
Below the Surface – Finds from an archaeological project in the River Amstel - Osiris30
https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondsten
======
tbabb
Is there a word for "time vertigo"?

So many lifetimes and stories associated with each one of those little shards
of object; these are just the ones discarded and found in this one small
place.

The magnitude of all the human lifetimes and endeavors that are now all but
non-existent makes my head spin. The depth of history is staggering.

~~~
ryanSrich
If you're into this kind of work, I suggest spending an hour or so
reading/looking through "Here" by Richard McGuire. It's a fascinating
conceptual graphic novel that really gave me a new way of thinking about time.
Even now, years after reading it, I find myself appreciating the history of
physical spaces, even spending time to research buildings and different places
I visit each day.

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/books/review/richard-m...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/books/review/richard-
mcguires-here.html)

~~~
barneyrubble
What the. I thought I recognized that book instantly upon seeing that preview
of it and skimming the article, but the fact that it had been released only a
few years ago made no sense to me--I was sure I'd seen previews of it
something like 15 years ago, and then I suddenly remembered, vividly, how
eerie it had seemed at the time, and I remembered being in this same house I'm
in right now, looking at it online and feeling weirded out. But just now,
after more reading, I found out the book is based on some earlier and similar
black and white pages he'd drawn back in 1989 for Raw magazine, which must've
been what I saw online 15 years ago.

So basically the last 10 minutes of my life have been super weird and totally
appropriate in the context of that dude's work. Gaaah. Thanks for the link,
and the bizarre meta experience I just had.

------
ygra
For those who may not find it like I did initially: The whole thing has
faceted navigation and filtering when clicking on the search icon in the lower
left. You can then filter by time range, material, and use.

~~~
noiv
This zoomable interface shows all items at once:
[https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/rokin/](https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/rokin/)

~~~
jasperk
This interface are hi-res pictures of the displays that are built in the new
subway station Rokin. The new line will open on July 21 in Amsterdam.

------
avenius
It's fascinating how you can see hints of the city's history through these
items. E.g. from the "golden age" (16-1700s) there are tons of items from the
bustling cloth and textile trade. It's also interesting to see how the
apparent quality of items has gone down over the centuries - even though
there's probably some survivorship bias, most recent items are just paper and
plastic, and probably wouldn't have lasted very long.

------
newman8r
anyone who thinks this is fascinating should take a look at magnet fishing
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_fishing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_fishing)
\- it's a pretty cool hobby.

~~~
dddw
ok that sounds like fun, how do you start with that. get a magnet... and then
find a spot?

~~~
newman8r
Yeah it's basically that simple. All you need is a rope and a good neodymium
magnet. If you search for magnet fishing on amazon you can get set up for
pretty cheap.

There's tons of videos on youtube about it and there's also a subreddit that
looks pretty helpful: /r/magnetfishing/

------
louisjpe
I inferred the items were mostly dredged up from the Amstel riverbed, rather
than a canal. Either way, as an Amsterdam resident this is a fascinating deep
dive into the city's history (and its international visitors).

------
TomMckenny
One item from early 1500s looks amazingly modern.

Amazingly Mondrian even.

[https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00092CER059...](https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00092CER059?index=15887)

~~~
robertgaal
Megaman > Mondrian

[https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00620MTL039...](https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00620MTL039?index=1)

~~~
TomMckenny
Maybe life doesn't suck. Today: canal trash is credits cards, cell phones and
Megaman. The past: fishing hooks, spear heads, a nazi coin and nothing more
fun than tobacco pipes and dice.

------
tribby
beautiful website, well beyond its functional requirements.

I wonder if any other cool stuff gets found when the canals are fished for
bikes (another interesting thing about NL canals I heard about on HN[1]), or
if that happens in mostly the same areas, making them more likely to be over-
fished.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFAIzp9MCkg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFAIzp9MCkg)

~~~
mirimir
Small cars, too: [http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/707-amsterdam-smart-car-
canals](http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/707-amsterdam-smart-car-canals)

------
teekert
A Mega Flippo, an audio tape and those marbles, it's a trip down memory lane
for me as well. Very cool project.

~~~
barking
There's a philips c12 (iirc) there, I had one circa 2000, really liked that
phone. Maybe it was more by association though. My contract allowed one free
number and I set that to a landline access number of a discount telecoms
provider so i was able to make calls to everywhere really cheaply for the
time.

------
noisy_boy
I find it intriguing that the design of the buckle[0] is over 600 years old
and practically unchanged.

[0]:
[https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZR2.00536MTL065...](https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZR2.00536MTL065?index=18227)

------
tonyedgecombe
There's a canal in Oxford I walked along regularly, over the course of a year
I pulled five bikes out of it, one of them looked brand new.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Brand new bike in a canal sounds suspicious as heck to me...

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I'm sure they were all stolen.

~~~
askmike
Most bikes in Amsterdam are stolen at some point. There is little crime except
when it comes to stealing bikes. Mostly because the police doesn't do anything
when bikes are reported stolen, so unless you're caught red handed you have
little to worry about.

------
tnolet
Slightly off topic: When in high school me and some mates actually found a
dead body in the canal.

This was not in Amsterdam but Utrecht, which has very similar canals. My
school was right on the canal and it was an early winter morning. Turned out
it was a homeless person who probably fell in while drunk, at least that was
what the police said. Not a nice morning...

------
babuskov
Many locks and keys? And a gun? I bet there's an unsolved crime behind that
one.

~~~
sushibowl
It's a plastic toy gun:
[https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00448KST001...](https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00448KST001?index=275)

~~~
roel_v
Under Dutch law, it's equally illegal to a real gun, because it looks like a
real gun. Yes, this is insane. (and police are doubling down on it, too - with
a recent campaign against 'too real-looking toy guns').

------
donquichotte
It's striking how disposable the newer plastic items look compared to pre-1930
items, which are made mainly out of ceramics, metal, glass and wood.

------
toomanybeersies
I was going to ask why there's no smartphones in the collection, but it would
appear that this was all dredged up in 2005.

Fascinating gallery anyway. I'm amused at how many pipes they managed to
dredge up, but a bit surprised at how many of them appear to be tobacco pipes.

~~~
joelhaasnoot
This was done as part of building a new metro/subway line straight through the
city (the "North - South Line"). Unfortunately, it's taken this long to
finish, should open in three weeks.

------
allochthon
It's really cool to see present-day artifacts as someone 400 years from now
might see them. "Flippo disk." "Mobile telephone."

------
nkrisc
Interestingly, there appear to be as many smoking pipes found in recent years
as in 1650. Some things never change, except perhaps what goes in the pipe.

~~~
defterGoose
I think that doesn't change so much either...

------
Grue3
USSR coins are categorized as Russian Federation, but Yugoslavian coins are
categorized as Yugoslavia. Seems inconsistent to me.

------
braymundo
As a D&D player, this amuses me:
[https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00442FAU026...](https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00442FAU026?index=18583)

------
zkascak
The archaeologist in me wants to go down to the Cuyahoga River and see what
kinds of things that get thrown in there. But then I remember that this is the
Cuyahoga River and do I really want to go in it even in a wetsuit?

------
akerro
So if you threw out your plastic ID card with your picture 29years, it's still
there, readable. Can this be used to prosecute people for flytipping?

~~~
anonymfus
No because there is no proof of intent.

But there are some thrown away guns in the collection so may be some old
crimes will be solved.

~~~
bestnameever
It looked I saw some bones too as I traveled back a few hundred years. Wonder
if they are human.

~~~
jonhendry18
There are some human bones.

------
pforpineapple
Amazed to see such good colors on even cardboard items (like that pokemon
pog). Isn't the water supposed to fade paint layers?

~~~
mathijs
That's a plastic 'Flippo'. Similar to cardboard milk caps but they came in
bags of potato chips and are made of plastic.

------
agumonkey
Funny how materials of each era have very different durability (and
complexity)

~~~
c3534l
I thought it was interesting to see ID cards and paper currency show up for
modern times and to see plastic emerge as a new durable material among the
ancient metals and pottery.

~~~
agumonkey
Not so fast

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17438042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17438042)

------
bullen
First food, then clothes, money, keys and finally drugs.

------
everyone
Theres an Irish pound coin near the top.. lol random.

~~~
everyone
Ok, theres also a 50 pence and 20 pence piece.. I reckon they were all dropped
in at the same time.

------
sbr464
It's like Wall-E but now

------
peter_retief
I love it, browse through time

------
jlebrech
do any of those IDs belong to missing persons i wonder.

------
Odenwaelder
Oh great, another internet rabbithole!

------
xiaq
Amazingly well implemented website.

* Works well on mobile

* Does fancy tricks with scrolling without breaking normal scrolling behavior or turning into a performance nightmare

* Good design _and_ very readable (when many other websites seem to equate good design with low contrast, thin text)

~~~
codedokode
It doesn't even work without Javascript. And it uses a preloader. Preloaders
are harmful: they block progressive page rendering by a browser; even though
they might look fancy, I strongly advise against using them. And what's worse,
it shows a preloader on every click.

So I would rather consider it a poorly implemented website. Since when do we
need Javascript to display a grid of images? This site can be easily
implemented in plain HTML; why did they chose to use JS here?

~~~
konradb
The grid of images seemed considerably large; my guess is if the page was just
a static grid of images it would increase their bandwidth costs considerably,
and might give rise to issues where if you scroll down far, it would still be
loading images from much higher up. Using this technique it looks like when
you scroll somewhere, it can load the images that you have navigated to. Maybe
modern browsers are smarter in this respect? I'm not sure.

~~~
codedokode
No, sadly modern browsers are not smarter. If you make a page with thousand of
images then they will load all of them. There are JS libraries to fix it, but
they make images inaccessible for bots.

------
mcv
I've got the feeling this is supposed to be showing a lot more objects than it
does. The timeline goes way back, but only the top bit if filled with fairly
recent items.

I'm watching this with Chrome on a Mac. Possibly not the combination they made
this for.

~~~
more-coffee
Yep, had the same in Safari. But when I use Firefox and click on -119000 it
shows the objects almost immediately.

~~~
jasperk
Should be better now. We didn't expect the traffic we had today.

~~~
mcv
It works fine now. I'm a bit stunned by how much there is.

------
ricklamers
Too bad it keeps breaking for me :( "OEPS, ER GING IETS GRUWELIJK MIS."

------
Angostura
Seems broken in Safari Mac - the facet search doesn't work and scrolling down
simply stops after a while.

------
frusciante19
Works great in Safari.

~~~
Angostura
Not here, for me on Mac

------
tzahola
Works horribly in Safari.

~~~
therealmarv
Also in Chrome on Android (both newest version). Got also an error on loading
often.

------
arghwhat
The reason that there are no Nokia's in the collection is due to them all
still working and holding charge, so they were taken and put to use.

