Back To Backyarchaeology

Be it ironic or coincidental, yesterday — my first as a fully empowered self-employer — also proved to be the first day in a long time (August 25, 2009, to be exact) that I unearthed a new treasure from our endlessly surprising backyard, the area behind our barbecue grill to be exact. And this time I didn’t have to dig deep at all.

I found myself back there trying to add a makeshift strut to support the increasingly troublesome lean of the fence our neighbors to the south had poorly erected in 2004, not long after I met Susan. Looking down I caught the edge of what I thought might be another historic Batchelder tile to add to the collection of four previously dug up.

Instead, beneath about an inch of soil, I found something of a multi-material mosaic tile — made of concrete, not clay — measuring 9″ x 11″ and embedded with broken bits of differently colored ceramic tile, and a fragment of shattered glass (click for the bigger picture):

I recovered and reglued the pieces of glass, which had come loose, but whatever might have been set in the now-empty channels that run diagonally between the left and top edges seems to either have been lost, or awaiting eventually discovery nearby.

My Flickr-based Gallery of Backyarchaelogy can be viewed here.