ARCHAEOLOGIST Zack Jones will not give his opinion about best artifact discovered so far at the GovHub dig right in the heart of Bendigo.
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"I don't have personal favourites," the Eco Logical Australia senior project manager said.
If he did, he would have 67,000 artifacts to choose from.
That is how many pieces a team of archaeologists have unearthed so far at Lyttleton Terrace in what is being hailed as the largest ever haul during a regional Victorian dig.
Mr Jones had been surprised by the sheer volume of discoveries made during a dig that will pave the way for building works across the road from Town Hall.
The most exciting thing was finding artifacts that had been "remarkably" well-preserved, "but the importance from an archaeological perspective will really be their context and what they can tell us about the site", Mr Jones said.
Some largely intact items date from the 1850s when Bendigo was a fledgling gold rush settlement.
New discoveries were being unearthed even while Mr Jones spoke to a media scrum at the site on Friday.
Below: a gallery showing some pieces found during the dig
As he spoke, fellow archaeologists set aside multiple small household goods that likely slipped through the floorboards and down to the foundations of houses and businesses a century ago, including a lot of pins.
Historical records suggest so many pins, thimbles and other sewing tools are being found because a dressmaker lived in one of the homes that once sat on the site.
Meanwhile, an archaeologist was painstakingly uncovering the well-preserved bones of a cat believed to have been buried in a yard.
Some of the best areas to find artifacts have been in cesspits and other holes used to dump rubbish.
Those treasure troves have even turned up the remains of a gun's trigger mechanism, which archaeologists on site said raised some interesting questions but also revealed priceless insights into Bendigo's past and the people who inhabited it.
The archaeological dig sites also include a hotel with a sometimes "sordid" history of fights, along with butchers, merchants and farriers, to name a few businesses, Mr Jones said.
Indigenous experts have investigated two Indigenous artifacts so far, Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Rodney Carter said.
They are stone pieces that could well have have been dropped as Indigenous people moved between Bendigo Creek and Back Creek, he said.
"I'd like to think those places are where we'd get sustenance like food, and where we'd camp," Mr Carter said.
"So what we would see here [at the Lyttleton Terrace site] is the idea of people moving through landscape and maybe taking moments of rest and reflection."
The dig continues.
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