American Civil War Artifact

After a farm family of Confederate sympathizers had removed themselves from Gettysburg towards Tennessee, on the second day of the battle for Gettysburg (July 2, 1863) errant Union or Confederate artillery struck the family's farm several times destroying equipment, farm animals, and most structures, including the large, eighteenth-century main residence.
Several months after the conflict, the property was purchased by another local farmer.  In the process of being razed, demolition crew and carpenters observed what appeared to be a glass jar w/cap lodged in the lower corner of a nearly leveled wall.  As one of the carpenters attempted to open the container, he peered at the contents, all of which appeared unfamiliar.  The cap on the jar seemed "welded" shut, and rather than smash the receptacle, the carpenter approached nearby Union Army engineers to inspect the contents.  The engineers, too, were unable to open the jar.  Puzzled, and feeling the contents may have some strategic value, they later turned the jar over to Union intelligence.
Baffled as well, the intelligence division later set it aside, though it remained with them until after the war, forgotten.
In 1866, and re-discovered among Gettysburg artifacts, the glass object was given to the Smithsonian Museum where, after the Museum's staff failed numerous efforts to open the container, the jar was placed in storage.
It has yet to be opened...
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Unnamed maker.  Untitled, circa 1863.  Glass, metal; unknown materials on interior.  4 3/4 x 3 3/16 x 2 1/2 inches.

Stone Instrument

Found within the inner recess of a granite boulder formation in a Northern Germany forest, these unidentified dark-to-light colored stones were fixed into the crevice of a fractured boulder.   Scattered on the ground in proximity to the boulder's base were several like stones, some in various states of fragmentation.  Wider at the boulder's tip, narrowing as it reached the base, the cleavage held four of these uncanny-appearing stones near the crest.  Judging from the few surviving "whole"  stones, each had been reconfigured creating a tab towards the center and protruding at an angle from the stones' exterior surface.  Additionally, a very short, narrow channel was carved into each stone on alternate sides.  The stones' permeability contrasted throughout; composed of hard and soft veneers, the harder  surface areas were apparently far more difficult to carve by comparison to immediate granite material.  Coverings were of irregular, valley-like texture.  Contrasting coloration was dominated by a musky-black hue blended with an alizarin crimson and emerald green. These stones were not indigenous to the discovery site.   Archaeologists and geologists  are wholly uncertain as to their provenance.  Although laboratory tests were performed on the stones, no conclusive answers were reached as to their material structure, thus the inability to determine age.  (The massive boulders at the site are approximately three million years in age.)  What, of course, ultimately fascinated researchers were the stones purpose being lodged into the boulder.  Given little site information (there were no engravings or other marks in the boulders), the people who assembled the stones into the boulder's split are also unknown, but could have been a small nomadic group briefly occupying the location (circa 11,000 BCE).  One theory suggests the stones were the "body" of a musical  "instrument."  Traces of reed and animal/leather fibers were detected in the stone channels, and appear to have been wound through the passages and then around the entirety via the open crevice, intimating that they were probably plucked to create a sonorous event...