Just found a piece of pottery in my own backyard

I was digging a hole for a new plant last week and my shovel hit something hard. It was a small, curved piece of ceramic with a blue glaze, and my local historical society said it's probably from the early 1900s. Has anyone else ever found something old just doing normal yard work?

4 comments

4 Comments

the_tyler2mo agoMost Upvoted

My old place had a yard full of surprises. I kept hitting bricks and chunks of old plates every time I tried to garden. The best was a whole horseshoe, all rusty and bent. It's wild what's just a few inches under the grass.

amy_anderson2mo ago

My friend was putting up a fence and his post hole digger scraped against a whole glass bottle. It was this old medicine bottle from like the 1920s, completely intact. He got super into it and started digging more carefully in that spot. He ended up finding a few more bottles and some rusty tools. It was basically a little trash pit from when his house was first built. Makes you wonder what people just buried in their yards back then.

mary_west2mo ago

Did your historical society say what the pottery piece was for, like a dish or something? @amy_anderson's friend's trash pit find makes me wonder if you've got a whole set buried back there.

sethm461mo ago

Oh yeah, that’s wild. I had a similar thing happen when I was digging a spot for a birdbath. Hit a whole old clay pipe and a broken cup, like someone just chucked their trash out the back door a hundred years ago. Makes you think there’s probably a lot more junk under everyone’s yards, just waiting to be unearthed.