relic hunting

Searching for remnants

Relic hunting is searching for and collecting historical artifacts, especially from battlefields, old homesteads, or archaeological sites.

Practitioners use metal detectors to find Civil War bullets, colonial coins, or military buttons.

The hobby occupies contested ground—enthusiasts see themselves as preserving history, while archaeologists often view them as destroying contextual evidence: He spent weekends relic hunting on private land in Virginia.

Related

detector · antiquities · digging · dug up · battlefield · Civil War · arrowhead · coins · unearthing · mudlarking · provenance · time capsule · hoard · burial · patina · trowel · cache · looter

Categories
Opposites
PRESERVATION vs. EXTRACTION

relic huntingheritage conservation

Protecting cultural assets for posterity

repatriation · conservation

temporal orientation

relic huntingmanufacturing

Industrial product creation

creation · construction · innovation · production · futurism

Family

relic, hunting, relics, hunt, hunts, hunted, hunter, hunters, huntsman

Familiarity
Top 500,000
Profile
Used worldwide · Timeless · Concrete · Rated G