Re: Latest on Newport Tower dig

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:23:32 GMT, Doug Weller
<dweller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 21:39:07 +1300, in sci.archaeology, Eric Stevens
wrote:

On 27 Nov 2006 20:25:25 -0800, "Tom McDonald" <kiltmac@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


Eric Stevens wrote:
On Mon, 27 Nov 2006 23:59:10 +0100, "Peter Alaca" <p.alaca@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

<snip>

This is nonsense Eric. If the tower is older then the
17th century, there must be older remains to be found
in an excavation, but they didn't. Therefore a garden
area away from the tower is irrelevant.

Of course it's not nonsense and your conclusion that the area is a
garden is premature.

See below.

If a team is going to carry out an archaeological examination of a
site one would expect that they would look where there were
indications of something to find.

Which is what they did. Folks have been yapping for years, decades,
that the tower needs to be investigated to rule theory a or theory b or
theory c in or out.

That work is now done, and there is nothing about the tower to suggest
that it pre-dates the Colonial period.

Let's get this straight. An area outside the tower has been explored
with ground penetrating radar and tests of electrical conductivity
have been made. On the basis of the results the team have excavated
and found - the remains of 19th century paths. After consulting old
maps they have reached the conclusion that it is these old paths which
have been detected by their measurements.

The article does say "The archaeologists also found remains of previous
paths". But that sentence has the word 'also', whereas you seem to be
claiming that that is all they have found and because of that the
excavations show nothing about the Newport Tower.

Doug,

That is a distortion of what I wrote. The direct implication of the
log on the site http://www.chronognostic.org/daily_logs.html is that
the GPR was particularly good at detecting the gravel of the paths and
that it was the buried paths that were responsible for the extremely
interesting patterns they discovered. Now they didn't actualy say this
but that is a reasonable conclusion to draw from the text. It is quite
wrong for you to use my drawing of attention to that implication to
imply that I am saying they found nothing else. All you have to do is
to read the web site to know that they did find things other than the
paths.

The first 4 holes were finished before November 3rd, at which point the
report says they were going to dig elsewhere. I wish they'd finished
their log.

So do I. I also wish they had dug that mysterious rectangle.


Now, what conclusions can you draw from that as to the builders of the
Newport Tower?

Further, the area does not seem
to have been of interest to any humans before the Colonial period. This
is, to me, the most interesting part of the find. Well done, that
company.

What was it? - 5 square meters of excavation? I may have that wrong
but I know they were not allowed to dig up much. Philip Dietiker could
(or maybe not) explain how reliable are the conclusions you could draw
from what was found in those excavations as to the general presence of
mankind in the area.

Now it may well be true that there are other folk yapping for
unspecified periods of time that other areas near the tower should be
investigated. This is fine and dandy, and I am, as always, very much in
favor of digging. That, and preparing properly with, among other
things, every goddamn relevant map one can get one's hands on.

And it seems the maps were not studied in sufficient detail before the
excavations started. If they had been someone would have woken up to
the fact that they were proposing to search old pathways.

But can we not, just for a moment, bask in the glow of one big question
answered?

Great - if you can tell me what it is.

I am quite specifically not arguing for the tower as being of Norse
construction and I for one would like the argument settled for good.

You mean you think the damned tower might not be from the Colonial
period? What is your <1% chance?

The odds are increasing that it is from the colonial period. But what
is that rectangular area which shows up in aerial photographs?

A colonial structure of some kind?

Apparently there is no record of any colonial structure in that
location but it is always possible that that is what it is.


However leaving alone a longstanding conspicuous 'explore me' cannot
lead to finality.

I'd love to have the right, and the power, and the capacity to move
everyone, on a rota, to some nearby place for a while, and dig to
bedrock on a city-by-city, township-by-township basis. What questions
we could answer then!

But I am not suggesting a general exploration of Newport. I'm
expressing my concern and regret that an area which has been a focus
of curiosity for more than 60 years has not yet been examined.

But how far afield from the tower itself do you personally think must
be dug up before we can say with 99+% certainty that the tower is what
the evidence adduced shows it to be?

That's not a valid question. The point is that there is a distinctive
rectangular area for which there is no explanation on the old maps
which has been crying out for explanatiion for 60 years. Are you
suggesting it should be ignored?



Eric Stevens



Eric Stevens
.