In front of the fire was laid the high table, draped in white linen, with dishes of gold, all heaped high with food. Its beauty and refinement stood in marked contrast to the behavior of the people in the room, which was noisy, boisterous, crude. The room was inherently elegant, richly and beautifully executed - and rather feminine, to modern eyes. And above the mantel hung a patterned tapestry of swans flying on a field of lacy red and gold flowers. In front of the fire stood a huge wicker screen, also gilded. At the end of the room stood a huge ornate fireplace, large enough for a person to walk into without ducking, its carved mantelpiece gilded and shimmering. See you at dinner.” They had arranged to haveĪrmor silver, their surcoats blue and white, red and gold their fluttering banners threaded with gold. In the meantime, I think we can all ease up.” “ That’s good news,” Marek said, grinning. I’ve asked Elsie to jump ahead and do the oilskin documents, just to see if there’s anything unusual there. I’m arranging for this lens to be checked by an optics guy back in New Haven. “ They’ve had good grinding techniques for two hundred years. This lens looks pretty sharply done… “ “ Doesn’t mean it’s new,” Stern said.
Which means one of them could have been wearing bifocals.” “I don’t know. Rick is looking at all the bones that were exposed today, and he thinks some of them are later than our period, eighteenth century, maybe even nineteenth century. I don’t know how old, but it’s not site contamination.
There isn’t any use trying.” “ So?” “The point is, that was the exposed edge of the lens, right? The edge that Kate said was sticking out of the earth?” “Right… “ “ So it’s old, André. You can’t get a decent date from that amount. “It could,” Stern said, “if there was enough of it for a C-14 run.
Because it was organic, rock varnish could be dated. “ It’s like rock varnish.” Rock varnish was the term for the patina of bacteria and mold that grew on the underside of rocks. “ That’s bacteria growing on the lens,” Stern said.
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