Word: digging
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Last spring, aerial photos were taken of the premises, which include half-buried pre-Roman ramparts dating back to the Iron Age. Then, in a three-week dig that has just ended, three big exploratory holes were carved in the dry loam to a depth of about 7 ft. Out of them came "Arthurian matter" called "minor jackpots" by the diggers, one of whom headily claimed to have found a carved letter "A." Presumably that meant something different in A.D. 500 than it did in Nathaniel Hawthorne's time...
Major Efforts. Along with more pottery, the jackpots include a 1-in.-long bronze pin for fastening garments, and a blackened iron knife blade some 5 in. long. University of Wales archaeologists conducting the dig found new ramparts within the older pre-Roman walls. Farther up the hillside they also found postholes 1 ft. in diameter-unusually large for the time-that may indicate the site of Arthur's mead hall, plus grain-storage pits and burnt remains from another timber structure...
...those estimates correct, skeptics may be forced to harbor the notion that the hill site was quite possibly the site of Camelot-a somewhat less opulent Camelot, of course, than Julie Andrews and Richard Burton inhabited. Toward that end, Arthurians are now raising more cash for a full-scale dig next summer. What they really need to prove their case, is a tablet, plate or shield inscribed with Artorius, Dux Bellorum...
...shop while his right frolics on a freewheeling holiday. Eyes squinched in concentration, his yard-wide smile flashing like neon, he launches into daring improvisational flights that, however farflung, somehow always resolve themselves into patterns as precise and neatly interlocked as a jigsaw puzzle. "These Russian cats really dig what we have to offer!" exclaimed Hines in Kiev. "They won't let us get off the stage...
...friendly central banks of eleven countries propped up the faltering pound with $1 billion of aid (TIME, June 24). Last week sterling suffered another sinking spell. At one point it dropped to an exchange rate of $2.7869, its lowest level in 21 months, forcing the Bank of England to dig into the country's slim reserves to shore up the currency...