Excavations

Nachman Avigad, 86, an Israeli archeologist who helped excavate Masada and the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Avigad was a professor of archeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He retired in 1973. He was on the team that worked at Masada, the site overlooking the Dead Sea that was the last settlement to hold out against the Romans during the Jewish revolt. After a three-year siege, the defenders in AD 73 killed themselves rather than be taken prisoner.

TAGHAR, Afghanistan - In a rugged valley outside Kabul, where mud-walled villages blend into bare scrubland, a team of international mining experts and Afghan trainees set up camp over the winter to probe the region's mineral resources. Protected by armed guards, they spent three months drilling test holes into the snowcapped peaks, as curious goat- and sheepherders looked on. "We hit copper damn near everywhere," said Robert Miller, a Colorado-based mining executive recruited by the Pentagon to help advise Afghan authorities on how to develop the country's natural resources.

Excavation on the western tunnel of twin subway passages beneath North Hollywood began Monday, using modified equipment to prevent a repeat of the sinkage problems that have plagued the idled eastern side of the massive transit project. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said workers gingerly scooped out a small amount of earth with the new equipment, opting to move forward cautiously in loose, sandy soil prone to shifting and sliding.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Phillip Tobias, a renowned South African paleoanthropologist and expert on early man and hominids, died Thursday. He was 86. Tobias died in a Johannesburg hospital after a long illness, according to South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand, where he chaired the anatomy department from 1959 to 1990. He "was one of the greats in human evolutionary studies," Nick Barton, director of Oxford University's Institute of Archaeology, told the Associated Press.

An ancient elephant graveyard on the outskirts of this Black Hills community has stirred scientists and the public, and excavations that began 13 years ago continue to turn up bones and tusks. The Mammoth Site, only 15% of which has been explored, is the largest known accumulation of remains of Columbian mammoths, a North American species. The bones are estimated to be more than 26,000 years old.

Underneath what was a parking lot until last month, archeologists have uncovered shards of opium pipes, ceramic dishes and ale bottles buried by residents of a Chinatown more than a century ago. Seven archeologists, who are winding up a 10-day excavation today on Ventura's Figueroa Street, are digging for trash pits several feet deep, hoping to fill gaps in the city's history.

Recent test digs at the McColl dump site show that aviation fuel waste could be removed without significant impact to the community, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report. Agency officials presented those findings to more than 100 neighbors of the dump site at a meeting this week.

Archaeologists in the ancient city of Troy in Turkey have found the remains of a man and a woman believed to have died in 1,200 B.C., the time of the legendary war chronicled by Homer, a leading German professor said on Tuesday. Ernst Pernicka, a University of Tubingen professor who is leading excavations on the site in northwestern Turkey, said the bodies were found near a defense line within the city built in the late Bronze Age. The discovery could add to evidence that Troy's lower area was bigger in the late Bronze Age than previously thought, changing scholars' perceptions about the city of "The Iliad."

An article in the Oct. 10 edition of the Los Angeles Times mentions that archeologist Robert Dunn was refused permission by Ventura city officials to present his slides in front of the city's historic preservation committee. Our committee would like to set the record straight on this matter. It was in fact, the members of the committee that decided against having the slide presentation. Our reason for the cancellation was that we had met with Mr. Dunn previously and spent about 45 informative minutes with him. As it was hard for us to picture in our minds much of what he was talking about, we at that time asked him to return to give us a slide presentation.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina dreamed for years of putting a cultural center and museum on the historic old plaza near Olvera Street downtown. If only she and the rest of the project's planners had taken as long to research the site. Last year, as the work got under way, a crew disturbed the eternal sleep of those buried in L.A.'s first Roman Catholic cemetery. In all, some 118 remains were dug up and carted away before community protests brought the digging to a halt in January.

SEOUL - North Korea appears to be preparing for a third nuclear test, digging a new underground tunnel at a site where previous tests were conducted in 2006 and 2009, South Korea's official news agency reported. Photos taken by a U.S. satellite reveal the excavation work at the Punggye-ri site in the country's northeast, the Yonhap agency reported Sunday. The work comes as North Korea also prepares to launch a satellite, called Kwangmyongsong-3, sometime this week to commemorate the centennial of founding father Kim Il Sung's birth.

The documentary "Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place" seems intended as a pleasant nostalgia tour that cycles through some of the hoariest conventional wisdom about the 1960s. Directed by Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood, the film is constructed in part from recently restored color film footage and out-of-synch audio initially created during a 1964 cross-country bus trip undertaken by author Ken Kesey, flush from the success of his "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," as he made his way from California to New York around the time of the publication of his second novel "Sometimes a Great Notion.

Seeking the remains of a little girl thought to have been murdered 50 years ago, Santa Barbara police on Tuesday started excavating an embankment beside a freeway bridge. Layer by layer, heavy equipment dug into a hillside 15 to 18 feet high. By afternoon, nothing had been found and the mystery of Ramona Price's disappearance remained unsolved. Ramona was 7 years old when she took a walk on Sept. 2, 1961, near her parents' home in Santa Barbara and disappeared. At about the same time, Mack Ray Edwards, who later confessed to killing six California children, was a heavy-equipment operator helping to build the bridge that spans U.S. 101. Lt. Donald Paul McCaffrey, a Santa Barbara police spokesman, said Tuesday that searchers had unearthed more than 3 1/2 feet of soil and were removing only a few inches at a time to allow for closer scrutiny.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina dreamed for years of putting a cultural center and museum on the historic old plaza near Olvera Street downtown. If only she and the rest of the project's planners had taken as long to research the site. Last year, as the work got under way, a crew disturbed the eternal sleep of those buried in L.A.'s first Roman Catholic cemetery. In all, some 118 remains were dug up and carted away before community protests brought the digging to a halt in January.

L.A. has flunked another history test. Not the kind with questions about George Washington and the Constitution. This was a test of our ability to protect our local history ? specifically one particular patch of land where many, if not most, of L.A.'s founders were buried. Now the long rest of some of those early Angelenos has been disturbed. Bones from one of the city's early cemeteries were dug up by accident during the construction ? ironically enough ? of a history museum.

Officials have halted some excavation on the site of a planned Mexican American cultural center after complaints about the removal of skeletal remains that have been unearthed there. Miguel Angel Corzo, the chief executive of La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, released a statement on Friday saying "We believe it is in the best interest of both La Plaza and the larger community to put this section of our project on hold. " Fragile bones from dozens of bodies have been found on the site since October, buried beneath the surface in an area planned as an outdoor space and garden.

Archeology has taken massively to the streets of Athens, combing through the splendid Greek past in search of a more livable future for a now-ramshackle capital literally gasping for breath. The harvest is bountiful--and bittersweet. Construction of a $2.8-billion underground Metro for Athens is imposing a delicate and painful balance between the demands of modern urban life and the legacies of history. Metro excavations have opened archeological digs the size of 22 football fields along major streets in the heart of the city.

Edwards Air Force Base officials have recommended that several World War II-era trenches be excavated to determine if they were used for storing chemical warfare materiel. The site currently "poses no health risk," said Robert Wood, chief of the Environmental Restoration Division at Edwards. "But complete excavation is the only way we will ever know the trenches' contents," he said The four trenches--9 feet deep, 15 feet wide and 150 feet long--are near a dormitory. Base spokesman Maj.

What happened to the old cemetery near Olvera Street where some of the earliest foreign settlers in this area were buried? Records of the Los Angeles Archdiocese say the remains of those buried there were reburied elsewhere in the 1800s ? but give no clue as to where. Now, excavation of the site for the construction of a cultural center reveals that if the cemetery was indeed moved, the job was less than thorough. This is an extraordinary archaeological find. Though the cemetery is far from intact, the patch of land nonetheless represents a unique piece of local history.

It's not unusual in Los Angeles for construction crews to find buried remains, but it is surprising to find a cemetery. Under a half-acre lot of dirt and mud being transformed into a garden and public space for a cultural center celebrating the Mexican American heritage of Los Angeles, construction workers and scientists have found bodies buried in the first cemetery of Los Angeles ? bodies believed to have been removed and reinterred elsewhere in the 1800s. Since late October, the fragile bones of dozens of Los Angeles settlers have been discovered under what will be the outdoor space of La Plaza de Cultura y Artes downtown near Olvera Street.