Perhaps it relates to the corners of cemeteries. While monitoring an
excavation a week or so ago I found a "modern" artifact of dubious use. It
was a concrete rounded cone with five or six small blue beads around the top,
which had a corroded iron "unident" think stuck into it. It had an
Anthropomorphic face on it made of a cowrie shell as the smile of the "Mona
Lisa" and two other small shell as the eyes barely above the level of the
concrete. Romans had terrazzo concrete but this looks more like ours. The
whole artifact complete with stem of iron sticking out of the top is about
four (4) inches tall with an unfinished base, that is it might have been
molded out of a chain link fence cap but appears larger. This was found in
the SE corner of the Old West Farms Soldier Cemetery in the Bronx, NY where
veterans of four wars and others are interred. Six or seven blocks away Al
Pacino the actor grew up on the street that intersects this cemetery with
180th Street, Bryant Ave. Possibly a Caribbean origin for this little
"dupee?" Any one seen one like it?

George J. Myers, Jr.

PS. There were many pennies of the "Lincoln Memorial" type thrown or strewn
over the cemetery, any one have any experience with this? A sawed off shovel,
just the handle and part of the shaft?