I've done a lot of work with schoolchildren.  Now I head off the question
about value by phrasing it the way one child did, "(Do you want to know)
what is the neatest thing (I've) ever found?"
Many years ago we received a huge assemblage of artifacts from Santa
Barbara.  There were many, many items, from several different features; one
of the features was associated with a Chinese laundry.  The collection was
not sorted at all.  I was basically just dividing the stuff up, when I came
upon a piece of what looked to be a standard bathroom tile - you know, those
ones that are about 4 inches square.  What caught my attention was the
unusual detail that this white tile was matte - completely unglazed.  As I
looked closer, under the dried mud, I could see little marks.  It turned out
to be the English alphabet, written in pencil.
I suppose there are several explanations for this, but my favorite is that a
Chinese immigrant was practicing the foreign (to him) alphabet, or perhaps
making a reference copy of what the characters should look like.  And what I
like about this artifact is that it was personalized.  There was more than
just the manufactured "thing".
That tile, with its writing, is still my favorite artifact.

S. Walter
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel H. Weiskotten" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2003 7:32 PM
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.