More re Masada

Tehre's nothing much here that wasn't in yesterdays reports about the new conclusions made by Israeli anthropologist Joe Zias, but there's a terrific photograph of the site.

Once a pillar of Israeli identity — army units used to be sworn in on the mountaintop, shouting the sentence "Masada will not fall again!" — the Masada story fell out of favor as Israelis became less comfortable with glorifying mass suicide and identifying with religious fanatics.

The very story of the suicide, as recounted in dramatic detail by the 1st century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus Flavius, also has come increasingly into doubt. Many scholars now believe it was either greatly exaggerated or never happened at all.

The original archaeologists at the site, Zias said, "had the story and went around trying to find the proof." No concrete evidence for the Zealot suicide has been found, he said.

Kenyans fete repatriated relics

Repatriation is a much-discussed topic in archaeology at the moment, and this article on the BBC website is just one of many articles that look at some of the issues. It looks at repatriation from the point of view of the villagers from whom the items were stolen.

For the last 22 years, a village along Kenya's picturesque coast has blamed its ill fortune on the theft of two memorial wooden statues known as vigango. Earlier this week, Chalani village in Kilifi District was the scene of joyous celebration as villagers received two vigango which had been repatriated from the United States.

Chalani villager danced as the vigango were returned to the graves. Vigango are wooden statues which are considered sacred by Kenya's Mijikenda ethnic group and erected on the graves of revered elders. Hundreds of vigango have reportedly been stolen and exported to Europe and the US, where they are sold to private collectors hungry for ethnic African art.

Entitled simply The Possessed, this article by Arthur Lubow on the New York Times website looks at the dispute over the fate of finds from Macchu Pichu (Peru), and the role of politics in the emotive world of heritage and cultural identity. This is a HUGE article - 10 pages of it, and is accompanied by a short but super slideshow of photographs from Hiram Bingham's excavations. If you are asked for a username and password you can enter egyptnews into both fields. Here's a tiny extract:

If you have visited Machu Picchu, you will probably find Bingham’s excavated artifacts at the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven to be a bit of a letdown. Mostly, the pieces are bones, in varying stages of decomposition, or pots, many of them in fragments. Unsurpassed as stonemasons, engineers and architects, the Incas thought more prosaically when it came to ceramics. Leaving aside unfair comparisons to the jaw-dropping Machu Picchu site itself, the pottery of the Inca, even when intact, lacks the drama and artistry of the ceramics of earlier civilizations of Peru like the Moche and Nazca. Everyone agrees that the Machu Picchu artifacts at Yale are modest in appearance. That has not prevented, however, a bare-knuckled disagreement from developing over their rightful ownership. Peru says the Bingham objects were sent to Yale on loan and their return is long overdue. Yale demurs.

Related articles referred to on the page are:
The Other Machu Picchu (June 3, 2007)
IN TRANSIT; A Bridge to Machu Picchu Runs Into Problems (March 11, 2007)
Taking the Back Roads to Machu Picchu (November 12, 2006)
Inca Show Pits Yale Against Peru (February 1, 2006)

UAE: Draft law on tourism and archaeology
I found this short item interesting as it looks at the prssures upon heritage caused by an increase in tourists. Marketing for tourism and planning for the preservation of heritage are brought together under one roof.

The Federal National Council has discussed the drafting of a new federal law setting up a National Council for Tourism and Archaeology, said the Minister of State for Federal National Council Affairs.

. . .

Abdul Rahman Mohammad Al Owais, Minister of Culture, Youth and Community development, said that archaeology, currently managed by local authorities, should also be brought under a federal umbrella. The FNC members decided to re-evaluate the draft law by a special FNC committee to further develop these new goals. "In a changing world of opportunity, we need effective tools to manage our needs and resources within the tourism sector on a national scale. We have to adopt a holistic approach towards the tourism sector on both the local and international scale."

"The main purpose of the new law is to give a federal umbrella to all aspects of our economy, which currently does not include tourism and archeology," Al Owais added.

Book Reviews from Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.06.32
Peter Green, The Hellenistic Age. A Short History. New York: The Modern Library, 2007. Pp. xxxvi, 204. ISBN 978-0-679-64279-4. $21.95.
Reviewed by John Bauschatz, Swarthmore College (jbausch1@swarthmore.edu)

In The Hellenistic Age: A Short History, Peter Green (hereafter G.) offers the nonspecialist reader a concise, well-written introduction to three centuries of political, economic and social history. The book has its flaws, but is nevertheless a welcome addition to the ever-expanding corpus of works on the Hellenistic Age

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.06.37
Christina Riggs, The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt: Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xxiii, 334 . ISBN 978-0-19-927665-3. $150.00.
Reviewed by David Frankfurter, University of New Hampshire (davidTf@unh.edu)

How Egyptian was Roman Egypt? The question has dominated quarters of Classics,
Art History, and Ancient History for over a century. The perpetuation of classical Egyptian iconography on temples suggests a fundamental religious conservatism, while papyrological documentation reflects extensive Hellenism.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.06.36
Elizabeth Blyth, Karnak. Evolution of a Temple. London/New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. 258. ISBN 0-415-40487-8. $46.95 (pb). Reviewed by Peter C. Nadig, RWTH-Aachen (cvr@rwth-aachen.de)

Blyth's (hereafter B.) book is a very well written account of the history, development and function of the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak (Jpt-swt), one of the largest and surely most complex religious sites not only in ancient Egypt but the ancient world as a whole. It was founded in the Middle Kingdom about 4,000 years ago and parts of it were even in use for Christian worship after the closing of pagan cults under Theodosius I.

Exhibition: Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797

New York -- A new exhibition that examines the blending of Western and Islamic cultures through the art of Venice is drawing large crowds to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797, explores the exchange of ideas and art objects between the great Italian maritime city and her Islamic neighbors.

. . .

The exhibition demonstrates the blending of cultures through trade and diplomacy as reflected in textiles, carpets, arms and armor, ceramics, sculptures, metalwork, furniture, paintings, drawings, prints and manuscripts. The three-month show, which includes nearly 200 works of art from more than 60 public and private collections around the world, closes on July 8.

A related exhibition, Europe and the Islamic World: Prints, Drawings and Books, is showing in adjacent galleries through July 15.

Third Century man preserved in salt

During the Roman Empire period, just after the fall of Parthia, a salt mine worker from northwestern Iran lost his life following a catastrophic rock collapse. Approximately 1,800 years later, the man's body — preserved in salt — was discovered in the very spot where he died, according to ecent Iranian news service accounts and to a report issued by the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies.

Since salt prevents bacterial growth and acts as a drying agent, the unfortunate accident victim became a rare natural mummy. He is the sixth "salt man" to be found at the Chehr Abad mine in Zanjan province. Removal of the body from its salty environs could damage it, so archaeologists hope to keep the mummy on site for now. Hassan Fazeli Nashli, director of Iran's Archaeology Research Center, explained that he and his colleagues still face "a lot of problems for preserving the other five ones" that have been unearthed over the past 14 years.

Two-page article with a photograph of the poor man.

Some Masada remains questioned by study
An article that picks up on a paper by anthropologist Joe Zias and forensics expert Azriel Gorski published in the June issue of the journal Near Eastern Archaeology, which has created a a bit of stir with the site's original excavators.

An Israeli anthropologist is using modern forensics and an obscure biblical passage to challenge accepted wisdom about mysterious human remains found at Masada, the desert fortress famous as the scene of a mass suicide nearly 2,000 years ago. A new research paper published Friday takes another look at the remains of three people found at the site and given a state burial by Israel as Jewish heroes. The remains, the study says, could actually be those of the Jews' Roman enemies.

. . .

Zias concluded the hair belonged not to a Jewish woman but to a foreign woman who fell captive in the hands of Jewish fighters. In his scenario, the woman was attached to the Roman garrison at Masada in A.D. 66 when the Zealots seized the fortress and killed the soldiers. Jewish fighters threw two Roman bodies into the bathhouse, which they then used as a garbage dump, judging by other debris found inside. The Zealots treated the woman captive according to Jewish law, cutting off her hair, which they threw in with the bodies.

Also covered at The Scotsman website and on the International Herald Tribune.

Tibet returns stolen idols to Nepal

Kathmandu - The Tibetan authorities Thursday returned 27 ancient idols and a miniature shrine stolen from a remote monastery in north-west Nepal. The return of the statues followed a decision of a Tibetan court recently to return the artifacts to their original location. The statues were brought to the Nepalese capital Kathmandu Thursday from Lhasa by a Nepalese government team. 'The idols and the shrine known as Chorten arrived in Kathmandu in good condition. They are now under police custody and will be handed over to proper authorities on Friday,' archeologist Prakash Darnal said.

According to Darnal, the idols were mainly of Buddha, Buddhist priests and sages. All the statues were between 600 and 800 years old. The statues were reported stolen by Tibetans from Yetser Jangchubling monastery in the remote Nepalese district of Dolpa, about 350 kilometres north-west of the capital Kathmandu, in 2005.

Saving History for the Public by James Delgado
Another disturbing feature on Archaeology Magazine's website about underwater archaeology.

Glorifying treasure hunters and denigrating archaeologists is a poor apology for the destruction of our underwater heritage.

In a June 8 New York Times Op-Ed piece, Robert Kurson, author of the popular book Shadow Divers, attacks archaeologists as pirates, calling us a "new breed of raiders." By contrast, he praises treasure hunters: "Without them...many of these wrecks would stay lost forever. Without the lure of a big and romantic payoff, no one
would even look." Moreover, Kurson paints archaeologists as ivory-tower academics and the treasure hunters as larger-than-life men-of-action: "it's a good bet that a grizzled, lifelong salvage diver has better real-life, tight-squeeze shipwreck experience than an archaeologist who writes up guidelines for this work from his office near the student union." This is a response from a grizzled lifelong archaeologist who has plenty of real-life, tight-squeeze experiences, as do many of my colleagues.

The recent controversy over the discovery of the "Black Swan" treasure off the coast of England by the company Odyssey Marine has ignited more than just a debate between scholars and treasure hunters. The key question of who owns the treasure has involved diplomats and lawyers, led to legal action, and a stand off at Gibraltar that has stoked longstanding tensions between Spain and Great Britain. Lost in the rhetoric of these battles is the question of the relevance of the archaeologists' arguments. Whether Odyssey Marine is doing careful work that meets archaeological standards remains unknown.

Human Nature Rubs Off on Chimps

A bit of human nature can apparently rub off on chimpanzees. Chimps nurtured by humans since birth have a far better chance of figuring out ow to use new tools, a new study shows. The findings highlight untapped potential within chimpanzees that can get uncovered "by studying them when they have been raised under very comparable conditions as our own children," said Ohio State University cognitive primatologist Sally Boysen.

The research suggests that early human ancestors may have been far more sophisticated in their mental capacities than previously thought, she added. "The emergence of higher order thinking, as well as motor skills that would permit complex tool use and construction and other cultural features of human social interaction, may have been part of our human ancestry much earlier than otherwise predicted by the fossil record of artifacts and human remains," Boysen told LiveScience.

A new cultural heritage forum has been formed by to support the International Journal of Cultural Property (Cambridge University Press). The Discussion forums of the International Cultural Property Society has been set up as a source of cultural heritage news and events information, as well as a place in which to express opinions about cultural heritage issues such as art theft, repatriation, relations between source nationsand collectors/museums, illicit excavations, and the use of digitalization to increase access to cultural heritage.

Registration is simple and free of charge.

Mass grave of Quakers uncovered in UK

A mass grave believed to contain the bodies of followers of the Quaker religious movement has been uncovered in Cambridgeshire. Environment agency workers found the rare Quaker burial site while carrying out work for flood defences at St Ives. Sixteen bodies were in the unmarked grave dating back to the late 1600s. Archaeologists described the find as "remarkable and unusual" as it gave an insight into Quaker burial practices just after the movement started.

The Story of the Archimedes Manuscript

This article doesn't actually consider the results of the decoding of the manuscript. There is also a bit about who Archimedes was, what he acheived and how he died, but it mainly takes a long and disapproving look at what happened to the manuscript over the course of its existence until today.

The texts, formulas and drawings by Archimedes, executed in brown ink, were erased in the Middle Ages and overwritten with a religious text. Specialists at the museum irradiated the pages, made of goat leather, with UV light. Then they were bombarded with X-rays in the particle accelerator at Stanford University to bring out the traces of iron in the Byzantine ink. NASA experts were also involved in analyzing the work. What, if any, are the fruits of all this labor? Has it revealed Archimedes "in a completely new light," as the Beck publishing house has proclaimed? Absolutely not.

. . .

It is, of course, not entirely accurate to claim, as the Beck publishing house does, that "the history of mathematics must be completely rewritten" based on the information gleaned from the analysis -- especially since the work was discovered in the academic world long ago. One hundred and fifty years ago, Konstantin von Tischendorf, a scholar in the German city of Leipzig, found the unsightly little book in the monastery library at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and recognized its "mathematic" content.

Saturday seems like a good day to round up the highlights of the latest news from the world of Egyptology. This was not an earth-shaking week.

The The Art Newspaper reports that the Supreme Council of Antiquities have asked the British Museum (London, U.K.) for the return, on three month loan, of the Rosetta Stone in 2010, when the Egyptian Grand Museum is opening to house Egypt's most important artefacts (currently in the disorganized and old fashioned Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, Cairo).

Saqqara Technologies have released the beta (trial) version of their new font set, which has been submitted to the World Wide Web committee for approval as a recognized font set, meeting the Committee's formal standards. For a more formal description see the Specification Page. For more details go to the EPGZ website.

For those of you who speak French, there's a nice piece on the CNRS website about the School of Scribes at the Ramesseum in Luxor.

Quite a bit of interest seems to have been generated by the announcement that the search for the "true" mummy of Hatshepsut will be assisted with DNA testing. For anyone interested in seeing some of these discussions, Donald Ryan discusses some of the evidence with respect to the identification of the mummy of Hatshepsut. Donald Ryan ( Donald P. Ryan, Ph.D., Division of Humanities, Pacific Lutheran University) rediscovered and documented KV 60 in the Valley of the Kings in 1989, and here he offers some clarifications on the discussion that has been taking place on that forum, including some history and the current state of play. His post is currently third from the bottom of the page.

Prensa Latina reports that the Cairo Islamic Art Museum is to re-open in December 2007 after a four year restoration.

Details of a new publication have been posted on the British Academy's website: Regime Change in the Ancient Near East and Egypt – From Sargon of Agade to Saddam, edited by Hussein Harriet Crawford (Proceedings of the British Academy No. 126). A contents listing with sample pages can be found on the British Academy website.

The Centro de Estudios de Historia del Antiguo Oriente (CEHAO), Argentine Catholic University, has published a paper from Volume 1 of its electronic Monograph Series on its website, with later additions to follow as these become available: Centro y periferia en el mundo antiguo. El Negev y sus interacciones con Egipto, Asiria, y el Levante en la Edad del Hierro (1200-586 a.C.). By Juan Manuel Tebes. CEHAO Monograph Series Vol. 1, Buenos Aires, 2007. It is in Spanish, with maps, diagrams and photographs and is in PDF format.

I think that today's set of posts may be my last lot before Tony's return. I could be wrong, and perhaps it would have been sensible to have saved the email that gave me details of his holiday timings somewhere safe, but it seems to have become lost in the labyrinthine nightmare of Outlook folders and sub folders. I really must sort the whole thing out. One day. Not today.

But I'll wish you all a fond farewell now, just in case.

I also want to say a huge thanks to Kat Newkirk, who is one of my chief lifesavers on my own blog, for forwarding me items of interest that she has found.

I will be very glad to see Good King Anthony returned to his rightful place at the throne of the Kingdom of ArchaeoBlog - I never realized just how much archaeological news there is out there, and how difficult it is to select which bits to exclude for fear of overloading visitors with data. I don't think that I always managed to get a good balance (today, for example, was just a bit busy, but what to reject??)

Tony, come and take this sceptre out of my hand before I do some damage with it.

All the best to everyone, and thanks for bearing with me :-)
Andie

Of Bricks and Boats
A recently discovered tomb found in Egypt is described on the Al Ahram Weekly website.

Archaeologists from the Katholicke Universiteit Leuven working at the Middle-Kingdom (2066-1650 BC) tomb of Uky, a top government official, have discovered an intact tomb chamber, complete with funerary goods.

While removing the debris out of a rock-cut shaft found inside the chamber of Uky's tomb, the archaeologists came across a huge limestone block indicating that a major find was imminent, in line with the ancient Egyptian custom of blocking their burial chambers with such a barrier. Through a hole in the block, they could see what they described as a beautifully-carved wooden statue of a man with large, staring eyes. After only an hour the block had been removed, and the team discovered a small but intact chamber richly stuffed with well-preserved wooden objects and containing a
decorated sarcophagus.

"Even though the burial took place more than 4,000 years ago, the colours on the painted objects are very fresh, and there was even no dust covering them," mission director Harco Williams said.

To see all three photographs that accompany this piece, click on the single image shown on the page. All three photographs will then be shown in a new window.

Not wishing to labour the Egyptological point, but anyone interested in Tutankhamun might be interested in this useful review of an exhibition in Cairo which features the contents of the Pharaoh's mummy wrappings (with photographs).

Jewel of the Jungle

The Smithsonian Magazine is offering an article online about Angkor (Cambodia), somewhere that is on my list of the top five places I really must visit in the next few years. It isn't really a news item, but it is a good and informative read.

The temple's precise, symmetrical beauty was unmistakable. The other tourists all faced the sun, watching in stillness and whispering in foreign tongues, as hundreds more arrived behind them. Angkor Wat at sunrise is a wondrous spectacle, one that I would return to several times during my stay in Cambodia.

. . . .

Although Angkor Wat is the largest and best known of these temples, it is but one of hundreds built by the kingdom of Angkor. Huge stone monuments scattered across hundreds of square miles of forest in northern Cambodia, the temples are the remains of a vast complex of deserted cities—which included manmade lakes, canals and bridges—that were astonishing in their size and artistic merit.

But piecing together information about the ancient Khmers who built them has not been easy for archaeologists and historians. The only written records that still exist are the inscriptions on the temple walls and the diary of a Chinese diplomat who visited Angkor in 1296. All administrative buildings and the homes of kings and commoners alike were made of wood; none have survived, leaving only the religious creations of brick and stone.

The article is accompanied by some good photogrpahs. Click on any one of the thumbnails, and then navigate through the others using the Previous and Next links to the bottom right of the image.

20,000 people meet for Summer Solstice at Stonehenge

England - Thousands of modern-day druids, pagans and partygoers converged on Stonehenge early Thursday to cheer the dawn of the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere — the summer solstice.

Clad in antlers, black cloaks and oak leaves, a group gathered at the Heel stone — a twisted, pockmarked pillar at the edge of the prehistoric monument — to welcome the rising sun as revelers danced and yelled. . . . Dancers writhed to the sound of drums and whistles as floodlights colored the ancient pillars shades of pink and purple, and couples snuggled under plastic sheets.

Solstice celebrations were a highlight of the pre-Christian calendar. People in many countries still celebrate with bonfires, maypole dances and courtship rituals. In more recent years, New Age groups and others have turned to Stonehenge to celebrate the solstice, and the World Heritage Site has become a magnet for those seeking a spiritual experience — or just wanting to have a good time.

But the celebrations also can attract their share of troublemakers. Police closed the site in 1984 after repeated clashes with revelers. English Heritage, the monument's caretaker, began allowing full access to the site again in 2000. Police were deployed early Thursday to keep the hedonists from getting out of hand, and to prevent revelers from climbing the stones.

And no, I wasn't there, not writhing under pink lamps, not wearing antlers and not snuggling under a plastic sheet! I know - I'm getting old.


For those wanting more information about Stonehenge, see the official Stonehenge website.

Slave quarters unearthed at historical state park

An excavation by Jack Bergstresser, resident archaeologist and director of Tannehill's Iron and Steel Museum, at Tannehill Ironworks and Historical State Park in Birmingham, Alabama (U.S.) has produced evidence of possible slave quarters.

"We're investigating what people here at the park have believed for years," Bergstresser said. "We know that slave labor was used in construction and also probably a part of the labor force at times, but there has been no evidence to this point." In addition to flat construction nails, the items found so far include bits of ceramics, an iron fork, a piece of a cup, a piece of a clay pipe, a green glass bead, a copper ring and a child's marble. For the scientists, those tiny tidbits are proof that the sites were houses.

. . .

When Tannehill furnaces were built in 1858, it is estimated that as many as 600 slaves might have been used both for construction and as part of the work force. Many were probably leased from nearby slave owners, but others apparently lived on site, walking a trail that still exists about 200 yards from the cabin sites to the furnace.

The furnace was destroyed by Union soldiers in 1865. That and the emancipation of the slaves triggered a new element in the local work force.

UNESCO launches reerection project of Ethiopia's ancient Axum obelisk

The UNESCO World Heritage Center has signed a contract with an Italian construction company, funded by the Italian Government, to begin the reerection of the Axum obelisk, the 1700 year old monument that has become a symbol of Ethiopian heritage. The work is due to commence in mid July. The total budget for the project is over 2.8 million U.S. dollars.

The works will take place in two segments throughout a period of 18 months, according to the UNESCO press release. During the first segment, a foundation for the obelisk will be built as well as a temporary steel tower for lifting the separate parts of the obelisk. In the second phase, the steel structure will be put in place and the obelisk lifted and placed in position. Finally, the surface of the obelisk will be cleaned and restored, and the steel support structure dismantled and removed.

The Ethiopian government plans to mark the end of their Ethiopian calendar year 2000 celebrations, held on Sept. 12, 2007, by inaugurating the standing obelisk, it said.

Also known as Stela 2, it is the second largest stela on the Axum World Heritage site in Ethiopia. Transported to Rome by the troops of Mussolini in 1937, it was returned by the Italian government in April 2005. Weighing 150 tons and 24 meters high, the obelisk was cut into three pieces and transported by Antonov airplanes to north Ethiopia's Axum town.

For those interested in the obelisk and how it is perceived in Ethiopia, there's a Special Report on Archaeology Magazine by Ian Limback, entitled The Axum Obelisk Returns, But Some Still Grumble (July/August 2005).

Comprehensive details of the 1974 excavation at Aksum are provided by Stuart Munro-Hay at about.com.

Scribbling notes as the expedition leader crawls along under those tremendous stones, calling out what he sees... ‘another chamber.. ten in all... enormous… seems to be plaster on the wall... another shaft coming down here... roots between the stones... ouch!... at the end, the top of a brick arch... it's blocked…’ This was Dr. Neville Chittick, leader of the 1974 British Institute in Eastern Africa’s expedition to Aksum in Ethiopia, recorded in my notebook as we entered for the first time the great tomb dubbed ‘the Mausoleum’ for its unexpected size and architectural impressiveness. The slow unfolding of my own particular discovery as part of Dr. Chittick’s team, the Tomb of the Brick Arches, also had moments of suspense. First, a staircase going down. A granite lintel appeared. Then, totally unexpected, a brick. The diggers clear
the top of an arch; I recalled the received dictum; ‘the arch was unknown in Aksum’. More clearing. The arch was horseshoe shaped — a new page to be written in the history of architecture. Then the blocking... broken or still intact...?

An article about Isthmia in Greece by Elizabeth R. Gebhard, Director of the University of Chicago Excavations at Isthmia, has been reproduced on the Spero News website. Isthmia was the seat of the Isthmian Games - one of four ancient Greek athletic contests. The article provides a history of discovery and excavation at the site.

One significant discovery was the early Archaic temple lying beneath the Doric building of Classical times. A catastrophic fire reduced the building and its contents to a mass of smouldering ruins amongst which Broneer recovered a host of small dedications brought by pilgrims to Poseidon's shrine.

. . .

Small and finely decorated oil vessels (aryballoi) were favoured dedications. A man who had been victorious in the pentathlon gave a jumping weight suitably inscribed. Its early letter-forms provide the first evidence for the pentathlon as an event in the games. A wheel from a chariot was dedicated, presumably in gratitude for a victory won at the Isthmian Games. Then there were arms and armour, dedications made by those who had been victorious in war. Humbler forms of dedication were the small terracotta figurines of horses and riders and of bulls, the animal sacred to Poseidon. As god of the sea, he also received small replicas of ships for a safe voyage.

The University of Chicago have an official section dedicated to the site, with every season's annual excavation reports, and study season reports. There are also 3-D site reconstructions and contour plans.

British Museum revamps Prehistory section
This is such good news - and not before time, either. The BM (London, U.K.) has some fabulous prehistoric artefacts, from the mundane to the extraordinary, and their storage facility contains staggering quantities of prehistoric items. It is terrific that their value is to be highlighted in an appropriate way.

There is no denying the beauty of prehistoric artefacts. You can disguise it, though, by displaying hundreds of arrowheads in cases that don't seem to have been dusted since the 1950s - which is why this new set of modern and gracious galleries comes as a joy. The real test of the dynamic new British Museum is how well it does its basic job of displaying the ancient past. Very well, is the answer from looking at this new suite. It's simple and smart, so as you walk along, you perceive changing time as a succession of colours: the neolithic becomes a room full of widely spaced white objects, the Bronze Age oxidised green, the Iron Age warm, earthy brown.

This is a satisfyingly long article by Jonathan Jones, which looks at many aspects of British prehistory and how it has been perceived, and includes a description of Lindow Man, the bog sacrifice.

Details for visitors to the museum can be found at the British Museum website.

This news that playing cards showing antiquities have been sent by the Pentagon to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has been bouncing around the Internet for a few days now. Here's an extract from one version of the story from the International Herald Tribune. I figure that if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for Tony, although it does somewhat fry my logic circuits:

The Defense Department is sending another deck of playing cards to troops in Iraq — this time showing some of the country's most precious archaeological sites instead of the most-wanted former regime officials.

Some 40,000 new decks of playing cards will be sent to troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan as part of an awareness program so troops can help preserve the heritage of those countries, said Laurie Rush, archaeologist at Fort Drum in New York.

It is aimed at making troops aware they should not pick up and take home artifacts and to avoid causing damage to historic sites, such as an incident after the 2003 invasion of Iraq when U.S. troops built a helicopter pad on the ruins of Babylon and filled their sandbags with archaeological fragments from the ancient city. Each card in the deck shows an artifact or site or gives a tip on how to help preserve antiquities.

Prospector finds shipwreck in Lake Erie

VERMILION, Ohio -- The wreckage of a steamship that sank in 1850 after its boilers exploded has been discovered at the bottom of Lake Erie.Thomas Kowalczk, an amateur shipwreck prospector, used sonar on his boat to discover the General Anthony Wayne in 50 feet of water, about eight miles north of this northeast Ohio city, the Great Lakes Historical Society announced Wednesday.


The side-wheel steamship, named in honor of Revolutionary War hero Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne, sank in April 1850 while en route from the Toledo area to Buffalo, N.Y.

Experimenting with prehistoric arrowheads is the topic of this article on the University of Wyoming website.

In the Stone Age, prehistoric peoples created weapons by making stone projectile points and affixing them to arrow and spear shafts. Until now, no one has researched the technological advantage or disadvantage of the arrowhead to prehistoric culture. With the help of Discovery Channel MythBusters Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, two University of Wyoming archeologists pledged to find out about the arrowhead’s significance to ancient cultures.

Nicole Waguespack and Todd Surovell, both in the UW Department of Anthropology, a few years ago began to question the purpose of arrowheads. The objects had long been accepted in their profession as an important component of prehistoric weaponry.The concept that projectile points were used to advance hunting has been perpetuated throughout history, but wasn't based on any meaningful evidence, according to the UW researchers.

Unfortunately, although the article explains the experiment, it does not reveal the results.

So, how did the arrowhead fit into the technology of prehistoric peoples? To discover whether superiority of an arrow with an affixed projectile point was busted as a myth or confirmed as fact, tune into MythBusters. Visit http://www.discovery.com/ for a program schedule.

A travel piece about Guantajo in Mexico which gives details of the Las Momias (The Mummies) museum.

It’s not the most well-organized museum you’ll find in Mexico, but what it houses proves to offer far more than morbid novelty.

. . .

Many of the mummies are said to have perished in a cholera outbreak here in 1833, though, due to rigorous taxes placed on keeping bodies in the limited local cemetery space, bodies are continually being dug up and appropriated by the museum, though only a fraction are ever on display. If one desired to become a mummy, your best bet would probably be to die in Guanajuato and simply wait a while. Sooner or later, you’d have a good chance of winding up in here. The mummies of Guanajuato—amongst them the smallest mummy in the world!—are one of the most uncanny manifestations of Mexico’s obsession with death, a strange conspiracy between the elements, the folklore and the tourism industry.

For official, albeit brief, details about the Las Momias museum see the museum's page on the city's website.

Museum explores medicine's impact on life

A new medical museum featuring oddities such as a Peruvian mummy, 16th century dissection tables, and a robot used to sequence the human genome opened in London on Wednesday. The Peruvian mummy is coiled up with its knees to the chest.(CBC) The $63 million permanent exhibit is dedicated to medicine and its impact on life. Curators selected the 1.5 million artifacts from the collection of Sir Henry Wellcome.

Wellcome, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, philanthropist and collector, travelled the Victorian world looking for treasures such as a lock of George III's hair, Napolean's toothbrush, Charles Darwin's walking stick with a skull-shaped handle, and Lord Nelson's razor. The national museum combines medicine and art, and is a place for people interested in what it is to be human, said curator Ken Arnold.

See the Wellcome Collection website for more details.

I don't know whether I have just been very unobservant in the past, or whether there are actually a remarkable number of fossil animals turning up, but here is yet another finding from Palaeontology: the sudden appearence of shrew-like mammals following the demise of dinosaurs.

The discovery of a primitive, shrew-like mammal fossil in Mongolia has revived the view that its modern mammal cousins arrived just as the dinosaurs made their dramatic exit about 65 million years ago, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

Recent studies have placed the arrival of modern mammals at anywhere from 140 million to 80 million years ago, long before an asteroid crashed into Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. "The fossil itself is the least interesting part of the story scientifically," said John Wible of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, whose research appears in the journal Nature.

He said the discovery of a new shrew-like mammal in 1997 -- Maelestes gobiensis -- led to an exhaustive analysis of the fossil record that dates the emergence of modern mammals at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago.

35,000 year old mammoth sculpture found in Germany
There is a slideshow of five lovely photographs on the above page.

In southwestern Germany, an American archaeologist and his German colleagues have found the oldest mammoth-ivory carving known to modern science. And even at 35,000 years old, it's still intact.

Archaeologists at the University of Tübingen have recovered the first entirely intact woolly mammoth figurine from the Swabian Jura, a plateau in the state of Baden-Württemberg, thought to have been made by the first modern humans some 35,000 years ago. It is believed to be the oldest ivory carving ever found. "You can be sure," Tübingen archaeologist Nicholas J. Conard told SPIEGEL ONLINE, "that there has
been art in Swabia for over 35,000 years." In total, five mammoth-ivory figurines from the Ice Age were newly discovered at the site of the Vogelherd Cave in southwestern Germany, a site known to contain primitive artefacts since it was excavated in 1931 by the Tübingen archaeologist Gustav Reik. Over 7,000 sacks of sediment later, archaeologists were again invigorated by the discoveries.

. . .

The geological context of the discoveries and radiocarbon dating indicate that the figurines belong to the Aurignacian culture, which refers to an area of southern France and is associated with the arrival of the first modern humans in Europe. Multiple radiocarbon dates from sediment in the Vogelherd Cave yielded ages between 30,000 and 36,000 years ago, the University of Tübingen reports. Some methods give an even older date.

Important Pre-Pottery Neolithic discovery in Syria

Polish archaeologists working at a Syrian settlement at the foot of the Taurus Mountains have discovered another stone tower – the oldest one in the world, many dwellings and 27 human and 3 animal burial remains from the beginnings of animal farming and growing the first grains – said Prof. Ryszard F. Mazurowski from the Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at Warsaw University, who is heading the digs.

For the past ten years, Polish-Syrian research in Tell Qaramal, 25 km north of Aleppo and about 65 km south of the Taurus mountains, has been concentrated on traces of the early stages of the pre-ceramic Neolithic period, which covers a period of about 10,700 – 9,500 B.C.. This was the time when the first farming cultures were being established, with a transformation from a hunting-gathering economy to a farming economy, which included keeping animals such as sheep and goats, as well as cattle and pigs at a slightly later stage.

. . .

The Tell Qaramel settlement examined by Polish archaeologists covers an area of about 4 ha and represents a stage of the pre-ceramic Neolithic Age. Previous excavations brought the discovery of four circular towers dating back to between the eleventh millennium and about 9,650 B.C. These are the oldest such buildings in the world. The professor says – “this is the biggest prehistoric discovery made by Polish archaeologists, and one of the greatest discoveries in the Near-East region for 60 years, since the discovery of Jericho”. In the last season, the archaeologists examined the fourth tower – and discovered a fifth one.

Website launched to conserve heritage

The Academy of Archaeology and Sciences of Ancient India (AASAI) has launched a
unique web portal with the aim to preserve ancient heritage here.

The portal, http://www.conserveheritage.org/, launched by Tamil Nadu Governor Surjit Singh Barnala on Sunday, also offers a new online course on ancient Tamil Epigraphy.

AASAI is the educational wing of REACH Foundation, a non-governmental organisation founded by noted archaeologist T Sathyamurthy.

Mr Sathyamurthy said the Academy would train young people from rural areas as tourist guides, besides providing training in reading stone inscriptions and palm leaves.

Tamil Nadu had at least two temples for every village, he said, adding that the base structure of most of the temples was strong and it was only the superstructures that required maintenance.

Volunteers, including those from the IT field, helped to clean temples and uproot vegetation growing in the crevices of temple walls, he said.

Press Release: Launch of First Scholarly Journal In Forensic Anthropology

Sweetwater Scientific is proud to announce the forthcoming launch of Journal of Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology, the first scholarly publication exclusively serving this vital and increasingly global discipline.

Led by a distinguished editorial team including Doug Ubelaker, Norm Sauer, Bradley Adams, and Marcella Sorg, among others, JFAA will publish peer-reviewed articles that advance research and practice in the field as well as editorials, case reports, news and conference information, and poignant "day in the life" narratives from practitioners across a broad range of practice areas. "Our research found that, in spite of the expanding scope of the field, forensic anthropology has been underrepresented in the existing literature," said Donna Vaillancourt, Executive Managing Editor at Sweetwater. "We're pleased to be the first publisher to provide a rigorous forum for disseminating research and establishing universal best-practice standards exclusively for this discipline."

Forensic anthropologists apply physical anthropology and human osteology techniques to aid in the identification of skeletal remains and assess time and cause of death. Their expertise has been used in a range of cases from confirming the identity of Tsar Nicholas II, to providing closure for families whose loved ones were victims of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 or of mass genocide in Bosnia, Iraq, and Guatemala.

The first quarterly issue of JFAA is scheduled for July 2007.

Subscription and submission information is available on the Journal Web site at http://www.sweetwater-scientific.com/ or by phone at 978.369.6095.
For further information please contact:
SweetwaterScientific Publishing Company
481 Cross StreetCarlisle, MA 01741-1507
Tel.: 978.369.6095, Fax: 866.388.7857
http://www.sweetwater-scientific.com/

Inca gun-shot skull discovery on video

This short but informative video is well worth watching - as well as photographs of the site, it shows some of the archaeological work and looks at post-excavation analysis of the skull itself.

Since they began digging in 2004, the team has excavated about 500 skeletons dating back some 500 years to the Inca civilization. One skull stood out—marked with what appeared to be the entrance wound from a musket ball. Edges of the hole in the skull were found to be impregnated with fragments of iron, a metal sometimes used for Spanish musket balls. It appears that a musket ball less than an inch (2.5 centimeters) wide punched into the back of the skull and passed through the head, leaving pieces of iron deep inside the bone. The body is thought to be the first forensically proven casualty of the Spanish conquest.

Archaeologist sparks hunt for Holy Grail

An archaeologist has sparked a Da Vinci Code-style hunt for the Holy Grail after claiming ancient records show it is buried under a 6th century church in Rome. The cup - said to have been used by Christ at the Last Supper - is the focus of countless legends and has been sought for centuries.

Alfredo Barbagallo, an Italian archaeologist, claims that it is buried in a chapel-like oom underneath the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, one of the seven churches which Christian pilgrims used to visit when they came to Rome. Mr Barbagallo based his claim on two years spent studying mediaeval iconography inside the basilica and a description of a particular chamber, in a guide to the catacombs written in 1938 by a Capuchin friar named Giuseppe Da Bra.

More thrills and spills about the New Seven Wonders
It is interesting to see that a country other than Egypt is less than impressed with the Competition. This time the subject is the Great Wall of China.

China's Great Wall may not be named one of the "new" Seven Wonders of the World because few Chinese are willing to cast a vote for it, the Great Wall administrators have said.

. . . .

The Great Wall so far has fewer than 150,000 votes, and will probably drop out of the "new" Seven Wonders list, administrators of the Great Wall said. "The Great Wall has received fewer votes even than some TV shows," said Xie Jiuzhong, a spokesman of the Great Wall management, earlier this week, adding that most of the votes for the Great Wall had come from foreigners. "China's Great Wall missed an opportunity 2,000 years ago when the Greeks named the Seven Wonders of the World," said Xie." It would be extremely regrettable if it failed to enter the "new" Seven Wonders this time," he said.

. . .

The contest has caused a lot of controversy in China, however. Many doubt the authority of the foundation and suspect that the event is commercial. Although the online voting is free, it charges one yuan for each SMS vote.

Voting closes on the 6th July, with the results announced on the 7th. I can't wait for the 6th July, and I've gone way beyond the stage of caring what happens on the 7th. I am officially and completly New-7-Wondered-Out. I found to my complete horror, the other day, that there's a New 7 Wonders theme tune. There's something desperately surrealistic about that. I actually thought that it was quite a good idea for raising awareness about heritage when it first began. It just goes to show how naive one woman can be.

Follow up to 1957 car capsule story
It was such a sweet idea, rather sad that it didn't work out as planned.

A concrete vault encasing a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried a half-century ago may have been built to withstand a nuclear attack but it couldn't beat back the natural onslaught of moisture.At a Friday ceremony complete with drum rolls, crews removed a multilayered protective wrapping caked with red mud, revealing a vintage vehicle that was covered in rust and wouldn't crank.

There were a few bright spots, literally: Shiny chrome was still visible around the doors and front fender, and workers were able to put air in the tires. But the unveiling in front of thousands of people at the Tulsa Convention Center confirmed fears that the past 50 years had not been kind"I'll tell you what, she's a mess. Look at her," said legendary hot rod builder Boyd Coddington, who was unable to start the car as planned.Event organizer Sharon King Davis, whose grandfather helped bury the Plymouth, joked that the car needed a little Oil of Olay to help it out.

First gun-shot victim found

The musket blast was sudden and deadly, the killing nearly 500 years ago of what may have been the first gunshot victim in the Western Hemisphere. "We didn't expect it. We saw this skull and saw the almost round hole and thought people must have been shooting around here recently," said Guillermo Cock, an archaeologist who found the remains near Lima, Peru.

But he realized that the skull was ancient, and a recent bullet strike would simply have shattered it, Cock said in a telephone interview. The skull was found among a large group of bones of ancient Incas, who had died violently in the early 1500s as the Spanish Conquistadors battled the native empire. The bones were in shallow graves, leading the archaeologist to speculate the burials were done hurriedly during conflict, perhaps an uprising against the Spanish in 1536. To be sure this was a gunshot wound — making it the earliest one documented in the Americas — the skull was studied by forensics expert Tim Palmbach at the University of New Haven, who brought in other experts.

Also covered on the Washington Post
Five excellent photos are also vailable at the following link on the Washington Post website: Victims of Peruvian Seige Found

Also on the National Geographic website, also with a photograph gallery of the skull.

Ancient Romans preferred fast food

Just as a U.S. Presidential state dinner does not reflect how most Americans eat and socialize, researchers think the formal, decadent image of wining and dining in ancient Rome mostly just applied to the elite.

According to archaeologist Penelope Allison of the University of Leicester, the majority of the population consumed food "on the run." Allison excavated an entire neighborhood block in Pompeii, a city frozen in time after the eruption of volcano Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

. . .

Allison noticed an unusual lack of tableware and formal dining or kitchen areas within the Pompeii homes. Instead she found isolated plates here and there, such as in sleeping quarters. "Similar to how children today bring a plate of food to their rooms before watching TV or playing on the computer, my guess is that Roman youths would tote food to certain areas where they possibly engaged in other activities," she said, adding that kids might also have dined with slaves in nanny or caretaker roles. What she did find in the homes were multiple mini barbecue-type fire boxes, suggesting that "BBQ or fondue-style dining" often took place.

Archaeologists Discover Gold Processing Center On The Nile

Archaeologists from the University of Chicago have discovered a gold processing center along the middle Nile, an installation that produced the precious metal sometime between 2000 and 1500 B.C. The center, along with a cemetery they discovered, documents extensive control by the first sub-Saharan kingdom, the kingdom of Kush.

The team from the University's Oriental Institute found more than 55 grinding stones made of granite-like gneiss along the Nile at the site of Hosh el-Geruf, about 225 miles north of Khartoum, Sudan. The region was also known also known as Nubia in ancient times. Groups of similar grinding stones have been found on desert sites, mostly in Egypt, where they were used to grind ore to recover the precious metal. The ground ore was likely washed with water nearby to separate the gold flakes.

. . .

The University of Chicago expedition is part of an international recovery project underway intended to find artifacts related to Kush and other civilizations that flourished in the area before archaeological sites are covered by a steadily rising Nile. The area is being flooded by Hamdab or Merowe Dam, located at the downstream end of the Fourth Cataract. The lake to be formed by this dam will flood about 100 miles of the Nile Valley in an area that had previously seen no archaeological work.

"Surveys suggest that there are as many as 2,500 archaeological sites to be investigated in the area. Fortunately, this is an international effort-teams from Sudan, England, Poland, Hungary, Germany and the United States have been working since 1996, with a large increase in the number of archaeologists working in the area since 2003," Emberling said. The area will probably be flooded next year, but the team hopes to return for another season of exploration.

Excavations at Souskiou-Laona completed

The site of Souskiou, near Palaepaphos, is famous for the earliest cemeteries in Cyprus, belonging to c. 3000 B.C., long before they became standard from the Bronze Age to the present. An official press release said the excavations which were carried out by the team focused on the habitations of those people who were eventually buried in the cemeteries. Their settlement is located on a steep hillside and this season the excavators were able to show how Chalcolithic people carved series of terraces on which to place their houses. Contrary to common belief, the remains were well preserved on the protected inner side of these terraces and much evidence was gained on the lifestyle of the community.

The Souskiou settlers specialised in the production of the cruciform figurines of the type that will soon grace the new euro to be introduced in Cyprus. ''To our surprise, production was not confined to a particular workshop. The waste material from the manufacture of these cruciforms was distributed throughout the settlement in such a way as to indicate that the figures were fashioned by several groups,'' the press release said.It added that this new data provides unrivalled evidence for the way in which these iconic images were created, as well as for the organisation of society and craft production in ancient Cyprus.

Whilst looking for something else entirely, I found some interesting items about the use of technology to assist archaeology - its a mixed batch, but I thought that it might be of interest.

Exploring virtual worlds
http://www.virtualworldproject.org/

Come take a virtual tour of ancient sites along the Eastern Mediterranean. Virtual Reality movies will bring the ancient world to you. Interactive maps will guide you through the sites. Accompanying descriptions will label the sites with the aid of supplementary images and drawings. This web site makes extensive use of multimedia technology. Apple QuickTime and Macromedia Flash must be installed on your computer in order to visit the ancient sites. See the requirements page for further details.

SHAPE
http://www.lems.brown.edu/shape/
http://www.lems.brown.edu/shape/main.html

An NSF ITR multidisciplinary project devoted to modeling, manipulation, analysis, and inferencing from data of 3-dimensional shape and its application to archaeology and art.

Global Egyptian Museum
http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.com/

At a rough estimate, over 2 million objects from ancient Egypt are kept in about 850 public collections, dispersed over 69 countries around the world. This website aims to collect them into a global virtual museum, which can be visited at any time, from any place. The Global Egyptian Museum is a long-term project, carried out under the aegis of the International Committee for Egyptology (CIPEG).

The NINCH Guide to Good Practicein the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials
http://www.nyu.edu/its/humanities/ninchguide/

Early developers of digital resources often had little thought for how their
projects might dovetail with others. Today many of these projects suffer from
this lack of forethought; they cannot be extended for broader use, they cannot
be built upon by others and the chances are slim that they will survive into the
future. More recently, the cultural community has begun to realize the
importance of applying technical and information standards intelligently and
consistently. The use of such standards not only adds longevity and scalability
to the project’s life cycle, but also enables an ever widening public to
discover and use its digital resources.

Vindolanda Tablets Online Database
http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/tablets/

The tablets database provides texts, translations (English), commentaries and new, large digital images of each tablet which can be examined close-up through a zooming viewer.’ To see an individual tablet, type its number in the box in the menu bar on the left of the screen and click ‘go’. To view all tablets in their published order, click the button in the same menu. Alternatively use Search and Browse to explore the database or see some highlights.

Newton papers reveal little known facts

Three-century-old manuscripts by Isaac Newton calculating the exact date of the apocalypse, detailing the precise dimensions of the ancient temple in Jerusalem and interpreting passages of the Bible - exhibited this week for the first time - lay bare the little-known religious intensity of a man many consider history's greatest scientist.

Newton, who died 280 years ago, is known for laying much of the groundwork for modern physics, astronomy, math and optics. But in a new Jerusalem exhibit, he appears as a scholar of deep faith who also found time to write on Jewish law - even penning a few phrases in careful Hebrew letters - and combing the Old Testament's Book of Daniel for clues about the world's end.

Remains of Earliest Giant Panda

Although it may sound like an oxymoron, a University of Iowa anthropologist and his colleagues report the first discovery of a skull from a "pygmy-sized" giant panda -- the earliest-known ancestor of the giant panda -- that lived in south China some two million years ago. The ancestor of today's giant panda really was a pygmy giant panda, says Russell Ciochon, UI professor of anthropology.

. . . .

Ciochon says that the ancient panda (formally known as Ailuropoda microta, or pygmy giant panda") was probably about three feet in length, compared to the modern giant panda, which averages in excess of five feet in length. Also, like it's modern counterpart, it lived on bamboo shoots, as indicated by wear patterns recorded on teeth and specialized muscle markings, indicating heavy chewing, on the skull.

The new find, made about 18 months ago in a south China karst (limestone) cave by Chinese researchers and co-authors Changzhu Jin and Jinyi Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, shows that the basic anatomy of the giant panda has remained
largely unchanged for millions of years.

Ciochon is a co-author of an article published in the June 18-22 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

2100 year old melon found in Japan

The inner fruit of what experts believe is the world's oldest melon, dating back about 2,100 years, has been excavated from the Shimonogo ruins in Moriyama, Shiga Prefecture, the Shimonogo Municipal Board of Education announced Thursday.
The fruit, measuring 10.5 centimeters, was discovered about one meter underground in the Shimonogo settlement, which was surrounded by moats during the Yayoi period (ca 300 B.C.-ca A.D. 300). The surface of the melon is discolored dark brown. Buried in moisture-rich soil that acted as a vacuum seal, the melon segment was kept from contact with the atmosphere and was able to preserve its inner fruit.
The Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto identified the age of the fruit based on radiocarbon dating. The melon, native to Africa, came to Japan via the Middle East and India. The oldest melon fruit previously discovered was one in China that dated back to the fourth century.

There have already been a depressing number of reports this week about the potential threat to archeaological sites in different parts of the world. This article on the New York Times website looks at the threat to the Nubian Kushite sites posed by the new Meroe Dam, a situation which echoes that of the 1960s when the Aswan High Dam was constructed, creating Lake Nasser and burying 1000s of years of archeaology forever. If you are asked for a username and password, type egyptnews into both fields.

Scholars have come to learn that there was more to the culture of Kush than was previously suspected. From deciphered Egyptian documents and modern archaeological research, it is now known that for five centuries in the second millennium B.C., the kingdom of Kush flourished with the political and military prowess to maintain some control over a wide territory in Africa. Kush’s governing success would seem to have been anomalous, or else conventional ideas about statehood rest too narrowly on the experiences of early civilizations like Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. How could a fairly complex state society exist without a writing system, an extensive bureaucracy or major urban centers, none of which Kush evidently had?

Archaeologists are now finding some answers — at least intriguing insights — emerging in advance of rising Nile waters behind a new dam in northern Sudan. Hurried excavations are uncovering ancient settlements, cemeteries and gold-processing centers in regions previously unexplored.

. . .

To archaeologists, knowing that a virtually unexplored land of mystery is soon to be flooded has the same effect as Samuel Johnson ascribed to one facing the gallows in the morning. It concentrates the mind.

Over the last few years, archaeological teams from Britain, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Sudan and the United States have raced to dig at sites that will soon be underwater. The teams were surprised to find hundreds of settlement ruins, cemeteries and examples of rock art that had never been studied. One of the most comprehensive salvage operations has been conducted by groups headed by Henryk Paner of the Gdansk Archaeological Museum in Poland, which surveyed 711 ancient sites in 2003 alone.

Obviously, it is not merely the archaeology of the Kushite era that is being lost.

The article is accompanied by photographs and maps.

There's a useful summary on the Persepolis Fortification Archive website about a paper which discusses an apparently unique presented on the Arta online journal. Here's an extract from that summary (which is accompanied by photographs):

For the first time, a text has been found in Old Persian language that shows the written language in use for practical recording and not only for royal display. The text is inscribed on a damaged clay tablet from the Persepolis Fortification Archive, now at the Oriental Institute at The University of Chicago. The tablet is an administrative record of the payout of at least 600 quarts of an as-yet unidentified commodity at five villages near Persepolis in about 500 B.C.

“Now we can see that Persians living in Persia at the high point of the Persian Empire wrote down ordinary day-to-day matters in Persian language and Persian script,” said Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute. “Odd as it seems, that comes as a surprise—a very big surprise.”

Until now, most scholars of Old Persian thought that Old Persian script and language were used only for the inscriptions of kings on cliff faces or palaces, or else to identify vessels of precious metals or other luxury goods that were connected with the kings and their palaces.

Another useful summary can be found on the Newswise website.

The full article can be found on the Achemenet website on the Arta online journal (2007.001). To see other article online at Arta (specializeing in Achaemenid research), you will need to navigate your way from the Achement website as follows: click on Ressources, then Engligne, then you can select from online journals Arta, Nabu and Jasr. Choose the one that you want to will then see a list of available papers. Arta is described as a "speedy vehicle for exchanging ideas and apreading news on excavations, publications, congresses, etc".

More on the origins of the Etruscans on the Guardian online.

The latest findings confirm what was said about the matter almost 2,500 years ago, by the Greek historian Herodotus. The first traces of Etruscan civilisation in Italy date from about 1200 BC.

About seven and a half centuries later, Herodotus wrote that after the Lydians had undergone a period of severe deprivation in western Anatolia, "their king divided the people into two groups, and made them draw lots, so that the one group should remain and the other leave the country; he himself was to be the head of those who drew the lot to remain there, and his son, whose name was Tyrrhenus, of those who departed".

It was a Roman who muddied the waters. The historian Livy, writing in the first century BC, claimed the Etruscans were from northern Europe. A few years later, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek writer living in Rome, came up with the theory that the Etruscans were, on the contrary, indigenous Italians who had always lived in Etruria.

. . .

Herodotus's story about the drawing of the lots may or may not be true, but the genetic research indicates that some Lydians did, as he wrote, leave their native land and travel, probably via Lemnos, to Italy.

The above page provides more details, including a concise timeline 0f Etruscan history.

Research into Tuscan cattle origins has recently offered comparative insights, summarized here on the Economist website.

Writing in this week's Proceedings of the Royal Society, Paolo Ajmone-Marsan of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Piacenza, Italy, and his colleagues conclude from the genetic make up of modern cattle in Tuscany (the part of Italy where the Etruscans lived) that these animals' ancestors came from the Middle East. By implication, the ancestors of their owners did, too.

An earlier (2004) report on Etruscan human genetic origins by Vernesi et al, entitled The Etruscans: A Population-Genetic Study can be found on the American Journal of Human Genetics website (April 2004, v.74/4).

Ancient home has answers underground

One of the oldest archaeological sites ever unearthed in Colorado was discovered on a sagebrush plateau in northern Eagle County 20 years ago this summer. A crew from Eagle-based Metcalf Archaeological Consultants discovered the Yarmony Pit House — a 6,000 year old, well preserved artifact treasure trove in the ranch country north of State Bridge.

It was the find of a lifetime. Evidence collected at the site shows that Yarmony was inhabited thousands of years before the Anasazi — Colorado’s famed “ancient ones” — built their dwellings at Mesa Verde. People were residing at Yarmony thousands of years before the pyramids were built in Egypt or the boulders were placed at Stonehenge.“Yarmony has kind of become the gold standard by which you measure pit house discoveries,” says Michael Selle, White River Field Office archaeologist for the U. S. Bureau of Land Management.

1957 Car Capsule
I thought that this piece might appeal to Tony.

On June 15th, 1957 city leaders in Tulsa celebrated Oklahoma's 50th birthday by burying a brand new car. A Plymouth Belvedere and some other odds and ends were
placed in a time capsule beside the county courthouse not to be opened until 2007. On Friday night that car will roll out.

Galen Culver went to see the preparations and talk to one family in Tahlequah who wouldn't miss this treasure hunt for anything. Undisturbed for almost fifty years diggers on Tuesday worked more like archeologist to make sure nothing went wrong with the treasure locked inside this big cement box. Already the curious are gathering.

Another article about sites in danger, this time in the Sonoma County area of the U.S. (there's a map on the site).

Kneeling in a remote stretch of Sonoma County forest, Reno Franklin used his fingers and an archeologist's trowel to sift through the rich, brown soil where he believes an ancient Indian village once stood. He was looking for clues to the laborious life his ancestors had once carved out of this land, and he dusted off a tiny obsidian arrowhead, gently and reverently holding the well-chiseled stone up to the sunlight.

The owner of the forestland wants to harvest its redwoods. Franklin said he worried such fragile artifacts would be trampled in the process.

. . .

Franklin is historic preservation officer for the Kashia band of Pomo Indians, whose history stretches back for thousands of years in this region 100 miles north of San Francisco. Today his fight to protect the tribe's past from developers, looters and vandals received a critical moment in the spotlight.The nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation released its annual list of America's most endangered historic places, and two Kashia sites — the Regalia House and the sacred Old Round House on the reservation at Stewarts Point Rancheria — were on the list of 11 locations.

More about the disvovery of 82,000 year old perforated shells in Morocco

The discovery of small perforated sea shells, in the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, eastern Morocco, has shown that the use of bead adornments in North Africa is older than thought. Dating from 82 000 years ago, the beads are thought to be the oldest in the world. As adornments, together with art, burial and the use of pigments, are considered to be among the most conclusive signs of the acquisition of symbolic thought and of modern cognitive abilities, this study is leading researchers to question their ideas about the origins of modern humans. The study, which was published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences on June 4 2007, was carried out by a multidisciplinary team made up of researchers at CNRS, working with scientists from Morocco, the UK, Australia and Germany.

It was long thought that the oldest adornments, which were then dated as being 40 000 years old, came from Europe and the Middle East. However, since the discovery of 75 000 year-old carved beads and ochers in South Africa, this idea has been challenged, and all the more so with the recent discovery in Morocco of beads that are over 80 000 years old. The discoveries all indicate the presence of a much older symbolic material culture in Africa than in Europe or the Middle East.

I've got more than an interest in rock art at the moment, due to getting to grips with the archaeology of Egypt's Eastern Desert, so any rock art items, however small, find their way into one blog or another. This one comes from Reuters Africa.

Algeria, a treasure house of prehistoric Saharan art, has discovered more neolithic rock etchings in the desert from around 8,000 years ago showing cattle herds, a government newspaper reported Monday.

El Moudjahid daily said local tour guide Hadj Brahim found about 40 images near the town of Bechar, about 800 km (500 miles) southwest of the capital Algiers. Prehistoric paintings are found in many parts of the Sahara, often portraying a garden-like environment of hunting and dancing in bright greens, yellows and reds at a time before desertification, which happened around 4,000 years ago.

Algeria's best known drawings are in the southeast in the Tassili N'Ajjer mountains. The site of 15,000 images has been named world's finest prehistoric open-air art museum by UNESCO. Despite a rich Saharan inheritance, Algeria remains off the beaten track for most tourists because of its politically unstable history and an undeveloped tourist sector.

Deseret News reports that petroglyphs have been damaged by gun shots. More than 35 shots have caused irreperable damage to rock art in the Fillmore area of Utah in the U.S..

The petroglyph vandalism was discovered earlier this week by a group of contractors taking inventory of archaeological sites in the area. The rock art is believed to be thousands of years old and had been untouched until May 2007, the BLM said.

The area is popular, BLM archaeologist Misti Haines said Friday. "These are things the Boy Scouts like to come out and visit. We have some very passionate volunteer groups, they come out to our area almost every year. They help us record these sites," she said. The damage is irreparable, Haines said.

However, the BLM will take steps to make the damage less apparent. A professional rock art conservator will be "inpainting" the damaged panels. "It's a very specialized skill," Haines said. "They take a special palette of colors out, they go to the art and fill in visually the missing gaps."

The BLM is offering a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandals.

Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun loses funding

The hills in Visoko are a natural formation and not pyramids, as Semir Osmanagic wishes to present them, says Bosnian Culture Minister. The Ministry of Culture of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina wants to put an end to the funding of the project “Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun.”

Opinions on the subject as well as on the pyramid phenomenon are so divided in Bosnia that some public persons, who have denied the existence of pyramids, said that they would set themselves on fire if those were really proven to pyramids.

Numerous politicans have given support to the research in Visoko, formerly a royal town. Experts have protested and the people find all this interesting. “The pyramids” are a natural formation However, Culture Minister Gavrilo Grahovac decided to shut down the source of funding, at least this one, because this was not a serious archaeological research. The credibility of the people who collaborated on the project was “unreliable” and they have published their findings that were kept away from the experts.

I've been following this study of the origins of the Etruscan people for some time, with considerable interest. The EurekaAlert website presents the latest piece of the jigsaw. Here's an extract:

The long-running controversy about the origins of the Etruscan people appears to be very close to being settled once and for all, a geneticist will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today. Professor Alberto Piazza, from the University of Turin, Italy, will say that there is overwhelming evidence that the Etruscans, whose brilliant civilisation flourished 3000 years ago in what is now Tuscany, were settlers from old Anatolia (now in southern Turkey).

. . .

The scientists compared DNA samples taken from healthy males living in Tuscany, Northern Italy, the Southern Balkans, the island of Lemnos in Greece, and the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia. The Tuscan samples were taken from individuals who had lived in the area for at least three generations, and were selected on the basis of their surnames, which were required to have a geographical distribution not extending beyond the linguistic area of sampling. The samples were compared with data from modern Turkish, South Italian, European and Middle-Eastern populations.

“We found that the DNA samples from individuals from Murlo and Volterra were more closely related those from near Eastern people than those of the other Italian samples”, says Professor Piazza. “In Murlo particularly, one genetic variant is shared only by people from Turkey, and, of the samples we obtained, the Tuscan ones also show the closest affinity with those from Lemnos.”

Satellite imaging is being used at Easter Island to get a obtain a better understanding of the renowned moai.

The spectrum of sunlight reflected by the Earth's surface contains information about the composition of the surface and it may reveal traces of past human activities, such as agriculture, structures and roads, vegetation and all kinds of rocks have distinctive temperatures and emit heat at different rates which satellite sensors can "see" that ordinary vision can not. Remote Sensing can be used as a methodological procedure for detecting, acquiring inventory and prioritizing surface and shallow-depth archaeological information in a rapid, accurate and quantified manner.Once data and information have been collected researchers and archaeologists will have a better understanding of the symoblic meaning and function of the "moai" statues.

Famagusta on the brink of ruin due to neglect

An ancient Cypriot port city which inspired Shakespearean tragedy and was famed
in medieval times for its architecture and wealth is on the brink of ruin
because of neglect, conservationists warn.

In its Venetian heyday Famagusta was one of the richest cities in the region, and a seat for the crowning of Lusignan Kings of Jerusalem. Fictionally, it marks the spot where Shakespeare's Othello, blinded by jealousy, smothered his beloved Desdemona, then took his own life.

Thick fortifications encasing the city protect a community of some 300 churches, and a stunning 14th century gothic cathedral which some art historians compare to Notre Dame of Rheims, but in miniature.

In a biannual review of world heritage sites, the privately run World Monuments Foundation (WMF) has listed the city as one of 100 world sites most at risk from conflict, alongside such world landmarks as the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, and what has been left of the Buddha statues at Bamiyan in Afghanistan.

Those campaigning for the protection of the city hope the status will galvanise much-needed conservation.

Barabar caves under threat in Bihar

Cracks have developed in the Barabar caves dating back to the age of Ashoka the
Great of Mauryan Empire in 3rd century BC.

Located in Jehanabad district, these caves were carved out of a huge piece of granite representing one of the earliest examples of rock-cut architecture in India. These were used by Jain monks as a retreat.

Following detection of the cracks, a worried Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) sent an SOS to Jehanabad DM requesting him to impose a ban on rock blasts in the nearby hilly region which may cause further damage by widening the gaps. The ASI has also decided to install a special clock housed in a glass at the site to monitor the stability of the site.

Art in the midst of law

This is a review of a very personal collection by Sir John Soane, whose home is now a museum of the art and archaeology collected by him:

IT’S hard to imagine Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London as being anything but quiet and pleasant. The peaceful locality is home to many lawyers who work in the vicinity as well as the Royal College of Surgeons. Located at the heart of this legal enclave is the remarkable Sir John Soane’s Museum, the brainchild of one of England’s most imaginative architects. The museum was originally Soane’s home. John Soane (1753-1837) was the son of a bricklayer near Reading in Berkshire. He was appointed architect and surveyor to the Bank of England in 1788

. . .

Soane designed and built his first house at No.12, Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1792-94, which is now part of the museum. Needing more space for his collections, he purchased and rebuilt No.13 next door, where he lived until his death. In 1824, he also rebuilt No.14 using the back of its site as an extension to his museum.

. . .

Soane’s collection of sculpture casts and antiquities are packed into every nook and cranny and the authorities fear they may be knocked down if too many people are let in at once. I was told by a rather severe-looking lady not to “swing my handbag” and to take off my coat and deposit it near the reception counter.

The house reflects Soane’s obsession with ancient Rome, as huge pieces of carved marble seem to defy the confines of the relatively small rooms. Soane used the Dining Room, which I first entered, to entertain guests and as a library for some of his 7,000 books. The “Pompeian red” of the dining room walls is probably based on a fragment of wall plaster he pocketed when visiting the excavations at Pompeii. The two Apulian vases, Cawdor Vase and Englefield Vase, and Cantonese chairs made of padouk wood and inlaid with mother-of-pearl are exquisite.

The full account of the museum can be found at the above link.

Cyprus coffin found with Homer texts

A 2,500-year-old stone coffin with well-preserved colour illustrations from Homer's epics has been discovered in western Cyprus, archaeologists said.

. . .

The limestone sarcophagus was accidentally found by construction workers last week in a tomb near the village of Kouklia, in the coastal Paphos area. The tomb, which probably belonged to an ancient warrior, had been looted during antiquity.

Flourentzos said the coffin - painted in red, black and blue on a white background - dated to 500 BC, when Greek cultural influence was gaining a firm hold on the eastern Mediterranean island. Pottery discovered in the tomb is expected to provide a precise date.

"The style is very simple, it has little to do with later Classical prototypes and rules," Flourentzos said.

Experts believe the ornate decoration features the hero Ulysses in scenes from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey - both hugely popular throughout the Greek world.