The Curse of Oak Island: RARE RELICS Uncovered on Lot Five (Season 11)

On lot five archaeologists Jamie Kuba
and Fiona Steel are investigating the
foundation near the shoreline where the
team discovered the 14th century lead
barter token one year ago.

Hey, I got another button!
Well, that’s great!
Yeah, this one’s much bigger.
Oh, that is quite shiny—like gold-plated.
Are you sure it’s a button?
Oh, I’m sure it’s a button
’cause we got the loop on the back.
But maybe it’s gold-plated?
I don’t think we’ve seen any of those yet.
I haven’t.
If this was military, it would be an officer’s button
if it was gold-plated.

So a gold-plated button?
Could Jamie Kuba be correct
that it belonged to a high-ranking military officer?
If so, could it have been an officer who took part in
hiding or protecting something of great value on Oak Island?
Very cool!
Oh, I can’t wait to see what that turns out to be!

Right! Holy cow, what have you got?
I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s a piece
of silverware handle.
Really?
Oh, it’s gorgeous!
Look at the designs on it!
I’ve never found a single piece of precious metal,
much less a piece this big of what could potentially be silver.
This is a big deal!
We’re here on a treasure hunt,
so we’re hoping that maybe we can analyze that
and that would give us the best possible chance
to get answers on who built this.

Whew! Hello!
So what do you have?
Yeah, so I don’t really know where to start,
so I’m just going to show you the first one
that I found today, and we’ll work our way through those.

Oh, all right!
That looked like gold!
It’s a very cool button.
That’s cool!
I can almost imagine a design on the front too.
It’s hard to tell.

What else did you find?
You’re going to flip! It’s so cool!
Oh, that’s silver, isn’t it?
I’m pretty sure it’s silver.
It’s quite decorative, though, with the top.
Yeah, it’s hand-decorated, so ornate.
Yeah, that’s really cool!
This is not just your average domestic building.
And they were using soil from deep in the Money Pit,
and there’s that kind of treasure as well.

Yeah, so what were they doing here?
It reminds me of like a crude mortar or cement.

Nearly one month ago, Jamie uncovered
a man-made cement-like substance in this feature
that has also been found around the mysterious tunnel
below the garden shaft.
This has made the team wonder
if this feature on lot five was connected
to an operation to hide something of great value
deep in the Money Pit area.

I mean, finding is the first step.
Take him to Emma and trying to get a date on him.
Step number two.
All right, it’s exciting!
Yeah, we’ll find more stuff for you.

Okay, three of us were called out to lot five,
and Jamie came up with these nice artifacts.
At the Oak Island laboratory,
Rick Lagina, Craig Tester, and Jack Bagley
meet with archaeologist Laird Nenn
and archo-metallurgist Emma Culligan
to receive Emma’s scientific analysis of
the gold-plated button and the possible
silver artifact that were unearthed one day ago
in the large stone foundation on lot five.

That is somewhat self-explanatory, right?
Yes, the key question is composition.
What is it?
It is a copper alloy with about 3% gold on the surface,
so it is gilded.
Gilding, which dates back to the times of ancient Egypt,
is a decorative technique by which thin layers of gold
are applied to the surface of an item.
What’s really revealing of that age and providence
in my analysis is the phosphorus—
you got about 5%,
but that kind of button composition
you wouldn’t see in a regular casual cloth.
I’d say it’s more like naval military.
It had to have been like an officer’s button then, right?
Yes, officer or a gentleman.

I can say that it’s most likely
English 18th-century naval military.
This naval button, does it have something to say
about the activities on lot five?
Might it have been British who came searching for something?
But if you’re doing original work,
you want to police your area.
I just hope we continue to make finds of artifacts
that will hopefully fill in the gaps in this story on lot five.

You know, this one appears to be silver,
but the question is, is it truly silver?
Yes, it is silver, yes, at about 90%.
In 40 years, I can’t remember a piece of silver!
A treasure trove license would define that as treasure.
It is treasure!
Yeah, it’s precious metal, and that’s as far
as we can go right now.

Yes, so what is it?
If we look at it functionally, we both believe
this is its original form.
Oh yeah, and you can see the slits on these sides,
on the edges—there’s some artistry there.
Yeah, I agree with that!
So it could be almost like the end of a tassel?
Decoratively?
Oh wow! A knife hilt?
You know, something like that.
It’s one of the cooler artifacts we found!

The initial excitement, which you’ve expressed,
is it’s silver, and why wouldn’t we be excited about that?
But to go further, I think we need more information.
Yeah, the idea of there must be silver
from the Conception,
if there were a metallurgical match to silver
from the Conception and it matches that, Bingo!
Then we’d be onto something—absolutely!

Yeah, absolutely!
Since the beginning of this year,
the team has found a number of metal artifacts
in the large foundation on lot five
that, according to Emma’s metallurgical analysis,
may be connected to Sir William Phips,
the English naval officer and privateer
who, in 1687, salvaged more than 30 tons of silver and gold
from the Spanish wreck known as the Conception.

We know that Phips found silver on the Conception,
and I believe some of the treasure from the Conception
was secreted to Oak Island.
In 2021, 32nd degree Freemason Scott Clark informed
the team that Phips worked closely with
a high-ranking Freemason from Nova Scotia named
Captain Andrew Belshire during his second salvage operation
of the Conception,
and he believes that much of the treasure
they recovered was hidden on Oak Island.

Laird, you spent a lifetime and you’ve not found,
so that certainly is quite interesting!
I can’t remember a piece of silver!
Mhm. Is it possible, as Rick Lagina has speculated,
that the silver artifact could offer more evidence
that Scott Clark’s theory may be true?

If so, might that explain why the team
has found the same man-made concrete-like material
in both the feature on lot five and around the tunnel
below the garden shaft?
I think this find is invigorating!
There’s no question about it.

What it does say emphatically is that the lot five feature is important.
I don’t think one can dismiss the fact that this find
in the concrete from lot five strongly hints at
a connection to Phips,
but also it speaks to a connection to the Money Pit.
I think it only reinforces that we might be onto something.
We know we have the Money Pit material
that was used in that foundation.
They could have kept some treasure right on site
before they moved it.

I can’t wait to see what other finds pop up
as we dig up the rest of the feature!
There you go!
And so I think we’ve got a lot to do,
and I, for one, am going to start.
You do!
All right, thank you both!
Great job!
Oh yeah!