AUBREY BURL ARCHAEOLOGIST HAS DIED AT 93

Aubrey Burl, who has died aged 93, was an unusual archaeologist for our times. The enthusiast’s megalithic expert, he combined the advantages of experience as a university lecturer and excavator, a redundancy package and a literary fluency to build an independent career as a successful writer. He published around 30 books about prehistoric standing stones of north-west Europe. In his 70s he turned to subjects of historical mystery, launching his last book – on Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady”, who he identified as the self-centred wife of John Florio – at the age of 88.

Megaliths are one of the distinguishing features of prehistoric Britain and Ireland – Burl listed around 1,300 stone circles alone. Long attracting public interest, they were often ignored by professional archaeologists, sniffy about mystics and sceptical that standing stones had much to tell about the past. Burl found a balanced path between academic indifference and naive obsession, no more so than in his discussions of ley lines and archaeoastronomy, bringing rare archaeological sense when the latter discipline most needed it. His writing appealed to many archaeologists but also to fans of the pot-smoking John Michell or the unbounded enthusiast Julian Cope – no mean feat.

In 1970, the year Burl obtained his MA at Leicester University with a thesis on stone circles, he became principal lecturer in archaeology at Kingston upon Hull College of Education. There for a little over a decade, he continued to research neolithic and bronze age ritual monuments. He directed five excavations, at stone circles in Northumberland, Moray, Aberdeenshire and the Isle of Arran, and he established a reputation as a readable and informed writer, producing some of his key books.

The first of these, The Stone Circles of the British Isles (1976), launched an enduring partnership with Yale University Press. Prehistoric Avebury (1979) was a fond analysis that mixed antiquarian and his personal observations of the then little-researched monuments in north Wiltshire. He wrote Rings of Stone (1979) to accompany photographs by Edward Piper, and Megalithic Rings (1980) for detailed surveys – many of which he had a part in – by the Thoms, father and son, who had contrived a “megalithic yard”, supposedly an ancient unit of measurement.

Finally, Rites of the Gods (1981) set out his distinctive vision of prehistoric Britain as a place of primitive religion and bleak living (“There is little sense of time or change,” complained one academic reviewer. “The approach is literary, not analytical”). He also fitted in lecturing, guiding and broadcasting, though, as a quiet man who preferred the company of friends and enthusiasts over a pint of beer or a glass of Laphroaig to the limelight of cameras, he was not destined to become a television personality.

Born in London, Aubrey was the son of Harry Burl, an engineer, and his wife, Lily (nee Wright). Called up in 1944, he joined the Royal Navy, where he became a sub-lieutenant. After studying at the University of London, he taught history and archaeology at Leicester University before moving to Hull. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and an honorary fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

He married first Olwen Hughes, a teacher and artist, with whom he had a son, Christopher; then Margaret O’Neil, a lecturer, with whom he had a son, Geoffrey; and finally Judith Lawson, an administrator at the University of Birmingham. She survives him.

• Harry Aubrey Woodruff Burl, writer and archaeologist, born 24 September 1926; died 8 April 2020

CORTEZ MAN SENTENCED FOR DAMAGING IN PUEBLO SITE

A Cortez man has been sentenced to federal prison for damaging an archaeological resource, an ancestral Puebloan site, in the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Shadrick Winbourn, 57, was sentenced to 12 months and one day for violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney’s office in Colorado.

Winbourn made several trips into a section of the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, near Cortez, in May and June 2017, where he located an ancestral Puebloan ceremonial site with a large dance plaza, a likely subterranean kiva, and multiple human burials. “Winbourn illegally excavated, removed, damaged and altered the site,” the news release said. He was arrested June 4, 2017, on an unrelated warrant, and a Bureau of Land Management ranger found pottery shards in Winbourn’s pockets and additional artifacts in a backpack.

In all, investigators found 64 items from the protected site in his possession, including jewelry, an axe head, and other tools, the release said. Archaeologists have restored the site and curated the stolen objects.

“Archaeological resources at the Canyons of the Ancients are irreplaceable cultural artifacts that have been entrusted to the common good,” said U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn in the release. “Anyone who seeks to destroy or profit off of these resources will face prosecution and serious consequences.”

The Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is 176,000 acres of public land administered by the BLM. It contains more than 6,355 recorded archaeological sites rich with well-preserved artifacts of native cultures.

ONE MILLION ROCKY MOUNTAIN TREASURE FOUND

A treasure chest full of gold, jewels and other valuables worth more than $1m (£790,000) is said to have been found in the Rocky Mountains.

Antiquities collector Forrest Fenn says he hid the bronze chest more than a decade ago, creating a treasure hunt for people to find it.

Thousands of people searched for it, many quitting their jobs and using up their savings. Four people died.

Now, Mr Fenn says, a man from "back East" has finally tracked it down.

"It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago," Mr Fenn, an 89-year-old millionaire from New Mexico, said in a statement.

NEW ZEALAND BURIAL GROUND IS MAORI ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE

Two people have been charged in relation to a vineyard built at Wairau Bar, an archaeological site, in Blenheim.

The charges were filed in the Blenheim District Court last week, on 3 June, by Heritage New Zealand following its investigation late last year into whether a vineyard at Wairau Bar modified or destroyed archaeological sites.

Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga chief executive Andrew Coleman said the Wairau Bar was well-known, and is believed to be one of the earliest Māori settlements.

"It's got urupā, it's got burial ground, there are lots of other archaeological features right across the Wairau Bar," Coleman said.

FAKE MESOPOTAMIAN FOUND FROM IRAN POSSIBLY

Whatever it was, after peeking inside with an X-ray machine, officers opened the trunks and found themselves gazing upon what at first appeared to be a treasure trove of Mesopotamian antiquities, protected by cardboard and bubble wrap. Most likely looted from archaeological sites in Iraq, they had been dispatched to a private address in the UK.

The lucrative business of supplying unscrupulous private collectors around the world with the looted heritage of the nations, that now straddle the lost empires of the ancient world, began in earnest in the chaos that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In recent years, however, thanks to increased stability and security in Iraq and the on-the-ground support of the British Museum and other overseas institutions, the situation has improved.

So much so, in fact, that when experts at the British Museum examined the contents of the two trunks, they discovered that the Border Force had intercepted not stolen artifacts worth tens of thousands of pounds, but a collection of worthless fake antiquities. To Dr. Simpson’s expert eye, the items were obviously very bad fakes. “All it took was one look, really,” he said. “It’s far better that there are fakes out there than real trafficked antiquities.”

Comparison of these original artifacts with the seized haul of fakes shows what the forgers were aiming for — and how badly they missed their target. Unlike looting, which deprives an entire nation of its heritage, faking artifacts has only one direct victim — an unscrupulous wealthy individual blessed, perhaps, with rather more money than sense.

Among the seized items were 190 fake clay tablets covered in cuneiform script; the early form of writing invented by the Sumerians some 6,000 years ago. The forgers had gone to the trouble of mastering the technique of creating the script by pressing a cut-reed or wooden stylus into damp clay — the word cuneiform comes from the Latin word for a wedge. “It’s actually quite a lot of effort to produce these things,” says Simpson, but it was all in vain. Much of what they had written was “gibberish.” Many of the inscriptions were an incoherent jumble of signs, some invented, while others were upside-down. If this had not been enough to give the game away, it was obvious that the clay tablets, quite apart from having been made from the wrong sort of clay, had all been fired to a high temperature in a modern kiln, whereas the real items would have been dried by the heat of the sun.

Even more suspicious, concluded the British Museum, was the fact that “the collection seemed to represent a virtually complete range of basic types known from ancient Mesopotamia.” It included cushion-shaped school texts designed to be held in one hand and written on one side only; inscribed cylinders designed for burial; administrative texts; a royal inscription referring to the late-Assyrian king, Adadnirari, a mathematical tablet; and an amulet clearly copied from a unique example excavated at the Assyrian capital of Nimrud.

It was, said the museum, “as if the whole genre of ancient Mesopotamian writing was represented in one shipment: An entire collection ready for a single, uninformed buyer.” Faking, added Simpson, “is an emerging trend. There is still looting going on in certain parts of the world — in parts of Syria there has been very bad looting. But the supply of fakes is on the increase. We see examples brought to us by law enforcement all the time, and this applies to mosaics, glass, metal, carved stone sculptures and clay tablets, like these.”

Looting in Iraq is now largely under control, said Simpson, who last year visited one site in the south of the country that had been seriously damaged by looters in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion. “That was a really bad case of organized looting of an early second millennium BC site, where all the prominent areas of ancient
It was, he said, in effect “a massive crime scene.”

The seized fakes will now be used for teaching and training purposes and a selection will go on display for a short period at the British Museum when it reopens.

Two mysteries continue to surround the consignment seized by the UK Border Force. The news about the seizure has emerged only now, almost a year after the discovery, for legal reasons, yet despite extensive investigations no arrests have been made in the UK.
The source of the fakes also remains unknown. Exactly where the forgers’ workshops are based “is difficult to say at the moment,” said Simpson. “We believe they are probably somewhere within the Middle East, but we have seen evidence of metalwork purporting to be from Iran or the Islamic world actually being made in the Far East. There is a global market.

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER HAS A MODEST DEBUT IN A LITTLE NEWSPAPER--TO BE AUCTIONED

One of the most important articles ever published by a 19th-century newspaper called The Baltimore Patriot & Evening Advertiser didn’t even make the front page. It appeared on Page 2.

The article was about a new song, “The Defence of Fort M’Henry.” The title was anything but catchy or enduring, but the newspaper said the song itself was “destined long to outlast the occasion, and outlive the impulse, which produced it.”

For once, a prediction in a newspaper proved correct. The song caught on, and its author, Francis Scott Key, became famous for it after it was retitled “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Still, that issue of The Patriot took on historical significance, because it was the first printing of Key’s lyrics with a date — Sept. 20, 1814, three days after Key had completed the lines he had begun scribbling on the back of a letter he was carrying.

The issue was important enough to end up in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, which concentrates on 18th- and 19th-century documents and memorabilia, especially newspapers. Its goal is to have one copy of every newspaper printed between 1640 and 1876 in the American colonies or, after the Declaration of Independence, the United States. It has two million newspapers on hand.

NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY FOUND NEAR WESTERN WALL IN Jerusalem

Excavations have revealed a unique Second Temple period subterranean system hewn in the bedrock beneath an impressive 1400-year-old

Archaeologists have begun to ponder about a new mystery near the Western Wall: Why did people invest such huge efforts and resources in hewing such an impressive subterranean system 2,000 years ago, while life was going on in the homes above-ground?

This system, the first of its kind uncovered in the area of the Western Wall Plaza and Tunnels, was exposed in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the “Beit Straus” complex, beneath the entrance lobby to the Western Wall Tunnels. The excavations at the site, renewed about a year ago, are being conducted as part of the work to prepare for a new and fascinating tour in addition to the classic Western Wall Tunnels tour run by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation. Researchers suppose that the complex was used by Jerusalem residents during the Early Roman period, prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The system was sealed beneath the floor of a large and impressive structure from the Byzantine period, waiting for some 2,000 years to be discovered.

The discovery was made by students of a pre-military preparatory program in Jerusalem. The students have been integrated in archaeological digs as part of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s educational policy, wishing to connect youth with their past. The system they discovered is composed of an open courtyard and two rooms arranged in three levels one above the other and connected by hewn staircases.

Neanderthal gene amazing associated with European women

Karolinska Institute
Summary:
One in three women in Europe inherited the receptor for progesterone from Neanderthals -- a gene variant associated with increased fertility, fewer bleedings during early pregnancy and fewer miscarriages, according to new research.