The Excavations
This Episode will focus mainly on our continuing feature, Back Yard Archaeology. We have at least one update on an older excavation, and we have some new excavations. We also have a mysterious discovery.
Mysterious Discover
While breaking up The Monolith, which you first saw in this Episode, I discovered a mysterious piece of metal embedded inside the concrete. Why was I breaking up so valuable an artifact? Well, so far we have not received a single offer for it from any museums or collectors, and breaking it up made it a lot easier to move and handle. This mysterious piece of metal is silvery-white in color and is not rusty at all. It's relatively light, too. Here are some pictures.
 |
| The top |
 |
| The bottom |
Yes, it's another new team member, and we feel that every household should have one of these. Meet Rocky, our new sledgehammer. Rocky is a standard 34" (that's 86.36cm, or 3.45mfoot) wood-handled sledgehammer with an 8.5# head. Rocky has been most helpful in breaking up some of the concrete that has been dug up in the back yard.
The Excavations Continue
There were two square-shaped pieces of concrete sticking up slightly out of the dirt, and I had been wanting to dig them up for several months - since before we moved in to our New House. They are now dug up, and as suspected there is more to them than initially met the eye. Here is what they looked like while buried.
Note the squareness of this artifact. This alone sets it apart from the other artifacts that have been excavated. It is also smoother and more refined than the other concrete artifacts - as though it had either been cast in a mold or carved from a larger block of concrete. Did the pre-Bishopians possess concrete casting technology? The other square artifact looked pretty much like this one while it was buried.
Here you can see what the artifact looks like after being unearthed. Note the fine craftsmanship, and contrast it with the roughness of the concrete artifacts in the pile in the background. You can also see the top of the other square concrete artifact in this picture. It is much like the first, so I felt no need to photograph it after excavating it.
Short Interlude
And now we take a short interlude to show you some recent pictures of Satchmo in the fireplace.
Clearly, our fireplace screen is not an effective cat deterrent. Not to worry, though - we have not yet had any fires in the fireplace and it is still relatively clean.
More Continuing Excavations
The excavating in the back yard has changed from passive finding to active finding. That is to say, when I started this project I was content to excavate artifacts that I could see, or that I discovered by accident, and now I have begun to search them out on purpose. In the back yard, near the house and patio, there is a raised area of dirt where I suspect there may be more artifacts. I have begun to think that the pre-Bishopans' thinking went something like this: "Well, we've torn out this hot tub, but what do we do with all of the concrete post foundations and all the pipes and tiles and stuff? I know! Let's just break off the pipes at ground level and let's just bury the concrete! It's perfect! No one will ever know and we won't have to dispose of this stuff." Fortunately for us, their burial skills were lacking. While excavating this raised area of dirt I discovered a rather large concrete artifact that I am calling The Junior Monolith, because it is the 2nd largest piece of concrete I have found - The Monolith being the 1st largest. This artifact has multiple post holes and it was abutting our patio when found.
Note the roughness of the concrete here. It is a stark contrast to the smoothness and straight lines of the square concrete artifacts discussed previously in this Episode. Also note that Rocky was very helpful in breaking up this artifact for easier removal from the ground. Here is a picture of the excavation area after The Junior Monolith was removed and the hole filled back in.
While digging this area of the yard I noticed that there was a lot of sand mixed in with the dirt, and I discovered pieces of clam shells buried in the sand and dirt. Clams typically live in the ocean, and sand is typically found at the beach, which is also near the ocean. Was our back yard part of an ancient ocean in pre-pre-Bishopian times?
Excavation Update
Finally, we end this Episode with an update to the excavation that was first mentioned in this Episode, and updated in this Episode. A quick recap - this excavation dealt with a PVC conduit, containing romex, that was buried in our yard and ran roughly parallel to the patio. It was discovered that the conduit ran underneath the concrete walkway by the house and porch. Here is a picture to aide in refreshing your memory.
At the top of this picture you can see some conduit coming out of the concrete and running along the ground next to the house.
As suspected initially, this conduit was one and the same as the buried conduit, and the romex inside the conduit was connected to an old, rusty, defunct timing device of some sort.
 |
| Inside the box |
The electrical cables have all been removed, the above-ground conduit has been broken off where it enters the concrete, the conduit hole in the concrete has been plugged with silicone, all of the buried conduit has been removed, and the excavation trench has been filled in. The box still sits on the wall. We may remove it some day.
The metric foot - an idea whose time has
bIsh
2 comments:
Regularly reading, rarely commenting... perhaps my commenting-brain will come back after my move. :-)
Too bad all that concrete is useless, and can't be transformed into something you (or anyone, really) wants. The pre-Bishoprians are indeed intriguing; my good friend V. is an anthropologist... I may relate your findings to her for a consult. ;-)
Perhaps, you need to rent a metal detector, and check out the back yard in detail.
I am starting to drift to a new theory, there may be a whole pirate ship buried down there, that was once parked on a beach. You know about pirates, don't you?
Post a Comment