TURKEY ASKING U.S. MUSEUMS TO RETURN ANTIQUITIES

The Getty and the New York Met are among the U.S. institutions the Turkish government has contacted over artifacts it believes were smuggled out of the country.


The government of Turkey is asking American museums to return dozens of artifacts that were allegedly looted from the country's archaeological sites, opening a new front in the search for antiquities smuggled out of their original countries through an illicit trade.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Cleveland Museum of Art and Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection are among the institutions that the Turkish government has contacted, officials say.

Turkey believes the antiquities were illegally excavated and smuggled out of the country after the passage of a 1906 law that gave the state ownership of antiquities in the ground.

Inspired by the success of its Mediterranean neighbors Italy and Greece, Turkey is taking a more aggressive stance toward its claims, many of which were first made decades ago.
Turkey is presenting the museums with supporting evidence and has threatened to halt all loans of art to those institutions until they respond to the claims. Loans have already been denied to the Met, a Turkish official said.

Confronted with evidence, the Getty, the Met, the Cleveland, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Princeton University Art Museum have returned more than 100 looted objects to Italy and Greece, changed their acquisition policies and formed collaboration agreements that allow for loans to replace acquisitions of suspect material.

But new evidence continues to emerge, underscoring that the scope of the problem is far wider. In January, Italy announced that it had recovered an additional 200 objects and fragments from the Met and Princeton after they were tied to an ongoing criminal investigation of Italian antiquities dealer Edoardo Almagia and Princeton antiquities curator Michael Padgett.

The 18 contested objects at the Met are all from the private collection of Norbert Schimmel, a longtime Met trustee who died in 1990. The museum acquired the Schimmel collection in 1989, and several of the contested objects are now highlights of the museum's Ancient Near East Galleries.

In hopes of avoiding protracted disputes, Turkey adopted a more aggressive stance in 2010, barring loans to institutions harboring contested objects. The Art Newspaper reported earlier this month that two British museums have recently been denied loans.

jason.felch@latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

CHUMASH CEMETERIES IN MALIBU, CALIFORNIA

Because I spend the winter months in Malibu I was intrigued by an article in the local "Surfside News" on February 16,2012. Chumash are Native Americans that lived in the Malibu-Santa Barbara area in prehistory. And some of their descendants still do The article headlined "Chumash Cemeteries Were !Preservation Opportunity."

Here's an edited overview:

Some Malibuites may be unaware that they drive, shop and in some areas even live on what was once consecrated ground. Large Chumsh and pre-Chumash cemeteries are known to have existed at Arroyo Sequit, Trancas Canon, Point Dume, Paradise Cove, Solstice Canyon and Malibu Lagoon (near the present day famous surfing beach). Archaeologists estimate there are hundreds of smaller grave sites scattered throughout the Santa Monica Mountains.

A number of significant Chumash sites were leveled or buried in the 1930s and 1940s to make way for Pacific Coast Highway. Archaeologist E. K Burnett, in a monograph published in 1944, describes numerous finds hastily excavated by teams attempting to survey and catalog sites before road crews bulldozed them.

The Trancas Canyon Cemetery site or CA-LAN-197, was initially excavated in 1968 by a group of Malibu residents. UCLA archaeologists David Thomas and John Beaton later stepped in to supervise he excavation. The site, located under what is ow the Trancas Garden Center and the shopping center parking lot, contained more than 100 burials dating to approximately 310-430 B.C., according to radiocarbon data.

Two cemeteries associated with Humaliwo -- the Chumash community that gave Malibu its name -- located along the edge of Malibu Creek at the Malibu Lagoon, cover a 2500 year period of Malibu history according to archaeologist Chester King.

Chumash and pre-Chumash burials continue to be unearthed in Malibu. UCLA field school students have been involved but according to a 2002 article in American Antiquity "The collections and associated documentation were in a state of disarray. Hundreds of hours were spent on organizing






and analyaing the Malibu material, including the artifacts, skeletal remains and documentation."

Because I spend the winter months in Malibu I was intrigued by an article in the local "Surfside News" on February 16,2012. Chumash are Native Americans that lived in the Malibu-Santa Barbara area in prehistory. And some of their descendants still do The article headlined "Chumash Cemeteries Were !Preservation Opportunity."

Here's an edited overview:

Some Malibuites may be unaware that they drive, shop and in some areas even live on what was once consecrated ground. Large Chumsh and pre-Chumash cemeteries are known to have existed at Arroyo Sequit, Trancas Canon, Point Dume, Paradise Cove, Solstice Canyon and Malibu Lagoon (near the present day famous surfing beach). Archaeologists estimate there are hundreds of smaller grave sites scattered throughout the Santa Monica Mountains.

A number of significant Chumash sites were leveled or buried in the 1930s and 1940s to make way for Pacific Coast Highway. Archaeologist E. K Burnett, in a monograph published in 1944, describes numerous finds hastily excavated by teams attempting to survey and catalog sites before road crews bulldozed them.

The Trancas Canyon Cemetery site or CA-LAN-197, was initially excavated in 1968 by a group of Malibu residents. UCLA archaeologists David Thomas and John Beaton later stepped in to supervise he excavation. The site, located under what is ow the Trancas Garden Center and the shopping center parking lot, contained more than 100 burials dating to approximately 310-430 B.C., according to radiocarbon data.

Two cemeteries associated with Humaliwo -- the Chumash community that gave Malibu its name -- located along the edge of Malibu Creek at the Malibu Lagoon, cover a 2500 year period of Malibu history according to archaeologist Chester King.

Chumash and pre-Chumash burials continue to be unearthed in Malibu. UCLA field school students have been involved but according to a 2002 article in American Antiquity "The collections and associated documentation were in a state of disarray. Hundreds of hours were spent on organizing


and analyaing the Malibu material, including the artifacts, skeletal

SEEING BENEATH STONEHENGE--TWO NEW 21ST CENTURY INVENTIONS HELP US UNDERSTAND AND VISIT STONEHENGE VIRTUALLY

I found this rather confusing when I went to these sites but possibly some of you may enjoy it:

Two new 21st Century inventions are helping us to understand and visit the wonders of Stonehenge from the comfort of our own homes. 'Google Under-the-Earth' is an extension of the well known 'Google Earth' and adds archaeological layers to the base levels. 'Seeing beneath Stonehenge' has been developed as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, using data gather by the combined team from the Universities of Sheffield, Manchester, Bristol, Southampton and London. The project has been funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and the software can be downloaded at blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/seeing-beneath-stonehenge and requires the base 'Google Earth' software installation as well.

If you do not have a PC and want to explore Stonehenge on the move? Then fear not. The University of Huddersfield (UK) and the web developers Ribui have developed an iPhone App called the 'Stonehenge Experience'. This app has really gone to town with voiceover commentaries, enhanced reality and even views of the henge when it was complete. Rupert Till, the modeller of the app and a senior lecturer at the University of Huddersfield, is quoted as saying "Creating the sound of Stonehenge as it was when it was first built was a really interesting challenge.

When put together with the Ribui app it makes for an absorbing immersive experience and allows people to see and hear Stonehenge as it was 5000 years ago". The app is available for download from the App Store (2.39.Euros, 1.99 UKP, 2.99 USD) at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stonehenge-experience/id486455671?mt=8

Edited from Bournemouth University (December 2011), New scientist (20 Dec 2011), Salisbury Journal (22 Dec 2011)
http://tinyurl.com/c4znl5t
[2 images, 1 video]
http://tinyurl.com/76ehysr

ARCHAEOLOGISTS BACK IN IRAQ -- HAVE FOUND 4500 YEAR OLD TEMPLE IN UR

Iraqi and foreign archaeologists have uncovered a temple at the Sumerian city of Ur, which dates back to about 2500 B.C., the head of the Antiquities Department says. So far the scientists have uncovered one of the walls of the temple along with numerous graves from the same period, said Hussein Rashid.

"An Italian excavation team in coordination with their Iraqi counterparts have uncovered the wall of a temple dating to 2500 B.C. at Tel Abu Tabeer in the ancient city of Ur," said Rashid. Rashid said there were three foreign excavation teams currently working in Iraq. It is the first team of foreign archaeologists to be working in the
country for more than two decades.

Rashid said an American team was to arrive in Iraq to excavate ancient mounds in the southern city of Nasiriya, the capital of Dhi Qar Province where the richest and most ancient Mesopotamian ruins are found. Rashid also said another Italian group will be arriving in the country to excavate the ancient Assyrian military capital, Nimrud, in the northern Province of Nineveh.

The Italian team in Ur is closely cooperating with scientist at Dhi Qar University. Rashid said Italian scientists will be lecturing on Iraq's ancient civilizations and languages in English.
.
http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news\2012-02-23\kurd.htm

NEANDERTHALS POSSIBLY ANCIENT MARINERS

IT LOOKS like Neanderthals may have beaten modern humans to the seas. Growing evidence suggests our extinct cousins criss-crossed the Mediterranean in boats from 100,000 years ago - though not everyone is convinced they weren't just good swimmers.

Neanderthals lived around the Mediterranean from 300,000 years ago. Their distinctive "Mousterian" stone tools are found on the Greek mainland and, intriguingly, have also been found on the Greek islands of Lefkada, Kefalonia and Zakynthos. That could be explained in two ways: either the islands weren't islands at the time, or our distant cousins crossed the water somehow.

Now, George Ferentinos of the University of Patras in Greece says we can rule out the former. The islands, he says, have been cut off from the mainland for as long as the tools have been on them.

Ferentinos compiled data that showed sea levels were 120 meters lower 100,000 years ago, because water was locked up in Earth's larger ice caps. But the seabed off Greece today drops down to around 300 meters, meaning that when Neanderthals were in the region, the sea would have been at least 180 meters deep (Journal of Archaeological Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2012.01.032).

Ferentinos thinks Neanderthals had a seafaring culture for tens of thousands of years. Modern humans are thought to have taken to the seas just 50,000 years ago, on crossing to Australia.

The journeys to the Greek islands from the mainland were quite short - 5 to 12 kilometers - but according to Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island, the Neanderthals didn't stop there. In 2008 he found similar stone tools on Crete, which he says are at least 130,000 years old. Crete has been an island for some 5 million years and is 40 kilometres from its closest neighbor - suggesting far more ambitious journeys.

Strasser agrees Neanderthals were seafaring long before modern humans, in the Mediterranean at least. He thinks early hominins made much more use of the sea than anyone suspects, and may have used the seas as a highway,rather than seeing them as a barrier. But the details remain lost in history. Any craft were presumably made from wood, so rotted away long ago. The oldest known Mediterranean boat, a dugout canoe from Lake Bracciano in Italy, is just 7000 years old. Ferentinos speculates that Neanderthals may have made something similar.

Even if Ferentinos is right, the Neanderthals were probably not the first hominin seafarers. One million-year-old stone tools have been found on the Indonesian island of Flores (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature 08844). Something,
perhaps primitive Homo erectus, crossed the sea to Flores before Neanderthals even evolved.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328544.800-neanderthals-were-ancient-mariners.html

THE FAMOUS ICEMAN MAY HOLD EARLIEST EVIDENCE OF LYME DISEASE

The 5,300-year-old ice mummy dubbed Ötzi, discovered in the Eastern Alps about 20 years ago, appears to have had the oldest known case of Lyme disease, new genetic analysis has revealed.

As part of work on the Iceman's genome - his complete genetic blueprint - scientists found genetic material from the bacterium responsible for the disease, which is spread by ticks and causes a rash and flu-like symptoms and can lead to joint, heart and nervous system problems. The new analysis also indicates the Iceman was lactose intolerant,
predisposed to cardiovascular disease, and most likely had brown eyes and blood type O.

To sequence the Iceman's genome, researchers took a sample from his hip bone. In it, they looked for not only human DNA - the chemical code that makes up genes - but also for that of other organisms. While they found evidence of other microbes, the Lyme disease bacterium, called Borrelia burgdorferi, was the only one known to cause disease, said Albert Zink, a study researcher and head of the European Institute for Mummies and the Iceman at the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano (EURAC) in Italy.

Lyme disease is transmitted by ticks in North America and Eurasia. It was first found in the United States in Connecticut in the mid-1970s; a similar disorder had been identified in Europe earlier in the 20th century.

The team also found he had a genetic predisposition for cardiovascular disease, supporting earlier scans showing the buildup of deposits within his arteries. In spite of the health problems from which the roughly 45-year-old Iceman suffered, he appears to have died a violent death. Researchers believe a flint arrowhead, shot into his left shoulder most likely killed him.

http://news.discovery.com/history/iceman-mummy-lyme-disease-120228.html

ANCIENT USES OF SOUND USED AT CHAVIN DE HUANTAR, A VILLAGE IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES

More than 3 millennia ago, people came to Chavin de Huantar, a village in a high valley in the Peruvian Andes, to hear the oracles speak - in the voice of resonant conch shell trumpets, with the help of some clever architectural design.
Chavin de Huantar consists of terraces, squares, ornate megaliths, and a temple, and there is abundant evidence that it was used for religious ceremonies. The site also contains bas-relief sculptures featuring animal imagery - jaguars, condors, and snakes - along with images of hallucinogenic plants and the tools used to prepare them for consumption.

Chavin de Huantar is particularly well suited to the study of ancient uses of sound, says Miriam Kolar, an archaeo-acoustics researcher at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. The interior contains elaborate, multilevel
mazes with long corridors and staircases that are well enough preserved to detect what the original residents must have heard. Moreover, ancient conch shell trumpets have been excavated in the village, and fossil conch shells are embedded in stones on the floor of the temple.

In the 1970s, a Peruvian archeologist identified a large canal at Chavin de Huantar with built-in terraces, which he proposed were designed to create sound from water rushing over edge. Kolar and her colleagues suspected that other parts of the site might have been intended to create certain sound effects. Sure enough, a long, narrow central passage grew narrower, a design that ensured that the sound of conch shell trumpets - called pututus - propagates from the interior of the temple to the outside.

"[Kolar] has good evidence to show that [the acoustic design] was purposefully done, says Steven Waller, an independent scholar in La Mesa, California, who has investigated the acoustics of ancient ceremonial caves, and who has presented evidence showing that Stonehenge and other stone circles in the British Isles were designed with acoustics in mind.

Edited from Science Now (16 February 2012)
http://tinyurl.com/6qs44l3
[1 image, 1 audio]

OLDEST ROCK CARVING OF THE AMERICAS FOUND IN BRAZIL

A stick figure man with a giant phallus is the oldest rock carving found yet in the Americas, researchers say. Scientists discovered the ancient carving in a cave named Lapa do Santo in central-eastern Brazil. The region is home to Luzia, the oldest human skeleton found to date in South America.

Lapa do Santo is one of the largest rock shelters excavated yet in the region, a limestone cave covering an area of about 14,000 square feet (1,300 square meters). Here, researchers have found buried human remains, tools made of stone and bone, ash from hearths, and leftovers from meals of fruit and small game.

In 2009, digging about 13 feet (4m) below the surface, the scientists found a rock carving or petroglyph of a man packed into the side of the cave. The figure, which appears to be squatting with his arms outstretched, is about 12 inches (30cm) tall from head to feet and about 8 inches (20cm) wide. [Photos of Phallus Petroglyph and Cave]

"We discovered this petroglyph in the final moments of excavation at the site," said researcher Walter Alves Neves, an archaeologist and biological anthropologist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. The engraving is also depicted with a relatively oversized phallus about 2 inches (5 cm) long, or about as long as the man's left arm. "The figure is probably linked to some kind of fertility ritual," Neves said. "There is another site in the same region where you find paintings with men with oversized phalluses, and also pregnant women, and even a parturition (childbirth) scene."

Carbon dating and other tests of the sediment covering the petroglyph suggest the engraving dates between 9,000 and 12,000 years old. This makes it the oldest reliably dated instance of such rock art found yet in the Americas.


Edited from Plos One (February 2012), LiveScience (22 February 2012)
http://tinyurl.com/6tolk4q
http://tinyurl.com/86gwemw
[2 images, 1 drawing]