What have you found while digging?

On the beach at Cocoa Beach Fl. Giant rib cage like the size of a car. Like hitting a dear with a Ranch Hand bumper we kept right on going.

My nicest bottle finds were a Parisian Sage hair tonic, clear glass, raised letters w/ separate collar added and wiped to neck ( didn't work, hair still fell out ) Buffalo NY. Nicest fired clay ( vitreous stone bottle ) was P & J Arnold - London England. The bottle was made by Denby Pottery near Derby. I believe this contained printing ink. Those 400 year old towns built on the river are treasure chests waiting to be opened.

Had forgot about this one. Didn't dig any up but was way too close for comfort.!!
In about 2004, I was doing site underground for a previous employer, that included Duke Power, BellSouth phone, Time Warner cable, internal building slab/underground and site lighting.
About a 20 acre site, build a shell building and do another.
This was one of those, this is an extra we just got.
You got to run four more 6" raceways for future utilities",
I was instructed to dig along the edge of the building that was already a finished shell.
The route was from the power pole at the road to along side and about 300 feet past the building that I had previously installed underground.(built the service)months earlier. Which was two for Duke Power high voltage, one for BellSouth and one for Time Warner cable. As I set up for the dig, I knew I had existing underground there put in by me; this is when the little flashing lights in the back of your mind are going and the little man is jumping up and down, waving flags. Needless to say, I am looking around trying to remember the exact location and possible path to miss my previous work. Leaves had started falling and I notice in the super thick undergrowth and woods, literally feet away, what looks like rocks and more rocks, So, looking closer I see it's old rough headstones from the 1700 and 1800s. Very small 10"-12" headstones. I didn't see these when the growth was full and green, probably 60-100 graves, no more than 8' form the building. Some you couldn't read at all, none of them had names, and many only had, what I'm guessing to be, the death date. You could see the unmistakable sink-ins of each grave, many had large trees growing out of the sink holes. This was an unkept, forgotten burial site. I start walking through investigating, currious now I saw eroded steel debris, blacksmith hammered "steel" littering the site. Really old and forgotten relics. I think in those days only wood was used for burial if you were lucky. Flashing lights are really going now.
Not feeling right about digging so close to their final resting place with tracks going at the edge of the sinkholes. No kind of fence/wall, just a edge of woods
To this day, I wonder what kind of cemetary it was (slaves, prison/jail execution, battle/civil war, some kind of epidimic?)
Sure was not on the prints.
I was told to dig!.. no markers or sinkholes in my path go on. GO !
Luckily got through it with no discoveries and only some heavy guilt.

Lectro 88. I know how you feel. You want to do a good job but sometimes you wonder what if.

Reel hip said:

Lectro 88. I know how you feel. You want to do a good job but sometimes you wonder what if.

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EXACTLY. And there was a clear error of due respect, regardless as to who it may be, or who it was.
When I'm layed to rest, I don't think I want someone disturbing the ground around me, and if they do, it's up to them to do the right thing.

I hold strong to, and in ALL things. Give respect-get respect.

That was a long time ago and it still bothers me. I SAW IT. I WAS THERE.
I really can not put into words, how, it all came to pass and how it was discovered (utter shock). The first time I didn't really realize a cemetary was there and couldn't see it for the undergrowth. Second time, I knew there was something there and was still continuing to dig. That's not like just finding a dinosaur. I don't know; maybe it's just me, but I try to do what's right.

That brings to mind a thing that happened about 40 years ago in west central Alberta. My cousins had a govt. contract to build a road. The engineers knew there were two graves somewhere in the area but the exact location was unknown. My cousin suggested peeling off a thin layer of sod with their Cat scrapers and on the third pass, they found the graves. He said they were outlined as plain as day. The graves were moved and the road was built.

One of the local municipalities had a round above-ground concrete water treatment tank, probably 10 or 12 feet tall and 40 ft or more in diameter. Hadn't been used in years, so the city boys decided they could cut a door in the side and use it for storage. Once inside, they found a complete human skeleton.

Murder victim? Homeless vagrant who fell in the tank? No one knows, the boss told them to keep quiet and get rid of it. Didn't want the old-timers in town to know that years ago they may have been drinking water from a tank with a body in it.

How did you get rid of it? Bury it? I wonder when some one (else) will find it!!! haha

My husband found me a nice bracelet. It was in an old outhouse! He dug it up, cleaned it up and I wore it for a month before I knew where he got it from.I thought at first he had done something wrong and I was a benefactor of his guilt! (LOL)

Back in NZ I found a cannon ball from the Maori wars when the Brits were fighting the local maori tribes back in about 1864, use it for a door stop now days.

Craziest thing I've ever come across was an almost complete, old cat cable dozer. The old owner of the property had got it stuck in the mud years ago and heavy rains and mud flows had buried it the rest of the way. Other than that I've found shark teeth 50ft below OG and was a couple hundred feet above sea level. And a large sea turtle (shell was 12 feet wide!!) out in San Clemente CA working on the Telega project. I've worked around native american burial sites but never was allowed to come close enough to dig up any remains, thank goodness.

I've found a lot of old tin and lead cans. A few old pop bottles and a lot of coloured glass bottles. A couple of my coolest finds were glass lidded jars, and a barrel top from a BC Oil Company barrel in the middle of the forest, I ripped the lead plate off the top and have it today.
Another thing is an old (pre 1910) baby carriage, twisted and rusted, thinking the wood wheels have rotted away. Also found an old bucket, full of pot shots. And an old folding chair, same place as the carriage. Leaf springs are normal.
I have 20 acres of property, the front 10 was logged a few years ago, but in the clear, about 20 feet from the fire pit a huge old pry bar was standing straight up, and it wasn't disturbed by the logging. It was probably used for the BC rail that is maybe 50 meters away.

I'm always looking.
Not the coolest stuff, but definitely some neat finds.

I dug a foundation for a guy for his new house that was near his old one. His dog was buried right where the new house was going. He told me where it was. I found it and placed it into a new hole that I previously dug for it. It was in a garbage bag. I ripped the bag with the teeth and saw some bones. I quickly scooped it up and got rid of it.

A dead hooker. No joke.

Vantage_TeS said:

A dead hooker. No joke.

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Yikes! That must have been an interesting day.

tuney443 said:

Yes and no.If you go to the Hyde Park mastodon site,my name appears a few times but not for finding the skull.They didn't give the credit to anyone else,but it's still wrong of them and I've been trying to get it rectified.

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At least they didn't pass the credit to someone else. That would be absolutely infuriating.

Did anything come of your discovery besides the mention. As in, was there a reward or anything?

This was not my dig, but very interesting read:

In May of 1971 while excavating the foundation for the First American Bank Complex, now the AmSouth Bank Complex, in Downtown Nashville, workers discovered a prehistoric cave system, which contained a 9-inch fang and foreleg bone from a Smilodon Fatalis.The importance of this find is in the fact, that of all the previous remains, by use of Carbon Dating, revealed that the Saber-tooth's became extinct around 11,000 years ago. The Carbon Dating of the Nashville find indicated that this cat was alive 9,500 years ago and to date no other Smilodon remains have been dated more recently.

I guess Nashville could claim to possess the remains of the last known Smilodon. From being a lifelong resident and living among its citizens, I know that local Nashvillians are not that presumptuous.

Someone did however, in 1997 think to associate a newly arriving NHL expansion team with a artifact that few were aware Nashville possessed and thus the Nashville Predators were born, complete with a logo depicting a mighty Smilodon.

about 6 or 7 years ago , while working for someone else we were trenching 1 mile of parking lot lighting for a large package delivery firm that ends with X, in a place called raritan center. we got the job after commiting to full fisical exams and OSHA confined space certs. (for a 2' deep trench
we show up to start the job and we're told to report to the E O D on the site ...turns out raritan center industrial park used to be raritan arenal
very nasty place -military dumped chemical weapons from ww1 ,shells, trucks, gernade you name it its down there
google this-----www.nan.usace.army.mil/business/buslinks/raritan/pdf/raritan0610.pdf

bones or arrow heads would have been better

Interesting thread..... By the way, I collect old bottles from before 1900 (primarily Michigan bottles), which is where I live. I find a lot of them at our project sites where I do site inspections, as well as from other contractors that I buy them from. If anyone has interesting ones for sale let me know!

I did not want to start a new thread so I will add to this one. While doing a garage/shop demo yesterday,the slab had to be taken out because the new building is larger. One side of the footing was a little deeper than the others.While digging deeper with the excavator to get under the footing I started feeling something that was giving unlike dirt. What was it? I just dug up a stolen BMW! The job is at a stop because the sheriffs checking to see the if the previous owner had a permit and what year it was pulled to see if the car was registered to him. Hopefully this won't slow my job down much, I have another job I need to start.