What would baffle future archeologists about your home area?

[LSSBB]

I think future archeologists will wonder why large swaths of Chicago's south and west side became depopulated while nearby suburban areas and the downtown thrived and spread, with no obvious evidence of war.

 

[kirstenholme]

The 300 students in the block next to mine who all died of unnatural causes almost simultaneously.

 

[Anerystos]

I was immediately put in mind of the old David Macauley book Motel of the Mysteries, in which future archaeologists misinterpret just about everything. The premise, as I recall, is pretty simple, which is that if your only basis for reconstructing an idea of some primitive religion is an assortment of artifacts for which you can think of no other use, the results can be pretty funny.

Way out, man. Exit ++!

I bought it on the off chance that it might be interesting. (I often do that with books. The times when impulse buying doesn’t pay off are well outnumbered by those when it does.)

I’ve only just got it and only had time to skim through it: it will need reading (and looking at the pictures) a second (and third) time. Some of the bits are great and I like the way he milked it for all it’s worth. What is really enjoyable is the way bits don’t make sense until later. A sort of Reverse Polish Logic, akin to Reverse Polish Notation. I particularly like the "Sacred Urn", the "Sacred Headband" and the "Sacred Point".

Maybe we should expand this thread into not just what a future archeologist find, but explicitly make suggestions about what interpretations they might put on it.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Speaking of bogs, our house is built on a cut-and-fill in the side of a hill. The area outside our back door turns into a muddy mess when it rains. We've put old carpet down to try and mitigate the problem, but it only works for a while.

Future archaeologists will wonder why we have multiple layers of carpet outside the house. Of course, the remains will be fragmentary at best.

Research assignment: French Drain (Don't worry, it has nothing to do with France.)

 

[arthwollipot]

Research assignment: French Drain (Don't worry, it has nothing to do with France.)

We already have drainage. The explanation for why it gets so boggy would require a rundown of the geology of the area, and is thus off-topic.

 

[ZirconBlue]

I grew up in a small town with had a Two-Story Outhouse.

A two-story outhouse is located in the town. It was built in 1869 for apartments that were attached to a general store. The top floor was used by the apartment dwellers while the bottom floor was used by patrons of the store. Although the store and apartments were demolished, the outhouse remained. Each level has two seats, so the outhouse could be used by four at a time. Waste from the top level dropped behind a false wall into a pit.[3] It is located at the corner of N Pine St. and Front St. 39°27′32″N 88°29′44″W

There's a picture of the outhouse toward the bottom of the wiki article. As mentioned, the building it was attached to is now gone, so it stands out in the middle of a lot, with no access to the upper level. I wonder what future historians would make of that.

 

[leonAzul]

What would palaeoanthropologists think of this, five thousand years hence?

If for some reason there were a disconnection from the documented provenance of this playground, could it possibly be misinterpreted as a rite of passage?

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Not a local one, but went on a holiday in the UK this year and took the Ingleton Waterfalls walk.
A custom there is to embed coins in a fallen tree by pushing them into the bark. The original tree is kinda full, so people have expanded the habit.
Now there are several tree trunks with thousands of coins pushed into them.
I'm sure that one will be fun for future archaeologists

 

[freedy]

Fossilised dog poo, neatly stacked in little plastic bags.

 

[Jim_MDP]

Not a local one, but went on a holiday in the UK this year and took the Ingleton Waterfalls walk.
A custom there is to embed coins in a fallen tree by pushing them into the bark. The original tree is kinda full, so people have expanded the habit.
Now there are several tree trunks with thousands of coins pushed into them.
I'm sure that one will be fun for future archaeologists

Sounded weird so I went hunting for pics...


http://www.amusingplanet.com/2009/10/strange-money-trees-of-england.html


Pretty wild.