Archaeologists conducting a survey in Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada have stumbled upon a 132-year-old Winchester rifle propped against a tree, possibly having been left there more than a century ago: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/archaeologists-1882-rifle-leaning-against-nevada-desert-tree-230226150.html#t1FCmzy



It'd be pretty amazing if it's literally sat there since the moment the owner put it there in the 1880's...

I was wondering where I put my gun... 

Next they'll find a skeleton that was mauled by a puma. Lesson: don't go for a jimmy riddle without your gun!

  indeed! Wonder if it was loaded - doesn't say if it was or if any empty shell cases were found in the vicinity. 

Unless it's been carefully faked by an unknown practical joker....

What they don't show is the park ranger who brought the gun back saying "where did I leave my M16? I had it when we went out ..."

 

Being an archaeologist this immediately caught my eye.  Normally headlines about archaeologists are something like 'Archaeologists find plague pit burial site' or 'Archaeologists look for King's burial site', but as with all such headlines the actual academic process is regarded as totally boring by the vast majority of sane people, i.e. non-archaeologists.  The story did bring to mind a colleague (unfortunately passed away now) who used to in the evenings on digs when we were all sitting around (in the pub of course) start us all planning on pranks we could do on the public viewing days.  Only once did I ever know him to carry out such a prank.

The dig we were directing was near a medieval castle, but both of us being 'stones and bones' archaeologists were mainly interested in the ancient, i.e. mesolithic occupation of the area.  We would show visiting members of the public a lovely piece of stone that was a 'flint or chert core' and explain enthusiastically how someone about 6 - 10,000 years ago had delicately flaked off slithers of flint or chert to use as various types of tools.  We soon learned that for some strange reason not everyone was enthrawlled by the time we were showing them our 20th artefact, perhaps a piece of burnt stone.  (There are some strange people in this world.   )

Anyway, it was an open public day and my friend turned up in a land rover and called me over, he had 3 suits of armour (modern I should say) that he had hired off a friend in a theatrical costumers to actually carry out his plan.  Carefully that morning we used parts of 2 of the sets of armour to place various bits in spoil heaps around the site, covering them with enough soil so that it looked like they had been excavated over the past few days and just tossed to the side with the spoil from the trenches.  We then quickly re-excavated a trench that had already been filled in and buried the third set of armour, just enough showing so that all the visitors would obviously recognise it as such.  

We had a fair group of about 40 - 50 people come for the tour of the site that day, and there was I explaining to them what we were doing, how our understanding of the site was evolving and the surprises that we had found (not once mentioning the armour of course), then we started the tour.  People were incredulous as we went up to each trench and there plainly for everyone to see was a piece of armour sticking out of the spoil heap.  I just explained it away by saying that 'Oh, the armour, that's nothing just a load of rubbish that we chuck out, nothing interesting about it' and such like excuses.  Then finally, as we approached the final trench (the one quickly re-excavated that morning) there for everyone to see was my friend moaning and groaning about finding another 'bloody suit of armour' and chucking pieces of it on the spoil heap.

The mutterings and pointing fingers along with the disrespsctful glares I had been receiving from the group now broke out into open pandemonium, suddenly we were close to what felt like at the time a riot situation.  Our joyful little prank had suddenly become serious, with one middle aged man actually appearing to get ready to commit physical violence in defence of what he believed was his and everybodys heritage!  Finally, we managed to calm things down by showing the crowd (or should that be 'baying mob') the receipt for the hiring of the armour and explaining it was all just a prank.  It didn't go down too well to put things mildly.

The upshot was that a journalist from the local rag appeared about an hour after the public had finally left.  He apologised for taking so long to arrive but he had to report and take photographs at a wedding before he could get to us.  Puzzled we asked him what it was he was interested in about the dig.  He replied his sister had phoned him when she visited the dig earlier and said that suits of armour were being dug up everywhere, it must be a knights graveyard.  He wasn't amused when we explained what had happened.  We were not amused either that in convincing him not to report the events of the afternoon it cost us an expensive trip to the pub and getting him sozzled to agree not to report the story in the paper.

We cut down the number of public open days after that and always made sure the tour and talk was back to serious archaeology, which 15 minutes into the tour was normally enough to bore the visitors senseless.

love it 

Course for Americans 132 years IS ANCIENT HISTORY......


IanS 

Excellent prank !! 
Cheers - Phil

Great pranking!

Remind me never to hire you a suit of armour.