Have you ever looked at a picture and been jarred by something there that just doesn’t belong? Suppose a museum created a display of Chinese art, but you find a Jackson Pollock painting among the Ming vases. Believe it or not, archaeology and history are full of things that don’t seem to belong where they were found. These objects are so pervasive that a name was coined for them: objects-out-of-place, or OOPS for short. And some of them seem to call into question the conclusions of archaeologists and historians regarding cultural interactions and even the datings of some sites and artifacts.
I’ve made a collection of things I’ve found that don’t seem to belong where, or when, they appeared, and I’ll share some of them here.