Treasure Hunters Battle for Chance to Unearth London’s Past
The tradition of “mudlarking” sees amateur archeologists combing the Thames foreshore for relics from millenniums of human history. But some fear that past risks getting lost forever.
Mudlark Lara Maiklem searching the shores of the Thames River in London.
Photographer: Andrew Testa/The New York Times/ReduxOn a Sunday afternoon in June, as tourists buzz around London’s Tate Modern museum on the south bank of the River Thames, Lara Maiklem is inspecting the shoreline around old wooden pilings, wearing kneepads and rubber gloves. In one small patch of sand and sludge, she spies some discarded junk from the city’s seaport heyday — a clay tobacco pipe stem, a lump of coal, a shard of German stoneware.
“You’re either a person who can spend five hours looking at mud and not get bored,” she says, “or you’re not.”