Many Cities Around The World,

embark on major public works,

 which often mean digging up parts of the city, and this is where the fun starts,

 as artifacts both ancient,

 and modern are recovered, point in caes, during a nine year period in the early 2000’s a new metro line was excavated along the banks of Amsterdam’s Amstel river, the urban waterway had to be completely pumped, which gave archeologists a rare opportunity to examine the full spectrum of everyday and extraordinary objects which had fallen to the bottom of the prominent river,

enter Below the Surface, a website created by the Department of Archaeology; Monuments and Archaeology (MenA), the City of Amsterdam; and their Chief Technology Officer, serves as an interactive compendium with access to images and information of 19,000 of the nearly 700,000 findings from the excavation site,

on the website you can explore the findings by date or dig into Below the Surface’s selection of object stories which provide context to specific pieces pulled from the river, an historical background is provided for select buttons, tokens, pottery segments, stamps, books, and other findings, meticulously divided display cases of the found objects are installed in the new metro line’s Rokin Station and can be visited by the public, a short documentary of the project can be found on Below the Surface’s website, with English subtitles coming soon, 

one thing, looking at collections like these is that there are so many objects that had a use, but in this day and age you would be hard pushed to state exactly what the object was actually used for, what a great way to explore your cities past.