New Jersey

Yes, on private land with the landowner’s written permission. That is the clearest legal route in New Jersey, and it is the only thing we do.

Federal land is closed. Access to state land is decided by New Jersey State Park Service and the rules are not the same at every property. Private ground, with the owner’s written agreement, avoids all of it.

On federal land, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 makes it an offence to disturb or remove archaeological resources over 100 years old without a permit. The National Park Service prohibits metal detecting outright in national parks.

The State Park Service sets the position for state parks, forests and historic sites, and several of its properties are protected archaeological ground in their own right. The rules are not uniform across the system, so the individual property is the only answer that counts.

We do not publish a summary of individual park rules, because they change and they differ site by site. The authority above is the one that decides, and they will answer directly.

Public land is complicated. Private land with written permission is not.

Ask the landowner and get it in writing, or book ground where the permission already exists. Knowing where to look is only half of it. The right to be standing there is the half that decides whether the day is detecting or trespass.

1. Identify the ground. Old maps, cellar holes, vanished settlements and terrain will all point you at likely land in New Jersey. None of that grants access to it.
2. Find who owns it. County parcel records name the owner. Knocking on the door still works, and still fails most of the time.
3. Get the agreement in writing. Who may search, which fields, on what dates, what happens to anything found, and who carries the liability.
4. Or skip to the end. Every FieldFinders listing in New Jersey is land whose owner has already agreed, set their own rate, and approves each request by name. The written search agreement comes with the booking.

New Jersey was the corridor. Both armies crossed it repeatedly between 1776 and 1778, and Trenton, Princeton, Monmouth and Morristown are only the engagements that got names. Underneath that sits a longer story: Dutch and Swedish settlement on the Delaware, Quaker farms through the west, and some of the earliest ironworks in the colonies scattered through the Pine Barrens. The farmland in the north and west has been worked continuously for three centuries.

1. 1630sDutch and Swedish settlement along the Delaware
2. 1660s onwardEnglish proprietors, Quaker farms in the west
3. 1776 to 1778The Revolution crosses the state, repeatedly
4. 1800sPine Barrens ironworks, glass houses and mill villages

Good workable loam through the Piedmont and the northwest, deep enough that targets sit well below plough damage. The Pine Barrens are sandy and acidic, which destroys iron but leaves non-ferrous unusually clean. Farmland in Hunterdon, Salem and Warren counties is the most rewarding ground in the state.

Revolutionary buttons, buckles and dropped coinage across the corridor, Spanish and colonial silver on the older farm sites, bog iron and glass house debris through the Barrens, and domestic brass wherever a house has stood since the 1700s.