Word: archaeologist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...clearing near the remote Rio Azul deep in the jungles of northern Guatemala, workmen were methodically chipping away at a boulder-filled shaft. As the narrow passage dropped abruptly under a rocky outcropping, Archaeologist Grant Hall suddenly spotted a streak of dark...
...painted!" Hall cried. His coworkers, members of a U.S.-Guatemalan team that was hoping to unearth an undisturbed Mayan crypt, crowded to the rim of the pit. "We all wept and embraced," recalls Archaeologist George Stuart. "There was such a sense of incredible relief. It had been a gamble, and we'd been building up to that moment...
...trail that led to the tomb began in 1962 when an employee of the Sun Oil Co. discovered Mayan ruins near Rio Azul, five hours by land from the nearest town. The oil firm passed along the information to Professor Richard E.W. Adams, a Mayan archaeologist now at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Lacking funds, Adams could not explore the region until this year. In the meantime bands of looters had dug into the tombs of the 500-acre area, carrying off jewelry, pottery and carvings. Once at the Guatemalan site, Adams turned his attention to a spot...
Adams decided to cut right through the platform, which eventually revealed the shaft and then the tomb. "I cried when I saw it," said Stuart, a staff archaeologist for the National Geographic Society, which helped finance the expedition. "I felt a little like a trespasser...
...results of the current cataloguing, scheduled to continue into next month, will eventually be published. Will they offer definitive answers? Unlikely. "We will create some new questions," thinks Montana Archaeologist Richard Fox. "We'll be putting more fuel on the fire." Custer, who could handle newsmen as well as horses, might have enjoyed the smoke signals...