Introduction
Sometimes, to be in Antarctica is to discover the unexpected. A rock cairn with artefacts has been found on Thomas Island, Bunger Hills, East Antarctica (Fig. 1). Our knowledge of exploratory and scientific visitation to Thomas Island is scant (Table I). The region was first visited and photographed by aircraft from United States Navy ‘Operation Highjump’ in February 1947, with a Martin PBM Mariner seaplane landing on an ‘unfrozen colored lake’ (Byrd Reference Byrd1947, p. 437; colour plate VIII, p. 452; p. 475; p. 516; Apfel Reference Apfel1948). The location of this lake landing is unknown, and field observations are consistent with the landing instead taking place on one of the large marine inlets that are confined from the open ocean by Shackleton Ice Shelf. Byrd (Reference Byrd1947) commented that there are ‘three open-water lakes’ - each large enough to provide a ‘smooth three-mile take-off’ (Byrd Reference Byrd1947, p. 498), and that the water was two-thirds as salty as sea water (p. 499). An image of the aircraft on the water also shows icebergs (p. 499). These descriptions are inconsistent with any of the southern Bunger Hills lakes, so the aircraft and crew most probably landed on Cacapon Inlet or Edisto Channel, located either side of Thomas Island (Fig. 1). The region was subsequently named Bunger Hills after Lieutenant Commander David E. Bunger, commander of this first aircraft to have landed there.
Fig. 1. Location of the field area showing the relationship of the rock cairn (marked by a yellow triangle) on Thomas Island to the unrelated Oasis-Dobrowolski Station (OD; 20 km south-south-west) and Edgeworth David Base (ED; 20 km south-west). TN = true north.
Table I. Known visits to Thomas Island. Further details of visits to Bunger Hills, without reference to specific location, are in Gore et al. (Reference Gore, Gibson and Leishman2020). This list carries the caveat that there may have been other visits, particularly by the SAE, which were not found in our literature search.
ANARE = Australian National Antarctic Research Program, now AAP (Australian Antarctic Program); AWI = Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research; SAE = Soviet Antarctic Expeditions, now RAE (Russian Antarctic Expeditions).
The following summer, United States Navy ‘Operation Windmill’ was conducted to provide ground truthing and astronomical control for the 1947 aerial photography. Surveyors Merritt and Krause from the United States Navy Hydrographic Office were dropped at Bunger Hills via helicopter (probably from USS Edisto) on 12 January 1948 and were retrieved on the morning of 15 January 1948 (Alberts & Blodgett Reference Alberts and Blodgett1956, Anon 2024). It is unclear whether or not Lieutenant (junior grade) Randolph G. Thomas, hydrographic officer with United States Navy ‘Operation Windmill', who served as surveyor with the astronomical control parties and for whom the island was named (USGS 2015), was present at the January 1948 field camp.Footnote 1 Subsequently, surveyors with the Soviet Antarctic Expeditions (SAE) worked on Thomas Island and measured a spot height of 109 m, reported in the Atlas Antarktiki (SAE et al. Reference Tolstikov1966), at the hilltop discussed in this manuscript.
These largely exploratory visits to Thomas Island were followed by short scientific visits consisting of lake water and biological sampling (Table I). The first systematic research on Thomas Island was possibly an Australian effort in 1985/1986 on glacial geology and emergent marine shorelines (Adamson & Colhoun Reference Adamson and Colhoun1992, Colhoun & Adamson Reference Colhoun and Adamson1992). Surveyors were present on the 1985/1986 Australian expedition, but it is unclear where they worked, or even if they visited Thomas Island. Subsequent research visits are unlikely to have travelled to the hilltop location of interest, as their activities were conducted elsewhere on the island (Table I).
Methods
The rock cairn and items were found opportunistically on 28 February 2024 while conducting geoscientific research on Thomas Island. The rock cairn was examined and two matchbooks were found buried in the frozen soil beneath the cairn. The site location was recorded using a handheld Garmin Etrex 22x GPS device using the WGS84 geoid, with a locational uncertainty of ±3 m. Some of the frozen soil could not be removed from the relatively fragile matchbooks due to the potential for damage. The matchbooks were photographed and returned to the soil and the cairn reconstructed. Web searches, particularly of scientific literature and images of matchbooks, were conducted to help determine further history of the artefacts and of visits to Thomas Island.
Results and discussion
The rock cairn was on the broad, glacial debris-mantled summit of one of the highest hills on Thomas Island (Fig. 2a), at ~114 m above sea level as recorded by handheld GPS (similar to the 109 m noted in SAE et al. Reference Tolstikov1966). There was no exposed bedrock or other form of formal survey marker there. The location at 66.10597 S, 100.90063 E is not presently in a Historic Sites and Monuments, Antarctic Specially Protected Area or Antarctic Specially Managed Area. The cairn is nearly 21 km north-east of the Australian Edgeworth David summer base and 20 km north-north-east of the Russian Oasis-Polish Dobrowolski Station. The cairn was four cobbles high and wide, with the long axes of the rocks being flat-lying, giving dimensions of ~40 cm height and 70 cm width at the base.
Fig. 2. a. Marie Weber (left) and Amber Howard (right) stand beside a cairn four rocks tall, under which two matchbooks were buried. The cairn (circled) lies between the people and the dark boulder at the right. The view is to the south across the broad hill summit (image: 20240228_185134.jpg). b. Detail of the front of the red matchbook. The sand obscuring the top of the book was frozen on and could not be removed without damaging the artefact (image: 20240228_184623.jpg).
Beneath the cairn were buried two ‘books’ of matches. With adhering sand and showing evidence of decay, the matchbooks were obviously not modern. One had a red cover with a prominent ‘United States Army’ text and logo (Fig. 2b), while the other carried printed warnings about mosquitoes and malaria (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3. a. Front side of the grey matchbook found on Thomas Island (image: 20240228_184637.jpg) compared with the front side of a World War II-era 10-in-one United States Army ration pack matchbook (source: https://www.kration.info/cigarettes-and-matches.html). b. Rear side of the grey matchbook from Thomas Island (image: 20240228_184612.jpg) compared with the rear side of a World War II-era 10-in-one United States Army ration pack matchbook (source: https://www.kration.info/cigarettes-and-matches.html).
The matchbooks are similar to those provided in United States World War II-era ration packs, which were distributed to military and civilian expeditions from the mid-1940s into the 1950s (van den Bogert Reference van den Bogert2024b, personal communication 2024). The matchbooks, along with cigarettes, were supplied in the dinner units of the K-ration and 10-in-one ration packs (Streeter Reference Streeter2007, Wikipedia 2024). The warnings about malaria were noted in the Type IIIb and Type IVa K-ration packs, produced from February 1944 for the former and from May 1944 for the latter (van den Bogert Reference van den Bogert2024a). The front sides of a matchbook found on Thomas Island and a World War II-vintage 10-in-one United States Army ration pack matchbook are shown for comparison in Fig. 3a. The text ‘Mosquito Bites Cause Malaria’ and an arrow across the bottom of the matchbook and leading up the right-hand side are the same in each case. The rear of the matchbook from Thomas Island contains the same text as a World War II-era matchbook, albeit in a slightly different design (Fig. 3b). The text on the Thomas Island matchbook reads ‘… shirt on and your sleeves rolled down. Use mosquito repellent when out-of-doors between sunset & sunrise.’ Note the difference in the use of hyphens in ‘out-of-doors’ and of the ampersand in ‘sunset & sunrise’ compared with the example known to be from a ration pack. These subtle differences may help to further constrain the timing and origins of these Thomas Island matchbooks.
Thomas Island was visited by United States Navy ‘Operation Windmill’ in January 1948. During this visit, a survey point was established by United States surveyors on what is now named Thomas Island, and it is probably this location that is marked by the rock cairn. An alternative is that SAE surveyors built the cairn, but the matchbooks make a United States origin more probable. The motivation for leaving the matchbooks buried in the soil there are lost to time. The matchbooks were replaced beneath the cairn and the rocks replaced. Just over 76 years had elapsed between burial of the matchbooks, construction of the cairn and their rediscovery.
Conclusions
A rock cairn, with two matchbooks buried beneath, has been found on Thomas Island, Bunger Hills, East Antarctica. The cairn marks the summit of a glacial debris-covered hilltop, which is probably the highest hill on Thomas Island. The rarity of visits to the island plus the origins of the matchbooks in World War II-era ration packs identify the United States Navy Hydrographic Office surveyors from 1948 as the probable creators of the rock cairn. A year earlier, an ‘Operation Highjump’ aircraft probably landed on the marine inlet near Thomas Island, rather than a lake elsewhere in southern Bunger Hills as reported previously.
Author contributions
DBG, AH and MW jointly found the cairn and artefacts. SB contributed the cartography, and all authors contributed to researching the literature and writing the manuscript.
Acknowledgements
We thank the crew, aircrew and other expeditioners from RV Polarstern, who made our fieldwork possible. We thank H. van den Bogert, who assisted with identification of the matchbooks, and two reviewers for their helpful comments.
Financial support
This research was not supported by a specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. Fieldwork was supported by RV Polarstern (Grant No. AWI_PS141_04, Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung (2017) Polar Research and Supply Vessel POLARSTERN Operated by the Alfred-Wegener-Institute. Journal of Large-Scale Research Facilities, 3, A119, http://dx.doi.org/10.17815/jlsrf-3-163).
Competing interests
DBG is on the editorial advisory board of Antarctic Science but had no part in the review or acceptance of this research. We declare no other known competing interests.
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