Bob,

Congratulations! You have been selected by Minelab Americas to represent our industry in a unique and revolutionary event. Your selection to this event should be regarded as an honor. You have been identified as one of the leaders in the Minelab channel from an industry, product & overall knowledge perspective.

Minelab Americas, Inc. has been working directly with the archaeological team at the James Madison’s Montpelier federal historic site (http://www.montpelier.org/) to establish an archaeological certification program for relic hunters in our partner channel. This program, called “The Minelab Archaeology Certification Program”, or MACP, is specifically focused on a collaborative effort between the relic hunting & archaeology communities. The goals of bringing these two important communities together in a professional and productive manner include:

1. To more effectively & in a collaborative manner preserve the history beneath our feet
2. To work across our respective communities to properly preserve historic sites across the country for relic hunting

You have been personally selected by me and the team here at Minelab Americas to be one of 15 people from the Minelab community to participate in the initial pilot MACP program. This program is an intensive 5-day training session on the sacred grounds of James Madison’s Montpelier estate in Virginia. During the training session, you will use your Minelab detector alongside the archaeologists at Montpelier to identify new relics & historical markers that are difficult to find beneath the surface. While identifying these new Civil War era historical relics beneath the surface, you will also be learning how to apply archaeological expertise & disciplines to the relic hunting discovery process. This learning will enable you to understand the nuances of archaeological digs, the importance of the discipline itself & give you the tools & credibility to take this learning back to your own community with the objective of driving ongoing local collaboration between the communities of archaeology & relic hunting.

I am inviting you to be one of my representatives at this breakthrough event. Should you accept this assignment, the dates of the training are March 12 – 16, 2012. All I will ask of you is to arrange your own travel to & from Charlottesville, VA & we will do the rest.

The effort to bring these two highly respected communities (relic hunters & archaeologists) together is critical to the long-term success of our industry. As the leader of Minelab Americas, I need our most respected industry representatives in the relic & treasure hunting community to drive the credibility of this certification effort – especially on such hallowed American grounds! "

Man was I Stoked !!

  It wasn't very long until we recieved our information pack from Dr. Matthew Reeves. Matt is the Director of Archaeology at Montpelier. Matt and his crew are amazing people, they are as Passionate about the archaeology at Montpelier as we are about Metal Detecting. The package outlined our itinerary for the week. The schedule kept us moving, this was without a doubt one of most enjoyable weeks of my life !

The program goals were: