On Monday, September 15, 2003, at 12:32 PM, Ron May wrote:

> Lyle,
>
> Nothing on lithics, but on a field survey of Douglas Fairbanks' ranch
> (yes, the movie star) in San Diego County, California back in 1972, my
> crew encountered a Peruvian Pepper tree next to the ruins of an old
> general store. Embedded in the tree was an entire plow. It looked as
> though someone propped it up and the tree grew around it. Fairbanks
> bought the ranch during the 1920s from descendants of the Osuna
> family, which held the land one hundred years earlier.

I did a survey on a very early part of historic Virginia, overlaid by
Civil War forts. I was told to "see the tree that ate the cannon."
Turns out that one of the USA cannons had burst and was basically a
large piece of metal. The owner pulled it up into his yard, pushed it
over against a tree and for the next 60 years, the tree grew around it.
Apart from being about half a 8" Columbiad and not movable by one
person anyway, the tree had done a pretty good job of enveloping the
thing. When I was there, the new owner and developer got a wrecker
truck and pulled the cannon out of the tree with nylon straps, took it
down to the new golf clubhouse and it is now an exhibit.

My buddies liked the idea of trees as old as Indians but when I pointed
out that Savannah River points were at the newest around 2000 years
old, they sort of understood.

Lyle