New Mexico is taking steps to ensure 10 million archeological artifacts are safe after a water pipe broke last week in the building where the artifacts are housed, drenching more than 1,500 boxes of historical items.
Last week, nearly 50,000 gallons of hot water washed into the basement where the artifacts are housed, said Stuart Ashman, of the New Mexico Office of Cultural Affairs.
The leakage was stopped immediately on Monday and pumps were installed to draw the water out of the basement, he said.
"As soon as it was possible, the material was moved to the upper floors of the building," he said.
Artifacts on the moveA new showcase for American Indians
The word Potomac means "where the goods are brought in" and it dates from the local Indian tribe rudely displaced here centuries ago by colonial whites intent on a New World. The word seems perfect for the whiff of irony and history in the air this month as the last of 800,000 Indian artifacts - priceless goods, in fact - were trucked in from New York City to become the bedrock treasure of the new National Museum of the American Indian.
Even incomplete, the museum stands as a modernistic cynosure, defiantly staring down its immediate neighbor, the gleaming white Capitol, where so many treaty promises to American Indians were written and broken. The museum marks a grand turning point in that history, a sacred federal site ceded to Indian management and broadcasting a message of hardy survival, not tribal extinction.
Ostrich beads indicate early symbolic thought
Stone Age beads revealed by archaeologists on Wednesday could be the strongest evidence yet that humans developed sophisticated symbolic thought much earlier than once thought.
The ostrich egg beads and numerous other artefacts, including ochre pencils, carved bone and stone tools, were recovered from the Loiyangalani River Valley, in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
The archaeologists who discovered the relics have yet to date them precisely, but believe they originate from the African Middle Stone Age - between 280,000 and 45,000 years ago. This is because they were found in a sedimentary layer along with many items characteristic of the Middle Stone Age.
Definitely worth considering this quote: "It is certainly debatable whether ostrich egg beads are symbolic," says Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at the University of Sheffield in the UK. "If they can convincingly date them, they also need to demonstrate that they are symbolic rather than simply decorative."
Iraq antiquities updateordan Ready to Return Stolen Antiquities to Iraq
AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan is ready to return to Iraq more than 700 stolen antiquities that were seized from smugglers, the official news agency Petra said on Tuesday.
Quoting the director-general of Jordan's Department of Antiquities, Fawaz Khreisha, Petra said the pieces, confiscated by security and customs authorities, were well preserved, scientifically documented and ready for delivery upon the request of the Iraqis.
The department has sent a compact disc with pictures of the artifacts to the Iraqi authorities renovating the National Museum in Baghdad which was looted after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) last year.