Lady Victoria Eclectic Pagan's blog: "Archaeology"

An Outdoor Museum to behold! Streakers, strollers and studiers enjoy the outdoor museum on Pine Island. The Pineland Archaeological Site encompasses more than 50 acres at the heart of the Pineland archaeological site, a massive shell mound complex extending across more than 200-plus acres from the mangrove coastline. It is the place to go if you want to walk in the footsteps of the ancient Calusa. The Pineland site complex is located in coastal Lee County northwest of Fort Myers. The site was a Calusa Indian village for more than 1,500 years. Enormous shell mounds still overlook the waters of Pine Island Sound. The remains of 15 centuries of Indian life are evident everywhere. Remnants of an ancient canal that reached across Pine Island sweep through the complex. Sand burial mounds stand in the woods. Historic structures representing Florida's early pioneer history also still exist at Pineland. Native plants and animals characteristic of coastal hammocks, pinelands, wetlands, and shell mounds are in abundance. The site is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and archaeologists have conducted research there since 1988. The Calusa Heritage Trail has a teaching pavilion, gift shop and trails leading to a short loop and a longer loop. Signs along the improved trail provide visitors with detailed information regarding the Calusa Indians, their culture and environment, and the history of Southwest Florida after the Calusa left. The short trail takes you to see Indian mounds rising 30-40 feet into the air and a segment of the awesome Calusa Canal. From the top of the tallest mound, you can look across the green waters of the estuary to the barrier islands of Boca Grande, North Captiva and Captiva Island. The longer trail leads you to hallowed ground, an impressive burial rising higher than you think possible for people without modern technology and earth moving equipment. I visited with my husband Eugene this past weekend. We were awed by the power and majesty of the village site, mounds and canal. The Pineland site is the legacy of the Randell family, the first owners to understand the significance of the site and desire to preserve it for all to take pleasure in. John Worth, the director of Randell Research Center, recently spoke to a Southwest Florida Archaeology Society audience gathered at the old Lyles Hotel in Bonita Springs. Worth's original research has taken him to the Spanish Archives in Spain and most recently to Cuba to read the documents left by priests and notable personages. The Spanish visited "La Florida" three times in the early 1500s, leaving accounts of Spanish sailors being attacked by Indians "who came straight at the Spaniards, shooting arrows at them, and with the surprise they wounded six, but they responded so quickly with the guns, crossbows, and swords that (the Indians) left them and went to help those who were in canoes who were attacking the rowboat and fighting with the soldiers." In 1521, Ponce de Leon attempted to establish a colony along the coast of Southwest Florida, ultimately resulting in his own mortal wound by a Calusa arrow, which led to his death in Havana. The order to attack might have been issued by Carlos, the Cacique from this Pineland village. The above picture is a view of Pine Island sound from atop Randell Research Center's Calusa Indian Shell Mound

'The Antikythera Mechanism Sometime before Easter 1900 a Greek sponge diver discovered the wreck of an ancient cargo ship off Antikythera island in the Dodecanese. Divers subsequently retrieved several bronze and marble statues and other artifacts from the site. The interest of the professional archaeologists brought in to conserve and assess the finds was initially centered on the fine statuary and the Antikythera Mechanism itself was only discovered to be of immense interest in May 17, 1902, when an archaeologist noticed that a piece of rock recovered from the site had a gear wheel embedded in it. Examination revealed that the "rock" was in fact a heavily encrusted and corroded mechanism that had survived the shipwreck in three main parts and dozens of smaller fragments. The device itself was surprisingly thin, about 33 cm (13in) high, 17 cm (6.75in) wide and 9 cm (3.5in) thick, made of bronze and originally mounted in a wooden frame. The Antikythera mechanism is one of the world's oldest known geared devices. It has puzzled and intrigued historians of science and technology since its discovery. The device seemed to have a range of interlocking gears made of bronze and a hand crank to give a turning movement to the geared mechanism, plus a display that showed information about the moon, sun and planets against a background of stars. Following decades of work cleaning the device, in 1951 British science historian Derek J. de Solla Price undertook systematic investigation of the mechanism. In June 1959, Price's "An Ancient Greek Computer" was the lead article in Scientific American. This article was the result of the first thorough description of the device "based solely on visual inspection and measurements." Later evaluations included crucial additional details from X-ray and gamma-ray analysis, among other techniques. Taking all the available facts into account, the prevailing theory at the moment is that the device was a clockwork-like mechanism designed to display the progress and positions of the sun, moon, and probably all five of the other planets known at the time (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) over a period of 19 years. In other words: it’s an analog astronomical computer. It had apparently been built several years before the shipwreck - most likely in 82 B.C. The device uses a differential gear, previously believed to have been invented in the middle ages, and is remarkable for the level of miniaturization and complexity of its parts, which is comparable to that of 18th century clocks. It is probable that the Antikythera mechanism was not unique. Cicero, writing in the 1st century BC, mentions an instrument "recently constructed by our friend Posidonius, which at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the sun, the moon and the five planets." The Antikythera Mechanism is strongly suggestive of an ancient Greek tradition of complex mechanical technology which, transmitted via the Arab world, formed the basis of European clock making techniques. Another, smaller, device dating from the sixth century AD, has been discovered which models the motions of the sun and moon and provides a previously missing link between the Antikythera mechanism and later Islamic calendar computers, such as the 13th century example at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. That device, in turn, uses techniques described in a manuscript written by al-Biruni, an Arab astronomer, around 1000AD. Detail of Hieroglyphic and Demotic script on the Rosetta Stone There are 82 remaining fragments of the mechanism that contain a total of 30 gears. The largest piece contains 27 of the gears. The device was too fragile to be removed from its home at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, so the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project team constructed a 12-ton portable micro focus computerized tomographer that used high resolution X-rays to probe the object and create a 3-dimensional image. In 2006, the Project announced that with these tools almost 95 percent of the text engraved on the various parts of the device is now readable, giving scientists a much-improved understanding of its capabilities. The mechanism was clearly an analog computer designed to allow the operator to predict the future or past positions of the sun, moon, and probably some of the planets. On the front of the device were two dials marked with the zodiac and a solar calendar, with pointers for the Sun and Moon plus a display showing the phase of the moon. On the rear of the object was displayed information about the Saros cycle (a period of around 18 years used in eclipse prediction) and the Callippic cycle (a period of about 76 years) using two ingeniously designed spiral dials.

'The Rosetta Stone" - a sizable block of dark grey-pinkish granodiorite stone bearing inscriptions written in three scripts - hieroglyphs (at top), demotic (middle section), and Greek (lower section) - has an immense significance in the history of archeology and in the better understanding of ancient cultures. The tides of history that had impacted upon Egypt since the times of the Pharaohs - Greek, Roman, Christian, Islamic and Arab, - had resulted in a complete loss of insight into what the ancient Hieroglyphs, (the Greek word hieroglyphica means "sacred carvings"), actually represented in terms of their intended meaning. The demotic script was also very poorly understood. The Rosetta Stone dates from 196 B.C. and was made available to western science after 1799 A.D. when forces under the overall direction of the French leader Napoleon Bonaparte, were pursuing his objectives in Egypt. The French involvements in Egypt in these times included the establishment of a scholarly Institut de l'Égypte in Cairo which was staffed by many French scientists and archaeologists. The Rosetta Stone arrived at the Institut de l'Égypte in August 1799 after some French soldiers had discovered it whilst rebuilding a fort at Rashid, (hence Rosetta), in the Nile Delta. From the time of its discovery the Rosetta Stone was regarded as having the potential for yielding a better understanding of what some hitherto little understood script characters were intended to represent and it was eventually proved to be the case that the Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek inscriptions were intended to convey the same content of meaning in two languages - Egyptian and Greek. We now know that the Rosetta Stone bears a governmental decree written for the attention of the people of the city of Memphis. At the time of this decree Egypt was ruled by a member of the dynasty, of Greek origin, that was descended from Ptolemy who had been one of Alexander the Great generals when that notable figure in history had led forces that had conquered Egypt. This Greek "Hellenization" of Egypt then gave scope for several scripts and languages to be current in Egypt. Hieroglyphs were traditionally used, since ancient times in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, for religious documents and other important communications, Demotic Egyptian was the common script of Egypt, and Greek had been established by the dynasty of rulers descended form Ptolomy. The closing years of the eighteenth century were times of war between European powers and the Rosetta Stone fell into English possession and this resulted in its being lodged in the British Museum in 1802. It was only in 1822 that the great French linguist and egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, who could read both Greek and Demotic text, achieved really important insights into the comparative translation of the scripts incised into the stone laying the secure foundation for fulfilling its immense potential in assisting in the actual understanding many previously undecipherable examples of hieroglyphic writing. Coptic was the language used by the Coptic church of Egypt from as early as the fourth century A.D. It was also written with the Greek alphabet but it utilizes seven additional symbols from the demotic script in order to cater for an additional range of sounds used in Egyptian speech. Champollion, looking at how the seven traditional demotic signs were used in Coptic, was able to work out what they stood for. Then he began tracing these demotic signs back to hieroglyphic signs. By working out what some hieroglyphs stood for, he could make educated guesses about what the other hieroglyphs stood for.

'Reconstruction' of the skull of Piltdown Man The 'discovery' of Piltdown Man was a famous hoax in the history of the science of archaeology. Following on from the unearthing of the fragmented skull remains in Piltdown quarry in Sussex, England, between 1908-1912 of what had apparently been a type of primitive hominid species increasingly ambitious claims of the finding of a missing link fossil relevant to understanding human evolution were made - partly through the intervention of the popular press. Although the fossil remains presented as being discovered in Piltdown Quarry subsequently seemed to display features that did not fit in with other paleontological discoveries of hominid fossil remains it was only some forty years later that 'Piltdown Man' was proven to be a fraud. The excavations of 1912 were undertaken by Charles Dawson and the 'early hominid' type he discovered was given the scientific name Eoanthropus Dawsoni before many months had passed. The remains seemed to combine a skull capable of housing a large brain with a jaw structure that was judged to be fairly primitive. Other significant skull remains were also reported as being discovered in 1915 bring the total of the 'Eoanthropus' finds made at Piltdown Quarry to two skulls, a canine tooth, a mandible (lower jaw), together with a tool carved from an elephant tusk. Dawson at Piltdown Quarry At this time the whole subject of Human Evolution and the interpretation of fossil remains was relatively new and undeniably controversial. Darwin's 'Origin of Species' had been published in 1859, his 'Descent of Man' followed in 1871. Very limited early discoveries of Hominid type fossils had been made of what became known as Neanderthal Man (1856), Cro Magnon Man (1869), Java Man (1890), Peking Man (a molar tooth 1903), and Heidelberg Man (1907). Society as a whole, however, was a long way from reaching a consensus on the relevance of theological versus scientific claims about the origins of humanity. The scant quantity of hominid type fossils available to paleontology were also hard to classify and problematic to give date of origin to. The Piltdown discoveries were initially dismissed by some scientists as they held that the skull fragments were self evidently from a different species than the jaw fragments but an acceptance of the claims of 'Piltdown Man' to be seen as something of a missing link in human evolution did take hold of the popular imagination. Other paleontological discoveries continued to be made, however, such as Australopithecus (1924), and a Peking Man skull (1929), that bore features inconsistent with the claims being made for the Piltdown discoveries. Furthermore a Fluorine Content Test had become accepted as being able to yield a reliable date for such discovered remains. When a Fluorine test was conducted in 1949 on the Piltdown remains the results indicated a relatively recent origin. Geologists began to cast doubt on the accepted age of the gravel deposits in the Piltdown Quarry in which the 'finds' were supposed to have been made. The case for Piltdown Man had been increasingly dismissed by academic paleontology. Some authorities declared the Piltdown remains to be a mixture drawn from hominid and other sources, scientific papers and textbooks tended to downplay or actually omit reference to Piltdown Man. Finally, in 1953, Piltdown Man was established as being a deliberate hoax, this came about during an international conference of paleontologists in London where a range of fossil remains were on display and where the suspicions of some of the delegates were aroused by the pattern of wear evident on the Piltdown teeth. Microscopic examination showed evidence of deliberate filing such that the molar teeth would seem to be a close and natural match for the skulls. This and other anomalies resulted in Piltdown Man being declared to be a deliberate hoax. There was uncertainty, however, as to who had decided to pull off the fraud. In the aftermath of the final discrediting of the Piltdown claims extensive scientific tests established that the Piltdown skulls were of Medieval origin and were perhaps 620 years old, the jawbone, itself perhaps 500 years old, probably came from an Orangutan, and the canine tooth was a genuine, chimpanzee, fossil dating from the Pleistocene Age. Evidence of deliberate staining with an iron solution to give an appearance of age to the bones was also detected.

Portrait of Heinrich Schliemann Heinrich Schliemann (Johann Ludwig Heinrich Julius Schliemann) was born in January 1822 in the German territory of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. His father was a minister of religion and the family, which grew to include several children, was not too prosperous by all accounts. Indeed, the demise of Heinrich Schliemann's mother in 1831 was followed by Heinrich's being sent to live with an uncle although a brief period of education at a Gymnasium (grammar school), was funded by his father. During his time at the Gymnasium Heinrich Schliemann was not yet a teenager but he may have already developed an interest in Archaeologist. In later life Schliemann claimed that his father had already introduced him to tales of the Greek Classical Era as related in The Iliad and The Odyssey, and had given him an Illustrated History of the World as a Christmas gift in 1829. Heinrich Schliemann even claimed in later life that by the age of eight he had already formed the ambition to excavate the ancient city of Troy. Schliemann also related how he and a young playmate, a girl named Minna Meincke, used to conduct "archaeological excavations" at the local churchyard and would spend time in the ruins of a local castle. It happened that Schliemann senior was accused of embezzling church funds and the ensuing scandal and loss of income contributed to his sons presence in the Gymnasium being only a brief one. Despite having a real interest in the Greek language, and a scholarly cast of mind, Heinrich spend a few years in a trades and commerce related 'vocational school' before becoming a apprenticed to a grocer at the age of fourteen. Heinrich stayed in this employment for some five years but continued to read in line with his interests in his limited spare time. He later claimed to have taught himself Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, over some two years. In 1841 Heinrich abruptly left his employer and embarked as a cabin boy on a ship bound for South America but a shipwreck saw him being returned to German territory after a rescue and landing in the Netherlands. He subsequently gained employment in merchant trading enterprises and was sent by one such firm to the Russian city of St Petersburg where his talent for and interest in languages allowed him to learn Russian and Greek in order readily converse with his clients and other business contacts. Schliemann seems to have employed a system that he used his entire life to learn languages - that of writing up his diary in the language of whatever country he happened to be in. Circa 1851 Heinrich moved to California where one of his brothers had made a fortune during these years which were years of "Gold Rush." Heinrich started a banking enterprise that bought and sold the gold dust won by the miners. Although he seems to have made a lot of money, (his bank seems to have handled $1,350,000 worth of gold in just six months), Heinrich Schliemann returned to Russia in 1852. Back in Russia Heinrich set himself up on somewhat gentlemanly patterns of life and married Ekaterina Lyschin, a niece of one of his wealthy friends. The new Mrs. Heinrich Schliemann seems to have expected Heinrich, although already quite wealthy, to continue to be prosperously active in business. Involvements in commerce as a contractor of military supplies at the time of the Crimean War (1854-1856) brought yet more wealth to the Schliemann household. This level of wealth allowed Heinrich Schliemann to retire from being an active merchant and to actively pursue his deep interest in the world of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Troy. He based himself in Paris and unsuccessfully tried to encourage his wife to bring their three children to continue their lives there. In 1868, after several years of archaeological exploration principally undertaken in Turkey, Heinrich Schliemann took on a partnership interest in a site at Hissarlik, previously investigated by a British Archaeologist named Frank Calvert, that Schliemann himself was convinced was the site of the ancient city of Troy. Schliemann by this time seems to have become firmly committed to finding the site of Troy and to decisively proving the actual historicity of the "Trojan War" as related in the ancient Greek classics. It happened that there was a falling out between Heinrich Schliemann and Frank Calvert as Schliemann, then an enthusiastic but perhaps unscientific excavator, assuming that "Homeric" Troy must be at the lower levels of the remains of the settlement appears to have dug straight down to those levels without, in Calvert's view, sufficiently investigating the materials removed. Ancient fortifications were discovered, however, in 1872. A cache of artifacts in copper, silver and gold was unearthed in 1873 and styled by Heinrich Schliemann as being "Priam's Treasure" after King Priam of Troy. By this time Heinrich Schliemann and his first wife, (who was not interested in Archeology), had parted company, Schliemann had asked a friend to help him find a well-educated, Greek woman, who was beautiful, dark-haired, poor, and shared a great interest in Homer. Schliemann's new younger wife appeared wearing the so-styled "Jewels of Helen." (Two children were born to this second marriage. These two, male, children were given the names Andromache and Agamemnon Schliemann). In the event the Turkish government disapproved of Heinrich Schliemann's approach to publicizing his discoveries and revoked permissions to excavate at Hissarlik. Schliemann and Calvert further alienated the Turkish authorities by smuggling the so-called "Priam's Treasure" out of Turkey. Tha Mask of Agamemnon The Mask of Agamemnon Scliemann subsequently embarked on excavations on the island of Crete where, in 1876, he unearthed elaborate golden artifacts, including a so styled "Mask of Agamemnon" discovered alongside skeletal remains in shaft graves associated by Schliemann with the ancient civilization of the Myceneans. The Turkish authorities had agreed to allow Schliemann to resume excavations at Hissarlik / Troy in 1876 but Schliemann did not return there to dig until a "second excavation" of 1878-1879. Other excavations followed in 1882-1883 and 1888-1890. During these later periods Heinrich Schilemann was assisted by other archaeologists including Wilhelm Dörpfeld, (in 1888-1890), who taught him to stratigrapize. Heinrich Schliemann developed a serious infection in his ears and after an operation in Greece in November 1890. Against the advice of his doctors he subsequently traveled to Leipzig, Berlin and Paris but medical complications associated with his initial ear complaint set in. He was on his way back to Athens for Christmas of that year but came to rest in Naples too unwell to complete the journey. He did visit the ruins of Pompeii but collapsed on Christmas day and died the following day. His friends ensured that he was buried in Greece in an elaborate mausoleum that Schliemann had already had built upon an Athenian hill and in the ancient Greek style as his final resting place. An inscription in ancient Greek above the entrance to this mausoleum declared it to be "For the hero, Schliemann." Heinrich Schliemann remains a controversial figure often accused of manipulating the details of his own life and his "discoveries" to build a misleading picture of his career and achievements. Other sources, including early personal letters, do not seem to support his claims that he had a very serious interest from an early age in Archeology. More seriously still a servant of long standing claimed that metal "artefacts" were manufactured at Schliemann's request such they they could be "salted" for "discovery" at ancient sites. Even the Mask of Agamemnon itself is sometimes alleged to be in this category as it seems to be in a style not known elsewhere in Greek Archeology.

Howard Carter was born on March 9th, 1874 in Kensington, London, and grew up in Swaffam, a town in north the county of Norfolk, England, as the youngest son in a family of eight children. He received little in the way of formal education although his father, Samuel Carter, an artist and illustrator, trained him in the fundamentals of drawing and painting. Although Carter developed a well above average skill, he had no ambition to continue the family business of painting portraits of pets and families for the local Norfolk landowners. Instead, he sought the opportunity to go to Egypt and work for the Egyptian Exploration Fund as a tracer, a person who copies drawings and inscriptions on paper for further studying. In October of 1891 at the age of 17, he set sail for Alexandria, Egypt, which was his first journey outside of Britain. Howard Carter’s first project was at Bani Hassan, the grave site of the Sovereign Princes of Middle Egypt during 2000 B.C. Carter’s task was to record and copy the scenes from the walls of the tomb. At this early age, he proved to be a diligent worker with much enthusiasm often working the day through and then sleeping with only the bats for company in the tomb. In 1892, Carter joined Flinders Petrie, at El-Amarna. Flinders was a strong field director and one of the most credible archaeologists of his time. Petrie believed Carter would never become a good excavator, but Carter proved him wrong when he unearthed several important finds at the site of el Amarna, the Capital of Egypt during the sovereignty of Akhenaten. Under Petrie’s demanding tutelage, Carter became an archaeologist, while keeping up with his artistic skills. He sketched many of the unusual artifacts found at el Amarna. Carter was appointed Principle Artist to the Egyptian Exploration Fund for the excavations of Deir el Babri, the burial place of Queen Hatshepsut. This experience allowed him to perfect his drawing skills and strengthen his excavation and restoration technique. In 1899, at the age of 25, Carter’s hard work paid off, when he was offered the job of First Chief Inspector General of Monuments for Upper Egypt by the Director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, Gaston Maspero. Carter’s responsibilities included supervising and controlling archeology along the Nile Valley. Carter’s employment at the Egyptian Antiquities Service came to an end in an unfortunate incident between the Egyptian site guards and a number of drunken French tourists. When the tourists became violently abusive to the guards, Carter allowed the guards to defend themselves. The French tourists, enraged, went through some high officials including the Egyptian Consul General Lord Cromer and called for Carter to make a formal apology. Carter refused, standing by his belief that he made the right decision. The incident gave Carter a bad name and caused him to be posted to the Nile Delta town of Tanta, a place with very little archaeological involvement. This forced Carter to resign from the Antiquities Service in 1905. From 1905-1907, Carter sustained a hard existence after resigning from the Antiquities Service. He had to make a living by working as a commercial watercolorist or sometimes a guide for tourists. In 1908 Carter was introduced to the fifth Earl of Carnarvon by Gaston Maspero. The partnership proceeded happily, as each partner’s personality seemed to compliment the others. The prodigiously rich Earl had come to Egypt to better recover from a serious automobile accident. Once in Egypt a desire for distraction led to a serious interest in Archeology which the Earl was prepared to pursue with his money as well as his time. Lord Carnarvon was able to secure official licensing that allowed archaeological digging to take place and Carter became the Supervisor of the Excavations funded by Carnarvon in Thebes and by 1914 Carnarvon owned one of the most valuable collections of Egyptian artifacts held in private hands. However, Howard Carter had still more ambitious aspirations. He had his eye on finding the tomb of a fairly unknown pharaoh at the time, King Tutankhamen, after various clues to its existence had been found. With benefit of the continued substantial funding provided by Lord Carnarvon, Howard Carter continued to work in the field with Lord Carnarvon in the west of the Valley of the Kings at the tomb of Amenophis III in 1915 and in the main Valley of the Kings from 1917-1922. Carter excavated in the hope of discovering Tutankhamen's burial place and had marked out a triangle of terrain on the map of the valley that he considered to be the most promising area for investigation by excavation. Such excavation required the disturbance of many tons of debris that had been left in ther valley by other archaeologists, (and by the multitudes of grave robbers of ancient and more recent times), in order to reach the bedrock into which such a tomb would have been hewn. Over some six years digging season after digging season produced little more than a few artifacts. Carnarvon was becoming dissatisfied with the lack of return from his investment and seemed to be on the point of withdrawing his support for the project. In 1922, at an interview in Carnarvon's Highclere Castle in England Carter exhorted his patron to continue to hold the license that allowed archaeological investigation to take place such that he, Carter, could personally fund the one more season of investigation that was necessary to complete the investigation of the triangle of terrain as initially projected. In response Lord Carnarvon agreed but insisted that he be the one to fund this last season of digging. Carter was confident and the challenge went on as work began on November 4, 1922. It took only three days before the top of a staircase was unearthed. Almost three weeks later the staircase was entirely excavated and the full side of what seemed to be an intact plaster block wall was visible. By November 26, the first plaster block was removed, the chip filling an ensuing corridor was emptied, and a second plaster wall was ready to be broken through. At about 4 P.M. that day, Carter broke through this second plaster block and made one of the discoveries of the century, the tomb of King Tutankhamen. This discovery of a complete and undisturbed tomb where the mummified remains of an actual Pharaoh of ancient Egypt had been interred with associated ceremony, rich artifacts, many wrought of gold, and with lavish decoration of the tomb proved to one of immense archaeological and cultural significance. Wealthy people often took themselves off to the Valley of the Kings to see something of what had been discovered for themselves. Lord Carnarvon's habit of frequently bringing people on site increasingly led to an estrangement between Carter and himself. The tomb’s artifacts took a decade to cataloge. During this time, Lord Carvarvon died in Cairo of pneumonia. After the media got wind of the treasures of King Tutankhamen and the death of Lord Carnarvon, the hype about a mummy’s curse set the media on a course of lurid speculation about a "Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb". Finally, the artifacts were sent to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the corpse of the young king was studied and laid back to rest. After his work was done with King Tutankhamen, Carter no longer worked in the field. He retired from the archeology business. He took up the pursuit of collecting Egyptian antiquities and, indeed, became a very successful collector. Often, toward the end of his life, he could be found at the Winter Palace Hotel at Luxor, usually sitting by himself in isolation. He died in Albert Court, Kensington, London on March 2, 1939.

Portrait of Flinders Petrie Flinders Petrie was a British Archaeologist and Egyptologist. Born on June 3rd, 1853 in Charlton, Kent. He was given the name is William Matthew Flinders Petrie. Petrie's mother, Anne, had a love for science, namely fossils and natural minerals. Mrs. Anne Petrie was a daughter of Captain Matthew Flinders, who was a celebrated early explorer of the coasts of Australia. Petrie taught himself trigonometry and geometry at a young age, with particular interest in varied standards of measurements. Petrie's father was a surveyor who taught his son how to use the most modern surveying equipment of the time. Petrie would go about England measuring Churches, buildings, and ancient megalithic ruins, such as Stonehenge. At thirteen, he read Piazzi Smyth’s Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramids;his interest flourished from this young age and Flinders convinced himself that he would one day see the pyramids for himself. Flinders began as a Practical Surveyor in south England. During this time he reverted back to studying Stonehenge. He was able to determine the unit of measurement used for the construction of Stonehenge, so in 1880, at the age of 24, Flinders published his first book called Stonehenge: Plans, Description, and Theories; this book would become the basis for future discoveries at that site. That same year, he began his more than forty years of exploration and examination of Egypt and the Middle East. From 1880 to 1883, Flinders studied and excavated The Great Pyramid of Giza. He was very meticulous and took his time during this excavation. He studied every shovelful of soil. In turn, Flinders' habits led him to be known as one of the great innovators of scientific method in excavation. In 1884, Flinders discovered fragments of the statue of Ramses II during his excavation of the Temple of Tanis. Petrie spent the next two years performing excavations of two Nile Delta sites at Naukratis and Daphnae. Here, he uncovered pottery and was able to prove that both of these sites were former ancient Greek trading posts. From this excavation he developed a sequential dating method that would enable him to determine the chronology of any civilization by pottery fragment comparison. In the course of a brief interlude in Palestine, a six-week season of excavations at Tell el-Hesi in the spring of 1890, he introduced into Palestine the concept that a Tell is a man made mound of successive, superimposed 'cities'. He established the dating of these 'cities' by means of their associated deeply stratified ceramic remains and of the "cross-dating" of these remains with reference to similar finds made in their Egyptian contexts. Petrie sponsored investigations that followed the stratification of a site in relation to such establishable chronologies. Over the next forty years, Flinders explored and excavated over thirty sites in the Middle East. Of his most famous finds was a Stele of Mernepath at Thebes which contains the earliest known Egyptian references to Israel (1236-1223 B.C.). Although Flinders was primarily self-taught and had no formal schooling, he was made Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archeology and Philology at University College, London in 1892. This chair had been funded by Amelia Edwards who was a keen supporter and admirer of Petrie. He was also the founder of The Egyptian Research Account, in 1894, (which eventually became the British School of Archeology in 1905). During his career he also wrote over 100 books and nearly 900 articles and reviews. A work of particular importance being his work entitled "Methods and Aims of Archeology," published in 1904. Flinders Petrie was popularly awarded the title of "The Father of Modern Archeology." 1923 saw Petrie knighted for services to British archeology and Egyptology. In 1927, Flinders Petrie returned to Palestine uncovering ruins and remained there until his death at the age of eighty-nine. He passed away in Jerusalem on July 28, 1942.

Portrait of Giovanni Belzoni Giovanni Battista Belzoni was an engineer and an explorer of Egyptian antiquities. He was born in Padua, Italy on November 15, 1778. Giovanni was a son of a barber and was one of fourteen siblings. Whilst still a young child Belzoni showed some interest and talent in engineering that was encouraged in this interest by his family. At the age of 16, Belzoni joined a monastic order in Rome after a disappointment in love. In this role he had some opportunity to exercise his skills in mechanics and hydraulics. However, while he was in the monastic order there were also ongoing turmoils associated with a revolution in France that had begun to spread more widely in Europe led to Belzoni becoming entangled in political matters as the French authorities dissolved the monastic order and eventually fled to the Netherlands (1800) and England (1803) to avoid being sent to jail. In England, Belzoni in despair at not find any employment in engineering and mechanics and having taken on a young wife, joined a traveling circus and was billed as “Patagonian Samson.” He was in fact some two metres (6'7") tall and possessed of immense strength. This career lasted twelve years and included several years spent with the famous Astley's Circus due to the patronage of Henry Salt, the traveler and antiquarian. After leaving the circus, Belzoni, his wife Sarah, and their Irish servant James Curtin traveled to Portugal and to Spain in accordance with contracts of employment as a circus strongman. From there Belzoni continued to Egypt. While in Cairo he offered his invention of a hydraulic machine to Mehmet Ali Pasha. Though this invention did seem to increase the availability of water Belzoni's invention was not taken up by Mehmet Ali Pasha. Belzoni became fascinated by Cairo and Egypt, he adopted local dress and grew a substantial beard. Young Memnon Luckily, Belzoni met up with his old patron Henry Salt who was now British Consul General to the court of Mehmet Ali. Salt convinced Belzoni to gather treasures and discover finds to send back to the British museum. Belzoni quickly left for Thebes “to remove the colossal stone head of Ramses II as a young man (The Young Memnon) to be delivered to the British museum.” The task at hand required much manpower because this head alone proved to weigh over 7 tons. It was this immense weight that had in fact contributed to the stone head being theoretically available for collection as it had inherently proved an impossible difficulty for others who had seriously attempted to "collect" it for transportation. For the next few years, Belzoni would do things that few or no one had done. He was charged with the difficult task of moving the two seated statues of Ramses II from Luxor to the British Museum. In 1817, he traveled to the Valley of Kings and discovered the tombs of Amenhotep III, Ramses I, Merneptah and Ay. While investigating these tombs he spotted indications of another royal tomb near the tomb of Ramses I. Eighteen feet below the surface of the ground, Belzoni discovered the entrance to the sepulchre of Seti I, Ramses I's son. This tomb has frequently been referred to as "Belzoni's tomb" in tribute to this discovery In the following year of 1818, Belzoni was the first person in modern times to enter the innermost chambers of the pyramid of Khafre at Giza. The entrance area had been deliberately confused by its designers with false passages and chambers. Belzoni used “his engineering genius to locate the entrance to the inner chambers...” Belzoni was also the first European to visit the oasis of Siwah and to identify the ruined city of Berenice on the Red Sea. In 1819, Belzoni returned to England. A year later in 1820, he published a book that made him quite famous. It was entitled Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries Within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia. this work is credited as being the first English research in Egyptology. Three editions of the book were published and it was received with great interest. On May 1, 1921, Belzoni got an opportunity to share his finds. A great exhibition called Egyptian Hall was set up in Piccadilly near Piccadilly Circus. This room reflected Belzoni’s expeditions and contained plaster casts from the tomb of Seti I. While on an excavation to Timbuktu in northwestern Africa , Belzoni caught dysentery and died on December 3, 1823 at Gato in Benin. He was buried under an Arasma tree in Gwata, a nearby village. Belzoni was no intellectual scholar, he was an amateur archaeologist. As an explorer he was motivated by finding hidden treasure so that he could sell the artifacts to collectors. His methods were often destructive and quite unorthodox but his discoveries laid the foundation for the scientific study of Egyptology. From this point of view, Howard Carter summed up Belzoni as "one of the most remarkable men in the entire history of Archeology."

An outline History of Archeology The exact origins of archeology as a disciplined study are uncertain. Excavations of ancient monuments and the collection of antiquities have been taking place for thousands of years. The terms "excavations" ond "collection" can, however, cover a multitude of scenarios. In ancient times the Tombs of the Pharoahs of Egypt were looted by grave robbers who probably hoped for financial gain through sale of their plunder. We can contrast this with the endeavors of the Italian Renaissance humanist historian, Flavio Biondo, who created a systematic and documented guide to the ruins and topography of ancient Rome in the early 15th century. Flavio Biondo, is seen by posterity a candidate for consideration as an early founder of archeology. He was a man of his times, Renaissance means rebirth and the rebirth those involved in the Renaissance hoped for was the rebirth of Human Achievement such as the ancients of the Classical Age of Greece and Rome had been capable of. Thus Biondo was inclined to treat the ruins and topography of ancient Rome with great respect. Such excavations and investigations as took place over ensuing centuries tended to be haphazard; the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were usually completely overlooked. King Charles of the Two Sicilies employed Marcello Venuti, an antiquities expert in 1738, to excavate by methodical approach, the ancient city of Herculaneum. This first supervised excavation of an archaeological site was likely the birth of modern archeology. In America, Thomas Jefferson, possibly inspired by his experiences in Europe (he had been located in Paris as a US representative to France), supervised the systematic excavation of an Native American burial mound on his land in Virginia in 1784. Although Jefferson's investigative methods were ahead of his time (and have earned him the nickname from some of the "father of archaeology"), they were primitive by today's standards. He did not simply dig down into the mound in the hope of "finding something"; he cut a wedge out of it in order to examine the stratigraphy. The results did not inspire his contemporaries to do likewise, and they generally continued to hack away indiscriminately at the deposited remains of ancient settlements, - ( aka "tell" sites), in the Middle East, at barrows and tumuli in Europe, and at ancient mounds in North America, destroying valuable archaeological material in the process. In 1801, an army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte was deployed in an Egyptian campaign. Napoleon brought some five hundred civilian scientists, specialists in fields such as biology, chemistry and languages, in order to carry out a full study of the ancient civilizations of Egypt. In these times some soldiers rebuilding a fort discovered an unusual stone on which ancient scripts were engraved. This stone, known to posterity as the Rosetta Stone, caused great excitement amongst the scholars attached to Napoleon's army. Several decades later the work of Jean-Francois Champollion in deciphering the Rosetta stone led to the discovery of the hidden meaning of hieroglyphics. This discovery proved to be the key to the study of Egyptology. Egyptology has since become a celebrated and prolific branch of classical archeology because of the amount and quality of material that have been well preserved in the dry Egyptian climate, In 1803, there was widespread criticism of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin for removing the "Elgin Marbles" from their original location as a frieze on the Parthenon in Athens. Back in England these marble sculptures themselves tended to be valued, even by his critics, only for their aesthetic qualities, not for the information they might yield about Greek civilization. It was only as the 19th century continued, however, that the systematic study of the past through its physical remains began to be carried out in a manner recognizable to modern students of archeology. Richard Colt-Hoare (1758-1838) turned his attention to recording the past of the countryside surrounding his estate at Stourhead in Wiltshire which he published in a book entitled Ancient Historie of Wiltshire in 1812. In his reporting of his investigations and excavation's of such neolithic barrows as Silbury Hill used terminology that was later adopted by other archaeologists. Colt-Hoare made meticulous recordings of his discoveries and preferred to use a trowel for careful excavation. Archaeology was continued as an amateur pastime pursued, in later years, by persons such as Augustus Pitt-Rivers who collected many artifacts during his early career as a colonial soldier to which he added further finds from a large estate he had inherited complete with numerous prehistoric features. Pitt-Rivers extensive personal collection of artifacts was used by him to develop a typology scheme for dating archaeological remains. The Pitt-Rivers collection forms the nucleus of a museum named after him, in Oxford. William Flinders Petrie is another man who may legitimately be called the Father of Archeology. His work in Egypt developed the concept of seriation, which permitted accurate dating long before scientific methods were available to corroborate his chronologies. He was also a meticulous excavator and scrupulous record keeper and laid down many of the ideas behind modern archaeological recording. The next major figure in the development of archeology in the UK was Mortimer Wheeler, whose highly disciplined approach to excavation and systematic coverage of much of Great Britain in the 1920s and 1930s brought the science on swiftly. It was not until the introduction of modern technology from the 1950s onwards that a similar leap forward would be made in field archeology. Wheeler's method of excavation, laying out the site on a grid pattern, though gradually abandoned in favor of the open-area method, still forms the basis of excavation technique. Meanwhile, the work of Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos in Crete had shed light on the Minoan civilization. Many of the finds from this site were cataloged and brought to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where they could be studied by classicists, while an attempt was made to reconstruct much of the original site. Although this was done in a manner that would be considered inappropriate today, it helped raise the profile of archeology considerably. Archeology was increasingly becoming a professional activity. Although the bulk of an excavation's workforce would still consist of volunteers, it would normally be led by a professional. It was now possible to study archeology as a subject in universities and even schools, and by the end of the 20th century nearly all professional archaeologists, at least in developed countries, were graduates. Undoubtedly the major technological development in 20th century archeology was the introduction of radiocarbon dating, based on a theory first developed by American scientist Willard Libby in 1949. Despite its many limitations (compared to later methods it is inaccurate; it can only be used on organic matter; it is reliant on a dataset to corroborate it; and it only works with remains from the last 10,000 years), the technique brought about a revolution in archaeological understanding. For the first time, it was possible to put reasonably accurate dates on discoveries such as bones. Other developments, often spin-offs from wartime technology, led to other scientific advances. For field archaeologists, the most significant of these was the use of the geophysical survey, enabling an advance picture to be built up of what lies beneath the soil, before excavation even commences. The entire Roman town of Viroconium, modern day Wroxeter in England, has been surveyed by these methods, though only a small portion has actually been excavated.