Under three months now till the 2010 TIGHAR expedition to Nikumaroro launches, sailing out of Apia, Samoa. We have two major and one subsidiary objective.
Major: 1. Systematic excavation of the Seven Site, at the SE end of the island, where we think the bones that may have been Earhart's were found in 1940.
Major: 2. Robotic survey of the reef face off Nutiran, where we think Earhart and Noonan landed in 1937, down to a depth of about 300 meters.
Subsidiary: Excavation of one or more cookhouses in the colonial village at Ritiati, to obtain faunal material for comparison with fire features at the Seven Site. Ancillary site mapping, metal detecting, surface collection.
Of course, the way things usually happen, we have to be prepared for major changes in plan, but that's what we INTEND to do. D-Day is May 18, with return on June 15. News of progress will be posted at www.tighar.org as it happens.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Sir Ian Thomson
I'm reminded this morning my my on-line calendar that Sir Ian Thomson's 91st birthday would be coming up in early January, had he not passed away last year. Sir Ian, known fondly as "Mungo," was Aide-de-Camp to Sir Harry Luke, High Commissioner of the Western Pacific and Governor of Fiji, in 1940-41, before returning to his regiment where he served with distinction in World War II. I became acquainted with Sir Ian when -- in Fiji in 1999 -- I was told that it was too bad he had recently died, because he could have told me a lot about that critical period in the history of Nikumaroro and its elusive bones. I wrote to Sir Ian's son in New Zealand, expressing regret at his father's passing and asking if he'd left any papers. Awhile later I received an aerogramme from Sir Ian himself, in Edinburgh. "Whilst some in Fiji may equate Scotland with the hereafter," he wrote, "I am not, in fact, deceased." For several years following my rather flustered response to his note, we maintained a correspondence that I found delightful, and Sir Ian pointed me toward a number of useful sources of information -- though he said that he himself had no direct knowledge of what might have happened to the bones from Nikumaroro.
I greatly valued my contact with Sir Ian, as I have with the late Harry Maude and other veterans of the great days of the British Empire in the western Pacific. I mourn their passing, and honor their achievements.
TFK
17 December 2009
I greatly valued my contact with Sir Ian, as I have with the late Harry Maude and other veterans of the great days of the British Empire in the western Pacific. I mourn their passing, and honor their achievements.
TFK
17 December 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Buying Thirteen Bones
Anyone interested in purchasing my new novel, Thirteen Bones, can do so directly from the publisher by going to www.tomfking.com. Alternatively, it's available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers. It's the fictionalized (but fact-based) story of the 1940 discovery of what were probably Amelia Earhart's remains on Nikumaroro in the Phoenix Islands, Republic of Kiribati.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Another Excerpt from "Thirteen Bones"
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Baiteke yelped, but didn’t move. He was lying on his back under a small ren tree. Keaki didn’t move either, but curiosity finally impelled him to speak.
“What’s the problem, Brains-in-your-butt?”
“I’m lying on something that hurts my back.”
“Try moving.”
“I’m too tired.”
It was the middle of the second day of work in the former kanawa grove. They had helped the men heave on the cable dragging the first two logs – for the canoe and the flagpole – down the slipway; they had not exactly gone “whoosh.” The men had tied them together in a sort of raft, and then Temou and Abera had begun the long, laborious paddle up to the village, hauling the rafted logs behind. Kirata and Takena were resting and smoking on the lagoon shore, and had sent the boys back to the grove to finish trimming the remaining logs. This seemed grossly unfair to them both, and after half an hour of work they had grown weary and collapsed on heaps of leaves and branches. The sun blazed down on the new clearing, which seemed to shimmer in the heat.
“Ow! Ow!”
Keaki lifted his hands in mock prayer to the sky. “Please, God, save my friend Baiteke from his torment. Cause him to roll over before his back breaks in two.”
“You torment me,” Baiteke grumbled, rolling onto his side. “What is this thing?”
“What thing?”
“This thing I was lying on – well, crab shit, it’s a box!”
“You’ve been lying on a box all this time and....”
“It was under all these leaves and twigs; I thought they’d be nice to lie on.”
“Let me see.” Keaki rolled over, folded into a crouch to see what Baiteke was pulling out of the deadfall.
It was certainly a box, made of wood, with a hinged top. Rather a nice box, something over a foot on each side, half a foot deep.
“Pretty box,” Keaki said admiringly. “What’s in it?”
“I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?”
“Try opening it.”
“Yeah, all right.” Baiteke didn’t move. “Do you think it is all right?”
Well, Keaki thought, that was a good question. Not far from where they’d found the skull, and here was a box. What might be in it? More to the point, what might come out of it?
“Maybe not. Maybe you should.....”
“Oh, well, what can it hurt? Here’s a catch....”
Baiteke threw back the lid, wrinkled up his forehead. “Bunch of paper.”
“Paper?”
“Yeah, but all brittle; look, it falls apart when I touch it.”
Keaki stood up and looked over Baiteke’s shoulder. The box, he saw, had a lot of pieces of paper in it, with handwriting on them, but they were crumbling away right before his eyes. Some of the writing was gray, like pencil lead, some of it was red and smudgy.
“I wonder what the words say. Can you…..?”
“I don’t know, but nobody can read them if they can’t even pick them up. Look...” He held up a piece of the paper, crumbled it in his fingers.
“Wait... don’t...”
“I wonder if there’s anything else.” Baiteke held the box upside down and the fragments of paper fell out, blew away in the wind.
There was nothing else inside.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Stratigraphy of the Seven Site
Nikumaroro
Nikumaroro is an atoll about 4.5 miles long and a 1.5 mile wide, with a lagoon in the middle. The windward (NE) side of the atoll is relatively narrow, with a topography dominated by a more or less central surge ridge paralleling the ocean and lagoon shores. In other words, constant battering by the sea has gradually built up a ridge of broken coral parallel to the shore; it’s no more than 10 meters high, and usually a good deal lower. The Seven Site lies along the crest and SW (lagoon-ward) side of the surge ridge.
Because it’s made up of broken coral, the ridge is roughly equivalent to a pile of gravel, though the individual pieces of coral are more variable than in your average gravel pile, ranging from fingernail size to the size of your head. In the one place we’ve dug relatively deeply (about 110 cm., at the site of the hole where we think the cranium might have been buried, near the SW base of the ridge), the coral becomes relatively consolidated at about 1 meter depth into something resembling bedrock, but with extensive void spaces.
The coarse nature of the material making up the surge ridge means that fine material – sand, small pieces of coral, organic detritus, and many artifacts – filter through the topmost stratum and wind up somewhat lower. We’ve found that there’s a relatively stable “surface” at about 10 cm. depth; almost everything we’ve found in the way of features and artifacts have been in that top 10 cm. But not in the top 5 cm. – that’s made up of relatively coarse material through which (or through voids around which) the lighter material has sifted. As a result, a close inspection of the surface itself may reveal very little, but once the top 5 cm. or so is raked or scraped away, one begins to encounter fire features and artifacts – which, however, peter out at about 10 cm. depth.
Typical stratigraphy (North wall of "hole" excavation"
Imagining the Bones Discovery
Here’s an excerpt from Thirteen Bones, imagining the 1940 discovery of the cranium that may have been Earhart’s, at the Seven Site.
“Maybe there’ll be ai” Baiteke gasped hopefully, slashing at a wall of mao.
Keaki grunted, and fell to considering coconut crabs, why they congregated in some places and not others, their relative scarcity and shyness near the village, how much his father liked them and how he, on the other hand, had eaten about as many as he cared to, ever. Musing, he slashed down a curtain of mao and stepped into a clearing. And stopped so abruptly that Baiteke ran into him.
“Ow! Did you decide to stop and shit?”
Keaki put out his arm to stop Baiteke from blundering into the clearing. Pointed.
The mao had ended because the kanawa grove was beginning, its canopy depriving the shrubs of sun. The relatively clear ground ahead was shady and rather gray compared to the brilliant green of the mao thicket. The land under the big trees sloped sharply upward – the inland slope of the surge ridge. At the foot of the slope, directly in front of them not ten feet ahead, lying on its side looking at them with big vacant eye sockets, was a very round, very white skull.
“Is it – a person?” Baiteke whispered.
“I think so.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, stupid!” Keaki stood transfixed, afraid to move or speak above a whisper for fear the thing would see him, hear him. Rise up out of the forest floor dragging its bones behind it, grinning like Teng Beiaruru on Moamoa’s moonlit bow, with finger bones reaching, grabbing….
Without another word, the boys turned back along their trail, first creeping silently, then running, jumping over stumps and piles of cuttings.
The Seven Site: Background
http://tighar.org/wiki/The_Seven_Site links to my in-progress report on the Seven Site. In a nutshell:
1. We think it’s the site where, in 1940, human bones were found together with a sextant box, remains of a woman’s shoe and a man’s shoe, a Benedictine bottle, and some corks on chains, near the remains of a fire with bird and turtle bones. Although the artifacts and bones have disappeared:
a. Measurements taken on the bones at the time are consistent with their being from a woman of Earhart’s height and ethnicity;
b. Numbers on the sextant box strongly suggest that it once contained a sextant that was in the inventory of the U.S. Navy at the end of World War I, possibly having been modified for aviation use and quite likely sold as surplus; and
c. The corks on chains could have been stoppers from desert water bags, two of which were aboard Earhart’s plane.
2. Gerald Gallagher’s telegrams about the discovery report that the cranium was buried by its finders; he then dug it up. There’s a hole in the ground at the Seven Site that makes little sense as a well, cellar, or much of anything else; we think it may be where the cranium was buried and then excavated.
3. In 2001 we re-excavated the hole and its backdirt with no success, but on the nearby surge ridge that bisects the site on a NW-SE axis, we found fire features with fish, bird, and turtle bones together with two piles of giant clam shells, a concentration of butterclam shells, and a number of enigmatic and not-so enigmatic artifacts. In 2007 we found more features and artifacts. In summary, it appears that:
a. Somebody camped at the site, collecting and cooking a rather unselective sample of fish from the reef and/or lagoon, along with a few birds, at least one adult sea turtle, some baby turtles, and clams.
b. This somebody didn’t consume the heads of the fish, as indigenous island consumers would have;
c. This somebody didn’t know how to open giant clams, tried to pry them open from the hinge side as one would an oyster, and then busted the bejeebers out of them with rocks;
d. This somebody tried to do something with bottles in one of the fires, perhaps attempting to distill or purify water;
e. The site was subsequently used by personnel from the nearby 1944-46 US Coast Guard Loran station for informal target practice and perhaps bird shooting, resulting in a scatter of M-1 cartridges and objects probably used as targets (plates, etc.).
f. At some point or points in time the island’s colonists built a small house on the site, installed a steel tank to collect water, brought in a good deal of corrugated iron, and planted coconuts, which failed. They also probably cut down some large hardwood trees and dragged them off the site.
g. Someone, at some point, lost or discarded:
i. A woman’s compact from the 1930s;
ii. An article of clothing with an American-manufactured zipper from the 1930s;
iii. An article of clothing with a snap;
iv. An article of clothing with a large button;
v. A bottle containing some kind of crème or lotion
vi. Something (or things), probably made of wood, containing American wood screws, a small pin, and two small hand-made aluminum items with teeth;
vii. A thin, laminated ferrous metal box(?) about 40 cm. on a side;
viii. Some other ferrous metal items we’re working on identifying (they’re all reduced to tiny pieces of rust).
Here’s a map of the site, and an overhead photomosaic made in 2007 using kite aerial photography (KAP). As you can see from the photomosaic, the site is ordinarily covered in Scaevola frutescens, a really nasty shrub that we remove (with care and considerable effort) using pneumatic loppers, chain saws, and bush knives. Disposal of the detritus is always a problem.
1. We think it’s the site where, in 1940, human bones were found together with a sextant box, remains of a woman’s shoe and a man’s shoe, a Benedictine bottle, and some corks on chains, near the remains of a fire with bird and turtle bones. Although the artifacts and bones have disappeared:
a. Measurements taken on the bones at the time are consistent with their being from a woman of Earhart’s height and ethnicity;
b. Numbers on the sextant box strongly suggest that it once contained a sextant that was in the inventory of the U.S. Navy at the end of World War I, possibly having been modified for aviation use and quite likely sold as surplus; and
c. The corks on chains could have been stoppers from desert water bags, two of which were aboard Earhart’s plane.
2. Gerald Gallagher’s telegrams about the discovery report that the cranium was buried by its finders; he then dug it up. There’s a hole in the ground at the Seven Site that makes little sense as a well, cellar, or much of anything else; we think it may be where the cranium was buried and then excavated.
3. In 2001 we re-excavated the hole and its backdirt with no success, but on the nearby surge ridge that bisects the site on a NW-SE axis, we found fire features with fish, bird, and turtle bones together with two piles of giant clam shells, a concentration of butterclam shells, and a number of enigmatic and not-so enigmatic artifacts. In 2007 we found more features and artifacts. In summary, it appears that:
a. Somebody camped at the site, collecting and cooking a rather unselective sample of fish from the reef and/or lagoon, along with a few birds, at least one adult sea turtle, some baby turtles, and clams.
b. This somebody didn’t consume the heads of the fish, as indigenous island consumers would have;
c. This somebody didn’t know how to open giant clams, tried to pry them open from the hinge side as one would an oyster, and then busted the bejeebers out of them with rocks;
d. This somebody tried to do something with bottles in one of the fires, perhaps attempting to distill or purify water;
e. The site was subsequently used by personnel from the nearby 1944-46 US Coast Guard Loran station for informal target practice and perhaps bird shooting, resulting in a scatter of M-1 cartridges and objects probably used as targets (plates, etc.).
f. At some point or points in time the island’s colonists built a small house on the site, installed a steel tank to collect water, brought in a good deal of corrugated iron, and planted coconuts, which failed. They also probably cut down some large hardwood trees and dragged them off the site.
g. Someone, at some point, lost or discarded:
i. A woman’s compact from the 1930s;
ii. An article of clothing with an American-manufactured zipper from the 1930s;
iii. An article of clothing with a snap;
iv. An article of clothing with a large button;
v. A bottle containing some kind of crème or lotion
vi. Something (or things), probably made of wood, containing American wood screws, a small pin, and two small hand-made aluminum items with teeth;
vii. A thin, laminated ferrous metal box(?) about 40 cm. on a side;
viii. Some other ferrous metal items we’re working on identifying (they’re all reduced to tiny pieces of rust).
Here’s a map of the site, and an overhead photomosaic made in 2007 using kite aerial photography (KAP). As you can see from the photomosaic, the site is ordinarily covered in Scaevola frutescens, a really nasty shrub that we remove (with care and considerable effort) using pneumatic loppers, chain saws, and bush knives. Disposal of the detritus is always a problem.
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