That Olympic Archaeology gallery got me thinking. What's the best find on a building site?

I've never really come across anything that spectacular from an archaeological point of view but I do rememer being on a site once where they found a German World War II bomb. I don't recall what type it was but they said it weighed almost 1,000kg. They had to get BACTEC in there to dispose of the thing - set work on site back quite considerably and we had to put an EOT claim in as a result.

 Still, it was probably better for everyone that the thing was dealt with properly. This is the alternative:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,444119,00.html

World War II Bomb Explodes on German Motorway

A highway construction worker in Germany accidentally struck an unexploded World War II bomb, causing an explosion which killed him and wrecked several passing cars.

A cutting machine lies wrecked by the side of the A3 motorway next to a small crater left by the explosion.
Zoom
AP

A cutting machine lies wrecked by the side of the A3 motorway next to a small crater left by the explosion.
A World War II bomb has exploded during construction work on a German highway, killing one worker and injuring several motorists who were driving past, police said.

The worker had been cutting through the road surface near the south-western town of Aschaffenburg when his machine struck the bomb and triggered it. Police said they weren't sure yet what type of bomb it was. "The explosion seems to have been too small for it to have been an aircraft bomb," a police spokesman said.

The A3 Autobahn linking the cities of Frankfurt and Würzburg has been blocked in both directions.

More than 60 years since the end of World War II, construction workers still frequently unearth unexploded bombs and it is not uncommon for whole city districts to be cordoned off and even evacuated while bomb disposal experts defuse them.

Indeed, just last week, some 22,000 people were evacuated from their homes in Hanover when three World War II bombs were discovered.
 

Working on social housing sites, you don't really find much that could be classed as 'archaeology'.

What you do find though - discarded needles, bags of pills, cannabis and various other recreational drugs, knives, handguns, a World War 2 pistol taped to the inside of a water cistern by one old chap who managed not to give it back after demobilisation (at least that was his story!)

Fun places to work Britain's housing estates.

Ages ago the archeaologists found a bronze age comb on our site, we were told that it was the best preserved ever found. Also a calf as an offering at a well and a few bodies. That site was handed over to the British Museum for quite a few months.

A mate did the groundworks on the site where the Roman water mill in Gresham Street was found and featured on Time Team.

Not work related but best of all, years ago my daughter found what I think is a hand axe of iron ore, while we were holidaying in Vendee in France. I don't dare show it to the experts in case it's really important and they take it off me. I just hold it and imagine the worker who may have used it once.

 CW

Many years ago, I was working on the utilities on a housing development when we uncovered what appeared to be some sort of ancient wall, possibly part of a Roman-era settlement.

We weren't to find out what it was though - because the project manager decided it was more trouble than it was worth to alert an archaeologist, so we re-routed the pipes around the side of the wall and then covered the whole thing up again...

Carolyn Walsh:

Not work related but best of all, years ago my daughter found what I think is a hand axe of iron ore, while we were holidaying in Vendee in France. I don't dare show it to the experts in case it's really important and they take it off me. I just hold it and imagine the worker who may have used it once.

Surely one for Antiques Roadshow?!

We found the remains of an old monastry once , but we made the mistake of teeling senior management who had it excavated  it in secrete on weekend, personaly i would rather have had Tony Robinson come down, on another site we dug a Ford Zodiac out for a bridge foundation , no one in it though. But the best find was the woman i married , i found her half burried under a toppled filing cabinate in the office.

While working in Huddersfield a few years back, we were requested to force entry into a flat by the building owner due to the tenant not answering the phone, door, mail, etc. Thinking he had done a runner we went ahead witrh the request, only to find the tenant sat in his chair and had been for over a week, poor guy, the worse thing was, no one had missed him other than the landlord.

 Maybe not a time team moment, but one that sticks in my mind.

 What makes it really sad is that he was proberly only missed by the landlord for not paying his rent.

Best find on site?? Quite a bit of lead water pipe on a reduce dig job, hooked it all out and weighed it in!

Human remains - but that's another story.

This road worker had a bit of a shock.

Road worker finds bag of human bones

 A Henkle Bomber engine in Willesden, (That went to Hendon)

A collection of pre 1938 Brittish Motorcycle catalogues on a wood factory floor in Old Ford, (they went to the Brittish Bycicle museum, i got £250 for them)

8 Doubless from Gurnsey dated 1888 in mint condition,

A Medievil Brooch in Evesham (i gave it to the alcohologists)

Countless Artilery shells,

I did find a really nice silver cigarette holder shaped like a dragons head when we stripped out the Indonesian Embassy in Grosvenor square too! (but thats secret)

And we never found any time capsules that we were supposed to give back!  ;-)

A few bits of jewelry and £1000 in 50p peices in jam jars under some floorboards on a housing job!

We used to find alsorts in the Demo!

 It has to be a big tall blonde thing called Kerry who used to come visit me in my Motorhome on a job in Lytham at 3 in the morning wearing her jim jams!

Apart from "Best find on a site" - actually ‘finding a site' that is doing some work would be a good start?

Please don't mention the Olympic Park however; having been out of work for several Months now and hearing about the problems the experts around there are having with Duck Weed on the surrounding waterways, I have recently very successfully, developed a very user friendly 'non-toxic-in-any-way' application that gets rid of that dreaded weed in less than 48 hours - and it doesn't come back. I have tested it on my own pond and on a local Schools lake and, it doesn't harm the inhabitants in any way - in fact both water features are flourishing but it has cleared the Duck-Weed, without any mechanical disturbance!

Perhaps I can add ‘Inventor' to my CV?

Here's another good one for this thread:

Builders unearth bodies of 138 dead nuns