Ideas worth spreading

Trash or historical artifact?

11,104 views | Lara Maiklem • TEDxNewcastle

One person's trash is -- a century later -- another's historical artifact. In this talk, author Lara Maiklem introduces "mudlarking" -- the practice of scavenging river banks for hidden treasure -- and tells of the physical history lurking under the miles of mud along the Thames.

One person's trash is -- a century later -- another's historical artifact. In this talk, author Lara Maiklem introduces "mudlarking" -- the practice of scavenging river banks for hidden treasure -- and tells of the physical history lurking under the miles of mud along the Thames.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxNewcastle, an independent event.

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About the speaker

Laraq Maiklem

Curious Mudder

Mudlarking is the practice of scavenging river banks looking for treasures hidden in the mud and Lara Maiklem has spent nearly 20 years doing exactly this mostly along the River Thames. She started river walking as a way to relax and over time started to become increasingly curious about the wide variety of things she found on her walks. Often these tiny discoveries yielded incredible history and stories behind them. As she began to document and share her discoveries she discovered there was a surprisingly large community of people who were fascinated by her findings and the practice of mudlarking. This ultimately led Bloomsbury Books (famous for the Harry Potter series) to publish her first book appropriately titled, Mudlarking. Launched earlier in August 2019, the book has shot to Number 2 on the Sunday Times Bestseller list as well as being named the BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxNewcastle, an independent event.

Read more about TEDx.