http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=00074F10-365F-1333-B65F83414B7F0000
September 23, 2005
Evolutionary Tools Help Unlock Origins of Ancient Languages
The key to understanding how languages evolved may lie in their structure, not their vocabularies, a new report suggests. Findings published today in the journal Science indicate that a linguistic technique that borrows some features from evolutionary biology tools can unlock secrets of languages more than 10,000 years old.
Because vocabularies change so quickly, using them to trace how languages evolve over time can only reach back about 8,000 to 10,000 years. To study tongues from the Pleistocene, the period between 1.8 million and 10,000 years ago, Michael Dunn and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics developed a computer program that analyzes language based on how words relate to one another. They developed a database containing 125 "structural language features," which include traits such as verb placement within clauses, for two sets of languages. Sixteen Austronesian languages made up the first set; the second was composed of 15 Papuan languages. (The image above shows an outrigger sailing canoe in a region where languages from the two sets are spoken. Called Island Melanesia, it is east of Papua New Guinea and northeast of Australia.) When the researchers used the new approach to reveal historical connections between languages, the results for the Austronesian languages closely resembled previous results that were based on vocabulary.
In contrast, the vocabulary-based method could not yield results for the Papuan languages but the novel technique did. It suggests that the languages are related in ways that are consistent with geographic relationships between them. In an accompanying commentary, Russell Gray of the University of Auckland in New Zealand cautions that the new technique still has uncertainty. But he contends that the approach "is likely to be widely emulated by researchers working on languages in other regions. In the future we may see the development of Web-based databases for the languages of the world. " --Sarah Graham
A more than 27,000 year-old grave with the bodies of two babies is pictured near Krems in Lower Austria September 23, 2005. Archaeologists of the Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Scienses (OeAW) excavated the bodies which were covered with an omoplate of a mammoth. This is the oldest grave ever found in Austria. REUTERS/HO/OeAW Praehistorische Kommission
http://www.noen.at/redaktion/news/article.asp?text=183670&cat=763
23.9.2005
Online-Ausgabe
27.000 Jahre altes Eiszeit-Grab bei Krems entdeckt
Mit einem sensationellen, eiszeitlichen Fund können Archäologen der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften aufwarten.
Sie entdeckten auf dem Wachtberg bei Krems eine mehr als 27.000 Jahre alte Begräbnisstätte. Im Grab fanden sich die mit Grabbeigaben versehenen Skelette von zwei Säuglingen, möglicherweise Zwillinge. "Sie wurden liebevoll unter einem Mammut-Schulterblatt bestattet", erklärte Projektleiterin Christine Neugebauer-Maresch.
Im Raum Krems finden sich teilweise meterhohe Auflagerungen von Löss - ein sehr feines Staubsediment, das ursprünglich aus Flüssen stammt. Immer wieder entdecken Archäologen darin Kostbarkeiten aus der Eiszeit: So kam vor 17 Jahren die unter dem Namen "Fanny" bekannt gewordene steinerne Statuette bei Ausgrabungen in in Krems-Rehberg und Stratzing ans Tageslicht.
Bereits seit mehreren Jahren sind die Archäologen der Prähistorischen Kommission der ÖAW auf dem Wachtberg von Krems mit Unterstützung des Fonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) tätig. Trotz einer Tiefe von über fünf Metern konnte so das Areal eines Behausungsplatzes geortet und gezielt als Forschungsobjekt ausgewählt werden. Die Funddichte übertraf laut Neugebauer-Maresch alle Erwartungen. "In der etwa acht bis 15 Zentimeter mächtigen Kulturschichte mit einem Alter von rund 27.000 Jahren konnten auf bisher rund zehn Quadratmetern mehr als 10.000 Fundstücke dokumentiert und geborgen werden", berichtete die Wissenschafterin. Glanzstücke sind eine besonders feine Steinsäge, bearbeitete Klingen, Kratzer, ein feines Elfenbeinstäbchen und ein geformtes und gebranntes Tonobjekt.
Mitte September stießen die Archäologen dann auf eine Vertiefung unter der Kulturschicht, die durch ein Mammutschulterblatt abgedeckt war. Darunter fanden die Ausgräber eine mit rotem Farbstoff aufgefüllte Mulde, an deren Grund die zarten Knochen zweier Säuglinge lagen. Beim weiteren Freilegen der Skelettteile entdeckten die Forscher noch eine Kette aus Schmuckperlen. Dies ist für Neugebauer-Maresch ein weiterer, klarer Hinweise für einen Bestattungsritus, die Kette war offenbar den beiden Verstorbenen mitgegeben worden. Die Funde gelten nun als mit Abstand älteste Grabstätte Österreichs, die ersten Belege für Bestattungen aus der Eiszeit.
http://www.omanobserver.com/Daily/World/World6.htm
Ice age infant skeletons found
VIENNA — The 27,000-year-old skeletons of two ice age infants have been found near Krems in northern Austria, the first discovery of its kind in Europe, the Austrian press reported yesterday. The perfectly preserved skeletons measuring 40 centimetres had been protected by a mammoth’s shoulder-blade bone, under which they had been buried on a sheltered hillside on the banks of the Danube River.
The grave, discovered 5.5 metres below ground, also contained a necklace of 31 pearls made from mammoth ivory and was located next to an area inhabited by ancient “homo sapiens fossils”, newspapers reported. “It is the first discovery of a child’s grave dating from this period,” confirmed the excavation manager, Christine Neugebauer-Maresch, to the daily newspaper Kurier.
“They may have been twins, but we have not yet been able to establish that,” she told Die Presse. The age of the skeletons will be analysed by the Institute of Natural Sciences in Vienna, which will also determine the cause of death. — AFP
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050919/cleodrag.html
Cleopatra Found Depicted in Drag
By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Sept. 21, 2005— A relief image carved approximately 2,050 years ago on an ancient Egyptian stone slab shows Cleopatra dressed as a man, according to a recent analysis of the artifact.
The object is only one of three known to exist that represent Cleopatra as a male. The other two artifacts also are stelae that date to around the same time, 51 B.C., at the beginning of Cleopatra's reign.
Researchers theorize that the recently discovered 13.4 x 9.8-inch stela probably first was excavated in Tell Moqdam, an Egyptian city that the ancient Greeks called Leonton Polis, meaning "City of the Lions."
"It shows Cleopatra dressed as a male pharaoh with the (characteristically male) double crown offering the hieroglyph of a field to a lion crouching on a pedestal," said Willy Clarysse, who conducted the analysis. "Above the lion, a hieroglyphic text calls him 'Osiris the Lion,' that is, the deceased and mummified lion who is identified with the god of the underworld, Osiris."
Osiris was an important god in Egyptian culture. Royals made offerings to him in hopes of receiving life, stability and dominion over their lands.
Clarysse, an Egyptologist and classics scholar at the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium, told Discovery News that Cleopatra's apparent sex change was probably due to the artist's laziness.
"Up to 51 B.C., Ptolemaios XII, the father of Cleopatra, was king over Egypt," he said. "When he died, some of the stelae were already carved. The stone cutter then added the name of the new sovereign in the cartouche, but he did not change the picture of the male pharaoh into a female because this was too difficult or too much work."
Clarysse added that one of Cleopatra's legs had been recarved, so perhaps someone started to redo the initial image "but then gave up."
The findings will be published next year in the German publication Antique World.
Queen Hatshepsut, who lived during the 16th and 15th centuries B.C., often was represented without breasts, in male clothing and with a full beard. Many historians believe she assumed these symbols of masculinity to assert her power and claim to the throne at a time when most women did not wield much official authority.
Clarysse believes it was unlikely that any of Cleopatra's subjects were confused about her gender. Images on temple walls and coins from her reign depict her as a woman.
"Moreover, her name (unlike that of Hatshepsut) shows that Cleopatra is a woman, both for the Greeks who end (most) female names with the letter 'a,' and for the Egyptians," he said.
The Cleopatra stela belongs to Beijing University Museum's Duan Fang collection. Fang was a prominent and well-traveled Chinese ambassador who amassed many prominent artworks, some of which are housed at Chicago's Field Museum.
Yan Haiying, an associate professor of history at Beijing University, found the Cleopatra stela in the corner of her university's museum storeroom.
"We were all very surprised," she told Discovery News. "I am thinking about going on searches in other storerooms of (Chinese) university museums and (China's) national museum. What I expect most is to discover other original (Egyptian) stelae somewhere in our country."
Yan agrees with Clarysse's determination that the recently found stela does indeed show Cleopatra as a man, but she suggested the "mistake" was intentional, since she said women like Cleopatra and Hatshepsut probably had to take on masculine characteristics to uphold their rule.
She also theorized, "Maybe Cleopatra did not want to go against the (all male leadership) tradition at the beginning."
The stela, along with other items from the Duan Fang collection, are now on exhibit at the Beijing University Museum.
http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2005-09-20_1325320.html
Ancient Roman navy soldier surfaces
Ravenna site yields first-ever image of imperial officer
(ANSA) - Classe, September 20 - The first-ever image of a soldier in the Ancient Roman navy has surfaced at a major imperial naval base at Ravenna .
The armour-clad, weapon-bearing soldier was carved on a funeral stone, or stele, in a waterlogged necropolis at Classe (ancient Classis), the now silted-up Ravenna port area where Rome's Adriatic fleet was stationed .
Previous finds at the site have only shown people in civilian garb .
An inscription on the soldier's funeral slab says he was an officer on a small, fast oar-powered ship ('liburna') used to catch pirates .
Although the stele is small - about one metre (yard) long - the detail of the carving is intricate .
The soldier has the bowl haircut and delicate, child-like features typical of carvings from the 1st-century AD Julio-Claudian era .
He wears anatomically shaped body armour with shoulder strips and a leather-fringed military skirt, above the light but tough military sandals called 'caligae' (from which the notorious emperor Caligula got his name). He is carrying a heavy javelin ('pilum') and has a short stabbing sword called 'gladius' on his decorated belt .
Over his armour there is a band which experts think could be a military decoration .
Part of the inscription is missing. The soldier's name is thought to be Monus Capito. His ship was called 'Aurata' or 'Golden' and the man who put up the stele, probably a fellow soldier, was named Cocneus .
The stele was found in three metres of water by divers helping archaeologists trace a large tunnel from late Imperial times .
The stone had been taken from the burial ground and used to prop up a part of the tunnel that had collapsed .
Experts said the find would have pride of place in a Museum of Archaeology being set up at Classe .
'Classis' in Latin means 'fleet' but was also local shorthand for the fleet's base. Rome had two Mediterranean fleets, one based at Ravenna and the other near Naples. Piracy was a major problem for Roman merchant ships and the navy frequently launched punitive expeditions against raiders from Cilicia, now southern Turkey .
In one of these, Julius Caesar caught and killed pirates who had captured and held him for ransom .
Then Pompey the Great, Caesar's one-time partner and eventual rival, smashed the Cilician pirates in a famous whirlwind campaign .
The Roman navy was an extension of the army and used army fighting methods. Ships rammed and hooked enemy vessels so that soldiers could
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/4259848.stm
Last Updated: Monday, 19 September 2005, 14:06 GMT 15:06 UK
Major excavation for Roman relic
North East experts are to investigate reports that a mosaic from Roman times is buried 15ft underground opposite the site of a former Sunderland brewery.
Archaeologists are now hoping to search for the ancient relic on the Vaux brewery site before it is redeveloped.
If they find the mosaic, it would confirm long-held suspicions by some local historians that there used to be a Roman settlement in the city.
The brewery closed in 1999 and will not be redeveloped until digs are complete.
Generations of people from Sunderland have grown up hearing stories of a Roman outpost that used to stand high above the River Wear.
Seven trenches
David Heslop, is the county archaeologist for Tyne and Wear, and said a thorough dig at the site would have to be carried out.
"I am convinced of reports that there was a Roman settlement in the city as coins have been found all over Sunderland.
"But we do need direct evidence which would mean extensive excavation work.
"Across the road on the Vaux brewery site seven trenches have been dug and evidence of even older settlements have been found such as the Stone Age."
http://www.alphagalileo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=readrelease&releaseid=506594
For further information, please contact:
Charles Elder
Bournemouth University
celder@bournemouth.ac.uk
+44 (0) 1202 961032
Posted By:
Bournemouth, University of
23 June 2005
Bournemouth Expert Solves Mystery of the Stonehenge Bluestones
Leading Stonehenge expert, Professor Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University, believes he has discovered the answer to one of the stone circle’s oldest mysteries – the exact location in Wales where Stonehenge’s ‘magical’ bluestones were quarried centuries ago.
Writing in the July/August issue of 'British Archaeology', Professor Darvill describes the very spot high in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire from where the bluestones – which form the inner circle of Stonehenge – were transported, some 240 miles west of Salisbury Plain.
What Professor Darvill and his colleague Geoff Wainwright believe they have found are the remains of a stone enclosure. Professor Darvill describes a “small crag-edged promontory with a stone bank across its neck” in one of the most elevated parts of Carn Menyn. The enclosure is small (less than half a hectare) but according to Professor Darvill it provides a veritable ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ of made-to-measure pillars for aspiring circle builders.
“Within and outside the enclosure are numerous prone pillar stones with clear signs of working,” he writes. “Some are fairly recent and a handful of drill holes attest to the technology used. Other blocks may have been wrenched from the ground or the crags in ancient times with simpler, but no less efficient, technologies that leave no trace.
“Three things are clear from just looking round the site,” Prof Darvill concludes. “First, those outcrops have been exploited as a source of stone for a long time and much has been taken away. Second, our understanding of what a ‘quarry’ is perhaps needs to be modified because here the extraction of pillars simply involves levering suitably shaped but naturally detached blocks from the ground or a fractured outcrop. And third, the remoteness of the place and its mountain – top situation invite comparison with other known sources of prized stone, exploited for axeheads during the fourth and third millennia BC.”
Notes for editor
Images of Prof Tim Darvill's work in Pembrokeshire are available upon request -
email: celder@bournemouth.ac.uk or
tel: +44 (0) 1202 961032
Reference URL
http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk
http://www.alphagalileo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=readAnnouncement&Announcementid=507912
For further information, please contact:
Jac Niessen
Wageningen University and Research Centre
Jac.Niessen@wur.nl
+31-317-485003
Posted By:
Wageningen University and Research Centre
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1575676,00.html
Iran to rebuild spectacular tent city at Persepolis
After dismissing it as a disgrace, Islamic rulers to recreate party venue
Robert Tait in Persepolis
Thursday September 22, 2005
The Guardian
Iran hopes to attract foreign tourists to the ancient ruins of Persepolis. Photograph: AP
It was once the scene of a lavish celebration of Iranian monarchy and a symbol of loathing for the revolutionaries who swept the shah from power.
Now Iran's Islamic rulers are to reconstruct a spectacular tent city that hosted kings, sheikhs and sultans in a 1971 extravaganza billed as the greatest cultural gathering in history. The party was staged by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi beside the ancient ruins of Persepolis to pay homage to 2,500 years of the monarchy.
The celebration, a feast of opulence at which guests consumed 5,000 bottles of champagne, was attended by international luminaries including the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Anne, King Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
It provoked a backlash from the shah's political opponents that eventually swelled into the movement that shaped the 1979 Islamic revolution. The 65 hectare (160 acre) site, which featured 51 luxurious air-conditioned tents organised in the shape of a star, fell into ruin after the revolution.
It served as an army barracks before being used as an administrative centre by the revolutionary guards. Today, the only remains of the tents are their metal skeletons, while the once-exquisitely landscaped gardens are overgrown with weeds.
"We are determined to revive it," a senior Iranian cultural heritage and tourism official told the Guardian. "Our plan is to restore it as it was. After the revolution, the place was ruined through lack of attention. They thought that if they repaired and maintained things, they would be restoring the shah's evil works and that was against their beliefs."
The project, overseen by Iran's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is part of a government initiative to woo foreign tourists.
It is also the latest phase of a campaign to rehabilitate Persepolis, a complex of palaces built by King Darius in around 518BC and the symbolic seat of subsequent Persian monarchs before it was largely destroyed by the invading Alexander the Great in 330BC. The monument's dynastic associations earned it the hostility of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, who described monarchy as "a shameful and disgraceful reactionary manifestation". But this year Persepolis has had the highest number of visitors since the revolution, with 35,000 a day during the Iranian new year holiday.
The decision to mark the 1971 celebrations contrasts with Khomeini's description of participants at the time as "traitors to Islam and the Iranian nation". Islamic sensibilities will be soothed by focusing on the event's excesses, such as alcohol consumption, female guests in low-cut gowns without hijab, and troupes of dancing girls.
But planners say privately many visitors would regard the exhibits with more admiration than disgust. "The reality is so delicate," said the official, who requested anonymity. "I recently showed a CD-Rom of the celebration to my children and they were admiring it. They were asking what was wrong and where was the problem that we had to have a revolution."
The memorial will be placed in the rebuilt central tent, designed as the shah's imperial reception hall, in which 20 giant crystal chandeliers once hung. Further exhibitions will focus on the Achaemenian dynasty, seen as the pinnacle of Iran's pre-Islamic greatness, when Persia's empire stretched from the Nile to the Danube. The other tents, which once housed the VIP guests, will be turned into restaurants and tourist accommodation.
After the revolution, the complex narrowly escaped destruction when a group of Khomeini supporters turned up intent on torching it. It was saved by local people, who drove them out.
The site's revival was welcome news for Khodakhost Homayoon, a ticket agent at Persepolis, who worked inside the shah's tent during the celebration. "It was a great day," he said. "People were here from all over the world and the message was peaceful. It made me proud to be Iranian. Ancient history is always a reason to be proud. No human being can be against it."
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=52661
Royal Thracian Palace Unearthed in Bulgaria
Lifestyle: 20 September 2005, Tuesday.
Bulgarian archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a Thracian city and a royal residence, the National Museum of History announced.
The first two floors of the palace, spreading over 104 square meters are preserved and the archaeologists, led by Ivan Hristov, have found many artefacts confirming royal presence.
The most indicative - a short two-face ritual iron axe, called labris is a well-known symbol of royalty in the ancient Thracian culture. A number of coins have also been discovered, depicting the Thracian kings Tereus, Kotis and Amatok among others.
The artefacts found at the excavation site help date the city and palace to the end of the 5th century B.C. The archaeologists assume that they have found the capitol of the Odris King Amatok, described by ancient Greek authors as standing twelve days away from the White Sea, nowadays Aegean Sea.
The excavation site is situated near the city of Hisar in Central Bulgaria, close to the Starosel village where a temple-tomb was discovered in 2000. Archaeologists believe that both discoveries are part of an ancient settlement, one that could become unique and thus extremely attractive to tourists if unified through good infrastructure.
21 September 2005
Extinct aurochs lives on in impressive monograph
Title
Retracing the Aurochs: History, Morphology and Ecology of an Extinct Wild Ox
Author: van Vuure Cis
Publication type Books
Publication Date 21 September 2005
ISBN 954-642-235-5
Cover PaperBack
Number of pages 424
Page size 165 x 240
Price € 67.90
Review copy available pensoft@mbox.infotel.bg
‘The aurochs is fearless and large-horned’, according to a 9th century Anglo-Saxon rune verse from North Germany. Old Germanic legends, rune verses, language reconstruction, archaeological finds, medieval descriptions, genetic analyses and modern cattle make up the sources for an overall picture of the aurochs (Bos primigenius). As a wild animal, this impressive mammal lived in large areas of Asia, Europe and North Africa, during the last one and a half million years. Nowadays some thousand cattle types have left, bred from the aurochs in the course of millennia. The original aurochs became extinct. For fifteen years, Wageningen researcher Cis van Vuure has worked on its morphology, ecology and habitat. The project, in which this monograph was realized, has been financed and supervised by Wageningen University (Wageningen, the Netherlands) and the Ministry of the Flemish Community (Brussels, Belgium).
In his book ‘Retracing the aurochs’, for both specialists and non-specialists, Cis van Vuure sheds light on all conceivable approaches of this mammal. The aurochs originates from India and Pakistan and spread to Europe and North Africa during Pleistocene and Holocene periods, lived along the Nile River and even arrived in China. Early human hunters immortalized this imposing bovine species in cave paintings at Lascaux and Altamira, 20,000 years ago. Of a more recent date are aurochs drawings from Central Siberia and Pharaonic Egypt. From Mesopotamia hunting depictions are known in which the Assyrian king Assurnassirpal II captured many aurochs, during the 9th century BC. In Europe, the extinction of the aurochs, caused by hunting and ousting, advanced from southwest to northeast. The last population lived in a royal forest reserve in Central Poland near the village of Jaktorów. The last specimen, a cow, died in 1627.
The aurochs bull had an impressive appearance with its shoulder height of 160-180 cm., and large dirty white horns with a dark tip, a colour comparable with that in Spanish fighting cattle. The horns could reach a length of more than one meter. By means of cave paintings, medieval pictures and writings, and genetics (of modern cattle) the coat colour of the aurochs could be reconstructed. The bull was blackish brown to black with a lighter dorsal stripe; the smaller cow (ca. 150 cm) was reddish brown, as was the young calf.
From ca. 7,000 BC onward, man domesticated the aurochs during a gradual process, parallel to sheep and goat. Not only many cattle breeds originated, but also a dichotomy in bovine animals came into being, that is zebu- (humped) and taurine (humpless) cattle. During this selection process the initially large differences between bull and cow (sexual dimorphism) diminished, shoulder height decreased, milk yield increased and diverse colours and horn forms emerged.
In its natural environment, the aurochs mainly ate grasses in spring and summer, in autumn acorns as well and in winter furthermore branches and possibly tree bark. In the forested landscape the aurochs especially searched for food in extensive wet forests and marshes along rivers, lakes and shores. The former nickname of the aurochs (‘morstapa’ – Anglo-Saxon for ‘marsh walker’) points to this preferred way of living. The population density of aurochs probably strongly varied, depending on the openness of the forest. Aurochs themselves, like other large herbivores, had little impact on forest structure and openness of the landscape; this conclusion was drawn from studies in palynology, archaeoentomology and Roman writings, and from the situation in the Great Wilderness in former East Prussia.
In spite of its large size, in Europe predators like wolf and lion cornered the aurochs. Especially young and diseased animals fell prey to them; full-grown bulls were able to kill many a wolf by kicking or goring, as was stated in Old Polish writings. Lynx, bear and fox were especially after young calves.
In his richly illustrated book Cis van Vuure gives a picture of the aurochs as it has never been described before. He paints a picture of this intriguing mammal as complete as possible and in that is why this multidisciplinary approach rules out large gaps. Moreover, in his description and evaluation of the breeding-back experiment by the Heck brothers, the author discusses the value and possibilities of breeding-back the aurochs from still existing cattle types, and their potential use and role in nature conservation.
In the book an extensive list of References and an Index are included.
Notes for editor
For information and review copies contact
PENSOFT Publishers (Sofia, Bulgaria)
Tel: +359-2-967-40-70
Fax: +359-2-967-40-71
E-mail: pensoft@mbox.infotel.bg
For pictures in high resolution contact
Jac Niessen, Wageningen University and Research Centre, tel. +31 317 485003, email jac.niessen@wur.nl.
For information and interviews (in English or German) contact
Mr. Cis van Vuure (author), tel. +31 317 416187, email t.vanvuure@chello.nl
For further information, please contact:
Judy Redfearn
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
judy.redfearn@epsrc.ac.uk
+44 (0) 7768 356309
Posted By:
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
15 September 2005 Media invitation:
e-Science records Roman finds
under embargo until 21 Sep 2005 14:00 GMT
Issued by EPSRC on behalf of the UK e-Science Programme
e-Science All Hands meeting 2005
Twenty first century e-Science met the ancient Roman world in a Hampshire field this summer. For the first time, archaeologists excavating at the Silchester Roman site used e-Science techniques to record their finds. The techniques will be demonstrated at the e-Science All Hands meeting in Nottingham on 20-22 September.
The archaeologists are participating in a project to build a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) that will enable geographically-dispersed researchers with an interest in the work to collaborate through on-line links. The project is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).
Silchester is one of the most important Roman sites in Britain. The town layout remains just as it was when the Romans abandoned it in the fifth century AD because nobody has built on it since. The excavations are of wide interest to Romanists throughout the UK and beyond.
Traditionally, archaeologists dig at the site during eight weeks each summer and record their finds using paper and pencil. These records are digitised the following winter for entry into the York-based Integrated Archaeological Database (IADB), which is held on a server in Reading.
The Silchester VRE project has three main aims. The first is to streamline this data gathering process, so saving time spent later on digitising records. The second is to facilitate on-line collaboration between researchers allowing them to share data and expertise. The third is to make databases inter-operable so that data can be compared easily and new correlations and insights found. “The project is streamlining the flow of data from excavation right through to publication, which traditionally is a very long process,” says Mike Rains, a member of the project team from the York Archaeological Trust.
This season, archaeologists tackled the first aim by abandoning their paper and pencils and taking up hand-held computers (PDAs) instead. Although the excavation is a mile from the village, an internet connection was established at the site with the cooperation of the nearest neighbour. Finds were recorded on the PDAs and entered directly into the IADB via the internet connection. The site supervisor had access to the results of previous excavations to put new finds into immediate context.
A series of de-briefing sessions will assess the lessons learned. As well as addressing issues with software or logistics (such as the extent to which the amount of post-excavation digitisation has been reduced), these will also address practical questions such as ‘do the PDAs work in the rain?’ ‘can you see the screen in bright light?’ and ‘do the batteries last long enough?’. The plan is to incorporate the findings into a new production system for full use next year.
Meanwhile, work is beginning on the project’s other two aims. Many archaeological specialists are self-employed and work from home, making unusual demands on collaboration software. “We’re developing something that will work on a PC at home with a broadband connection,” says Mr Rains.
Interoperable databases would make the task of finding other examples of a new find much easier. The plan is not only to enable searches for correlations across different databases, but also to record the findings of those searches. “When you search for a correlation, you’ll be able to insert a link so that somebody else doesn’t have to repeat the exercise in future. You’ll also be able to automatically notify others who may be interested in what you’ve discovered,” says Mr Rains.
To attend the e-Science All Hands meeting, or the media briefing at 3pm on Wednesday 21 September, go to http://www.allhands.org.uk/pr/index.html. Conference website http://www.allhands.org.uk/
Notes for editor
Contacts
Mike Rains Tel: 01904 663043
Fax: 01904 663024
Email: admin@yorkarchaeology.co.uk
Judy Redfearn, e-Science/Research communications officer, JISC/e-Science Core Programme tel. 07768 356309 e-mail: judy.redfearn@epsrc.ac.uk
Links
Silchester VRE http://www.silchester.reading.ac.uk/vre/
UK e-Science Programme http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/escience
e-Science is the very large scale science that can be carried out by pooling access to very large digital data collections, very large scale computing resources and high performance visualisation held at different sites.
A computing grid refers to geographically dispersed computing resources that are linked together by software known as middleware so that the resources can be shared. The vision is to provide computing resources to the consumer in a similar way to the electric power grid. The consumer can access electric or computing power without knowing which power station or computer it is coming from.
The UK e-Science Programme is a coordinated £230M initiative involving all the Research Councils and the Department of Trade and Industry. It has also leveraged industrial investment of £30M. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council manages the e-Science Core Programme, which is developing generic technologies, on behalf of all the Research Councils.
The UK e-Science Programme as a whole is fostering the development of IT and grid technologies to enable new ways of doing faster, better or different research, with the aim of establishing a sustainable, national e-infrastructure for research and innovation. Further information at www.rcuk.ac.uk/escience.
Reference URL
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/escience
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwickshire/4278218.stm
Last Updated: Saturday, 24 September 2005, 11:26 GMT 12:26 UK
Castle's old fountain uncovered
Experts used a 3D laser scanner to reveal the fountain's remains
The remains of an Elizabethan fountain have been uncovered by archaeological experts in Warwickshire.
A team from Poland used a 3D laser scanner to reveal the fountain in the gardens at Kenilworth Castle.
The 16th Century fountain was part of a garden created in 1575 by Robert Dudley for Queen Elizabeth I's visit.
John Watkins, of English Heritage, said using this kind of technology would help experts reconstruct the fountain. It should be finished by spring 2007.
He said it was the first time the laser scanner had been used in garden archaeology in the UK.
Getty Had Signs It Was Acquiring Possibly Looted Art, Documents Show
Museum attorneys say half the masterpieces in its antiquities collection can be traced to suspect dealers. Italy seeks return of 42 items.
By Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino, Times Staff Writers
Attorneys for the J. Paul Getty Museum have determined that half the masterpieces in its antiquities collection were purchased from dealers now under investigation for allegedly selling artifacts looted from ruins in Italy.
Italian authorities have identified dozens of objects in the Getty collection as looted, including ancient urns, vases and a 5-foot marble statue of Apollo.
The Italians have Polaroid photographs seized from a dealer's warehouse in Switzerland that show Getty artifacts in an unrestored state, some encrusted with dirt — soon after they were dug from the ground, Italians officials say.
In response to the Italian investigation, Getty lawyers combed through the museum's files and questioned staff members over several months in 2001, trying to assess the legal exposure of the world's richest art institution.
The Times recently obtained hundreds of pages of Getty records, some of them related to the museum's internal review.
Those documents show that Getty officials had information as early as 1985 that three of their principal suppliers were selling objects that probably had been looted and that the museum continued to buy from them anyway.
In correspondence with the Getty, the dealers made frank, almost casual references to ancient sites from which artifacts had been excavated, apparently in violation of Italian law, the records show. The Getty's outside attorney considered the letters "troublesome" and advised the museum not to turn them over to Italian authorities.
Although Italy is seeking the return of 42 objects, the Getty's lawyers did their own assessment and determined that the museum had purchased 82 artworks from dealers and galleries under investigation by the Italians.
They include 54 of the 104 ancient artworks that the Getty has identified as masterpieces.
The internal Getty documents include memos, purchase agreements, correspondence and other records going back 20 years. They paint a picture of a young, aggressive institution determined to build a world-class collection as governments were placing tight restrictions on the antiquities trade.
Among the findings:
• A 1985 memo shows that Getty officials learned from dealer Giacomo Medici that three objects the museum was acquiring had been taken from ruins near Naples decades after Italian law made it illegal. The Getty completed the $10.2-million acquisition anyway.
• An acting curator accused the Getty in a 1986 resignation letter of turning a blind eye to problems in the antiquities department. With eerie prescience, he said the museum's "curatorial avarice" would someday lead to an external investigation and demands from a foreign government for the return of looted artifacts.
• In 1987, Harold Williams, then chief executive of the Getty Trust, and John Walsh, then director of the museum, discussed the "prevailing assumption" that antiquities with no documented ownership had probably been looted, according to Walsh's handwritten notes. Williams referred to one of the Getty's main dealers, Robin Symes, as a "fence," according to the notes, and asked his staff: "Are we willing to buy stolen property for some higher aim?"
Williams and Walsh say they were speaking hypothetically and that the museum never knowingly bought looted artworks.
• In correspondence with Marion True, the Getty's curator of antiquities, Medici and another dealer, Robert E. Hecht Jr., described artifacts they were offering for sale in terms that suggested they were illegally excavated. In one letter, Hecht told True that an ancient urn was being sought by Italian police. The Getty later purchased the object.
• In 1993, the Getty bought an ancient gold funerary wreath despite True's initial misgivings that the piece was "too dangerous" to acquire. The Getty later received a copy of an Interpol cable describing the item as having an "illicit origin."
Italian authorities have charged True, Hecht and Medici with conspiring to traffic in looted antiquities. Medici was convicted last year and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He has remained free while he appeals.
The trial for True and Hecht began in July and is scheduled to resume in November in Rome.
Medici, Hecht and Symes deny knowingly selling looted art.
The Italian legal offensive poses a threat to one of the Getty's most important collections as the museum prepares to reopen the Getty Villa in Malibu as a showcase for antiquities after a six-year, $275-million renovation.
True and her attorneys declined to comment for this article, beyond asserting her innocence.
In a statement, the Getty said Friday that it had "never knowingly acquired an object that had been illegally excavated or exported…. "
Although dealers under investigation "have been discredited," the Getty statement said, that "does not mean that any object acquired from one of them was illegally excavated or exported."
The Getty said it could not comment further on issues raised by "privileged and confidential information" from the Getty's files without jeopardizing True's right to a fair trial.
"Based upon the information and evidence that it has seen, the Getty continues to believe that Dr. True's trial should result in her exoneration," the statement said.
In a separate statement, Williams, the former chief executive, said that it "had been common practice for decades for reputable museums and collectors to acquire" artifacts with no documented ownership history, particularly when "possible countries of origin were doing nothing to protect their sites or enforce their laws."
Walsh, the former museum director, said: "We all agreed — and the acquisition policy is clear — that nothing would justify buying an object that we knew or strongly suspected was stolen."
Countries Outlaw the Plundering of Antiquities
For centuries, the Mediterranean's ancient ruins had been plundered by invading armies and touring colonialists, amateur collectors and farmers-turned-tomb raiders. When oil magnate John Paul Getty began buying antiquities in the 1930s, collectors were more interested in whether artifacts were authentic than in whether they had been legally excavated and exported.
In 1939, the Italian government declared that all ancient objects uncovered from Italian soil after 1902 were state property and could not be sold or exported without government permission. But the restriction, like other so-called patrimony laws, was not widely recognized by other countries, and illegal trafficking continued.
That was changing by the time Getty died in 1976, leaving his fledgling museum $700 million to build on his collection.
In 1970, a UNESCO convention called on governments to make it illegal to "import, export or transfer ownership" of cultural property without permission from the country of origin. Italy ratified the convention in 1979. The U.S. Congress followed in 1983.
By then, American criminal law was already getting tough on antiquities trafficking.
In 1977, five American dealers were convicted in Texas of conspiring to sell looted artifacts from Mexico. The case recognized the foreign government's ownership claim and established that the artifacts were stolen property under U.S. law.
By the early 1980s, "people were on notice that if they knowingly dealt in archeological artifacts illegally removed from a country with a national ownership law, they were committing a crime in the United States," said Patty Gerstenblith, a law professor at DePaul University in Chicago and co-chairwoman of the American Bar Assn.'s international cultural property committee.
The Getty and other museums faced a dilemma. One choice was to limit their purchases to antiquities held by established collections and accompanied by documents showing they had been legally excavated and exported. But the pool of such objects was small.
The alternative was to take a chance on objects without documented ownership history, or provenance. Although it is difficult to prove that such objects have been looted, the consensus today among archeologists and legal experts is that most were probably removed without the source country's permission.
In recent years, court rulings have demolished what had been a common defense among curators and collectors: that they did not know artworks had been looted.
In 1999, the U.S. government reclaimed a golden libation bowl and returned it to Italy at the request of Italian authorities. A wealthy New York collector who paid $1.2 million for the item said he didn't know it had been smuggled. A federal appeals court upheld the seizure.
In 2002, a New York jury convicted a prominent dealer of conspiring to sell a stolen sculpture of an Egyptian pharaoh. The defendant claimed he didn't know it had been stolen. The judge told jurors that they could consider the dealer's deliberate avoidance of knowledge the equivalent of knowing it had been stolen. Higher courts upheld the conviction.
Despite the changing legal environment, looters have remained active. They descend on archeological sites, searching for buried objects with long metal probes. In Italy, they have been known to dig up tombs with backhoes.
The looters work in concert with smugglers who spirit items out of the country, usually to Switzerland, where lax laws have until recently allowed smugglers to flourish.
Publicly, the Getty and True have decried looting.
In a 2000 speech in Denver to the Assn. of Art Museum Directors, True argued against the practice of presuming that antiquities without provenance are "innocent until proven guilty."
"Experience has taught me that in reality, if serious efforts to establish a clear pedigree for the object's recent past prove futile, it is most likely — if not certain — that it is the product of the illicit trade, and we must accept responsibility for this fact," she said.
Four months after the speech, Italian officials informed the Getty that True was a target of their investigation.
The case stemmed from a breakthrough in Italy's long-running effort to curb trafficking, a 1995 raid by Swiss police on a warehouse in Geneva used by Medici, the Italian who supplied many of the Getty's dealers.
Authorities found nearly 4,000 artifacts in various stages of restoration, as well as neatly organized albums with Polaroid photos of thousands of other objects already sold.
The photos depicted what appeared to be freshly excavated objects: ancient pots still in pieces, marble statues covered in dirt. The Italians were very eager to know what had become of them.
Acting Curator Investigates Provenance of 3 Objects
On learning of the Italian investigation in 2000, the Getty hired a New York criminal defense attorney, Richard Martin, to conduct an internal review.
Among the documents Martin and his colleagues found was a memo showing that the Getty had purchased items excavated from an Italian site long after Italian law prohibited it.
In the confidential October 1985 memo, Arthur Houghton, acting curator of antiquities, told Deborah Gribbon, then deputy director of the museum and later its director, that he had looked into the origins of three objects the Getty was acquiring from New York businessman Maurice Tempelsman, a private collector.(SEE DOCUMENT)
They were a ceremonial marble basin with a painted scene from Homer's "Iliad," a sculpture of two mythical griffons attacking a fallen deer and a marble statue of Apollo. The Getty paid $10.2 million for the objects, which date back 2,300 years.
Houghton had been asked to comment on another expert's theory that the artworks were found together. In the memo, he wrote that he had contacted Medici and learned that the dealer "had bought all three objects from the excavators."
According to the memo, Medici told Houghton that two of the artifacts had been unearthed from a tomb in Southern Italy in 1976 or 1977 and the third from the ruins of a villa nearby.
"The fact that the dealer is asserting that he got them from excavators — that is important," Ricardo Elia, a Boston University associate professor of archeology and an expert on the antiquities trade, said in an interview. "It means that the buyers at the Getty would be knowingly buying looted and smuggled antiquities."
The Houghton memo identified Hecht and Symes as middlemen in the sale of the artworks to Tempelsman.
The records contain no indication that Houghton or Gribbon reconsidered the purchase based on what Medici had revealed. All three objects remain in the collection.
Years later, the Polaroid photos found in Medici's Swiss warehouse revealed more about their origin. One of the photos shows the Apollo lying on a board, unrestored and dirty.
The Italian Carabinieri, or paramilitary police, later posted the picture on its website, calling it an example of "looted art that needs to be returned."
Asked for comment earlier this month, Gribbon sent an e-mail denying that she or anyone else at the Getty engaged in illegal behavior, adding that patrimony laws "were little known and seldom enforced" at that time.
The information in the Houghton memo was "unverified" and did not prove that the artworks had been illegally excavated, said Gribbon, who resigned last year as director of the Getty Museum.
Houghton, who declined to comment, resigned from the Getty in 1986. His resignation letter said he was fed up that his attempts to investigate a predecessor's conduct had been stifled.
That was the letter in which Houghton criticized the museum for "curatorial avarice" and said Getty leadership had chosen "a path of self-enforced ignorance of fact." He predicted that the Getty could face "the demand by another country or institution for the return of material in the museum's collection."
Failing to deal with these issues, he warned, would be "catastrophic" for the Getty's reputation.
'Troublesome' Letters About 'Illegal Excavations' Cited
On April 30, 1986 — the date of Houghton's resignation — True was named curator of antiquities.
True had held positions at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum and a London antiquities dealership. She was completing her doctorate at Harvard, where she specialized in ancient Greek vases.
True had met Hecht in 1972 or 1973, when she was a curatorial assistant at the Boston museum. Hecht is the scion of an East Coast department store family who has lived in Europe for decades, nursing a passion for coins and antiquities.
In 1972, Hecht sold New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art an urn painted by Euphronious, the master painter of ancient Greece. Allegations that the artifact had been recently looted from Italy sparked an international controversy. The allegations were not proved, and the Metropolitan kept the urn.
True also knew Medici. She was introduced to him at an auction in Switzerland around 1984, she has told Italian officials. Medici used four Geneva warehouses with showrooms.
In letters to True uncovered during the Getty's internal review, Hecht and Medici made little effort to hide their involvement in selling items of suspicious origin.
In one undated, handwritten letter, Hecht informed True that an ancient vase, or pelike, he had offered to the Getty might not be available because Italian authorities were looking for it. (SEE DOCUMENT)
"Yesterday my friend called me [and] said that since the Carabinieri were looking for the pelike with the arms of Achilles he abandoned negotiations. So I will not have it," Hecht wrote. "Perhaps others may acquire it. Sorry. Best wishes, Bob."
The Getty purchased the pelike for $42,000 in July 1986.
Museum files list the seller as Fritz Burki, Hecht's Swiss antiquities restorer. Italian court records say Burki has admitted that he frequently "possessed, restored and transferred as dummy — in particular to the J. Paul Getty Museum — various objects of illegal provenance received by Medici and Hecht."
In 1991, True wrote to Medici asking for information about the origins of three pottery fragments in the Getty's collection on behalf of a staff member who was studying them.
In handwritten Italian, Medici replied that the fragments came from a "chamber-type tomb" at Cerveteri, one of the most heavily looted sites in Italy.
Years later, the Polaroid photos found in Medici's Swiss warehouse revealed more about their origin. One of the photos shows the Apollo lying on a board, unrestored and dirty.
The Italian Carabinieri, or paramilitary police, later posted the picture on its website, calling it an example of "looted art that needs to be returned."
Asked for comment earlier this month, Gribbon sent an e-mail denying that she or anyone else at the Getty engaged in illegal behavior, adding that patrimony laws "were little known and seldom enforced" at that time.
The information in the Houghton memo was "unverified" and did not prove that the artworks had been illegally excavated, said Gribbon, who resigned last year as director of the Getty Museum.
Houghton, who declined to comment, resigned from the Getty in 1986. His resignation letter said he was fed up that his attempts to investigate a predecessor's conduct had been stifled.
That was the letter in which Houghton criticized the museum for "curatorial avarice" and said Getty leadership had chosen "a path of self-enforced ignorance of fact." He predicted that the Getty could face "the demand by another country or institution for the return of material in the museum's collection."
Failing to deal with these issues, he warned, would be "catastrophic" for the Getty's reputation.
'Troublesome' Letters About 'Illegal Excavations' Cited
On April 30, 1986 — the date of Houghton's resignation — True was named curator of antiquities.
True had held positions at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum and a London antiquities dealership. She was completing her doctorate at Harvard, where she specialized in ancient Greek vases.
True had met Hecht in 1972 or 1973, when she was a curatorial assistant at the Boston museum. Hecht is the scion of an East Coast department store family who has lived in Europe for decades, nursing a passion for coins and antiquities.
In 1972, Hecht sold New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art an urn painted by Euphronious, the master painter of ancient Greece. Allegations that the artifact had been recently looted from Italy sparked an international controversy. The allegations were not proved, and the Metropolitan kept the urn.
True also knew Medici. She was introduced to him at an auction in Switzerland around 1984, she has told Italian officials. Medici used four Geneva warehouses with showrooms.
In letters to True uncovered during the Getty's internal review, Hecht and Medici made little effort to hide their involvement in selling items of suspicious origin.
In one undated, handwritten letter, Hecht informed True that an ancient vase, or pelike, he had offered to the Getty might not be available because Italian authorities were looking for it. (SEE DOCUMENT)
"Yesterday my friend called me [and] said that since the Carabinieri were looking for the pelike with the arms of Achilles he abandoned negotiations. So I will not have it," Hecht wrote. "Perhaps others may acquire it. Sorry. Best wishes, Bob."
The Getty purchased the pelike for $42,000 in July 1986.
Museum files list the seller as Fritz Burki, Hecht's Swiss antiquities restorer. Italian court records say Burki has admitted that he frequently "possessed, restored and transferred as dummy — in particular to the J. Paul Getty Museum — various objects of illegal provenance received by Medici and Hecht."
In 1991, True wrote to Medici asking for information about the origins of three pottery fragments in the Getty's collection on behalf of a staff member who was studying them.
In handwritten Italian, Medici replied that the fragments came from a "chamber-type tomb" at Cerveteri, one of the most heavily looted sites in Italy.
Williams told the group that the "prevailing assumption" about artifacts with no documented ownership was the "likelihood that they are stolen — in violation of laws," the notes say.
He left the group with this question:
"Are we willing to buy stolen property for some higher aim?"
In a recent interview, Williams said he "probably" overstated the question to provoke his staff to reflect on the implications of the Getty's acquisitions.
With Williams' question in mind, Walsh said, he went back to his office and jotted the outlines of a new policy (SEE DOCUMENT). First, he described the ethical challenge facing the Getty, as Williams had summed it up:
"1. We knowingly buy stolen goods.
"2. We knowingly deal with liars by accepting their warranties."
Walsh then sketched what would become the museum's first formal antiquities policy in 1987. It called for the museum to ask for information from dealers about objects they were selling and, before making a purchase, to ask the country of origin whether there was proof an item had been stolen.
The Getty would also publicize an acquisition quickly and return it if shown evidence that it was looted, Walsh wrote.
Asking foreign governments for evidence is unlikely to elicit information about an object's origin because illegally excavated artifacts are by definition undocumented, experts say.
In the case of the Aphrodite, Italian officials informed the Getty's attorneys that they had "no information as to the origin and authenticity."
Records show the Getty bought the statue in 1988 for $18 million, a sum not previously disclosed. It was the most the museum had ever paid for an antiquity. In keeping with its practice, the Getty also did not reveal the source of the statue: Symes.
But Getty officials built stringent safeguards into the museum's contract with Symes in case evidence surfaced that the statue had been looted. The museum paid $9 million upfront with the balance paid after four years, when the dealer's warranty that the piece was authentic and legitimately acquired had expired.
As a precaution, Williams insisted that Symes store more than $9 million in art at the Getty as collateral.
The acquisition prompted an international furor. Italian officials launched a formal investigation into rumors that the statue had been illegally excavated in the Sicilian city of Morgantina. But the Italians could not find proof, and the controversy subsided.
Then in 2001, a Swiss resident was convicted in an Italian court of trafficking the Aphrodite, based in part on statements by local residents that the statue was illegally dug up in Morgantina three months before Symes offered it to True.
A court later overturned the conviction, ruling that the statute of limitations for the offense had expired. But Italian officials say the evidence of looting remains unchallenged. They are citing it in their request for the return of the Aphrodite.
'Something Too Dangerous for Us to Be Involved With'
In 1993, with the Getty's initial antiquities policy in place, True pursued another problematic acquisition: a gold Greek funerary wreath.
An explosion of thin gold leaves and blooms accented by inlaid colored glass, the piece is featured on the cover of the museum's 2002 antiquities handbook. The object is of Greek origin and not a part of the Italian case.
Williams told the group that the "prevailing assumption" about artifacts with no documented ownership was the "likelihood that they are stolen — in violation of laws," the notes say.
He left the group with this question:
"Are we willing to buy stolen property for some higher aim?"
In a recent interview, Williams said he "probably" overstated the question to provoke his staff to reflect on the implications of the Getty's acquisitions.
With Williams' question in mind, Walsh said, he went back to his office and jotted the outlines of a new policy (SEE DOCUMENT). First, he described the ethical challenge facing the Getty, as Williams had summed it up:
"1. We knowingly buy stolen goods.
"2. We knowingly deal with liars by accepting their warranties."
Walsh then sketched what would become the museum's first formal antiquities policy in 1987. It called for the museum to ask for information from dealers about objects they were selling and, before making a purchase, to ask the country of origin whether there was proof an item had been stolen.
The Getty would also publicize an acquisition quickly and return it if shown evidence that it was looted, Walsh wrote.
Asking foreign governments for evidence is unlikely to elicit information about an object's origin because illegally excavated artifacts are by definition undocumented, experts say.
In the case of the Aphrodite, Italian officials informed the Getty's attorneys that they had "no information as to the origin and authenticity."
Records show the Getty bought the statue in 1988 for $18 million, a sum not previously disclosed. It was the most the museum had ever paid for an antiquity. In keeping with its practice, the Getty also did not reveal the source of the statue: Symes.
But Getty officials built stringent safeguards into the museum's contract with Symes in case evidence surfaced that the statue had been looted. The museum paid $9 million upfront with the balance paid after four years, when the dealer's warranty that the piece was authentic and legitimately acquired had expired.
As a precaution, Williams insisted that Symes store more than $9 million in art at the Getty as collateral.
The acquisition prompted an international furor. Italian officials launched a formal investigation into rumors that the statue had been illegally excavated in the Sicilian city of Morgantina. But the Italians could not find proof, and the controversy subsided.
Then in 2001, a Swiss resident was convicted in an Italian court of trafficking the Aphrodite, based in part on statements by local residents that the statue was illegally dug up in Morgantina three months before Symes offered it to True.
A court later overturned the conviction, ruling that the statute of limitations for the offense had expired. But Italian officials say the evidence of looting remains unchallenged. They are citing it in their request for the return of the Aphrodite.
'Something Too Dangerous for Us to Be Involved With'
In 1993, with the Getty's initial antiquities policy in place, True pursued another problematic acquisition: a gold Greek funerary wreath.
An explosion of thin gold leaves and blooms accented by inlaid colored glass, the piece is featured on the cover of the museum's 2002 antiquities handbook. The object is of Greek origin and not a part of the Italian case.
Steiner, who left the Getty in 1999, declined to comment, as did Gribbon and Cobey.
In 1999, the museum sent three items, including a marble bust of an athlete, to Italy after an archeological publication identified it as coming from an excavation in Southern Italy.
Documents show that the Getty didn't seek restitution from the Fleischmans, as provided in its contract with the couple, but went to Symes, who had sold the bust to the Fleischmans. Symes agreed to compensate the museum with other artworks.
Based on the seized Polaroid photos, the Italians have identified 11 other objects from the Fleischman collection as having been looted and are seeking their return.
Barbara Fleischman, a Getty board member since 2000, denied that the museum had laundered objects through her and her late husband's collection and said they never thought the items they were buying could have been looted.
Provenance, she added, was "not an issue at the time."
"We were absolute innocents," she said. "We thought we were buying it from legitimate dealers. Looking back at it, maybe it was naive."
Symes' Guarantees About Statue Called 'Worthless'
In 2001, Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri flew to California to question True under oath about the Getty's acquisitions and her dealings with Medici, Hecht and Symes.
Afterward, True sparked a debate among Getty attorneys and top officials when she drafted a proposal to acquire a Hellenic bronze statute of the sea god Poseidon. The Italians had long claimed the piece was looted.
The British Railway Pension Fund had bought the statue from Symes in 1976. A controversy erupted when it was exhibited two years later: A leading Italian scholar said it had been dredged from the Bay of Naples and smuggled out of the country.
Symes had told the British pension fund that he legally acquired the statue from a Greek woman who, with her late husband, had bought it in 1938 and kept it in Switzerland.
Getty attorneys learned that the woman was actually the aunt of Symes' former business partner and of such limited means that she probably never owned valuable art.
The discovery fueled worries that True's attempt to buy the controversial statue would provoke Italian authorities, who had already put the Getty on notice they were investigating Symes.
Italian authorities have interviewed Symes for a total of 24 hours about the antiquities trade, he acknowledged in a recent interview.
Cobey, the Getty's in-house attorney, argued that True faced "substantial risks … by allowing herself to be associated with this acquisition, given the object's history and her own unresolved status with Prosecutor Ferri," records show.
She characterized Symes' guarantees about the statue's background as "worthless."
Cobey declined to comment. The Getty eventually abandoned the purchase.
"Even in the absence of absolute proof of theft," Cobey wrote in one e-mail, "when should a reasonable person see that the sirens are going off, the red lights flashing?"
Safeguarding treasures
Timeline tracks reforms and legal developments in the world of antiquities.
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1939: Italy passes a cultural patrimony law declaring all archeological artifacts to be government property unless the items were in private hands before 1902.
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1970: A UNESCO convention calls for tighter international import-export restrictions on cultural property.
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1977: Several art dealers are convicted of conspiring to sell stolen artifacts in the first American criminal case to recognize a foreign country's ownership of archeological items under U.S. law.
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1979: Italy ratifies the UNESCO accord.
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1983: Congress ratifies the UNESCO accord, committing the U.S. to greater import controls on antiquities.
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1987: The Getty Museum announces its first antiquities acquisition policy, which relies on the guarantees of dealers and puts the burden on foreign governments to prove an artifact has been looted.
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1995: In September, Swiss authorities raid Geneva warehouses, seizing thousands of illicit antiquities and photos of thousands more. Items shown in 42 of the photos were later identified by Italian police as being in the Getty's collection.
In November, the Getty announces a tougher acquisition policy that allows the museum to purchase only those antiquities held in private collections before 1995 or with written documentation.
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1999: Getty antiquities curator Marion True testifies on Italy's behalf in favor of tighter U.S. imports of antiquities. The Getty returns three items to Italy after discovering they had been stolen or looted.
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2000: Italian authorities notify the Getty that True is a target of their investigation into the looting of antiquities.
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2001: The Getty's outside counsel advises Trust chief executive Barry Munitz not to give Italian authorities several "troublesome" documents that show True had close relationships with two art dealers, both of whom have since been named her co-defendants.
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2005: True trial is to resume in Rome in November.
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Source: Times reporting