Found these the other day in a construction site near my home, where there are soon to be a bunch of more houses. They have already excavated these sites and will be building over them. Inevitably, artifacts like these are left behind to be destroyed by modern construction.
The foreman, a man names Stoole or something like that, gave me permission to look around. Otherwise I wouldnt suggest going onto construction sites to look for relics and stuff.
You're right. ALl you can do is hope that the stuff is left buried and is not disturbed in new construction. This stuff found on the surface, before the houses go up, would likely be picked up by workers or broken to pieces by equipment. It looks like there is a tiny crack in the little bead. Its very fragile. I dont know if its stone, bone seashell or what.
Too bad that these places get covered up so often these days. I would love to find shards like those but I tend to find shards made by the stone china tribes
Ive never found an Indian bead before, so I was pretty excited when I saw it. Pottery sherds are pretty common, although you dont see a lot of decorated stuff nowadays. The piece at the bottom is painted solid red.
The foreman said they had excavated the area around a year ago, but they never dig up and take everything. Stuff is always left behind and the construction workers find it.
Hope you salvage all you can from the site.
Where are the archies? Why is this happening?
This goes on and has since we got here but the archaeologist chastise us for picking up artifacts on private property.
The archaeologists worked for the housing development people. The dug some trenches with a back hoe to look around, but like I said before, these sites are often very large, so they never dig up the entire place. Artifacts can always be found left behind, simply because there are so many of them. Its not uncommon to see hundreds or even thousands of pottery sherds laying on the surface out here. Then you combine that with the amount of lithic debris, and there is just stuff everywhere. The archaeologists are looking for museum quality stuff to preserve, not just anything I guess. I didnt get his first name, but the foreman guy or manager (whoever he was) said he has found some interesting stuff from time to time, but he didnt go into specifics.
Here in Santa Cruz, a rather progressive town, a development company found a grave and a sacred ceremonial knoll. The county did a quick look over. Made them fence off a tiny part, wouldn't let anyone else look around and then built 50 houses on top...unfortunately money is king...