» Stuff I've found

Child's Jawbone
My Dad is a bit of an budding archaeologist (he even has an Indiana Hat - tchuh!) and often attends digs around the county. On a few rare occasions when I'm not hungover, I've accompanied him and been allocated my square metre of dirt to start brushing away at. Having been a few times I'd started to be able to date odd bits of pottery and could kinda' sort out what was rubbish and what was significant.
One cold Sunday, Autumn morning, I attended a dig that was trying to unearth a lost village that had disappeared during the plague. All that remained of the village was the ruins of a church and the dig was just outside the main gates. Anyway, I had been huddled over my square of excavated earth for about an hour when my trowel struck something hard, I brushed off all the soil and revealed what looked like the brown stained dome of a piece of pottery. I tested for the edge, found it and flipped over a shard of pot. Confusingly, the underside of the pot didn't look like pottery at all... I kept digging and within a minute had unearthed a jawbone complete with milk teeth... Yes. I had found a child's skull with no trace of a body.
Sent shivers down my spine.. how long had this been here?
Anyway, coroner had to be called and shut down the dig for two weeks (much to everyone's annoyance). Turned out to be a 9-10yr old girl buried outside of the gates of the church 600-700 years ago.
Made me feel freaky.
And I never went again.
(Thu 6th Nov 2008, 14:58, More)