Dad's Mystery Archaeological Find
Dad asked me to take my "good camera" to their house last night to take some shots of his archaeological findings. Apparently my brother, a builder, was digging some footings for an extension and found a load of pottery buried in the clay. Now, most people wouldn't think anything of it, but our parents are paid-up members of the Sherwood Archaeology Society and so were soon on the scene.
All in they managed to excavate a veritable haul of bits of pottery, which they've had experts date as being mediaeval and about 700 years old. It's all in dad's garage at the moment, waiting for a more permanent home:
Here are two bits that make up a handle.
Dad, the detective, has worked out there must have been a kiln sited there and what they've found is the scrap they never sold.
Guess The Object
Remember about 4 years ago we all had some fun trying to help dad work out where a photo was taken? Well, it might be a long shot, but he needs help working out what the following object from his haul is:
It's made of about 5 separate pieces and is about 6 inches tall. He plans on sending the photos to Nottingham University, but, in the mean time I though we'd have a go at guessing what it is. My guess is it's the base of some sort of goblet. Perhaps intended for church use.
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I would suggest it is the base of a goblet as well. Can't quite make out whether the decoration is a specific pattern - doesn't look Celtic, from what I know (which is really very little!). I guess if there was anything obvious, like a circle quartered by a cross, you would have mentioned it :-)
Found out something interesting on Radio 4's history of the world in 100 objects the other day, which was the origin of the word "Porcelain". Apparently Marco Polo, who first brought porcelain from China to Europe, was trying to find a way to describe the translucent finish. Porcelain comes from the Italian for "Little pigs", which is the Italian description used to describe Cowrie shells, which have a similar finish. I think it is funny that something associated with being "posh" is derived from that!
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Hi Jake,
maybe it is an old candle holder?
I've got another unsolved riddle for you. Maybe someone knows how old these tiles may be?
http://marksein.blogspot.com/2006/01/does-anybody-knows-how-old-these-could.html
I got them from France some years ago...
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It always amazes me that when you watch things like Time Team they find a piece of pottery about the size of ten pence piece and then go on to tell you it was part of a 5 foot high vase.
5 minutes later they find another piece which looks identical (to the untrained eye, anyway!) and they say it was from a dinner plate.
I'm always in awe of their knowledge (in spite of my scepticism!) and given the size of the object in the picture I'm sure someone will be able to give you a good answer.
Goblet seems like a good guess though!
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With that little groove on the back side, and room for cabling, my guess is that this is from a iPad stand / charger. :-)
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England is just one big archeological dig site which is cool as you can just potter around the backyard and start digging up history...LOL.. Here in Australia we have to go far far away to find a fossil of a giant bunyip or wombat or some boring herbivore that died with a mouthful of weeds, during the meteor strike 65 mllion years ago.
The "mystery piece" looks like it's an old goblet or candlebra. But I think James has it right, i knew i saw something like that in the Apple store recently here in Sydney for about $168.00 called an iGoblet but available in black/silver/white and pink for the girls.
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