Posted on 06/27/2003 11:25:09 PM PDT by goody2shooz
Mark Grasmueck can see underground and, without hardly anyone noticing, he has been peeking below downtown Miami.
Grasmueck, a University of Miami geophysicist, is quietly working with archaeologists on the planned One Miami development in the heart of Miami just north of the Dupont Plaza hotel -- a site that almost certainly harbors ancient treasure.
What he sees as far as 20 feet under the asphalt -- and how he sees it -- could revolutionize archaeology, help experts assure the purity of our drinking water and reveal new details of South Florida's 120,000-year-old limestone foundation.
''The deeper you go, the more back in time you go,'' said Grasmueck, a slim, bespectacled assistant professor who was born and educated in Switzerland.
So you can see underground? ''Yes,'' he said.
You are Superman? ``Well, not exactly.''
Grasmueck, 36, has developed a device that he slowly and methodically pulls backward like a reverse lawn mower, each time targeting a four-inch strip of ground.
A particularly sophisticated form of ground-penetrating radar, the device visually slices the earth into fine layers. When reassembled, the exquisitely thin images create a movie that takes the viewer on an underground tour.
He tested his ground-breaking technology two years ago near Coconut Grove, creating a one-minute subterranean view of Ingraham Terrace Park.
FINE-TUNING
Now, he and noted archaeologist Robert Carr are fine-tuning the device in downtown Miami, hoping it will help them find ancient pottery, primitive tools and other artifacts below the six acres of parking lots north of the Dupont Plaza.
A 24-second movie produced by Grasmueck already has identified promising archaeological targets there, perhaps evidence left by the now extinct Tequesta Indians who carved the Miami Circle on the other side of the Miami River.
The film shows a possible pattern of post holes and even possible burial sites, though other explanations -- including natural solution holes -- are possible. More precise analysis of the images is under way, and Carr is preparing to ''ground-truth'' the findings by digging up areas pinpointed by the film.
''I was stunned when I saw this,'' Carr said. ``He produces what appears to be an X-ray movie of what's below the ground. It's like the greatest science fiction film you ever saw. Nothing like this has ever been done in the history of archaeology.''
Now destined to become the site of luxury condominiums, stores and offices, the land once was covered by the main Tequesta village. Also here over past centuries were a Tequesta burial mound, early Spanish forts, the 19th century Fort Dallas and the Royal Palm Hotel.
Under one corner of the site, Carr and his team already have found pottery shards, musket balls and discarded animal bones and shells.
''We haven't found anything highly unusual yet, but we know we're on the right track,'' he said.
That exploration was conducted the way archaeology always has been conducted: by guessing and digging. But the need to perform labor-intensive, large-scale excavations might be eliminated -- if Grasmueck's technology works.
On May 25, he and a team of four scientists methodically pulled his device through 200 passes -- called transects -- over a 66-foot-by-76-foot grid in a parking lot between Southeast Second and Third streets and Second and Third avenues. It took them all day.
Basically, the machine and its antennae transmit electromagnetic pulses that can penetrate the ground. Return echoes, collected by a receiver, appear slightly different at each survey location, depending on the precise nature of the material they intercept.
When assembled by a sophisticated computer program and analyzed by Grasmueck and his team, the data can point archaeologists to the most promising areas for limited excavation.
The computer ''stacks'' the images in a cube, then slices the cube horizontally, providing the viewer with the illusion of embarking on an underground trip.
As the voyage unfolds, anomalies -- small circles that might be post holes, oblong shapes that could be graves, and other irregularities -- come into view.
''What gives us echoes are changes in soil type and moisture content, and rocks and pipes and artifacts,'' Grasmueck said. ``Everything that is different from the surrounding material gives a return, an echo.''
Some antennae can send waves as deep as 100 feet under Florida, but at a cost in clarity. Such penetrations might soon be used to track salt-water intrusion into South Florida's water table and to help reconstruct the formation of the region's foundations.
For the One Miami site, Grasmueck chose antennae that balanced depth with clarity, providing what laymen might consider a somewhat muddy image but one that he and other experts consider remarkably clear.
''Here you see the asphalt,'' Grasmueck said, looking at the film in his office at UM's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science on Virginia Key, ``and then they put in a bit of crushed rock and the soil and the midden deposits that Bob Carr is after and then the Miami oolite limestone.''
TREASURE CHEST
Midden is the black, earth-like substance formed by the debris of ancient cultures. It is the treasure chest of local archaeologists.
Carr and Grasmueck have formed a symbiotic professional relationship. Carr, who helped discover the Miami Circle and often conducts urban archaeology as bulldozers lurk close, needs tools that will make his work more efficient. Grasmueck must rely on Carr to help him test or ''ground-truth'' his device by seeing what is really under the site.
In about a month, Carr plans to use photos and maps developed by Grasmueck as an underground guide to the One Miami site.
Said Carr: ``This is very exciting. We're developing the language of how to interpret this kind of data. Nothing like this has ever been done in archaeology.''
Grasmueck, asked whether he plans to be on site when Carr tests the new system, said: ``Yes, of course. I'm very curious to see what comes out of that ground.''
My guess:
Lead, or plumbum from which the word for plumbing, is very malleable, which means joints between lead pipe sections or lead pipes and fixtures can be hammered or compressed until they seal reasonably well. Lead corrodes and leaches, however, so lead plumbing will need repair eventually as joints reopen. It was as good a joint as could be had until copper, solder, and teflon tape for threaded joints in brass or iron pieces or welding of steel pipes.
Tip: look at your keychain, there's a good chance it resembles this.
You got me started. I suspected it had something to do with plumbing. When I was a kid, my dad would use flax and melted lead to seal cast iron drain pipes. I liked playing with the melted lead.
My e-mail addy is in my profile.
For example: Our 'reading of the will' has it's origins in the king's court where no-one knew how to read and all written documents were read out loud in the court. The king employed a reader and a writer and (According to Burke) the reader could not write and the writer could not read. All reading in those days were read out loud and when a monk was seen reading something without moving his lips, people were astonished.
My grandad used to sit on his porch in the swing and read his bible out loud...even when no-one was present.
LOL, I'm sure you're correct, dad called it flax. (It was rope like)
"Ring around the Rosy, pocket full of posies, upstairs, downstairs, we all fall down." I tracked this down also. I knew it was related to the plague but could not figure out the 'upstairs-downstairs' part.
"Upstairs - Downstairs" relates to economics...the more affluent lived upstairs (out of the muck/garbage/refuge, stench on the street) and the poor lived downstairs. That statement implied that the plague affected everyone equally...the rich and the poor.
Well, that's one of the tin-foil hat stories about HAARP. The most persistent is that it's actually a weather control program, based on Nikolai Tesla's work. The site linked elsewhere as a reply to you maintains that HAARP is a research project on the ionosphere. I also heard that it was actually part of the ELF (extreme low frequency) system for broadcasting messages to submerged subs.
NASA flew a penetrating radar system on the shuttle some years ago that was able to detect long buried canals, roads and even villages. According to Tom Clancy (as well as other sources) this mission wasn't about archaeology, it was meant to demonstrate our capability to pick out hidden hardened sites, therefore making Soviet attempts to build hidden missle silos moot and thus encouraging them to negotiate at the START talks. They have continued to fly the radar, as well as one adapted to an airplane (see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980216073822.htm for an article about archaelogical discoveries at Angkor Wat).
I still have this funny feeling that we know where the WMD are buried and we're holding off for our own reasons. Part of it may be giving the dims and the European appeasers enough rope to hang themselves. We may also be watching the sites to see who goes there. I can only hope.
Agreed. The tin foil comment is about how persistent the extreme versions of the related rumors, particularly the Tesla/"weather control as a weapon" version. Doesn't mean the tin-foiler's can't take it, run with it and make all related "knowledge" subject to review.
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