Search

In volume xxxiv of the Papers, pp. 131–50 (hereafter cited as ‘PBSR (1966)’), a short account was given of the site of Botromagno, overlooking the town of Gravina, on the western borders of the modern Apulia, and of the trial excavations which the British School conducted there in 1966 on behalf of the Superintendency of Antiquities for Apulia. As will have been evident from that account, the results were sufficiently promising to justify an extension of the work, and the report which follows gives some details of the three further seasons of work which were undertaken in 1967 and 1968 jointly by the British School, the University of Alberta and the Institute of Archaeology, London University. The first of these, covering five weeks in May-June of 1967, was directed by Dr. M. Aylwin Cotton and Mr. Halstead B. Vander Poel. The second and third seasons, both of five weeks, took place in August-September of 1967 and 1968 respectively, and were in both cases directed by Miss Joan du Plat Taylor of the Institute of Archaeology, London University.

Calcite, gypsum, aragonite, and halite have been found in coastal Enderby Land, Antarctica. The salt minerals and their distribution in antarctic soils and surficial materials have diverse possible modes of genesis. Efflorescences of very soluble salts are formed where moisture from melting snow, itself containing salts of marine origin, enters the soil and is later drawn back to the surface as a result of intense evaporation. The returning solution, in addition to its original mineralization, carries ions derived from soil formational processes. Similar genesis accounts for crust deposits of salt minerals on the undersides of boulders overlying soil materials. Other crusts, especially those on rock outcrops, are evidences of chemical weathering of rock interiors, migration of solutions to surfaces in response to thermal gradients, and subsequent deposition by evaporation. Calcitan formation within the soil profile represents precipitation from solution—contemporaneous in coastal Enderby Land, but possibly relict in other parts of the Antarctic continent.