Historic Antarctic Artefacts Discovered - 29 May 2022

The discovery of historic Antarctic artefacts at Cape Evans is one of the highlights of the season for the Trust. The historic items, left behind from expeditions of the heroic age, were made visible to the conservation team due to the lack of winter snow accumulation and high snowmelt. Items included a dog hospital, mutton carcasses, Aurora’s second anchor (still with the shackles attached) and a pick axe.

The items are located around Scott’s Terra Nova hut at Cape Evans – the iconic base associated with Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition (1910– 1913) and his ill-fated expedition to the Geographic South Pole.

Programme Manager Al Fastier says these sightings are really important, as the objects  either weren’t recorded or hadn’t been seen for decades. Al was the first person to come across the mutton carcasses, still wrapped in muslin, after taking a routine walk to inspect the site at the start of the season. “We’re learning more about the hut and the activities that took place around it and we’re just getting to see things that haven’t been seen in a very long time.

The mutton would have been picked up in New Zealand on the way to Antarctica by either Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition (1910-1913) or Shackleton’s Ross Sea party of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917) and then stored in the snow cave.

While Al has been visiting the site since 1987, he was fascinated to see the mutton carcasses for the first time. The carcasses were recorded in the Cape Evans conservation and archaeological plans of the site and known to be in an ice cave. “I love my job and am always amazed that I keep on learning and seeing more after visiting the sites so many times,” says Al.

A second ice cave has also revealed the finds of a scientific hardwood bench that was used for gravity measurements. This had been partly exposed in previous seasons but this was the first time the Trust’s teams had seen it fully exposed. Scientists were part of the early explorers’ expedition teams and undertook significant science, including some of the earliest advances in the study of earth sciences, meteorology and biology, which is still important to scientific research today.