the risk associated with exhibiting, sometimes museums may use reproductions. These are always marked as such in the exhibition box or hall. Today, 3D scanning technology makes printing an identical replacement much faster and less expensive. In addition, the reproduced pieces can be replicated many times and still look identical to the original object.
When artifacts have missing parts, 3D printing technologies also allow conservation experts to restore the missing details, which would otherwise be impossible to reproduce. Although the replica might be made using a different material from the original object, most people will not be able to tell them apart.
The co-owner and operator of Smoky Mountain Relic Room, Chase Pipes, has extensive experience in archaeology, paleontology, geology, and history. In his work, Chase Pipes is involved in the preservation of pieces he obtains during his finds.
Through the preservation of archaeological and historical finds, generations learn about the lives of those who have come before them. There are several factors that influence the process of preservation.
In general, researchers take both a reductionist and holistic approach to preserving artifacts, whether they are simple objects or whole sites. A reductionist approach looks at every piece of the find as an important explanation as to the what, where, when, how, and why of an event or a place.
During the holistic process, researchers strive to keep the artifact similar to its current state (depending on the context of the piece) or to the state when it was used. For example, artifacts from September 11 will be preserved to hold the significance of the tragedy that happened that day, i.e. un-restored watches stopped at the time of the plane’s crash. Alternatively, restoration of a piece of art or an object (i.e. military coehorn mortar) provides an explanation of how the object appeared before use.
Another factor that influences the preservation process is the environment. Finds that are located in or near water or marshy lands have to be moved very carefully. Water damage over a few years can affect materials, so when dealing with artifacts that might be centuries old, researchers have to use safety measures that will decrease the likelihood that the materials will disintegrate. In many cases, research teams have one of two choices. They can move the site or building to a new area of construction or they can move the site adjacent to or underneath the newly constructed area. In either case, these decisions will depend on the engineering capabilities of the team and the importance of the site.
The co-owner and operator of the Smoky Mountain Relic Room in Sevierville, Tennessee, Chase Pipes travels widely throughout the United States and the world to source and purchase a broad spectrum of historically-relevant items and preserved natural wonders. Items recently acquired by Chase Pipes and the Smoky Mountain Relic Room include an authentic M1903 Springfield ammunition clip from the 1916 US Invasion of Mexico and a fossilized triceratops skull frill. The business also buys and sells a range of minerals, crystals, and meteorites.
Chase Pipes resides about 30 minutes from Sevierville in the small town of Dandridge, Tennessee. When he isn’t working, he enjoys getting into nature to hike and canoe. He is also an avid primitive skills and survival enthusiast and a recreational practitioner of forgotten skills such as flint knapping and blowgun making. Mr. Pipes has volunteered to help complete state park construction projects wearing 18th century clothing and employing 18th century methods and tools.
The co-owner and operator of Smoky Mountain Relic Room, 
Chase Pipes 