Archaeologica.org

"I usually work in the Far North but South Wairarapa will be very interesting. There are some of the earliest-known sites in the country right here, and what we need to make sure is that the sites haven't deteriorated from coastal erosion or that someone hasn't put a bulldozer through them.

"The sites hold the cultural values of both pakeha and Maori that are left on the ground – the subset of our history."

NZAA National project manager Lynda Walter said the Site Recording Scheme was established in 1957 to encourage the recording of information about archaeological sites. It is a paper-based system holding over 58,000 records that contains text, plans, section drawings, photographs, artefact drawings and field notes, she said. It is endorsed by the Historic Places Trust and the Department of Conservation as the national system for recording archaeological site information.

A CT scan of King Tutankhamun's mummy has disproved a popular theory that the Egyptian pharaoh was murdered by a blow to the head more than 3,300 years ago.

March 11, 2005
But the Pharaoh may have suffered from a broken thigh shortly before his death at the age of 19. Some members of the examination team say that the Pharaoh may have died from an infection of this wound.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS are sizing up a splendid painted anthropoid wooden sarcophagus found by chance at the Saqqara necropolis last week..

The sarcophagus was found by an Egyptian archaeological mission engaged in cleaning the burial shaft of the sixth- dynasty royal physician Qar, which neighbours King Djoser's pyramid complex at Saqqara almost 35km south of the Giza Plateau.

Samples taken over the past two years from sediments beneath Tana, which supplies the water which makes the lower Nile valley so fertile, reveal the lake may have almost dried up during the critical period around 4,200 years ago due to climate change.

According to the team's theory, the flow of water on which the farm-based ancient Egyptian economy thrived would have slowed to a trickle, causing a devastating famine that lasted for 200 years.

That would have been enough to destroy the Old Kingdom and its people, leaving only the pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza as their legacy to history.

The research is being carried out by a geological team from St Andrews University and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Bates said: "The opportunity to establish such a long and detailed record of climate change at the heart of Africa has important implications, not only for trying to understand past, present and future climate change, but as we delve back into the past, it will also have important implications for the study of human development and the migration of early man from the cradle of mankind."

"What we now know is that the lake dried out 18,000 years ago, which corresponds with the end of the last Ice Age. As we get better at what we are doing we should be able to detect the nuances of what went on in the lake after that time," Bates said.

[117,101] - On May 26th, 1837, J. R. Hill, working for Howard Vyse, was clearing the exit point for the southern airshaft of the King's Chamber where it exited at the 102nd course. After removing two outer tiers of stone, an "Iron Plate" was found wedged between some inter stone joints. The plate was roughly 12" x 4" and 1/8" thick. This iron could prove that the Iron Age of Egypt, currently placed at no earlier than 650 B.C. could actually predate that time by 2000 years! This iron plate is now in the British Museum.
[117,106] - Optical and chemical tests were finally performed some 108 years later in 1989 on the iron plate. The results reported by the metallurgical experts were that the metal was iron, not of meteoric orgin, that was formed by smelting at between 1000 and 1100 degrees Centrigrade. There were traces of gold on one face of the plate, as if it had at one time been gold plated. The evidence, the report concluded, would suggest that the iron plate had indeed been in place since the Pyramid was built.

The Howard-Vyse expedition also found another strange artefact while exploring the outside faces of the Khufu pyramid with explosives: a plate of iron measuring 26 x 8.8 cm. and about 4 mm. thick. Although iron cannot be carbon dated, the story of its discovery and testing is worth being reminded of here in view of the possible huge implications it might bear on the Pyramid Age. The discovery of the iron plate was not made by Howard-Vyse himself but by an engineer called J.R. Hill, who was under Howard-Vyse's employment. Hill found the plate embedded in a joint on the south face of the monument near or within the entrance of the so-called air-channel. Hill was adamant that the iron plate must be contemporaneous with the construction of the pyramid since he had to blast away two outer tiers of blocks in order to reach it and extract it from a masonry joint near or within the mouth of the southern shaft. The iron plate was eventually donated to the British Museum along with an affidavit from Hill and also from others who had been present during the find. In 1926 Dr. A. Lucas examined the iron plate and, although at first agreed with Mr. Hill that it was contemporaneous with the pyramid, Lucas later changed his mind when he realized that the iron was not from meteoritic origin. It is generally believed that iron was unknown in the Pyramid Age and that the only possible source of iron was from iron-meteorites, which are composed of about 95 iron and 5 nickel [5]. In 1989, however, two metallurgists, Dr. El Gayar of the faculty of Petroleum and Mineral in Suez, Egypt, and Dr. M.P. Jones of Imperial College London, asked the British Museum for a small sample of the iron plate so that they could conduct a full scientific examination. After El Gayar and Jones conducted a series of chemical and microscopic tests on the iron plate, these scientists concluded that: 'the plate was incorporated within the pyramid at the time that structure was built' i.e. it was contemporaneous with the pyramid [6]. The chemical and microscopic analyses of the iron plate also revealed very small traces of gold, suggesting that the plate had perhaps been originally gilded. The actual size of the plate was estimated to have been 26 x 26 cm., which is roughly the same size of the shaft's mouth, which in turn suggests that the iron plate possibly had served as some sort of cover or gate to the shaft's mouth. El Gayar and Jones also pointed out that the plate's dimension of 26 x 26 cm. implied it was sized in royal cubit, the measure used by the pyramid builders (half a royal cubit of 52.37 cm. gives 26.18 cm.). As we have said, the plate could not be Carbon 14 dated since it contained no organic material. In spite of the findings of Gayer and Jones, the British Museum still assumes that the iron plate was probably a piece broken off a spade or shovel used by Arabs in medieval times.

Note: The Club in action.....underlined.