Patrick Bennet 7. Roman Villa
In the summer of 2015, Luke Irwin was digging a trench in his yard to lay a new cable. His plot is located in the village of Tisbury, in Wiltshire, England. While digging he stumbled upon some pieces of mosaic. Archaeologists from Historic England and Salisbury Museum were called in. What started as a small home improvement, turned out as one of the most significant discoveries from the Roman era.
It was one of the largest Roman villas found in the UK, similar to the great Roman villa at Chedworth. It was dated in the period between 175 AD and 225 AD.
Archaeologists worked on the site for several days, uncovering the marvellous mosaic and a lot of the walls. They estimated that the villa was a 3 story building with 20 to 25 rooms. The full uncovering and preservation of the find was impossible at the time, so they buried it back. The site is now known as the Deverill Villa.
8. Whale fossil
In 2014, 53 year old Gary Johnson called specialists to check a strange rock. He had heard the news of a whale fossil found nearby earlier that year, and he remembered a weird rock in his backyard, that he found in his teen years. The LA Search and Rescue team was called in to pull the rock out of the ground. It weighed over a ton, and it turned out to be a whale’s baleen, dated between 16,000,000 and 17,000,000 years ago. The whale’s baleen is the filter in its mouth that captures krill and other small prey. Since it is a soft tissue, very few were preserved as fossils, making this find one of about 20 in the whole world.
The rare fossil was relocated to a museum. More pieces of the same whale were found in neighboring yards. The area was a seafloor in prehistoric times, so marine fossils were quite common, but Gary’s rock turned out to be one of the most unique finds ever.
9. The Saddle Ridge hoard
In 2013, a couple was walking their dog on their private property in California Gold country when they stumbled across a real gold treasure. And they didn’t even have to dig for it, well, at least not too much. They noticed a piece of rusted metal, that seemed to be a can of some sorts sticking out of the ground. So the husband decided to pull it out. It turned out to be quite heavy, and he used a wooden stick to remove some of the soil around it. What they took out of the ground turned out to be a hoard of 1,427 gold coins in mint condition dated in the period 1847 – 1894. The value of the coins was a total of $27,980, but their value today was assessed to be about $10,000,000. The coins never entered circulation and were perfectly preserved.
The couple wishes to remain anonymous and are known only as John and Mary. The location of the property was also kept a secret in order to prevent treasure seekers entering the family’s property. All that is known is that the location is near the site of the Gold Rush of 1849.
10. Ancient burial stone
Picture is of another site that is well known link. I couldn’t find any further info on this case, and the content is rather dull, might be better to remove this one from the list.
A historian owning a large plot of land was looking for a very particular stone. It’s whereabouts have been forgotten for a long time, but rumors of a giant balanced stone in the woods were still alive. After doing some research with one of his friends, they were able to find clues to its location, and it was indeed within the historian’s property.
They went out looking for it, but didn’t really expect to find it in one piece. They thought that 300 years of weather effects would have crumbled it into smaller pieces.
When they finally found it, it was standing whole and solid, all covered in moss.
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