Quest for Camelot

Camelot, a city of shadowy palaces

And stately, rich in emblem and the work

Of ancient kings who did their days in stone.

--Tennyson

If King Arthur ever existed, he was hardly the Lerner & Loewe hero who ruled so romantically over the fabled Camelot. He was more likely a quarrelsome and ruthless local chieftain who badgered monks, stole their cattle, and led a hardy band of early English Christians in clobbering barbarian invaders at the battle of Mount Badon in A.D. 517. Still, avid Arthurians yearn to prove either version--and it now looks as though some hard archaeological evidence is at hand in a hilly pasture at Cadbury Castle, 100 miles southwest of London.

Minor Jackpots. On that site ten years ago, an amateur woman digger turned up pieces of pottery jars that apparently had once held oil or wine snipped from the Eastern Mediterranean about A.D. 500. Since only a rich king or warlord could have imported such luxuries at the time, Camelot cultists were quick to speculate that Arthur's legendary headquarters were buried somewhere near by. Led by famed archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler, British scholars eventually mustered a "Camelot Research Committee" to raise cash and reconnoiter the 18-acre site.

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.

According to their styles and materials, the pin and the pottery go back to the late 5th or early 6th century A.D. The newly found ramparts and decayed posthole matter have yet to undergo close analysis, but experts guess that they also date from the Arthurian period. If further scrutiny proves 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.

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