What's the weirdest thing you've dug up?

I've only been digging with a shovel and only dug about 2 feet down in my deepest spots, but I've been finding some pretty interesting things!

I think the weirdest thing I've dug up so far is a full water hose. It was buried about 6 inches down and all sprawled out. It was like pulling up a never ending tree root.

The previous owner must have been a golfer, because I find golfballs everywhere.

What are some weird things you've dug up?

Last weekend my brother dug up 350 year old Chinese coin where an old house was being torn down.  I've never dug up anything very interesting. I'll have him send me a picture of it again and post it.

Woah, that's pretty awesome!

Yeah I haven't found anything good either, mostly just trash.

Found what I suspect was a very old septic tank once. It looked like it was made out of lime plaster and river gravel. Accidentally punched a t post through the lid, thought it was a rock until the t post suddely sank almost all the way into the ground.

We're getting quite a collection from our new field. lots of old bits of metal, hinges, keys, the huge bolts one uses to help support bulging walls, a small glass bottle that I think was an injection bottle. old coins, the best of which is a silver 1911 25øre in almost perfect condition. old garden shears and for some really odd reason the metal bits of 2 lever arch files.. what were they doing in a field?
The best find was from the old house and it was a flint scraper.

My best is a tow chain that I mentioned in another post. It was 18 inches down in my barn.  My brother dug up some intact Indian pottery and a stone ax head.

There was the day we thought we were about to discover a body.
We had just moved into our house and were poking through an inherited brush pile to see about cleaning it up. Our home is in a historic neighborhood with small lots, and a brush pile just didn’t seem like the best use of space, not to mention an eyesore. Moved some branches and found what felt like plastic buried in leaves and hummous. We started tugging on it, and it became apparent it was a tarp. And it was heavy.

As we kept pulling it out and unraveling, we started finding the odd tool and other debris. And it was clear that it had been rolled up, and had something heavy at the center. This tarp was huge. Then the nature of the debris we were finding changed and things started to get weird. There was a hat. Then a shoe. And then another shoe. And a paint scraper that was broken off in a way that looked very much like a shiv. That was the point where we started to discuss if maybe we should stop digging and call the police, just in case it was an old crime scene.

In the end, we kept going, and the huge lump in the middle turned out to be just a huge pile of lovely earth. We told the story to the neighbors, and they were able to fill in some blanks.

It turns out that the last time the house was painted (possibly in the 1990s), the painter stopped showing up and didn’t return phone calls. Eventually, the previous owners found another number for him. They called and asked to speak to the painter. The woman on the other end said “who wants to know?” They explained the situation, and asked if he was coming back. She replied, “well, I’m his mother, and it’s going to be a while before he gets back. He’s in federal prison.” TheY asked what they should do with the ladders and other stuff he’d left behind. She said, “I don’t care, sell it for scrap.” So I guess that’s what they did. And the other painting detritus they wrapped up in his tarp (which was actually a friggin pool cover) and dumped in a corner of their yard.

So that’s the strangest thing I’ve dug up.

I was digging post holes last week and encountered some bones about 2' down.  They were deer sized and very soft.  But well below the topsoil into the sub soil.  

I think I dug up a cannonball. We're across a creek from some fertile level land where I imagine settlers would have built a fort and fired upon raiding parties on the hilly side of my side of the creak, but maybe it's a product of my imagination.

Wow! Do you have a picture of it?

I'll see if I can locate that hunk of rust in the brambles.

A few years ago I swapped our tiny city backyard from a 30 slope of dead grass and concrete into three terraces of gardens and drought resistant lawn.  I did it 100% by hand with buckets and shovels and very little of the yard was not turned over and the list of finds was varied:
-Bottles of every shape and size from tiny iridescent perfume bottles to full size milk bottles
-a crystal Christmas ornament
-an inch long fire helmet made of lead (original owner was a fire captain)
-various piles of burned trash full of metal and glass (these were under the concrete walkways). I guess the used to burn the trash and bury it.
-a horse shoe (not the throwing kind)
-two legs from claw foot tub

And the oddest of all
-a solid brash shotgun shell with a monogrammed plug which I think was to protect it from crushing after use.  This was a model made into the late 1800s

We live in the Outer Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco, just north of Golden Gate park which makes the finds all the odder.   I will see if I can find some pictures.

I'm digging a (very small) pond and about a foot down it appears to be yellow plastic sheeting over something hard.  I didn't have the energy to investigate, so I'll brave the horror next weekend.  Also the plastic-wrapped bundle I'm really hoping isn't a pet.  I had planned for part to be 1 foot deep and the rest 3 feet deep, but, um, it may stay 1 foot deep entirely.  At least now I know why the drainage there is so terrible!

Oh no! We rented a house where the deal was that we took care of the owner`s pack of dogs along with our two, and they got really rowdy. One day I found my adolescent pup running around with a dog skull in its mouth, and what looked like a fur explosion all over the yard. Called up the landlord and it turned out that they hadn't buried a deceased dog deep enough....

My modest balloon frame house is 106 years old.  It originally had a tiny cellar under 1/4 of the first floor.  At some point, the rear portion was dug out as well, with a good portion of the dirt just tossed in the remaining quarter of crawlspace, under the living room.  I took it upon myself to remove a good part of that dirt, as it was nearly to the floor joists and we had to get in their for electrical updating.  

I found at least four intact half-gallon stone crocks laying on their sides.  If you don't know up front what they are, you wonder if they might be some artillery shells before they are fully revealed.  We removed the dirt very carefully.

Turns out they were locally made and very collectible.

Several of the items that we dug up or found on my brother's land that proved useful, cool, or weird were an intact pyrex dish, a stop sign, large chains, and a truck hood. The truck hood initially was used to cover a small pallet structure to keep kindling and small firewood dry. The truck hood worked really well; however, it is destined to be recycled as scrap because it is rusting and covered in toxic paint.

Alex Arn wrote:
-an inch long fire helmet made of lead (original owner was a fire captain)
-two legs from claw foot tub
-a solid brash shotgun shell with a monogrammed plug which I think was to protect it from crushing after use.  This was a model made into the late 1800s