Don't laugh and don't you dare get mad RLS...Dr. Robert L. Schuyler is my
greatest find. No where have I ever come across someone who personifies
Historical Archaeology and has no problem sharing his ancedotes and love of his
profession. I am so very fortunate to have landed where I did and been involved
in an education that will go way beyond his lifetime.  The things he has taught
me will be passed on and journaled for my children, their children and finally
the following generation of Historical Archaeologists.
--
It is within the boundries of love that you discover life.


Quoting "Daniel H. Weiskotten" <[log in to unmask]>:

> 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.
>