Argillite Bowl in the Royal British Columbia Museum

Historic Manhattan Cemetery

The area of lower Manhattan where construction on an office building was taking place in 1991 lead to the discovery of hundreds of human remains which were later revealed to be the remains of an African American burial ground. An old map from 1755 revealed the cemetery and the excavation which followed was fascinating.

From the cemetery were excavated the remains of 419 people from a possible 10 000- 20 000 occupants. The graves excavated from the cemetery have produced simple grave goods befitting slaves and free blacks.

More than two centuries after it was last used the finds are a rare look into earlier African Americans lives. A monument has in the intervening years been built on the site and a visitors center is set to put the site into context. The artifacts and human remains were ceremonially re interred in 2003.

The Looting of Magdala

With the invasion of Ethiopia in 1868 the British forces won the day and then looted the royal palace and the territories churches taking back the booty to Britain where it sits in a few institutions including the British museum, the British library and the Victoria and Albert but also in private hands.

There are attempts being made to repatriate the objects back to Ethiopia though I personally do not hold out much hope in that after 140+ years but even today a piece of an Egyptian monument was collected off the private market and given back by the Metropolitan museum of art.

Clay People

This is a nice article from the people at discovery on figurines recently found in Ghana. There are lots of good pictures in the article.

A Mystery Fit for Shakespeare

The Empty sarcophagus of Fulke Greville in the collegiate church of St. Mary's in Warwick has been found not to be so empty. In recent scanning of the monument there has been found three anomalies inside that look like boxes.

The Elizabethan gentleman is believed by many to be the author of at least some of the works attributed to William Shakespeare including Antony and Cleopatra. There is also some belief that there may be an unofficial biography of James I who was disliked by Greville inside the monument.

No known original Shakespeare manuscript is known to exist and many are hoping to find the original manuscript for Antony and Cleopatra. There are also distinctions to the Rosicrucian order hinting that Greville may be the author of the Tempest as well.

Researchers are hoping in the next six weeks to use an endoscope to look inside the sarcophagus. Fulke Greville was murdered in 1628 by a servant who believed that Greville had cheated him.

Fulke Greville is buried in the crypt below the church of St. Mary's, Warwick.

The Rose and the Globe

Archaeologists have been working uncovering two of sixteenth century England's most famous theaters the "Rose" where many of Christopher Marlow's plays were preformed and the "Globe" where many of William Shakespeare's plays were performed.

Julian Bowsher the museum of London archaeologists and colleague Pat Miller found lots of debris from seashells to dress ornaments from seeds to broken pipes. The wealthier clients would have dined on the likes of crab while the poor classes would have dined on oysters, with a large assortment of nuts and fruits being consumed.

Unlike today back in the Tudor period theater goers would have moved around had a smoke or pressed themselves up against the stage, well that still remains true today. The results of the excavation have also shown the exact size and development of both theaters.

The details of the excavation will be published by the museum of London archaeology in a book called "The Rose and the Globe: Playhouses of Shakespeare's Bankside, Southwark,"

The Return of Victorious Youth

An Italian judge in a thirty seven page court order has found the Greek life size bronze statue in J. Paul Getty Villa in Pacific Palasades, California is to be returned to Italy though that is what was expected to happen.

Fishermen found the Greek bronze statue of a youth in international waters in 1964 and hid it in a cabbage patch in Fano, Italy before they sold it to someone who smuggled it out of the country where it appeared on the German art market in 1972 for $4 million.

The ancient statue is known as "Victorious youth" and is a prize in the Getty villa complete with it's own climate controlled room. The case now relys on documents to prove or disprove Getty ownership as all the central figures including the fishermen who found the statue are deceased. J. Paul Getty himself had doubts about the statues provenance but after his death it was finally purchased for his Villa in 1977.

In recent years the Getty museum has been functioning under critical eyes from foreign countries who believe many of the museums masterpieces were stolen. The Getty has as a result handed back dozens of the collections finest pieces while an important Greek kouros is most likely a forgery making this statue all the more important to the museum.

For know the Getty holds tight to what may be it's most important piece of ancient Greek art still in its collection. Sadly the Getty museum came into its great wealth to acquire ancient art a century too late. It is to be expected that the Getty statue is probably going nowhere as regardless of what a judge in Italy thinks.

Museum of Tolerance

The Simon Wiesenthal center is going forward with it's building of a museum of tolerance on top of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. The petition to save the twelfth century Mamilla cemetery has gone all the way to the United Nations.

Representatives of 15 of the oldest families in Jerusalem who have relatives buried in the cemetery presented their petition to the UN in Geneva. Opponents of the museum plan are upset by the thought of a museum of tolerance being built on the graves of generations of Palestinians.

The article comes with a must watch video

Campaign to preserve Mamilla cemetery

James Henry Breasted and the Oriental Institute

Here is a video on James Henry Breasted and the founding of the Oriental institute.

Relations Annulled

The officials in Iran have been putting on a hissy fit for a couple of months sending threats in the direction of the British museum over delays in sending the Cyrus cylinder to Tehran for a loan as was agreed by the two sides.

Delays in sending the cylinder have been caused by last years elections and the protests in Iran from those who thought that Iran's elections were fixed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his cronies which have resulted in mass arrests and deaths including the recent execution of two of those protesters.

The second delay in sending the cylinder is the claim by experts at the British museum of having found clay tablets within its collection which bare similarities in inscription to the Cyrus cylinder.

Hassan Mohseni of cultural heritage and tourism described Tehran's relationship with the British museum as annulled,

I imagine to the relief of the British museum.

Totem Poles

Royal British Columbia museum, Victoria

Western Man, Mongolian Tomb

The DNA tests on the skeleton of a man found in a tomb in Mongolia show that the mans ancestors were from eastern Europe. The elderly mans burial is thought to have taken place during the Xiongnu Empire, 209 bc. - 93 ad.

The location of the burial is close to that of a very important man suggesting that he may have been in that mans employ.

Pictured here is a photo taken in 1910 by Aurel Stein of a mummy found by him, he was just one of many explorers who found these mummies in the Tarim basin in the Taklamakan desert with the most famous discovery being "Ur David". Some of these mummies are nearly 4000 years old.

Being nearly two thousand years older than Xiongnu man these mummies show that Xiongnu man was just the latest of eastern European people who traveled east no doubt following the money or as prisoners of some long forgotten battle though to my knowledge Xiongnu man shows no sign of being a prisoner.

While ten thousand years earlier Asian peoples were migrating to the America's making the discovery of a European in Asia not all that unexpected or surprising.

Shakleton's Stash

On Shakleton's 1909 expedition known as the Nimrod expedition the antarctic explorer brought along at least 5 crates of liqueur, 3 crates of scotch whiskey and two crates of brandy. The crates of liqueur were deposited beneath the floorboards of the Shakleton's hut when the explorers abandoned the expedition.

A century of freezing the crates and the contents has caused a number of bottles to crack evidence of which is the strong smell of whisky surrounding the embedded crates. There is a plan to extract some samples of the whiskey to see if the distillers can recreate the lost recipe.

Snowshoes

Royal British Columbia museum

Silbury Hill

Letters found in the British library talk about an eighteenth century dig on Silbury hill in which a hole was dug from the top of the hill down through the center. The dig revealed that some 95 feet down was a small cavity and in it the remains of an oak log believed to have been a totem pole.

The totem pole is believed to have been erected on top of the hill by the original builders with the rest of the hill completed by building up the hill around it.