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.
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