PHILADELPHIA - In just a few hours of digging at Valley Forge National Historical Park, prosecutors say, Alfred Lucien unearthed the kind of finds amateur treasure hunters dream of.
A musket ball. A locket. A pewter button. Studs, buckles and fasteners that may once have adorned the uniforms of soldiers at the turning point of the Revolutionary War.
It was the sort of haul park rangers dread to hear about as they try to protect the dwindling number of rare artifacts buried at national parks.
I have mixed feelings about this case, admittedly knowing only what is gleaned from the article. While I generally applaud the idea of prosecuting looters, the two perps here don't seem to be major threats to the archaeological record (jail time for three nails?). See McManamon's report on the scope of looting in the U.S. for some perspective, and also an article by Hester Davis.
Looting is a major problem the world over; no matter how great that Anasazi pot might look on your mantle, please refrain from purchasing it, unless it has the proper paperwork for non-looted items.
Free Reading:The African-American Archaeology Newsletter has 19 (at this writing) issues online for free. They make for fascinating reading in what I believe is a rather neglected area of interest at least in the popular media. However, I do recall several news articles written on the discovery of various A-A cemeteries, particularly one in NYC (see, for example, a 1998 CNN story on a New York slave cemetery).
[Update] The A-A Newsletter is no longer being published, which is why the link cited above only has issues available through 2000. They are currently developing a web-only version. Follow the links to their homepage and sign up for the listserv if interested in following A-A archaeology in more detail. --AJC
Email apologies. If anyone's tried contacting me since this thing went up, I haven't read it yet due to problems connecting with my blog's email service. I'm trying to correct this ASAP, but in the meantime. . .well, keep writing, but don't expect an answer right away. Or look at my web site (see earlier entries) and use that address, but please use that one only for serious comments or inquiries.
Old books online.This is the coolest thing I've seen on the Web in a long time: The British Library's "Turning the Pages Project.
Visitors can virtually 'turn' the pages of rare books or manuscripts in a highly realistic way, using touch-screen technology and animation. They can zoom in on the high-quality digitised images and read or listen to notes explaining the significance of each page. There are other features specific to the individual books. In the Leonardo Notebook, for example, a mirror button turns the text round so visitors can read his famous mirror handwriting.
It's amazing. They provide a virtual view of old books (such as DaVinci's notebooks) and the user can page through images of the actual pages as if browsing a regular book. The neatest thing is the magnifier which allows you to read the text more legibly. It also has an audio feature that describes what you're looking at. For scholars, this is demonstrates the true power of the Internet: allowing researchers the world over access to original documents (usually called 'primary source material'). For the average user, it's informative, but most of these things are in non-English languages so their usefulness is somewhat limited. Hopefully in the future translations will be accessible on-screen as well along with annotations.