long story short: to build a new metro line in amsterdam, a tunnel was dug in the city center through a riverbed of clay and sand. over millennia, the river amstel had been accumulating all sorts of things dropped or thrown in its bed. some things are recognizable to us now, but the deeper you go, the more intriguing it gets.

it’s astonishing the amount of bank cards, phones, keys, coins and buttons, guns and ammunition, skulls and bones, so many spoons and knifes… but also cannon balls, vases and they sieved through tons of stuff, scanned every last bit of broken porcelain and put everything on a website where you can see and search. when i searched for “film”, a few results popped up, plus a few cameras:

i find the whole thing fascinating: from the engineering feat of this metro line to the contemporary archeology done in its wake. so many layers of history, hiding just underneath the surface!