Dive Brief:

• As they prepared the former site of a mansion in Little Rock, Ark., for construction of a parking deck, workers turned up a military sword that is likely from the 19th century.
• The deck will go where the mansion of lawyer and U.S. Sen. Chester Ashley was built around 1820 and enlarged about two decades later.
• Historians said the sword, which Clark Construction officials turned over to the Historic Arkansas Museum to be cleaned and examined, might have belonged to Ashley, or to a Confederate officer — or an officer with Union troops who occupied the mansion after September 1863.

Dive Insight:

Finds like the sword remind us that we build on our own history, whether that is built history like the Ashley mansion or natural history on land that has never seen construction — as far as we know. Swannee Bennett, curator of the museum, said testing will determine the sword's age after it has been carefully cleaned. Ashley, he said, was a "mover and shaker" in Little Rock and a colonel in the territorial militia and could have afforded a sword.