French perfidy

This is from StrategyPage, dated April 27:

While Iraq's use of GPS jammers did not succeed in the recent war (the jammers were quickly located and bombed), three years earlier, one of Iraq's allies did make successful use of GPS jamming against U.S. and British troops. In the Summer of 2000, American, British and French tanks were competing for a $1.4 billion contract to equip the Greek army. For some reason, the GPS gear in the American and British tanks never seemed to work correctly during the tests. It was later discovered that the French had brought a small GPS jammer to the tank evaluation area and rigged it so a French officer could turn the jammer on and off remotely whenever the American or British tanks were moving about. Eventually, Greece selected German tanks for its army.

Spotted thanks to Sgt Stryker.

The truth about the "powerful gun industry"

A short and sharp dissection of the myth of American gunmakers' financial and political power by Eugene Volokh:

The gun industry, as the New York Times has pointed out (Mar. 18, 2000, and June 15, 1999), is composed of "small, marginally profitable companies," with a combined revenue of $1.5 billion to $2 billion per year. "By contrast, Ford and General Motors have revenues of over $140 billion a year each," and despite that, car design and use is pretty heavily regulated; likewise, alcohol, gambling, and many other industries (many of which are quite heavily regulated) are much more powerful than the gun industry. According to opensecrets.org, in the 2000 federal election cycle (the last one for which they have full information), the total political contributions (counting only those of $200 or more) from industry members, PACs, and employees were under $4.4 million, which made the industry the 64th ranked contributor out of the over 80 that opensecrets.org counted.

Baghdad museum items in bank vaults reported intact

This sounds like good news:

Except for the apparent withdrawal by Saddam and son, the business end of Iraq's central bank -- its main vaults -- appear mostly intact. Civilian US officials say they have located the bank's main vaults, obtained some keys and combinations and sent Iraqi investigators inside. The vaults apparently escaped the looting that swept Baghdad after Saddam's regime fell.

US Treasury Department officials say the safes contain US dollars, Iraqi dinars, gold and items from the museum put there for safekeeping. They say the safes had flooded.

Meanwhile, From Ft. Myer's Pentagram, a report that gives yet more context for the events of April 9-10:

When asked if he could have done more to stop looting in Baghdad V Corps Commander Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace replied, "We were still getting our ass shot off as we went into Baghdad," Wallace said. "And our first responsibility was to defeat the enemy forces, both paramilitary and regular army. As we were able to stabilize the combat situation, then we able to get around to point security and area security of the ministries and museums and places such as that." Wallace was speaking to the Pentagon press corps Wednesday via a direct video hookup from Baghdad.

The general went on to say only 38 artifacts and maybe as few as 17 are now unaccounted for and his troops also secured another museum in downtown Baghdad on the same day and prevented looting there. Wallace admitted the enemy was more aggressive than his staff had war-gamed for and the presence of "fanatical, if not suicidal, foreign fighters" also surprised him. . .

The general was asked about the tactics used in the battle for Baghdad.

Rather than capturing sections of the city one by one as is usually the norm, Wallace sent armored raids into sections of the city and welcomed attack and then cut up the opposition.

Although many have bemoaned the lack of manpower allocated to taking Baghdad, given the tactics actually used, larger or more numerous forces might simply have caused more damage, more civilian casualties, and more friendly fire incidents. And if the methodology was to send out forces to be attacked, placing forces too near museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions might well have been seen as endangering those institutions more than protecting them. This would certainly be consistent with the reports of American forces retreating when fired upon from the National Museum.

UPDATE: Over at Eve Tushnet's, Bill Hauk asks if stationing troops at the museum prior to cessation of hostilities might even have been a violation of the 1999 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property, given the risk of them being attacked and the museum being damaged or destroyed as a result.

Roman bridge remains found in Northumberland

A rescue operation is set to save the remains of a spectacular Roman bridge which once spanned the Tyne. A trial excavation has revealed massive blocks from the stone bridge in the river bank at Corbridge in Northumberland. Evidence suggests that the bridge had a triumphal arch and was adorned with statues.

But the structure is under threat from riverbank erosion and Tyne and Wear Museums and English Heritage have lodged a bid with the Heritage Lottery Fund for backing to finance a rescue dig.

Read more here.

Damnatio memoriae in Babylon

Inside the ancient city of Babylon, they are taking the walls apart - brick by brick. Not looters, who have already trashed the restaurant, the tourist shop and the main entrance, but the museum's caretakers, who have a very different goal in mind.

Every day, Babylon's archeologist and director roam through the city's labyrinths removing the last vestige of Saddam Hussein: hundreds of bricks inscribed with his name. "In the era of President Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq, God preserve him," they read, "who rebuilt Babylon, as protector of the great Iraq and the builder of civilization." Since thieves torched the city's small tourist shack, the bricks have become the hottest souvenir at Babylon, where they are snatched up by Marines for a buck a piece. . .

"We vowed to remove his name when he left the throne," said Mohammed Taher, Babylon's museum director who now spends his days giving guided tours to Marines. . .

In his heyday, Saddam sought to recreate Babylon in his image. Soon after he officially took power in 1979, Saddam ordered the rebuilding of the city's walls and, like Nebuchadnezzar who ruled Babylon in sixth century B.C., he directed his builders to place his name on hundreds of bricks in the fortress. He rebuilt the city's amphitheatre, where he held the Babylon Festival every fall to celebrate the nation's cultural richness.

The "rebuilding", of course, was a hideous totalitarian fantasy, a false past trampling roughshod over the real. Read the full article here.

Art trove in monastery Down Under?

“Your drawing is much better than ours.”: So said Hugo Chapman of the Prints and Drawings Department at the British Museum, in 1999, when confronted with a tempera study of a head from Raphael’s workshop, probably by Giulio Romano. This head of an apostle is notable not only for its quality but also for its ownership: the community of Benedictine monks of New Norcia, western Australia, which was set up as a Catholic mission by Spain in 1846.

New Norcia is a hodge-podge of curiosities where anything might still turn up. The secret is now out, and since the discovery of the Raphael/Giulio Romano, scholars and auction houses have surveyed the paintings, none more so than Nicholas Lambourne of Christie’s. The works on paper, of which there are tens of thousands, may still conceal finds. . .

The paintings collection is of mostly Caravaggesque oils from Spain and Italy. There are a few good originals, such as a Holy Family and a Rest on the flight to Egypt by Giovanni Bernardino Azzolino, as well as works by Tomaioli, Giacinto Brandi, and the circle of Orazio Riminaldi. The majority are copies, as befits a a relatively poor mission sent round the world. The Giulio Romano, on the other hand, has an exceptional provenance. It was bought for purely religious reasons in 1941 at an auction of deaccessioned works from the National Gallery of Australia.

Read the rest here in the Art Newspaper.

BBC launches WW2 reunion website

World War II veterans are to be reunited online thanks to a new website launched by the BBC. Soldiers will be asked to share their wartime memories as part of a memorial to Britain's war heroes. Surfers will be able to look up their regiment and add their comments to the site. The project is part of the BBC's plans to commemorate next year's 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. It is hoped every British Army unit will eventually be represented on the site. . .

The site launches at the end of May at www.bbc.co.uk/ww2.

From the BBC (link has now been corrected).

Newly-discovered Goyas sell for 1.75m Euros

Two paintings by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya have been bought by the Spanish Government for 1.75m euros (£1.2m) each on Thursday. Before they were known to be Goya's work, the paintings were estimated to be worth only 1,500 euros (£1,075).

The two small religious paintings, Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) and Tobias y el Angel (Tobias and the Angel), were discovered by chance last year by an art expert for Spanish auction house Alcala Subastas.

Richard De Willermin, who specialises in 17th- and 18th-century Italian and Spanish art, was appraising some other works in a home in Madrid when he spotted one of the paintings in a hallway.

From the BBC.

Making mead

Here's an article titled The Making of Mead. I remember trying some store-bought product years ago that was nauseatingly sweet, yet as the author points out, it doesn't (and shouldn't) have to be that way. In fact, I once sampled some home-brewed mead that was more like a wheat beer -- not necessarily something I'd want to drink every day, but eminently drinkable.

Thunderbirds soar at auction

Figures and props from the Thunderbirds children's TV show have been auctioned for £112,000 - over five times more than expected. The only existing head of puppet astronaut John Tracy sold for £37,600 - despite being valued at just £6,000. The 23 Thunderbirds items, which also included military uniforms and clothing, were only expected to sell for a total of £20,000. . .

The Thunderbirds collection was saved from the rubbish dump by the seller's grandfather after the programme came to an end in the 1960s. . .

A Virgil Tracy puppet head, valued at £5,000-£6,000, ended up fetching £18,800, while a head of man servant Kyrano, with an estimate of £2,000-£3,000, sold for £11,750. Scott Tracy's blue International Rescue cap plus trousers and pistol were bought for £3,055, while Alan Tracy's cream suit fetched £1,528.

From the BBC.

Unique purple quahog pearl brooch

Was just at a local auction and the buzz among area dealers was this story (which doesn't appear to have been picked up nationally):

A $14 brooch purchased three years ago at a Bristol [RI] antiques shop has turned out to contain a priceless purple pearl, according to Alan Golash, a Newport antiques dealer.

Golash is somewhat vague about the details of his purchase, but his claims about the value of the rare pearl are corroborated by gem experts who examined it separately.

His partner found the brooch in a basket of costume jewelry at a former antiques shop in April 2000, but Golash said his partner doesn't want to be publicly identified. Golash also decined to identify the former shop or its owners.
"That's not fair to do to people," Golash said. "If they found out they sold something for $14 that was worth $1 million, it would kill them". . .

Golash, who restores antique jewelry, cleaned the brooch, and discovered it was made of 18-karat gold and enamel and included three small rose-cut diamonds. Based on its construction and Victorian styling, it is believed by jewelry experts to have been created between 1850 and 1875. But most notably, the brooch features two pearls, both of which gem experts say are all natural, purple and produced from quahogs. The larger pearl is the size of a marble.

How much of the story is true remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: publicizing where and for how little it was purchased is only asking for trouble.

More Baghdad questions, but few answers

When reports conflict, whom is one to believe? To date, the statements of Baghdad museum officials and employees have been eagerly reprinted, with few venturing to question their veracity. Yet there is more cause for caution than for trust, given the regime that the museum and its staff served. A particularly pointed attack on Donny George appears here (scroll down to the entry for May 1), and goes well beyond this brief excerpt:

There was much ado about the much-quoted Dr. George, who gave a colorful account of the museum under siege. He (again) pointed an accusing finger at the United States, for failing to prevent the "crime of the century." ("Was it done intentionally? I don't know. But moving a tank 50 of 60 meters would have saved mankind's heritage.")

And he got glowing press in London. The Guardian reported that his "bravery in tackling looters after the first Gulf war has earned him something of a reputation as an Indiana Jones figure." He also made a great impression on officialdom. "A typically wet performance on Tuesday from culture secretary Tessa Jowell," noted the Financial Times. "She found it 'truly humbling' to meet Donny George, veteran research director of Baghdad's National Museum." Clearly, Dr. George has landed on his feet.

But no one who knows how Saddam's Iraq worked should think for a moment that Dr. George was anything less than a faithful servant of his master. In fact, he seems to have been less the Indiana Jones of Iraqi archaeology, and more its Tariq Aziz. He was the urbane handler of the foreign archaeologists, with one overarching purpose: turning them into an anti-embargo lobby among the well-heeled. To judge from the sanctions-busting by many foreign archaeologists, he did a pretty good job. He certainly enjoyed the confidence of Saddam Hussein. Two years ago, Dr. George boasted to a foreign journalist that Saddam not only read his reports, but returned them with careful notes in the margins.

Early on, there were reports that the looting of the museum was the work of Ba'athist officials, and there have been many accounts now of storage areas robbed by persons having keys. Yet it seems that museum officials from Dr. George on down continue to dismiss the possibility of insider involvement, while continuing to proclaim the looting to be the work of fiendishly efficient foreign-controlled criminals. But as noted in this NY Times article, the picture is not holding up in all respects. Some of the best pieces have been returned, while an entire storeroom of copies was looted -- strongly suggesting smash-and-grab opportunism rather than cunning master art thieves. And it is quite odd that all the reports of master thieves at work seem to come from museum employees (as opposed to the very different reports from the museum's neighbors, as reported here [scroll down to "AND this"]); might it just be possible that they have reasons to want to deflect investigators' attention?

In fact, the Guardian reported on Tuesday that museum officials appear to be actively obstructing recovery efforts by the US military:

Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, who commands the taskforce conducting the search, said . . . "Before the war many items were removed from the museums and put in underground vaults in the Central Bank of Iraq. The vaults appear to be intact but no one has been able to tell us which vaults they are in, provide us with access, keys or combinations". . .

Dr Nawal al-Mutawazy, the museum's director, rejected the implication. "The Americans have asked for all the inventory of Iraq's museums and we did not supply them with it because most of the papers were scattered round the floor," she said. Asked about access to the vaults, she replied: "Who says there are vaults?"

But Dr Jabel Khalil, chairman of the state board of antiquities, confirmed that there were vaults. "We can't answer the question of what has been lost until we investigate what we have, and that will take lots of time, because some of the looting was from halls and some from vaults."

This doesn't seem to be getting the attention it should. Top museum officials are caught telling outright lies, openly contradicting not only what reliable observers have reported, but each other as well. It's high time to start reviewing this whole episode from the beginning, this time looking more critically at sources that hitherto have been regarded as unimpeachable. An example from the Times article referenced above:

Officials at the National Museum, whose scholars and scientists are widely respected, dismissed the idea that the museum was targeted as another symbol of Mr. Hussein's rule. They conceded, however, that particularly in recent years, the government had supported the work of the museum, which reopened in 2000 for the first time since the 1991 gulf war.

Colonel Bogdanos said that some Iraqis returned looted objects to him, rather than to the museum itself, which was identified with Mr. Hussein. "It has been a challenge to us that the Iraq museum is closely identified with both the prior regime and its Baathist Party," he said. "Everyone says this looting was anger at the regime."

Supporting that thesis is the destruction of numerous other cultural institutions where nothing but furniture and computers were stolen. The National Center of Books and Archives, also known as the National Library, was destroyed by fire, although Mr. Limbert said he had heard that 90 percent of its books and documents had been removed for safekeeping. The Awgaf or Religious Endowment Library, however, was burned, and it lost 6,500 Islamic manuscripts. The Central Library of Baghdad University and the Science Academy were also looted and destroyed by fire.

Perhaps the key revelation, however, has been that much of the most important material in Baghdad's museums and libraries had been removed to secure remote storage before the war -- a fact that the oft-quoted officials must have known, but inexplicably failed to mention (another link here). Inexplicably, that is, if one believes them to be impartial custodians of mankind's common heritage, rather than Ba'athist apparatchniks doing their best to cover themselves.

UPDATE: This article is now challenging the widely-circulated report that the Iraqi Oil Ministry was protected when the museum was not. We shall see if the challenge is taken up. . . .

Baghdad museum climbdown begins

Reports continue to be incomplete and contradictory, but recent news suggests that the losses to looting at the Iraqi National Museum may be much less significant than feared -- much, much less. Today's NY Times, for example, reports:

A top British Museum official said yesterday that his Iraqi counterparts told him they had largely emptied display cases at the National Museum in Baghdad months before the start of the Iraq war, storing many of the museum's most precious artifacts in secure "repositories."

The official, John E. Curtis, curator of the Near East Collection at the British Museum, who recently visited Iraq, said Baghdad museum officials had taken the action on the orders of Iraqi government authorities. When looting started, most of the treasures apparently remaining in display halls were those too large or bulky to have been moved for protection, Mr. Curtis said. . .

Mr. Curtis's remarks may help explain recent reports by both Iraqi officials and American authorities that losses at the National Museum are less extensive than previously feared. For instance, Col. Matthew F. Bogdanos, a Marine reservist who is investigating the looting, said recently that Baghdad museum officials had listed only 25 artifacts as definitely missing.

Mr. Curtis said it appeared that a vast majority of the looting at the National Museum had not taken place in its display halls but in its basement storage rooms, where more commonplace objects were kept.

An even more radical reassessment was published in yesterday's Chicago Tribune:

The vast majority of antiquities feared stolen or broken have been found inside the National Museum in Baghdad, according to American investigators who compiled an inventory over the weekend of the ransacked galleries.

A total of 38 pieces, not tens of thousands, are now believed to be missing. Among them is a display of Babylonian cuneiform tablets that accounts for nine missing items. . .

The inventory, compiled by a military and civilian team headed by Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos, rejects reports that Iraq's renowned treasures of civilization--up to 170,000 artifacts--had been lost during the U.S.-led war against Iraq. It also raises questions about why any of the artifacts were reported missing. . .

Damage to the museum's administrative offices was extensive, with desks, wiring, fixtures and chairs hauled out by looters. Artifacts, apparently obscured in some instances by the rubble left by looters, emerged largely unscathed. "There is no comparison in the level of destruction seen in the museum and that seen the administrative offices," Bogdanos said. "It's absolute wanton destruction in the offices. We didn't see anywhere near that destruction in the museum. [People] stole what they could use. . . . They left the antiquities."

Investigators, compiling information about what occurred during the chaotic takeover of Baghdad by U.S.-led troops, are concluding that little damage occurred to antiquities displayed at the museum. Investigators counted 17 display cases destroyed out of 300 to 400 cases. Many of the items apparently were removed before the looting. In addition, investigators have counted 22 items that were damaged, including 11 clay pots on display in corridors. Most of those damaged artifacts are restored pieces and can be restored again, museum officials told investigators.

The most significant of the damaged pieces was the Golden Harp of Ur. But investigators determined that the golden head on the damaged antiquity, feared missing, was only a copy. Museum officials confirmed this week to investigators that the original head had been placed in a storage vault at the Iraqi Central Bank before the war.

It also seems that many minor items were taken from the museum's storage areas without any sign of forced entry, leaving open the question when those particular thefts occurred:

The inventory was compiled after investigators examined five large storage areas in the museum Saturday to check for looting. Each room was lined with shelves holding plastic containers filled with envelopes of small, less-valuable artifacts, such as beads or amulets.

There was no apparent sign of forced entry to the storage sites, and the doors were locked when investigators arrived. Museum staffers told investigators they had no keys to the room, so investigators remain uncertain how entry was made. Investigators found that the basement storage area, which held thousands of small items not deemed suitable for display, had been disturbed in one of the rooms. They broke through a cinder-block barrier to the room to find hundreds of cardboard boxes intact and about 90 plastic boxes, containing about 5,000 less-valuable items, missing. A boxful of such items was retrieved about a week ago near Al Kut, investigators said, and it is likely that the intruders are attempting to move other such artifacts outside Baghdad.

Interestingly, some of the storage areas were in upper floors of the museum; in one there was evidence confirming reports that American forces were fired upon from the museum:

In one storage area on the second floor, [investigators] discovered evidence of a gunner's nest. From debris left behind, investigators concluded that a gunner was armed with an assault rifle and rocket-propelled grenades. About a foot from the gunner's lookout was a hole punched through the wall by a 25 mm shell. Investigators surmised that the gunman fled after that single volley from allied forces.

Slave pen preserved

Even now, slowed by a stroke and 70 years past his boyhood toiling in the fields as a tenant farmer, Isaac Lang Jr. can still recall the terrible secrets hidden inside the old tobacco barn.

"Dad told us never to go in there," Mr. Lang, 84, recalled, sitting up in his bed in a nursing home here. "He said, `Boys, I'm going to tell you the truth. It's all right to play around that barn, but don't go inside.' He said it just wasn't right. That it was pitiful. He never did tell us why."

The building resembled the hundreds of long, low tobacco barns with rusting roofs that mark these winsome rolling hills along the Ohio River, except for a log structure concealed inside. Its windows were fitted with thick, crisscrossed wrought-iron bars ordered by Capt. John W. Anderson, a Kentucky slave trader.

In the forced westward migration of slaves in the years after 1790, historians say, Captain Anderson held an unknown number of African-Americans in the log house, which has recently been identified as the only known surviving rural slave jail.

From the NY Times, also reprinted here.

Fewer than 30 missing items?

Just got back home late last night, so catching up on the news will take some time. A number of readers have inquired about reports that the Baghdad museum authorities have only listed some 29 items as missing. Alas, this is not the revelation some think it to be; the stolen artifacts are still certain to number in the thousands, and the low initial count is surely the result of the scattering (and likely, attempted destruction) of the Baghdad museum's inventory records.

The fact is, recording and publishing objects receives low priority in any museum; money is always short, and it inevitably goes first to acquisition, preservation, and display. Few museums in the entire world have a significant portion of their records digitized, facilitating off-site backup. Museums in poor but archeologically rich locations often have skimpy records indeed -- all on paper, often without photographs, with the most minimal of descriptions.

This article in the NY Times touches on some of these problems:

. . . Iraqi and American officials concede that it will be almost impossible to prevent the continued illegal export of treasures from ancient Mesopotamian sites.

The immediate focus is on trying to recover what was stolen from the museum, but in the rare roadblocks still operated by American and British troops here, the search is for weapons, not for antiquities. The only success to date came when a unit of the Iraq National Congress stopped a truck and found a steel case containing 453 small objects taken from the museum.

Among Iraq's neighbors, only the customs authorities in Jordan, traditionally the first destination of looted Mesopotamian art objects, have displayed fresh vigilance for possible smuggled antiquities. The National Museum, which remains in a state of disorder and disorganization, has in turn been slow to draw up a detailed list of looted treasures, partly because it lacks a computerized inventory. . .

"What happened to the Iraq museum is only the tip of the iceberg," said Jean-Marie Durand, a French archaeologist. "For years, the whole country has been looted. At Larsa, the site was turned over by a bulldozer. It looked like the moon."

The article concludes with a crude attempt at downplaying the recent losses while tarring earlier generations of archeologists:

Yet in contrast to what happened in the 19th century and a good part of the 20th century, the current transfer abroad of Iraqi treasures is modest. Before Iraq's Ottoman rulers issued an edict in the late 1870's, everything found by foreign archaeologists ended up in European museums, notably the British Museum, the Louvre in Paris and the State Museums of Berlin (the legendary Ishtar Gate from Babylon is at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin).

Even under the new Ottoman law, foreigners could claim half their finds, while the other half went to the Oriental Museum in Istanbul. Then, with Iraq under British control from 1917, half again went to foreigners, but with half staying in Iraq. This led in 1921 to the creation of the National Museum by Gertrude Bell, an English archaeologist, whose four successors as director of the museum were also foreigners. Only in 1974 was all export of Iraqi treasures banned.

As we have noted before, the greater issue is not so much who owns the artifacts, but that they -- and most importantly, the information that they may provide -- not be lost. Carrying artifacts off for display in foreign museums may now be seen as unacceptable, but at least the objects were generally properly preserved, recorded, and published -- certainly not the case with what the Times writer euphemistically calls "the current transfer abroad".

UPDATE: Looks like the Baghdad museum records were indeed systematically destroyed, if this is accurate:

Dr. John Curtis of the British Museum. . . who visited the museum after the fall of Baghdad, said experts would only know the full extent of the damage once an audit was completed -- a process that could take years. . . the offices of the Baghdad museum were "systematically crushed." Doors were broken down and "every single scrap of paper, every negative, every computer disc, every file had been pulled off the shelves (and) ripped up."

BUT THEN we get conflicting reports, such as this:

While the catalog at Baghdad's National Museum has been kept for the most part intact, the status of inventories at museums in other parts of Iraq is unknown.

This Old Cromlech

A Devon farmer has realised his dream by building a Bronze Age burial chamber on his land. Gavin Dollard transported four huge pieces of granite from Dartmoor to his estate near Ivybridge to carry out the construction. It is thought to be the first time in 2,000 years that a cromlech - defined as a prehistoric monument made of stones and thought to be a burial tomb - has been built in the UK.

Mr Dollard, 52, who wants to be laid to rest in the chamber, had hoped to have the edifice constructed in time for the Millennium celebrations. However, work was only completed on Tuesday when a huge crane lowered a 14-tonne piece of granite on to three 10-tonne standing stones which had already been erected to create the chamber.

From the BBC.

Trafalgar sail conservation

The only surviving sail from the Battle of Trafalgar is being preserved for history by a team of textile experts. HMS Victory's fore topsail now lies in an "environmentally-controlled tent" while the process to clean it continues. It is not an easy job with the sail boasting 90 shot holes from the battle on 21 October, 1805, in which Admiral Lord Nelson was fatally wounded.

Experts from the University of Southampton's Textile Conservation Centre and Mary Rose Archaeological Services Limited are undertaking research to find the best way of removing potentially harmful acidic soils from its surface.

From the BBC.