Hmm memorable finds. I guess finding a couple of pearls at my site in
Cossack qualifies. It was WA's first pearling port but no-one had found lost
pearls in the townsite before.

Still I think my favourite is still the human tooth with its 19th century
gold fitting to turn it into a denture. We found it under Government House
along with a bullet and the team had lots of fun inventing stories to
explain them along the lines of "The Butler Did It".

----- Original Message -----
From: "paul courtney" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, 12 October 2003 10:14 PM
Subject: Re: Most Memorable Find


> I can't think of any memorable finds on site (probably too hung over to
> notice) though i was pretty chuffed last year when a colleague sent a box
of
> pottery from a small urban phase II site in Shropshire (NW England)- half
a
> day's work- and I found a 16th century salt in the form of a female
figure.
> Subsequently I found a photo of a head from a similar salt from several
> hundred miles away in Westminster (London) which looks like it was made by
> the same potter. Memorable moments - finding a reproduction copy of Jacob
de
> Gheyn's Wappenhandelinge (military exercise book) in a secondhand bookshop
> in Groningen on my honeymoon though my wife wan't too pleased (it was
large
> and we were travelling by train)- she is better trained these days,
watching
> the waves roll up to Louisbourg (I never thought I would ever visit);
> watching a certain well known ex-patriot English archaeologist firing his
> spud gun into the James river one balmy evening; seeing the collection of
> 16th century St. Porchaire ware in the Renaissance museum at Ecouen
outside
> Paris after catching a metro and a long bus ride shared with live animals
> (there is another poor and multi-ethnic Paris beyond the periphique)- only
> one sherd has ever come from an excavation so don't expect to find any;
the
> time I stopped to take  a photo of an abandoned  19th century
fortification
> in Britanny by a roadside fence with a sign saying 'military
property-entry
> forbidden', my wife offered to hop over to get a better photo until I
> disuaded her with the possibility of her being shot or spending 30 years
in
> prison, a few seconds later some military type screeched to a halt in a
> passing car and eyed us suspiciously until we departed.
>
>
> paul courtney
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Daniel H. Weiskotten" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 3:32 AM
> Subject: Most Memorable Find
>
>
> > After several decades of people asking me "what is the most valuable
thing
> > you ever found?", I finally had someone ask the other day "what was the
> > most memorable thing you ever found?"
> >
> > Having wished for several decades that people would ask this sort of
> > question, I had a ready answer (although not then given in such a
> > long-winded form):
> >
> > Back in the mid-1990s I was monitoring the removal of a large parking
lot
> > at the Calvert Mansion, Riversdale, in Riverdale, near College Park
> > Maryland.  The area had been heavily disturbed in building the parking
lot
> > in the 1960s and during construction projects at the mansion in the
> > 1930s.  Many archaeological features remained intact, but we stayed
clear
> > of them if they were not to be impacted.  That left us doing a lot of
> > mapping and collecting lots of artifacts that had lost their context in
> the
> > various disturbances over the years.  One soggy late-winter day an
elderly
> > lady wandered in to see what we were digging and I eagerly listened as
she
> > told stories of how she used to play in the house as a child (it had
been
> > the home of Hiram Johnson, Governor of California 1911-1915, California
> > Senator 1917-1923, and some credit / blame him with making California
the
> > wacky state that it is today [he would have loved the recent recall
> > election]).  For some years after Johnson lived there the house had been
> > abandoned and the old lady recalled the deserted house, with its
beautiful
> > marble fireplaces, broken statuary in the attic, and a once fine piano
> that
> > had lost all its ivories to the pocket knives of prying young boys.  She
> > said that the poor piano, with its toothless grin, had haunted her all
her
> > life, for pianos can are such beautiful things.  As she said that I
> reached
> > into the day's artifact bag and retrieved a single slice of ivory that
had
> > just been found near the house and we assume had once adorned the home's
> piano.
> >
> > I thought she was going to pass away right then and there.  It was deep,
> to
> > say the least.
> >
> > Lets start a thread with anecdotes of your most memorable finds.
> >
> >         Dan W.