http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article326302.ece
DNA shows first Europeans were hunters not farmers
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 11 November 2005
Whisper it quietly in Brussels but Europe may not have been a continent of farmers for time immemorial after all. New DNA research suggests we are actually descended from hunter-gatherers who pre-date the arrival of agricultural techniques.
The first farmers to arrive in Europe more than 7,000 years ago appear to have left behind a legacy of agriculture but no descendants, a study of ancient DNA has found. Modern Europeans do not seem to have inherited the genes of the first farmers to arrive from the Near East, where they had invented agriculture 12,000 years ago.
A study of 24 skeletons of an early farming community in central Europe has found that their DNA does not match the DNA of modern men and women living in the same part of the world. The researchers believe the findings indicate that although the first farmers brought agriculture to Europe, they did not manage to displace the much older, resident population of hunter gatherers.
In a paper published in the journal Science, the team concludes that modern Europeans are directly descended from the first modern humans to arrive on the continent more than 40,000 years ago when they survived on hunting game and gathering berries.
"Our paper suggests that there is a good possibility that the [genetic] contribution of early farmers could be close to zero," said Peter Forster of the University of Cambridge, one of the authors of the study. "It's interesting that a potentially minor migration of people into central Europe had such a huge cultural impact," he added.
How the practice of farming spread across Europe and what happened to the people who were living on the continent at the time, has been a long-running debate in human prehistory.
Some experts believe that the first farmers displaced the early hunter-gatherers because the improvements in food supply that agriculture provided led to an explosion in the population.
However the latest study by a team from Britain, Germany and Estonia suggests that the first farmers did indeed pass on the culture of farming but they did not contribute significantly to the overall genetic make-up of modern Europeans. "This was a surprise. I expected the distribution of mitochondrial DNA in these early farmers to be more similar to the distribution we have today in Europe," said Joachim Burger of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. Mitochondrial DNA is passed on only from mothers to their children so it is possible that the latest results could still be explained by incoming farmers taking local women for their wives.
The team analysed the mitochondrial DNA of 24 skeletons belonging to a culture known as the Linearbandkeramik. They were the first farmers known to occupy central Europe, notably the area of modern-day Hungary and Slovakia, about 7,500 years ago. Within the following 500 years, agriculture had spread west to France and east to the Ukraine.
The archaeological evidence suggests that agriculture was introduced into Greece and south-east Europe from the Near East more than 8,000 years ago and then spread north and west towards the Atlantic.
One possible scenario is that small pioneer groups of farmers moved into an area occupied by hunter-gatherers who quickly changed their lifestyle once they saw the benefits of growing their own crops.
Alternatively, a different population may have replaced the early farmers but the archaeological evidence for such a mass and rapid displacement is scant.
Whisper it quietly in Brussels but Europe may not have been a continent of farmers for time immemorial after all. New DNA research suggests we are actually descended from hunter-gatherers who pre-date the arrival of agricultural techniques.
The first farmers to arrive in Europe more than 7,000 years ago appear to have left behind a legacy of agriculture but no descendants, a study of ancient DNA has found. Modern Europeans do not seem to have inherited the genes of the first farmers to arrive from the Near East, where they had invented agriculture 12,000 years ago.
A study of 24 skeletons of an early farming community in central Europe has found that their DNA does not match the DNA of modern men and women living in the same part of the world. The researchers believe the findings indicate that although the first farmers brought agriculture to Europe, they did not manage to displace the much older, resident population of hunter gatherers.
In a paper published in the journal Science, the team concludes that modern Europeans are directly descended from the first modern humans to arrive on the continent more than 40,000 years ago when they survived on hunting game and gathering berries.
"Our paper suggests that there is a good possibility that the [genetic] contribution of early farmers could be close to zero," said Peter Forster of the University of Cambridge, one of the authors of the study. "It's interesting that a potentially minor migration of people into central Europe had such a huge cultural impact," he added.
How the practice of farming spread across Europe and what happened to the people who were living on the continent at the time, has been a long-running debate in human prehistory.
Some experts believe that the first farmers displaced the early hunter-gatherers because the improvements in food supply that agriculture provided led to an explosion in the population.
However the latest study by a team from Britain, Germany and Estonia suggests that the first farmers did indeed pass on the culture of farming but they did not contribute significantly to the overall genetic make-up of modern Europeans. "This was a surprise. I expected the distribution of mitochondrial DNA in these early farmers to be more similar to the distribution we have today in Europe," said Joachim Burger of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. Mitochondrial DNA is passed on only from mothers to their children so it is possible that the latest results could still be explained by incoming farmers taking local women for their wives.
The team analysed the mitochondrial DNA of 24 skeletons belonging to a culture known as the Linearbandkeramik. They were the first farmers known to occupy central Europe, notably the area of modern-day Hungary and Slovakia, about 7,500 years ago. Within the following 500 years, agriculture had spread west to France and east to the Ukraine.
The archaeological evidence suggests that agriculture was introduced into Greece and south-east Europe from the Near East more than 8,000 years ago and then spread north and west towards the Atlantic.
One possible scenario is that small pioneer groups of farmers moved into an area occupied by hunter-gatherers who quickly changed their lifestyle once they saw the benefits of growing their own crops.
Alternatively, a different population may have replaced the early farmers but the archaeological evidence for such a mass and rapid displacement is scant.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9997587/
Scientists find ‘Goliath‘ inscribed on pottery
Reference from 950 B.C. lends credence to Bible tale, archaeologists say
Updated: 9:30 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2005
JERUSALEM - Archaeologists digging at the purported biblical home of Goliath have unearthed a shard of pottery bearing an inscription of the Philistine’s name, a find they claimed lends historical credence to the Bible’s tale of David’s battle with the giant.
While the discovery is not definitive evidence of Goliath’s existence, it does support the Bible’s depiction of life at the time the battle was supposed to have occurred, said Dr. Aren Maeir, a professor at Bar-Ilan University and director of the excavation.
“What this means is that at the time there were people there named Goliath,“ he said. “It shows us that David and Goliath’s story reflects the cultural reality of the time.“ In the story, David slew Goliath with a slingshot.
Some scholars assert the story of David slaying the giant Goliath is a myth written down hundreds of years later. Maeir said finding the scraps lends historical credence to the biblical story.
The shard dates back to around 950 B.C., within 70 years of when biblical chronology asserts David squared off against Goliath, making it the oldest Philistine inscription ever found, the archaeologists said.
Scientists made the discovery at Tel es-Safi, a dig site in southern Israel thought to be to be the location of the Philistine city of Gath.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20051107/42010229.html
Archaeologists discover base of ancient lighthouse
13:12 | 07/ 11/ 2005
CAIRO, November 7 (RIA Novosti, Igor Kuznetsov) - French diving archeologists have discovered the foundation of the ancient lighthouse of Pharos in Alexandria, the seventh wonder of the world.
The director of the Alexandria national museum, Ibrahim Darwish, said Sunday that the lighthouse, which was destroyed by two earthquakes in the 11th and 14th centuries, had occupied an area of 800 sq m north of the city's eastern harbor.
The lighthouse consisted of three towers stacked one on top of the other largest to smallest and reached 120-137 meters (390-450 feet) in height. On top of the lighthouse, there was a bronze chalice holding smoldering coal. A complicated system of mirrors made it possible for travelers to see the smoldering coal from a distance of tens of kilometers (up to 60 miles).
The lighthouse was built by Greek architect Sostratus for King Ptolemy II (284-246 BC). It was erected on the eastern side of the island of Pharos at the entrance to the harbor of Alexandria. Earthquakes scattered the remains of the lighthouse all over the harbor, and only now have archeologists established its exact location.
In July, Governor Salam El Mahgoub called on Egyptian and international organizations to restore the lighthouse, a project that will cost $100 million.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=70644
Fears for safety in Rome's forum
Sunday Nov 6 06:17 AEST
A stretch of wall in Rome's ancient forum has collapsed, raising fears that much of the popular tourist site is potentially dangerous for visitors.
About 15 metres of wall fell over in the early hours of Friday onto a walkway that leads to the famed Arch of Titus and the Colosseum.
Officials said if the 5-metre-high wall had collapsed during the forum's opening hours, the path would have been packed with tourists.
Another section of wall collapsed nearby in 2003, but experts did not believe the latest damage zone had been at risk.
"At this point we have reason to believe that the whole area is in serious danger," said Angelo Bottini, head of Rome's Archaeological Office.
The forum was the centre of political, commercial and religious life in ancient Rome. The vast, open-air site lies in the heart of modern-day Rome and draws huge crowds, but much of it is poorly preserved and gradually eroding.
Culture minister Rocco Buttiglione said the cash-strapped Italian government would now have to find more funds for one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world.
"Don't tell me that we have to protect these sites only because they draw visitors and make money. We have to do it because they are part of our soul," Buttiglione was quoted as saying by Il Messaggero newspaper.
©AAP 2005
http://www.saipantribune.com/newsstory.aspx?cat=1&newsID=52101
'Saipan may be Pacific's oldest archaeological site'
By Marconi Calindas
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Sediment cores taken from Saipan's Lake Susupe in 2002 have yielded a continual record of plant pollen and other materials for the past 8,000 years that could make the island one of the oldest archaeological site in the Pacific, according to the Historic Preservation Office.
HPO director Epiphanio E. Cabrera said that scientists who have been working with the CNMI recently announced new evidence that could push the date for the earliest human settlement in Micronesia back to nearly 5,000 years ago.
Cabrera said researchers J. Stephen Athens and Jerome Ward from the International Archaeological Research Institute Inc. noted a series of abrupt shifts in Saipan's ancient environment, some of which appeared to have been caused by humans.
Charcoal particles and an abundance of grass pollen and pollens from betel nut palm and coconut trees that appeared around 6,860 B.C. were analyzed. Cabrera said the discovery predates the earliest archaeological sites on Saipan by more than a thousand years.
"This is some of the earliest evidence for human settlement ever found in Micronesia," he said, adding that his office is very excited to have sponsored the study.
Dr. Richard Knecht, acting staff archaeologist, said the recent findings suggest that sites 5,000 years or older existed on Saipan.
"The challenge now is to use what we know about ancient shorelines, which will likely reveal more early sites and possibly the first movement of early humans into the Pacific from Asia," Knecht said.
Cabrera said that future studies and coring of lakes and sinkholes in the CNMI are required to refine the "very promising, though still preliminary" findings. He said his office would continue to seek funding for research and plans to publish the report in its publication series.
Other studies of ancient sites also revealed early occupation of the CNMI. The HPO director said a core from Lake Hagoi on Tinian revealed coconut pollen and charcoal particles dating back to 5,444 B.C. There were also similar finds at Tipalao Marsh in Guam and a sinkhole in the Kagman Peninsula on Saipan's east side also shows major changes in vegetation by about 6,520 B.C.
Similar but slightly later dates were found in core studies in Palau and Yap, Knecht said.
"It probably took years for humans to alter the environment to the point where it leaves a signature in the sediment cores. Therefore, the actual dates of initial human settlement could be decades or centuries before those taken from the cores," he said.
The earliest sites in the CNMI are Saipan's Unai Achugao site from 1,800 B.C. and Tinian's Unai Chulu site dating to 1,500 B.C. Cabrera said HPO's search to find the earliest site in the CNMI will continue as long as funding is available.
"Our staff and our partners in the scientific community will be working to learn more, but for now it seems safe to assume that our ancestors were here on these islands 5,000 years ago," Cabrera said.
http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=89478
Japanese researchers find Buddhist stone caves in Afghanistan
KABUL: A team of Japanese researchers has found Buddhist stone caves believed to date back to the eighth century about 120 kilometers west of the Bamiyan ruins in central Afghanistan, the team said.
The team, headed by Ryukoku University professor Takashi Irisawa, confirmed in late October the discovery of a group of caves built on cliffs located 1 km west of the Keligan ruins in the upper Band-e-Amir River area.
The discovery indicates the possibility that the influence of Buddhism may have extended to the area of the upper waters of the river centering around the Keligan ruins around the eighth century, and that the religion’s sphere of influence in the region may have been greater than previously thought, team members said. Islam was beginning to gather momentum around that time.
"It will provide an invaluable clue in researching the sphere of Buddhism stretching westward," said Irisawa, an expert on Buddhist culture at the Kyoto-based university.
The group of caves is made up of four layers with seven rooms. The bottom layer, which is the largest, is 4 meters high, 5 meters wide and 15 meters long.
Three rooms in the bottom layer have spaces where Buddhist statues are believed to have been placed, indicating that the rooms may have been used for praying, team members said.
Irisawa said, there is "little doubt that the caves are Buddhist caves as they closely resemble the structure and architectural style of the Bamiyan stone caves."
Xuanzang, a Chinese monk known as Genjo Sanzo in Japan who visited Bamiyan in the seventh century, wrote in his book on his travels called "The Records of the Western Regions of the Great Tang Dynasty" that he had passed more than a dozen temples and some 300 monks on his way to Bamiyan.
The area of the Keligan ruins may have been where Xuanzang passed through, team members said.
A group of stone caves were also found in a village 2 km east of the Keligan ruins.
The cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley, which was destroyed by the country’s former Taliban rulers in 2001, were registered on the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage list in 2003.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article326745.ece
Revealed: the real story behind the great Iraq Museum thefts
How the US army's Indiana Jones went after Baghdad's raiders of the antiquities
By David Randall
Published: 13 November 2005
The story of what really happened inside the Iraq Museum when thousands of valuable antiquities were stolen in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 US invasion has been revealed in a new book.
Written by the chief investigator, it says there were three separate thefts, at least one of which was an inside job, another the work of professionals, and a third where fleeing Iraq military had left open a door which let in the looters. At least 13,864 objects were stolen, making it the biggest museum theft in history.
But the book reveals that, with an estimated 500,000 objects in the museum and thieves having the run of the place for 36 hours, the wonder is the loss was not far closer to the original, inaccurate, reports of 170,000 items. And the efforts of Iraqi, US and Italian officials, plus police and customs worldwide, have so far led to the recovery of 5,400 items, nearly 700 from inside the US and Britain.
All this - as well as the remarkable tale of the reclaiming of the fabulous Treasure of Nimrud - is told in Thieves of Baghdad, available only in the US, and written by Matthew Bogdanos who has been described, with only a minimum of hyperbole, as a real-life Indiana Jones.
He was born in New York, as a boy worked in his family's Greek restaurant, became a marine, a reservist, a lawyer in the city's district attorney's office, lost his home in the 9/11 attacks, and had to use all his marine training to fight through crowds and emergency service workers to rescue his family from an flat whose windows were blown in and contents covered in two inches of ash. Weeks later, he was in uniform as a marine Lt-Colonel, on operations in Afghanistan, and thence, by 2003, to southern Iraq.
It was here, on 18 April in Basra, he heard the Iraq Museum has been plundered. Bogdanos - a keen amateur classicist - requested permission to investigate, put a team together, and hurried north to Baghdad. He arrived at the museum compound on 20 April. It was not a pretty sight. It had been used as a fighting position, Iraq army uniforms were scattered all around, as were expended RPGs. In a courtyard smoldered the remains of hundreds of Ba'ath party cards and files. And, above the centre door to the main building, was a large handwritten sign 'Death to all Americans and Zionist pigs'.
Saddam's forces had abandoned the museum sometime on 10 April. Two days later senior curators returned, chasing off the last of the looters that had numbered 300-400 at their height. It was in this window of 36 hours that the thefts occurred.
The first area the US team entered was the administrative offices where the destruction was "wanton and absolute". Everyone of the 120 offices had been ransacked, every piece of furniture broken. But, in the public galleries, the damage was far lighter. Of 451 display cases, only 28 were damaged, but nearly all were empty. To his relief, Bogdanos learnt their contents had been removed by staff ahead of the invasion to a "secret place" within the museum known only to the five most senior officials. Where that was, no one was then saying. But 40 antiquities - including some of the best, like the Sacred Vase of Warka, the Mask of Warka, Bassetki Statue and the eighth century BC ivory 'Lioness Attacking a Nubian' - were stolen. The thieves, says Bogdanos, were "organised and selective".
The above-ground storage rooms told a different story. Here was where looters had struck, getting in via a door left open by Iraqi soldiers who, even as they fled, discarded their uniforms in a trail of clothing. The looters has swept entire shelves of items into bags, and the result was 3,138 missing items, such as jars, vessels and shards.
On 2 May [check], Bogdanos and companion crept down a dark hidden stairwell towards the basement storage area. They saw its great metal door was wide open with no sign of a forced entry. Someone in the know had got there first. "The chaos," wrote Bogdanos, "was shocking: 103 fishing tackle-sized plastic boxes, originally containing thousands of cylinder seals, beads, amulets and jewellery were randomly thrown in all directions Amid the devastation, hundreds of surrounding larger, but empty, boxes had been untouched. It was immediately clear that these thieves knew what they were looking for and where to look." The investigators feared the worst. But they discovered that 30 cabinets containing part of the world's finest collection of cylinder seals and tens of thousands of gold and silver coins were untouched.
What Bogdanos later surmised was that the thieves had the relevant keys, but had dropped them and, in the unlit basement and lacking torches, had been unable to find them again. What, however, had been taken was 4,795 cylinder seals, 5,542 coins, glass bottles, beads, amulets, and jewellery. As Bogdanos wrote: "It is simply inconceivable that this area had been found, breached and entered by anyone who did not have an intimate insider's knowledge of the museum." Bogdanos fingerprinted all 23 staff who returned after the invasion and were known to have access to storage rooms. But many staff did not return, including Jassim Muhamed, the museum's former head of security. Yet the biggest obstacle to the investigators' work was the poor state of the under-funded museum's records. The storage rooms, for instance, contained thousands of unlogged excavated items. A full inventory did not exist, and, Bogdanos estimated, would take years to compile. Recovery of missing items had to take priority.
An amnesty started within two days. Word was put out to immams, newspapers and television, and on the street that anyone returning an item would be asked only one question: "Would you like a cup of tea?". An Arabic-speaking member of Bogdanos's team was posted on the gate to solicit returns, and the team walked the streets, drank endless cups of tea in cafes, and played backgammon with anyone who looked as if they might know something. In one, Bogdanos, still a keen amateur boxer at 45, staged an impromptu sparring match with a local champion to provide a diversion while a colleague quizzed an informant.
The response was almost immediate. Bags containing an item would be dropped off, items allegedly taken for 'safe-keeping' were brought in by hand, some antiquities were left at mosques, others simply handed to a patrolling US soldier. The Sacred Vase of Warka, after two weeks of negotiation, was returned in June in a car boot, along with 95 other artifacts. Bogdanos was even contacted when on leave and handed a 4,000 year old Akkadian piece in a brown envelope as he sat in a Manhattan coffee shop. All but 101 of the 3,138 items stolen from the storage rooms have been recovered, yet at least 8,500 pieces are still missing, the most significant being the Lioness ivory.
Just over 2,000 recoveries were the result of raids, the biggest being at a farmhouse on 23 September. Under a foot and a half of dirt in the backyard was the Mask of Warka. In November, two raids on the same day produced the Nimrud brazier, used to warm the throne room of King Shalmaneser III in the ninth century BC, plus 76 pieces stolen from the basement, including the Bassetki Statue, which had been covered in grease and hidden in a cesspit.
Bogdanos says one of their best sources of information was the now discredited Dr Ahmed Chalabi, whose Iraqi National Congress forces stopped a truck bound for Iran and found on it no fewer than 465 items. Meanwhile, with publicity and photographs of some missing items circulated to Interpol and customs, more of the stolen items started to be seized abroad - 1,395 of them by the end of 2003. Some 669 were seized in 2003 when four FedEx boxes, addressed to a New York art dealer, were impounded by US customs at Newark airport.
But what of the fabulous Treasure of Nimrud, 1,000 pieces of gold, crowns, necklaces, rosettes, bracelets and precious stones from the eighth century BC? One of the great archaeological discoveries of the last hundred years, it had been seen in public only once, briefly, in 1989. A year later, it was moved by the Hussein regime to the Central Bank. It had not been seen since, and, shortly before the battle for Baghdad, Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, had emptied that bank's vaults of much of their contents.
On 26 May, the investigators showed up at the bank's vaults, and found them flooded with 20ft of water. A National Geographic film crew agreed to pay for them to be pumped out, in return for an exclusive. On 4 and 5 June the team returned, and found in the vaults a collection of wooden boxes (plus the body of a would-be robber). One by one they were opened, revealing the burial goods from the royal tombs of Ur, until one box remained. At 1.43pm, its lid was prised open and there was every Hollywood film's idea of ancient treasure - gold crowns, bracelets, necklaces and anklets.
And Bogdanos? Early next year he will be back at the DA's office, conductinginvestigation into worldwide antiquities trade. All his royalties from his book are being donated to the Iraq Museum.
The story of what really happened inside the Iraq Museum when thousands of valuable antiquities were stolen in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 US invasion has been revealed in a new book.
Written by the chief investigator, it says there were three separate thefts, at least one of which was an inside job, another the work of professionals, and a third where fleeing Iraq military had left open a door which let in the looters. At least 13,864 objects were stolen, making it the biggest museum theft in history.
But the book reveals that, with an estimated 500,000 objects in the museum and thieves having the run of the place for 36 hours, the wonder is the loss was not far closer to the original, inaccurate, reports of 170,000 items. And the efforts of Iraqi, US and Italian officials, plus police and customs worldwide, have so far led to the recovery of 5,400 items, nearly 700 from inside the US and Britain.
All this - as well as the remarkable tale of the reclaiming of the fabulous Treasure of Nimrud - is told in Thieves of Baghdad, available only in the US, and written by Matthew Bogdanos who has been described, with only a minimum of hyperbole, as a real-life Indiana Jones.
He was born in New York, as a boy worked in his family's Greek restaurant, became a marine, a reservist, a lawyer in the city's district attorney's office, lost his home in the 9/11 attacks, and had to use all his marine training to fight through crowds and emergency service workers to rescue his family from an flat whose windows were blown in and contents covered in two inches of ash. Weeks later, he was in uniform as a marine Lt-Colonel, on operations in Afghanistan, and thence, by 2003, to southern Iraq.
It was here, on 18 April in Basra, he heard the Iraq Museum has been plundered. Bogdanos - a keen amateur classicist - requested permission to investigate, put a team together, and hurried north to Baghdad. He arrived at the museum compound on 20 April. It was not a pretty sight. It had been used as a fighting position, Iraq army uniforms were scattered all around, as were expended RPGs. In a courtyard smoldered the remains of hundreds of Ba'ath party cards and files. And, above the centre door to the main building, was a large handwritten sign 'Death to all Americans and Zionist pigs'.
Saddam's forces had abandoned the museum sometime on 10 April. Two days later senior curators returned, chasing off the last of the looters that had numbered 300-400 at their height. It was in this window of 36 hours that the thefts occurred.
The first area the US team entered was the administrative offices where the destruction was "wanton and absolute". Everyone of the 120 offices had been ransacked, every piece of furniture broken. But, in the public galleries, the damage was far lighter. Of 451 display cases, only 28 were damaged, but nearly all were empty. To his relief, Bogdanos learnt their contents had been removed by staff ahead of the invasion to a "secret place" within the museum known only to the five most senior officials. Where that was, no one was then saying. But 40 antiquities - including some of the best, like the Sacred Vase of Warka, the Mask of Warka, Bassetki Statue and the eighth century BC ivory 'Lioness Attacking a Nubian' - were stolen. The thieves, says Bogdanos, were "organised and selective".
The above-ground storage rooms told a different story. Here was where looters had struck, getting in via a door left open by Iraqi soldiers who, even as they fled, discarded their uniforms in a trail of clothing. The looters has swept entire shelves of items into bags, and the result was 3,138 missing items, such as jars, vessels and shards.
On 2 May [check], Bogdanos and companion crept down a dark hidden stairwell towards the basement storage area. They saw its great metal door was wide open with no sign of a forced entry. Someone in the know had got there first. "The chaos," wrote Bogdanos, "was shocking: 103 fishing tackle-sized plastic boxes, originally containing thousands of cylinder seals, beads, amulets and jewellery were randomly thrown in all directions Amid the devastation, hundreds of surrounding larger, but empty, boxes had been untouched. It was immediately clear that these thieves knew what they were looking for and where to look." The investigators feared the worst. But they discovered that 30 cabinets containing part of the world's finest collection of cylinder seals and tens of thousands of gold and silver coins were untouched.
What Bogdanos later surmised was that the thieves had the relevant keys, but had dropped them and, in the unlit basement and lacking torches, had been unable to find them again. What, however, had been taken was 4,795 cylinder seals, 5,542 coins, glass bottles, beads, amulets, and jewellery. As Bogdanos wrote: "It is simply inconceivable that this area had been found, breached and entered by anyone who did not have an intimate insider's knowledge of the museum." Bogdanos fingerprinted all 23 staff who returned after the invasion and were known to have access to storage rooms. But many staff did not return, including Jassim Muhamed, the museum's former head of security. Yet the biggest obstacle to the investigators' work was the poor state of the under-funded museum's records. The storage rooms, for instance, contained thousands of unlogged excavated items. A full inventory did not exist, and, Bogdanos estimated, would take years to compile. Recovery of missing items had to take priority.
An amnesty started within two days. Word was put out to immams, newspapers and television, and on the street that anyone returning an item would be asked only one question: "Would you like a cup of tea?". An Arabic-speaking member of Bogdanos's team was posted on the gate to solicit returns, and the team walked the streets, drank endless cups of tea in cafes, and played backgammon with anyone who looked as if they might know something. In one, Bogdanos, still a keen amateur boxer at 45, staged an impromptu sparring match with a local champion to provide a diversion while a colleague quizzed an informant.
The response was almost immediate. Bags containing an item would be dropped off, items allegedly taken for 'safe-keeping' were brought in by hand, some antiquities were left at mosques, others simply handed to a patrolling US soldier. The Sacred Vase of Warka, after two weeks of negotiation, was returned in June in a car boot, along with 95 other artifacts. Bogdanos was even contacted when on leave and handed a 4,000 year old Akkadian piece in a brown envelope as he sat in a Manhattan coffee shop. All but 101 of the 3,138 items stolen from the storage rooms have been recovered, yet at least 8,500 pieces are still missing, the most significant being the Lioness ivory.
Just over 2,000 recoveries were the result of raids, the biggest being at a farmhouse on 23 September. Under a foot and a half of dirt in the backyard was the Mask of Warka. In November, two raids on the same day produced the Nimrud brazier, used to warm the throne room of King Shalmaneser III in the ninth century BC, plus 76 pieces stolen from the basement, including the Bassetki Statue, which had been covered in grease and hidden in a cesspit.
Bogdanos says one of their best sources of information was the now discredited Dr Ahmed Chalabi, whose Iraqi National Congress forces stopped a truck bound for Iran and found on it no fewer than 465 items. Meanwhile, with publicity and photographs of some missing items circulated to Interpol and customs, more of the stolen items started to be seized abroad - 1,395 of them by the end of 2003. Some 669 were seized in 2003 when four FedEx boxes, addressed to a New York art dealer, were impounded by US customs at Newark airport.
But what of the fabulous Treasure of Nimrud, 1,000 pieces of gold, crowns, necklaces, rosettes, bracelets and precious stones from the eighth century BC? One of the great archaeological discoveries of the last hundred years, it had been seen in public only once, briefly, in 1989. A year later, it was moved by the Hussein regime to the Central Bank. It had not been seen since, and, shortly before the battle for Baghdad, Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, had emptied that bank's vaults of much of their contents.
On 26 May, the investigators showed up at the bank's vaults, and found them flooded with 20ft of water. A National Geographic film crew agreed to pay for them to be pumped out, in return for an exclusive. On 4 and 5 June the team returned, and found in the vaults a collection of wooden boxes (plus the body of a would-be robber). One by one they were opened, revealing the burial goods from the royal tombs of Ur, until one box remained. At 1.43pm, its lid was prised open and there was every Hollywood film's idea of ancient treasure - gold crowns, bracelets, necklaces and anklets.
And Bogdanos? Early next year he will be back at the DA's office, conductinginvestigation into worldwide antiquities trade. All his royalties from his book are being donated to the Iraq Museum.
http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk
Ancient well discovery sheds light on city's medieval past
Emma Dunlop
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have unearthed a medieval well over 3m (9ft) deep which had lain undiscovered for over 800 years.
The University of Sheffield's archaeological consultancy firm ARCUS made the unexpected find in Sheffield's city centre.
The discovery was made during the team's excavation at Carmel House on Fargate in Sheffield city centre, as part of the redevelopment of the site by Hermes Property Unit Trust.
University academics said it was "unprecedented evidence" about how Sheffield would have looked in medieval times, when it was a small market town until its massive growth during the industrial revolution.
The dating of the well, dug into sandstone bedrock, suggested it was contemporary with the rebuilding of Sheffield Castle in stone in 1270 and the granting of Sheffield's market charter by Edward I in 1296.
Important pottery finds were also recovered, further suggesting that the well was in use by 1300, and had been filled in during the 17th century around the time of the Civil War.
The medieval ceramics included jugs made in the Hallgate area of Doncaster and other vessels from the Humber estuary.
Animal bones, plant remains and microscopic pollen grains were also found in the waterlogged conditions of the well.
Analysis of the finds will now take place in the laboratories of the university's archaeology department.
University archaeologist Steve Baker said: "It's fantastic to find this evidence which has lain undisturbed beneath the town for eight hundred years. This represents a goldmine of information relating to medieval Sheffield."
Director of ARCUS, Jim Symonds, added: "Sheffield is world famous for its achievements during the industrial age. However, this important discovery reminds us that Sheffield was also a thriving medieval town."
Two years ago city planners passed controversial plans to turn the Grade II listed Carmel House, which stands on the corner of Fargate and Norfolk Row in the city centre, into shops.
This was to make way for a £10m redevelopment of the Victorian building.
The move had raised concerns from conservationists, including English Heritage, but councillors agreed to the plans on the grounds the front facade would be retained
Work began earlier this year.
10 November 2005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4421786.stm
Enormous nuclear bunker for sale
See inside the bunker
A nuclear bunker made to house the government and civil servants in the event of nuclear attack is for sale.
The existence of the underground complex at Corsham, Wiltshire, was kept secret until recently, but the Ministry of Defence is now inviting buyers.
Built in the late 1950s, the bunker covers many acres and was decommissioned in the 1980s.
It is underground - more than 100ft (30m) down - and includes a kitchen and BBC studio.
The MoD says it has received hundreds of enquiries for purchase which will be under a private finance initiative, including two serious bids.
Despite being close to one of Britain's busiest railway lines, the facility was shrouded in secrecy for 50 years beneath non-descript government buildings.
Enormous and fully-equipped kitchens remain unused
In the 1950s as the threat of nuclear war intensified, the government pinned its hope for survival on buildings already used by the military.
If there had been an attack, the then prime minister Harold Macmillan and much of Whitehall would have been moved west to the bunker.
Nick McCamley, author of Secret Underground Cities, said in the past the government "simply refused to admit" the bunker existed.
"They gradually released documents about some of the other sites in the area, but as far as [this complex] was concerned it simply did not exist."
Chairs and office equipment are still stored there, in preparation for thousands of civil servants.
There are huge generators to provide power that might have been needed for weeks, boxes of paper and files, and enormous kitchens - all unused.
One of the largest telephone exchanges ever built would have linked to the regional government, which would also have been underground in the event of an attack.
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART31728.html
NAIL CLEANER & ROMAN EMPEROR AMONG 67,000 ITEMS DUG UP BY PUBLIC
By David Prudames 09/11/2005
Culture Minister David Lammy gets his hands on an Iron Age torc found in Norfolk. © 24 Hour Museum.
A 1st century nail cleaner, a collection of cheese scoops and an almost forgotten Roman emperor are among the 67,000 artefacts and 427 pieces of treasure unearthed by members of the public in the past year.
These impressive statistics were revealed in the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) annual report and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS) Treasure annual report, launched at the Museum of London on November 9 2005.
Announcing the publication of both reports, Culture Minister David Lammy welcomed the successes they outlined and praised the inclusive work of the PAS.
“What occurs to me is the diverse background of the people that are doing the finding," he said. "I get a sense of the real thrill that people get when they come upon something that’s valuable either economically or because it makes such an impact in terms of its historical significance."
Faye Simpson, Finds Liaison Officer for London, discusses the work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme with the Culture Minister. © MLA.
But, he added, the power of the scheme reaches beyond finders to the wider community. Many of the artefacts end up in local museums, he said, where young people and children get exposure to them “and get that rewarding sense of pride in the wider narrative of this country. That’s exciting.“
The UK’s largest community archaeology project, the PAS is run by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and encourages the voluntary recording of archaeological objects found by the public. It operates throughout England and Wales via a network of Finds Liaison Officers (FLOs).
As well as identifying and recording artefacts as diverse as a Roman seal box and three 18th century cheese scoops, FLOs also play a crucial role in the reporting of treasure finds.
Under the Treasure Act 1996 finders of gold or silver objects over 300-years old and prehistoric base metal are obliged to report their discoveries, which are subsequently valued at the British Museum and acquired for public display.
Domitian II, whose existence was confirmed thanks to the discovery of this coin by a metal detectorist in Oxfordshire. © The British Museum.
Among the finds that have come to light in the past year is a stunning electrum torc (necklace) found in South West Norfolk and now residing at Norwich Castle Museum. It dates back to the Iron Age (around 200-50 BC), but is in such good condition it could have been made yesterday.
There’s also a 1st century nail cleaner, part of a Roman oil lamp and a coin bearing the image of Edward the Confessor.
Another coin unearthed in the last 12 months caused a bit of a stir when it turned out to prove the existence of a little-known Roman emperor.
Dating back to around 271 AD, it bears the image and name of Domitian II. The only other coin of its type to be found was discovered in France and was, until this example proved Domitian’s existence, thought to be a fake.
Peter Peach (left) and Frank Basford, Finds Liaison Officer for the Isle of Wight, show off the Anglo Saxon skillet Peter found while searching in a field on the island. © 24 Hour Museum.
There are also personal items from the Anglo Saxon era such as the gold pendants and copper-alloy girdle accessories found in Kent by Nigel Betts, Brian Petit, Keith Stafford and John Darvill.
John told the 24 Hour Museum that heading out with a metal detector "is a form of getting back to the past. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle," he added, "you find these small bits and gradually over a period of years you get a picture of what’s been going on in the area."
In John’s case that puzzle turned out to be a female burial dating back to around 625-675 AD, which was discovered under the direction of Kent Finds Liaison Officer Andrew Richardson. A subsequent community excavation revealed what is now believed to be the source of the finds.
John’s been detecting for around 25 years and considers the PAS to be an invaluable companion and authority for his fellow amateur archaeologists. "People coming into the hobby," he said, "need to know the significance of what they’re finding and I think this scheme certainly does help people understand and record their finds."
Peter Olivant happened upon these three 18th century cheese or apple scoops on the Thames foreshore. © MLA.
This mutually beneficial relationship between finders and the PAS is something the Deputy Head of the initiative, Michael Lewis, holds very dear.
"It’s nice to hear the minister say such positive words about the scheme," he told the 24 Hour Museum. "It’s clear he recognises that the finders do this not for financial gain but for their interest and love of archaeology. It’s obvious that finders want to do the right thing."
The success of the scheme, he added, has led to enquiries from archaeologists in France, Germany and Holland who have been impressed by the way it works and are looking to set up something similar in their countries.
"It demonstrates that some people are looking to the scheme and see it as something that might be the way forward," he said