Free Republic

The 'grave slab code' baffles expertsApr 12 2007 By Tony Henderson Environment Editor, The Journal What could be a 900-year-old code is baffling archaeologist Peter Ryder. Over the last 30 years Northumberland-based Peter has recorded 700 ancient grave slab covers in the county, plus another 500 each in County Durham and Cumbria. But the carvings found on one 12th-Century slab, which had been recycled and used 300 years later in a church tower, have set Peter a puzzle. Three 12th-Century grave slabs were incorporated into the tower of St Michael and All Angels Church in Newburn, Newcastle. They have been...

If the skies are clear as forecast, volcano watchers who turn out for the reopening of the Johnston Ridge Observatory on Friday will get a spectacular view of a hulking slab of rock that's rapidly growing in Mount St. Helens' crater. It's jutting up from one of seven lobes of fresh volcanic rock that have been pushing their way through the surface of the crater since October 2004. The fin-shaped mass is about 300 feet tall and growing 4 feet to 5 feet a day, though it occasionally loses height from rockfalls off its tip, said Dan Dzurisin, a geologist...

Ancient inscribed slab brought to light April 19 2004 at 03:15PM Potsdam - A team of German and Egyptian archaeologists working in the Nile Delta has unearthed "quite a remarkable" stele dating back 2 200 years to Ptolemaic Egypt which bears an identical inscription in three written languages - like the famed Rosetta Stone. Announcing the find on Monday, University of Potsdam chief Egyptologist Christian Tietze said the stone fragment was "quite remarkable and the most significant of its kind to be found in Egypt in 120 years". The grey granite stone, 99cm high and 84cm wide, was found "purely...