Mudlarking - updated

This past week [In 2009] the BBC featured an article on "mudlarking," (treasure hunting along riverbanks at low tide).

"... there is no place better to mudlark than on the 95-mile foreshore of the Thames, considered by some the largest open-air archaeological site in London...

While a general permit to look for artefacts allows the aspiring treasure hunter to dig only 7.5cm into the ground, a special mudlark's licence allows the enthusiasts to venture much further underneath the surface.

"The best thing I've ever found," says Tony, "is a silver wine taster, dated 1634, that is now in the Museum of London's collection."

Over the last 30 years, Tony and his friends from The Society of Thames Mudlarks have amassed a collection of more than 2,500 buttons ranging in date from the late 14th to the late 19th Century. They are now being donated to the Museum of London and include examples of buttons made of silver, pewter and semi-precious stones...

I think it sounds like fun, although I think I remember references in some Dickens' novels that it was not viewed that way in earlier times:

During the Industrial Revolution, mudlarks were usually young children or widowed women. Becoming a mudlark was a cry of desperation as it is considered one of the worst "jobs" in history. At the time of the Industrial Revolution, excrement and waste would wash onto the shores from the raw sewage which wasn't treated. The corpses of humans, cats and dogs would also wash up. Mudlarks would be lucky if they made a penny a day selling what they had found during low tide, which was the only time people could scavenge along the shores of the rivers.

I'm sure lots of murder weapons and wedding rings have been tossed into the Thames.

Reposted from 2009 to add a report of the recovery of a neolithic skull fragment by a mudlarker:

The fragment of a neolithic skull was mudlarked from the south bank of the river’s foreshore by Martin Bushell last September... The discovery, which Bushell initially believed was just a shard of pottery, was handed in to the Metropolitan police. The force commissioned radiocarbon dating of the bone, which revealed that the man had died about 5,600 years ago...

Last month, a rare Roman oil lamp found on the river’s foreshore by Alan Suttie, an amateur treasure hunter, also went on display at the Museum of London. Other ancient objects found in the Thames in previous years include a neolithic polished macehead, a sword dated to the late bronze age and a bust of the Roman emperor Hadrian, dated to his visit to Britain in AD122 – all of which are on display at the British Museum.

See also:  Love tokens retrieved from the mud of the Thames (2011).

Reposted from 2019 to add a link to a Bloomberg article on the subject:

The number of mudlark permits, which are valid for three years, surged from a few hundred around 2016 to more than 5,000 during the pandemic, fueled largely by social media. Worried about a plundered foreshore, the Port of London Authority that oversees the riverbank halted issuing new permits in November 2022...

The publicity has been a headache for riverbank conservationists, and the multitude of mudlarks is part of the problem. Maiklem argues that using metal detectors, shovels and hand tools hastens erosion and are unnecessary given the river’s powerful 20-foot tidal swing that unearths buried treasures...

Miller says that because the number of mudlarks has “gone through the roof,” it’s harder to find buried artifacts. “It’s basically the same size cake, but now thousands of people are trying to get a slice of that cake.”..

Lots of rivers in old cities hold troves of sunken antiquities but nowhere else are they as readily accessible as the Thames. “London is really quite unique, in that we have that combination of having a tidal river and a foreshore that’s stable enough to be walked on,” Sumnall says. “And we are a global city with a very long history of human occupation that stretches back 400,000 years.”