I am a retired U.S.N. rescue swimmer and medical diver. I was diving off the coast of Gitmo Bay, Cuba in approx. 70 ft. of water when on the bottom I found a small object which appears to be made out of lead. It was encrusted with sediment and approx. 3 inches long shaped like a bottle. After removing the debris there was a indented circle with what appears to be a protruding face maybe of a king?. Above the indentation of the face are some letters or numbers. I told my parents of what I found because of it being interesting, at that time they were subscribing to National Geographic and said they had seen an object of similar description in an issue. According to the issue the object (in the issue) was 1700 yrs. old and a perfume vile. It went along to say vikings on ships would use these viles for obvious reasons and one was so they would not have to smell the men who were rowing the ship. I have tried and tried to find this issue or some one who could help me identify this lead vile. Can you help?
thank you,
David P. Miller
I don't know that I can help you much. :) I'd say the best thing to do would be to contact someone "in the know" at a local public university.
The only thing I could say for sure is that the vikings probably didn't get that far south. They tended to stay relatively near land and hugged the coastline where possible. Their records say that they never got much farther south than New England, via Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland.
About the smell, well, I guess they'd just stop noticing after a while. :D