OXFORD, ENGLAND—Excavations ahead of the construction of a shopping center have uncovered hundreds of objects, including 50 medieval leather shoes, a leather bag, a wooden bowl, and timber posts that had been placed in muddy stream banks. “These finds are as rare as gold,” project director Ben Ford of Oxford Archaeology told BBC News. “It’s amazing to think these shoes were worn by people who walked the streets of medieval Oxford.” The excavation covers an area that was just outside the Oxford city walls at the time, where a friary for the Greyfriars religious order stood. To read about another medieval excavation in Oxford, go to "Vengance on the Vikings."