Archaelogists from around the globe are poised to launch a campaign in Cambodia aimed at preventing looters from spiriting away the kingdom's ancient treasures, they said on Tuesday.
Heritage Watch, the first independent group of its kind in Cambodia, is due to begin operations within a month and will focus on protecting the array of prehistoric artefacts here, director Dougland O'Reilly said.
"Cambodia is a fantastic opportunity for archaelogy because it hasn't been explored scientifically due to the long period of conflict," O'Reilly told AFP, referring to decades of unrest that formally ended in 1998.
HOW ANCIENT ROMAN MADE GOOD IMPRESSION
A fingerprint impression left more than 1,800 years ago has been found on a jar unearthed in a Lincolnshire field.
The print was discovered on the inside a Roman pottery fragment after an amateur archaeologist stumbled across it.
Experts believe the impression is of an index finger and would have been made by the potter who crafted the item.
The artefact was discovered in a field near Sleaford last month by metal detector user Tim Camm.
This is actually quite common. Doesn't make it into the news very much, but one can see these sorts of things quite often. In fact, when one of our staff was assisting to clear some uninscribed tombs in the Valley of the Kings, we found numerous fingerprints in the plaster on the walls.
Guatemalan murals show sophistication of ancient Maya
In the sweltering bowels of a ruined Mayan pyramid, a 10-hour drive to the nearest grocery store, archeologists are painstakingly uncovering 2,000-year-old murals that elaborately depict an early creation mythology.
Though they have been chipping away at the rock face for more than two years, the archeologists continue to be astonished by the artistic sophistication of the paintings, which predate the Maya's Golden Age by 800 years.
"It's as if you didn't know the existence of the Renaissance," said William Saturno, the University of New Hampshire archeologist who discovered the murals three years ago. "You know the art of the 19th century and you think it's the high point . . . when suddenly someone stumbles into the Sistine Chapel and looks at the moment where God touches the hand of Adam."
Restoration of pagan stone circle
Archaeologists are starting work to restore one of Cornwall's prehistoric stone circles.
Three of the stones at the Nine Maidens circle at Madron near Penzance which have fallen over will be re-erected in time for the summer.
The project is a joint venture with Cornwall County Council, the Environment Department (Defra) and the Nine Maidens Commoners.
U.S. Antiquites Market Update Tribal session with Army focuses on burial sites recovery
With rare American Indian artifacts fetching higher and higher prices on eBay and other outlets, the race to protect tribal burial sites has grown in importance, heritage preservationists and archaeologists say.
The Army Corps of Engineers held a closed-door tribal conference this week in Mobile on the sensitive issue of reburial of Indian remains removed from sites on government property -- military bases, federally flooded territory for waterway projects and other acreage.
About a dozen representatives from tribes in the Southeast and Oklahoma attended the two-day conference. The Mobile-based corps has 21 federally recognized tribes that are interested in lands under its civil works boundaries, according to corps archaeologist Ernie Seckinger.
From looters to arsonists Arsonists Threaten Maya City, National Park in Guatemala
More than a millennium ago, fierce power struggles raged between Maya kings in the city of Waka, deep in the Guatemalan jungle. Today, the city is once again under assault, this time from drug smugglers, cattle ranchers, and the impoverished farmers they hire as arsonists.
Last year, more than 2,000 forest fires were set in the region, burning more than 100,000 acres.
On the front lines of this battle: archaeologist David Freidel, whose team is excavating the ancient site, nestled inside Laguna del Tigre National Park, Central America's largest nature preserve. As the forest disappears, he warns, the Maya history is being wiped out, too.