Nice. Back when the USA was forced to coin real money.

When was your house built?

Built in 1947.

Awesome, waterbug, thanks for posting it! In my final of three gardens back in Seattle, Washington (I moved here in 2000 and am SO happy I did), I lived in a TINY 100 year old (115 now, LOL) railroad workers shack that I made into a cute little cottage. Anyway, previous owners had dug and buried trash before trash service was regular and I would always dig up stuff when working on a new garden area. Usually nasty old witch shoes (those super tall many-looped pointy witch shoes, LOL), lots of bent silverware, and the occasional old tin mug, but never anything cool like a coin. It's neat!

In my two Valley gardens all I've ever dug up is caliche and rocks.

Thanks again for posting the coin, it's cool.
Happy gardening and happy digging,
Grant

When I lived in western NY there were 100+ year old trash piles in the woods I dug through. Brings history alive, very interesting. The most exciting thing I'd find was carnival glass which at the time was a hot collector item. But I only ever found pieces...hence "trash pile" I guess.

Here I do find a surprising amount of broken glass and surprisingly deep. Some looks pretty old, but hard to say. The other interesting archaeological item I find everywhere in the yard are irrigation systems. At least 3 systems were in my yard. Iron pipe, a black plastic that was flexible but now brittle and breaks into lots of tiny bits and the more recent PVC. Seems like I can't dig a hole without hitting one. Kind of interesting guessing what kind of yard they had in the past based on the different systems.

Cool finds. The only surprising thing I've seen around are sea shells. Those witch shoes and mugs could have been valuable.

That's amazing waterbug_guy!! Lucky you!!

Here on my property I've found lots of twisted metal, the remnants of little Matchbox cars...apparently the many children living in this house before we purchased it attached firecrackers to the toy cars, then tossed and watched them blow up.

Then there was also what seemed like tons of broken beer bottle pieces strewn all over so perhaps the demolition culprits were NOT children ;-)

Thanks for sharing your find and also photo of it - really cool!!

Fun to see/hear what folks find! In that Seattle garden I was always finding bits and pieces of pipes and stuff too. What a mess (but interesting).

The witchy shoes looked like these, but imagine them buried underground for at least 50, and probably many more, years. They actually held up well.

Fun discussion, happy gardening and discovering!
Grant

Cool find waterbug, those *are* witchy looking shoes Grant. For a time we lived in the 'foreman's house' on a ranch outside of Nogales AZ. When digging in the garden I found this cool grinding stone.

That's wild. I don't know what I would have made of that if I'd found it. Bigfoot arrowhead? Meteorite?

-buggy! It's a kitchen tool. Mortar and pestle - this would be the pestle. Chopping with the sharpened end, grinding grains etc with the rounded end.

There was likely twine or something wrapped around the indented part for gripping and probably hanging, with a loop at the end.

This post was edited by marymcp on Fri, Jan 2, 15 at 21:21

I always find pieces of broken glass and bits of old dog toys whenever I dig in the yard, but that's about it. I also get the occasional piece of old PVC pipe every now and then. Nothing that interesting though. Cool find!

-m, Yes, I was able to figure that out when you said it was a grinding stone. Guess my post confused you.

Cool find, Mary! I would never have guessed what it was. Thanks for the ID and the pic--very cool! Happy gardening all, this is such a fun discussion!

Name that artifact. Found this about 16" below ground the other day. About the size of a smart phone, very heavy for its size.
{{gwi:2122805}}

With some tarnish removed...
{{gwi:2122806}}

My thinking initially is that this is obviously a 1 pound Aztec silver bar dropped by the Spanish Conquistador Hernando Cortez. Until this discovery Cortez hadn't been known to have traveled to Phoenix...start rewriting those history books

But alas, silver isn't always silver.

No idea, buggy! Ax blade? Let us know! :)