Science: 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.