'Stygian darkness' protected Cross Plains author's cellar artifacts

CROSS PLAINS – They may have not found Conan’s battle axe, but they did find Occam’s Razor.

When Jeffrey Shanks’ team of National Park Service archaeologists began digging up the backyard of the Robert E. Howard home last week, they used data from ground-penetrating radar as a guide. According to the device, it seemed a large anomaly was present beneath the western-half of the yard. They reasoned it must be the fantasy author’s storm cellar, the target of their search.

More: Diggin' on Howard: Experts mine mysteries in Conan the Barbarian author's back yard

Behind them, the bricks poking from the grass across the yard had to be a flower bed, or something. Anything but the cellar.

But the principle known as Occam’s razor would not be denied: With all things being equal, often it’s the simplest explanation that proves right.

“We weren't sure this was the cellar because It's rather small compared to most cellars, dimensions-wise,” Shanks explained. “But as we went down, we finally realized this was the cellar.”

The small bricked chamber measures around six feet long and perhaps four feet wide. By Tuesday afternoon, the team had reached the floor, about five feet down, and had cleared the entrance but had not located any stairs.

“When we came down on a number of jars, the tops of mason jars, we knew this was definitely the cellar,” Shanks said. “All three sides were lined with these fruit jars stacked at least four or five rows high.”

The vessels, wrapped in “Stygian darkness” as Howard might have wrote, were protected by dirt and the now-desiccated remains of the cellar’s door. Over that, a few large boulders and a wheelbarrow-load of fist-sized rocks mixed with newer fill.

“It was quite a feat of digging to get down this far,” Shanks said.

The team recorded the layers, or stratigraphy, of the dig as they went.

“What I am doing is creating a narrative of what happened in the cellar, the different dumping episodes, to recreate what happened here,” Shanks said.

Many of the jars had used a glass seal, predating rubber rings, with those seals now broken. From above, a dark, syrupy liquid could be seen glistening within the jars.

“It's the remains of green beans,” Shanks said. “We are taking samples and we’ll analyze that, but it was vegetables most likely.”

There was no sign of the doctor sign belonging to the famous author’s father, but Shanks said they still had much to uncover. They did find a glass apothecary bottle which Dr. Howard would have drawn medicine from, as well as a glass pipette he would have used to do so.

One item everyone referred to as “the battle axe” made for fun speculation. Shaped like Conan the Barbarian’s weapon, it’s tiny enough to rest on a fingertip.

Some thought it a fish bone, others a hat pin. But given Howard’s most famous creation, It set imaginations afire.

Arlene Stephenson of Project Pride, which runs the museum, said the cellar will be an interesting addition to the home once the dig is finished.

“Whether or not we find a whole lot that is actually Howard's, it’s just the idea that it was here when the Howards were here, and they used it in some way,” she said. “I think it’s exciting.”

The team was scheduled to finish Wednesday, store the artifacts, and then bring the best ones out for the Robert E. Howard Days celebration the second weekend in June. Shanks will give a presentation on the dig at that time, after which the artifacts will be properly cleaned and analyzed at the park service’s Southeast Archeological Center in Tallahassee, Florida, and then returned to the Howard home.

“For me, the best Robert E. Howard-related artifact here is the cellar Itself,” Shanks said. “This is something we didn't really know about, we didn't know how deep it was or how was constructed.

“This is like finding another room to the house.”