Rick Lagina, Marty Lagina, Craig Tester, and the team gather in the War Room with Steve Guptill to assess their next move. The Top Pocket Find shaft is complete, having yielded 17th and 18th century artifacts but no valuables, and earth collapse from previous backfill has left the surrounding ground unstable. The team decides to shift to the Peacock area, more than 40 feet northeast, where Dr. Ian Spooner and Dr. Christa Michael have for years detected gold and silver in underground water. Core drilling earlier this season revealed a ten-foot void at 150 feet, and an underwater camera captured images of possible man-made artifacts including metallic objects, reinforcing the theory of an offset treasure chamber once connected to the original Money Pit. Alex Lagina coordinates as crews from SB Canada and ROC Equipment begin excavating Peacock-1, the third seven-foot-diameter shaft of the year, with Terry Matheson confirming bedrock at 211 feet and the solution channel extending up to roughly 165 feet.
On Lot 8, Spooner joins archaeologists Laird Niven and Fiona Steele at the cradle-like stone feature beneath the 40,000-pound boulder, where Fiona has exposed blue clay and a mortar-like cement binding the hand-placed rocks in layers. Spooner collects organic samples for testing. That evening in the War Room, Emma Culligan, Spooner, Fiona, and Jillian present their analysis. Emma identifies the substance as a manipulated sand-silt-clay mix with no modern binding elements, while Spooner places the feature before the mid-1700s. Emma narrows the range further to between post-1200s and pre-1800s, describing it as premodern and possibly medieval. Low traces of silver persist in the soil, and Alex raises the possibility that a deeper shaft could have transferred the silver signal upward through organic material. Fiona notes the absence of artifacts at the site may itself point to great age. Rick connects a medieval date to the Knights Templar era and references Zena Halpern's Templar map, which identifies this area as the December Triangle.
On Lot 5, Marty and metal detection expert Gary Drayton investigate a stone well near the round feature that the property's late former owner Robert Young had classified as 20th century. Professor Adriano Gaspani's recent archeoastronomical analysis, however, dated the nearby round feature to as early as the 13th century, consistent with a bronze button and spike previously found in the area and scientifically dated to the same period. Gary descends into the well and finds it extends far deeper than expected, with feet of compressed leaves below the apparent floor. Near the well, Marty and Gary recover an iron object that Gary initially identifies as a possible pintle, noting that similar pintles have been found on Lot 8 near the boulder and on Lot 15, both possibly predating 1795. In the lab, Emma and Laird lean toward identifying it as a driven hook of clean iron with elevated chromium and copper content, suggesting a continental European rather than British origin. No modern alloying elements are present, and Emma dates the object most likely to the mid-1700s, raising the possibility that the well is older than Robert Young believed.
In the southwest corner of the swamp, Rick leads a new dig in a freshly permitted area where the team had earlier uncovered sections of a sand-covered cobblestone road lined by eight-sided survey stakes possibly dating to nearly 800 years ago. Billy Gerhardt and Peter Fornetti help locate more of the road before Peter spots what appears to be a cut stake. The following day, Rick uncovers a five-sided stake and an eight-sided stake positioned together, the first time both types have been found paired. Gary discovers a second identical pairing nearby. Rick paces 21 feet between the stake sets, predicts a third at the same interval, and finds one at the predicted location. The alignment runs northwest toward the center of the swamp. Rick interprets the different shapes as markers from different time periods, with swamp dates suggesting activity stretching back to the 13th century, and connects the findings to Fred Nolan's longstanding belief that the swamp was an artificial creation concealing earlier work.
