Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/28/meet-your-fellow-mudlarks-at-this-curiosity-shop.html
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Don’t know if Seattle has more than its share of these fine operations, but perhaps the most famous is its tourist trappy “Ye Olde Curiosity Shop” (down by the docks)
long gone, but for truly ancient seattlites it was "Jones Fantastic Museum". they had some remarkably creepy stuff there.
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I went walking on a section of the Thames one evening at low tide, found quite a few sheep bones, and loads of those single-use tobacco pipes made of cheap clay, not much else.
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Back in the 90s, I used to go to a gun club that friends belonged to (you could camp overnight!), called The Raccoon Club. There was a sign in the clubhouse spelling the name out in raccoon penises. 
Here in Savannah we have Graveface Records, and now Graveface Museum, to satisfy our itch for the interesting and macabre.
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Just be aware that without a permit from the Port of London Authority you are not allowed to take anything away from the foreshore and even with a permit you are not allowed to sell anything. And they have paused the issuing of new permits since mudlarking became a social media fad and the archaeology is being stressed.
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I certainly wasn’t going to do more than poke at the sheep bones, and the bits of the pipes are so common that they aren’t really interesting.
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Not interesting? You’re breaking my archaeologist heart!
Nuh, I get it. While they are a tremendous source of dating information, in an unstratified context like that they’re of comparatively little use.
Tbh, my comment wasn’t even aimed at you as much as at anyone reading yours and deciding to imitate you. I have recently soured a bit on the mudlarking community. I used to follow them because compared to metal detectorists they seemed to be genuinely interested in the history and didn’t have that combative streak. But that has changed with the pandemic and the rise of mudlarking as a serious social media phenomenon. There’s lots of casual thievery by tourists and organised thievery by sellers going on and the rhetoric they use reminds me of the aforementioned detectorists.
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I mean, I used to find them around the Ashley River in Charleston, and they’re certainly of interest to someone with enough knowledge about their manufacture and usage, but they’re basically clam shells for normies like me, seen one, seen em all.
You’re much more likely to find me looking for fossils, or nice looking rocks, or collecting the odd seedhead.
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