Medieval Man's Best Friend

A paw print found on one of the bricks at Stensö.

Sometime in the 1300s, a brickmaker had just finished laying out the still-moist forms of future bricks, ready to be fired, when a dog ran through her work. Some 700 years later, we uncovered evidence of that canine romp, because apparently it wasn't enough of an issue to warrant a do-over. Undoubtedly, other bricks were marked similarly—the dog didn't just step on one brick. I can just imagine how guilty it must have looked when it got yelled at.

It's actually somewhat common to find animal and human prints on archaeological sites and materials, but this is the first time I've seen it with a dog. Strangely, the piece of brick is harder than most and seems to have survived because of how the paw print distributed the heat during the firing process. Neat!