Friday, April 29, 2011

Cavers near record depth

Cavers in the Nice Big Dry Tubes part of the Stormy Pot
cave system on Mt Arthur.
Cavers exploring the bowels of Mt Arthur in Kahurangi National Park are on the verge of descending to record-breaking depths.

The four-member Extreme Cave Team's second exploration of the Stormy Pot cave system, below the high tussock slopes on the mountain's northern side, took team members to a depth of 575 metres.

Team leader Kieran Mckay said the new system potentially dropped another 600m from the current point of exploration to where an underground river emerged into daylight.

Last year the team broke the country's cave depth record by finding the first cave in the country to go more than 1000m deep. Mr Mckay said Stormy Pot had the potential to drop to a record-breaking 1200m.

They exited the system late last week after a 14-day stint – five days of which were spent exploring the system from an underground camp.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

South America's Oldest Textiles Identified With Carbon Dating

Textiles and rope fragments found in a Peruvian cave have been dated to around 12,000 years ago, making them the oldest textiles ever found in South America, according to a report in the April issue of Current Anthropology.

The items were found 30 years ago in Guitarrero Cave high in the Andes Mountains. Other artifacts found along with the textiles had been dated to 12,000 ago and even older. However, the textiles themselves had never been dated, and whether they too were that old had been controversial, according to Edward Jolie, an archaeologist at Mercyhurst College (PA) who led this latest research.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Into The Lost Crystal Caves












Carbon dating identifies South America's oldest textiles


Textiles and rope fragments found in a Peruvian cave have been dated to around 12,000 years ago, making them the oldest textiles ever found in South America, according to a report in the April issue of Current Anthropology.

The items were found 30 years ago in Guitarrero Cave high in the Andes Mountains. Other artifacts found along with the textiles had been dated to 12,000 ago and even older. However, the textiles themselves had never been dated, and whether they too were that old had been controversial, according to Edward Jolie, an archaeologist at Mercyhurst College (PA) who led this latest research.

The cave had been disturbed frequently by human and geological activity, so it was possible that the textiles could have belonged to much more recent inhabitants. What's more, the prior radiocarbon dates for the site had been taken from bone, obsidian, and charcoal—items that are known to sometimes produce inaccurate radiocarbon ages. According to Jolie, charcoal especially can produce dates that tend to overestimate a site's age.

"By dating the textiles themselves, we were able to confirm their antiquity and refine the timing of the early occupation of the Andes highlands," Jolie said. His team used the latest radiocarbon dating technique—accelerated mass spectrometry—to place the textiles at between 12,100 and 11,080 years old.

The textile items include fragments of woven fabrics possibly used for bags, baskets, wall or floor coverings, or bedding. They were likely left by settlers from lower altitude areas during "periodic forays" into the mountains, the researchers say. "Guitarrero Cave's location at a lower elevation in a more temperate environment as compared with the high Andean [plain] made it an ideal site for humans to camp and provision themselves for excursions to even higher altitudes," Jolie and his colleagues write.

These early mountain forays set the stage for the permanent settlements that came later—after 11,000 years ago—when the climate had warmed, glaciers receded, and settlers had a chance to adapt to living at higher altitudes.

Jolie's research also suggests that women were among these earliest high altitude explorers. Bundles of processed plant material found in the cave indicate that textile weaving occurred on site. "Given what we know about textile and basket production in other cultures, there's a good possibility that it would have been women doing this work," Jolie said.

"There's an assumption that these early forays into the mountains must have been made exclusively by men," he added. "It appears that might not be the case, though more work needs to be done to prove it."

###

Edward A. Jolie, Thomas F. Lynch, Phil R. Geib, and J. M. Adovasio, "Cordage, Textiles, and the Late Pleistocene Peopling of the Andes." Current Anthropology 42:2 (April 2011)
.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Caving team returns

A caving team that was turned back by a waterfall deep within a Mt Arthur cave in February has returned, determined to reach the end of what could be the country's longest cave system.

Outdoor adventure instructor Kieran McKay and his five-member Extreme Cave Team have high hopes that the system will link up with the Nettlebed Cave.

The groups discovered the new Stormy Pot system after weather forced them to seek shelter on the western side of Mt Arthur.

They found a muddy entrance which led into a wider, higher system. It has so far taken them to a depth of 470 metres and extended about 2.5 kilometres.

Mr McKay said they had to abort the mission when the cave abruptly ended in a waterfall.

"We were in a long canyon, about 30m high, when we went around a corner and the water shot into blackness."

The stream appeared to exit the mountain about 800m further down its eastern slope, he said.

Mr McKay said the team carried "heaps' of rope and was eager to get back into the system. They would map it for future cavers.

They hoped it might lead to the Nettlebed Cave system at the head of the Pearse River. It has been explored to a depth of 890m and is 23 kilometres long. The Ellis Basin system is just over 1000m deep – New Zealand's deepest – and 33km long. "This one could even be deeper," Mr McKay said.

Source: Nelson Mail

Monday, April 11, 2011

Tourism does not harm all caves


Unlike the situation in other caves, damage caused by tourists at the Águila cave in Ávila, Spain is "imperceptible", despite it receiving tens of thousands of visitors each year. This is the main conclusion of an international research study headed by the University of Alcalá (UAH), which measured heat variations in the cave.

"Despite the tens of thousands of visitors that the Águila Cave receives each year, the temperature variations in it are related to the weather outside, while the long-term impact of tourism is virtually non-existent", David Domínguez Villar, researcher at the Department of Geology of the UAH and lead author of the study published in the journal Acta Carsologica, tells SINC

The research was carried out using data gathered by temperature sensors, which have been fitted in the cave since 2008. These devices make it possible to observe heat variations in the cave, and are very sensitive to the impact of visitors.

"We took data from the cave every 10 minutes and used a filter. The impact of visitor arrivals on temperature increase could be observed immediately. For this reason, we chose the maximum and minimum levels, and we filtered certain periods with or without visitors so that we could differentiate between the natural dynamics of the cave and the impact of the visitors", says Domínguez.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

The 6th Karst Record Conference (KR6) on Climate Change to be Held in Birmingham

This years 6th International Climate Change – The Karst Record Conference will be held for three days at the University of Birmingham in the UK. These conference focus on the use of speleothems and other deposits from caves to interpret the historical record of climate from the past.

The Karst Record conference series began in 1996 in Bergen, Norway. Since then Karst Record conferences have been held in Krakow, Poland (2000), Montpellier, France (2003), Baile Herculane, Romania (2006) and Chongqing, China (2008).

The conference includes optional field trips to visit local caves in the UK and nearby Ireland happening both before and after the event. The conference schedule is as follows. 


  • June 21st-26th: Field trip to Ireland (optional) (registration closed) 
  • June 26th: Field trip to Mendip (optional) 
  • June 26th: Registration and Welcome Reception 
  • June 27-29th: Conference 
  • June 28th: Field trips and Workshops (optional) 
  • June 30th: Field trip to Buxton or Field trip to Oxfordshire (optional) 
Click here for more information.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Magazine: Underwater Speleology Volume 38 n° 2 released



Journal of the Cave Diving Section of the National Speleological Society.

Contents of Volume 38 n°2:
  • Little Hole, Big Finds: Diving Tulum’s Chan Hol (Barbara Dwyer, Kim Davidsson)
  • Agnes Milowka Memorial (Richard Harris, Ken Smith)
  • Skills, tips & Techniques (Jim Wyatt)
  • Wes Skiles Peacock Springs Interpretive Trail (Kelly Jessop)
  • Cave diving Milestones (Shirley Kasser)
  • Visit With A Cave: Madison Blue Springs (Brandon McWilliams)
  • Conservation Corner  (Kelly Jessop)
  • Australia: Down Under (Forrest Wilson)

Click here to download a copy (PDF, 5.20MB).

Friday, April 29, 2011

Cavers near record depth

Cavers in the Nice Big Dry Tubes part of the Stormy Pot
cave system on Mt Arthur.
Cavers exploring the bowels of Mt Arthur in Kahurangi National Park are on the verge of descending to record-breaking depths.

The four-member Extreme Cave Team's second exploration of the Stormy Pot cave system, below the high tussock slopes on the mountain's northern side, took team members to a depth of 575 metres.

Team leader Kieran Mckay said the new system potentially dropped another 600m from the current point of exploration to where an underground river emerged into daylight.

Last year the team broke the country's cave depth record by finding the first cave in the country to go more than 1000m deep. Mr Mckay said Stormy Pot had the potential to drop to a record-breaking 1200m.

They exited the system late last week after a 14-day stint – five days of which were spent exploring the system from an underground camp.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

South America's Oldest Textiles Identified With Carbon Dating

Textiles and rope fragments found in a Peruvian cave have been dated to around 12,000 years ago, making them the oldest textiles ever found in South America, according to a report in the April issue of Current Anthropology.

The items were found 30 years ago in Guitarrero Cave high in the Andes Mountains. Other artifacts found along with the textiles had been dated to 12,000 ago and even older. However, the textiles themselves had never been dated, and whether they too were that old had been controversial, according to Edward Jolie, an archaeologist at Mercyhurst College (PA) who led this latest research.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Into The Lost Crystal Caves












Carbon dating identifies South America's oldest textiles


Textiles and rope fragments found in a Peruvian cave have been dated to around 12,000 years ago, making them the oldest textiles ever found in South America, according to a report in the April issue of Current Anthropology.

The items were found 30 years ago in Guitarrero Cave high in the Andes Mountains. Other artifacts found along with the textiles had been dated to 12,000 ago and even older. However, the textiles themselves had never been dated, and whether they too were that old had been controversial, according to Edward Jolie, an archaeologist at Mercyhurst College (PA) who led this latest research.

The cave had been disturbed frequently by human and geological activity, so it was possible that the textiles could have belonged to much more recent inhabitants. What's more, the prior radiocarbon dates for the site had been taken from bone, obsidian, and charcoal—items that are known to sometimes produce inaccurate radiocarbon ages. According to Jolie, charcoal especially can produce dates that tend to overestimate a site's age.

"By dating the textiles themselves, we were able to confirm their antiquity and refine the timing of the early occupation of the Andes highlands," Jolie said. His team used the latest radiocarbon dating technique—accelerated mass spectrometry—to place the textiles at between 12,100 and 11,080 years old.

The textile items include fragments of woven fabrics possibly used for bags, baskets, wall or floor coverings, or bedding. They were likely left by settlers from lower altitude areas during "periodic forays" into the mountains, the researchers say. "Guitarrero Cave's location at a lower elevation in a more temperate environment as compared with the high Andean [plain] made it an ideal site for humans to camp and provision themselves for excursions to even higher altitudes," Jolie and his colleagues write.

These early mountain forays set the stage for the permanent settlements that came later—after 11,000 years ago—when the climate had warmed, glaciers receded, and settlers had a chance to adapt to living at higher altitudes.

Jolie's research also suggests that women were among these earliest high altitude explorers. Bundles of processed plant material found in the cave indicate that textile weaving occurred on site. "Given what we know about textile and basket production in other cultures, there's a good possibility that it would have been women doing this work," Jolie said.

"There's an assumption that these early forays into the mountains must have been made exclusively by men," he added. "It appears that might not be the case, though more work needs to be done to prove it."

###

Edward A. Jolie, Thomas F. Lynch, Phil R. Geib, and J. M. Adovasio, "Cordage, Textiles, and the Late Pleistocene Peopling of the Andes." Current Anthropology 42:2 (April 2011)
.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Caving team returns

A caving team that was turned back by a waterfall deep within a Mt Arthur cave in February has returned, determined to reach the end of what could be the country's longest cave system.

Outdoor adventure instructor Kieran McKay and his five-member Extreme Cave Team have high hopes that the system will link up with the Nettlebed Cave.

The groups discovered the new Stormy Pot system after weather forced them to seek shelter on the western side of Mt Arthur.

They found a muddy entrance which led into a wider, higher system. It has so far taken them to a depth of 470 metres and extended about 2.5 kilometres.

Mr McKay said they had to abort the mission when the cave abruptly ended in a waterfall.

"We were in a long canyon, about 30m high, when we went around a corner and the water shot into blackness."

The stream appeared to exit the mountain about 800m further down its eastern slope, he said.

Mr McKay said the team carried "heaps' of rope and was eager to get back into the system. They would map it for future cavers.

They hoped it might lead to the Nettlebed Cave system at the head of the Pearse River. It has been explored to a depth of 890m and is 23 kilometres long. The Ellis Basin system is just over 1000m deep – New Zealand's deepest – and 33km long. "This one could even be deeper," Mr McKay said.

Source: Nelson Mail

Monday, April 11, 2011

Tourism does not harm all caves


Unlike the situation in other caves, damage caused by tourists at the Águila cave in Ávila, Spain is "imperceptible", despite it receiving tens of thousands of visitors each year. This is the main conclusion of an international research study headed by the University of Alcalá (UAH), which measured heat variations in the cave.

"Despite the tens of thousands of visitors that the Águila Cave receives each year, the temperature variations in it are related to the weather outside, while the long-term impact of tourism is virtually non-existent", David Domínguez Villar, researcher at the Department of Geology of the UAH and lead author of the study published in the journal Acta Carsologica, tells SINC

The research was carried out using data gathered by temperature sensors, which have been fitted in the cave since 2008. These devices make it possible to observe heat variations in the cave, and are very sensitive to the impact of visitors.

"We took data from the cave every 10 minutes and used a filter. The impact of visitor arrivals on temperature increase could be observed immediately. For this reason, we chose the maximum and minimum levels, and we filtered certain periods with or without visitors so that we could differentiate between the natural dynamics of the cave and the impact of the visitors", says Domínguez.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

The 6th Karst Record Conference (KR6) on Climate Change to be Held in Birmingham

This years 6th International Climate Change – The Karst Record Conference will be held for three days at the University of Birmingham in the UK. These conference focus on the use of speleothems and other deposits from caves to interpret the historical record of climate from the past.

The Karst Record conference series began in 1996 in Bergen, Norway. Since then Karst Record conferences have been held in Krakow, Poland (2000), Montpellier, France (2003), Baile Herculane, Romania (2006) and Chongqing, China (2008).

The conference includes optional field trips to visit local caves in the UK and nearby Ireland happening both before and after the event. The conference schedule is as follows. 


  • June 21st-26th: Field trip to Ireland (optional) (registration closed) 
  • June 26th: Field trip to Mendip (optional) 
  • June 26th: Registration and Welcome Reception 
  • June 27-29th: Conference 
  • June 28th: Field trips and Workshops (optional) 
  • June 30th: Field trip to Buxton or Field trip to Oxfordshire (optional) 
Click here for more information.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Magazine: Underwater Speleology Volume 38 n° 2 released



Journal of the Cave Diving Section of the National Speleological Society.

Contents of Volume 38 n°2:
  • Little Hole, Big Finds: Diving Tulum’s Chan Hol (Barbara Dwyer, Kim Davidsson)
  • Agnes Milowka Memorial (Richard Harris, Ken Smith)
  • Skills, tips & Techniques (Jim Wyatt)
  • Wes Skiles Peacock Springs Interpretive Trail (Kelly Jessop)
  • Cave diving Milestones (Shirley Kasser)
  • Visit With A Cave: Madison Blue Springs (Brandon McWilliams)
  • Conservation Corner  (Kelly Jessop)
  • Australia: Down Under (Forrest Wilson)

Click here to download a copy (PDF, 5.20MB).