Diggers

Many an archaeologist has eyed a handsome modern structure and secretly thought of what treasures he might find beneath it, if only somebody would blow it up. The German blitz on London in World War II provided just such an archaeologist's windfall, exposing ancient ruins sealed fof centuries by the close-built modern city. Last week Director William Grimes of the London Museum described the discovery of two blockhouses which the Romans built either to protect Londinium, or to protect themselves from Londinium's people.

Five years ago Grimes got interested in a kink in London's medieval wall near St. Giles Cripplegate Church in the downtown "City" of London. It angled suggestively, as if it were enclosing something about 200 yards square. Grimes selected the site of some blitzed office buildings, dug a trench and found the face of a solid wall made of Kentish ragstone, the Romans' favorite building material. Combined with the kink in the medieval wall, it outlined roughly a square Roman fort.

Red tape delayed further digging for years. But at last the persistent Grimes got permission to dig in another nearby bomb site, selected a spot where he thought the systematic Romans would have built their usual turrets. Well below the modern surface, he found what he was looking for: two stone blockhouses about 25 ft. square. Between them ran a road divided by stone markers into two 8-ft. chariot-ways. The road had been surfaced three times. Grimes estimated that the forts and road were built in A.D. 70-90, about the time of the Emperor Vespasian.

Londinium's old Roman fort cannot be left on display as it is; land is too valuable in the heart of modern London. Grimes hopes that its stones will be put aside, then reassembled in some suitable place. This is being done with the Temple of Mithras that was found not far from the blockhouses (TIME. Oct. 4, 1954). Its stones are waiting in a basement, carefully identified, while workers push construction of Bucklersbury House, a new business block. When it is finished, the temple will take shape again in the building's courtyard.

Cave of Mammoths. At Poitiers, the 15th International Prehistoric Congress was told of the discovery of a highly decorated cave in central France. Early this summer Remain Robert, President of the Prehistoric Society of the Ariege department, got a letter from friends in Lyons urging him to explore a cave on their country estate in the Dordogne department.

Unexplored caves are promised lands for French prehistorians. Armed with the tools of the diggers' trade (acetylene lamps, hammers, ropes and shovels), Robert rushed to the Dordogne estate, took with him Professor Louis Nougier of the University of Toulouse. For three hours the two scientists hacked and shoveled their way into the half-blocked cave. "We were about to abandon our search." says

Robert, "when suddenly we discovered on the ceiling above us two superb drawings of mammoths." Before they left the cave that evening, they had counted drawings of 61 mammoths, twelve bison, eight goats, six horses and four rhinoceroses. On the floor were many flint tools, some of them unfinished.

The location of the cave is still kept secret to protect it from destructive sightseers. But one honored guest, the Abbe Henri Breuil, dean of French prehistorians, was invited to inspect the find. Although 79 years old, he crept through the cave's winding corridors and examined the animal drawings. He declared them "among the most beautiful specimens of prehistoric art yet discovered," estimated they were late paleolithic, probably between 15,000 and 20,000 years old.

The men of the Old Stone Age did not decorate their caves with animal drawings for pure love of art. The drawings had a purpose: they were the central images in religious rites. In the newly found cave there are no drawings of deer, and the Abbe Breuil thinks he knows why. His guess: "The occupants of the cave probably regarded deer as their mythical ancestors. They were forbidden to kill and eat them. So there was no reason to use any charm, such as cave paintings, to attract deer."

Ancient Hearths. Diggers' discoveries nowadays are apt to have two moments of climax: 1) when the article is found, and 2) when its age is determined, often months later, by the carbon 14 process.

Last March, two Texas amateur archaeologists. Advertising Man WTilson Crook Jr. and Railroad Engineer R. K. Harris, found a peculiar stone spear point in a patch of charcoal-blackened earth a few miles outside Dallas. Near it were bones of now extinct animals: camels, horses, an elephant.

The two amateurs recognized the importance of their find. The spearhead was a partially fluted "Clovis point"--so called because the first such flint specimen was found near Clovis, N. Mex. Clovis points have always been considered older than the fully fluted Folsom points, but no one was sure just how old they are. Commonest guess was 15,000 years. But the discovery of a Clovis point in a campfire hearth containing charcoal made it possible to date the Clovis culture by carbon 14.

Through professional archaeological friends, the amateurs got their hearth dated by a new carbon 14 apparatus in the laboratory of the Humble Oil & Refining Co. at Houston. Last week Crook and Harris were celebrating the second and bigger climax: the charcoal had proved to be 37,000 years old.

This is an age far greater than any ever established previously for human traces in the New World. Apparently some sort of human, who never developed much in the way of culture, was hunting in the U.S. Southwest many thousand years before paleolithic man made his striking pictures in the caves of France.

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