Oh yeah, I forgot a detail ... some land across the road from the main battle area of the Mill Springs battlefield had been used for plinking for years. The reenactments in the mid-1970s even had musket live-fire competition over there. During the metal detector surveys, some of these 1970s Minie bullets showed up (Lyman 575-213), as well as modern .38 caliber wadcutter bullets. We had to explain to the archaeologists that, no, these were NOT bullets from the 1862 battle, and why they were found there.

Those metal detector surveys of that battlefield were a real eye-opener. We learned FAR more from that analysis than we ever could from just searching period records. We could actually SEE the exact locations of opposing battle lines, from round ball and buckshot drops (lots of .69 smoothbores in use there). We could also see where a battle line must have formed at or near the top of a hill, from an impact line of balls and bullets going across just below the hilltop (short rounds).