What’s the weirdest thing you ever found? Jack (11)

Hello Jack,

I guess one of the weirdest things I ever found was when I was digging an eighteenth century cemetery in Ireland. One of the skeletons I was excavating had a strange rounded gap in their teeth, which was very regular and at the time I had no idea what it was and what could have caused it!

We later discovered there were several other skeletons in the same cemetery that had the exact same problem with their teeth…

I then found the explanation: these people had been smoking clay pipes, which were very abrasive. And because they kept putting the pipe in the same spot between their teeth, it made a hole in them after they had been smoking for a long time! Clay pipes were used in the UK and Ireland between the late sixteenth century and the early twentieth century and fragments of clay pipes are common finds on excavations, or even if you are into mudlarking. Some had very simple designs but others were highly decorated and a lot of people still collect them today!

After discovering the reason for these clay pipe notches, I knew what to expect but the first one I excavated was definitely one of the weirdest things I had seen on site at the time!

Odile, January 2026