Looted antiquities, organized crime, money laundering, and terrorism

An article of merit in today's Financial Times:

For dealers trading in stolen antiquities, the orgy of looting at Baghdad's national museum in the chaotic days after the fall of Saddam Hussein was bad news. The blaze of publicity has shone an unwelcome spotlight on their sometimes murky world. . .

The trade in ancient artefacts brings together dealers of all shades with some of the world's richest people, prestigious museums and art galleries. It ties poor people plundering archaeological sites to international crime networks and terrorists.

Wherever there is a coincidence of historic sites and conflict, chaos or political instability, in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, Mali and elsewhere, looters are there. They take from museums, but more frequently from archaeological sites. Once removed, the artefacts are often lost to scholarship. . .

There is a growing body of evidence that connects the trade in looted antiquities with organised crime. . .

Richard Allan, a Liberal Democrat member of parliament who is sponsoring legislation aimed at curbing the trade in Britain, told the House of Commons in April that it was also clear from British police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation information "that there is a link between the removal and transport of cultural objects and the funding of terrorism".

He said Scotland Yard seized £3m of Bactrian art from Afghanistan in September 2001. "The pieces are 3,000 years old and had been looted by members of the Northern Alliance and sold via Pakistan to fund the war effort against the Taliban regime." In 2000, a valuable Indian stone frieze was seized from a London auction house. "That piece was being sold by Sri Lankan terrorists to fund their war effort."

Rodolfo Ronconi, director of Italy's international police co-operation services department, says the antiquities trade is also - like that in stolen art - often linked to money laundering. Irving Finkel of the British Museum says that antiquities often move in parallel with drugs. "The value of antiquities and their portability mean they are the ideal things for these sorts of people." Julian Radcliffe of the Art Loss Register, an arts theft database, agrees. "I used to be sceptical about whether stolen art is being used in money laundering. Now I'm not."

Despite the lingering myth of shadowy criminal aesthetes squirreling away masterpieces in their secret pleasure domes, the use of stolen art as underworld currency is much better documented. The article goes on to discuss efforts to compile lists of stolen objects, and the pitfalls involved (public lists, of course, are also open to antiquities smugglers). This note about Iraq has not received wide play elsewhere:

But any database is only as good as the information in it. Experts documented more than 3,000 pieces as having been looted from regional museums in Iraq after the 1991 war. But Ronald Noble, secretary-general of Interpol, told a conference this month that only one piece from Iraq made its way to his organisation's database.

Mention is also made of the differences from country to country in the legal status of stolen goods, which helps explain why Europe much more than the USA or Britain is a center for illicit artefact trading:

"Crooks move into countries where the law is very favourable to the holders," says Mr Radcliffe. In the Netherlands, for example, a thief of an object becomes its legal owner after 19 years. Switzerland's free ports allow the easy import and export of antiquities, no questions asked. . .

The law in continental Europe is also more favourable to the so-called "good faith buyer" than to the victim. In the UK, however, courts also tend to favour the victim unless the holder demonstrates that the piece was bought in good faith, that a long time has elapsed since it was stolen or plundered, and that the victim was not advertising the loss or making serious efforts to find it.

US law also favours the victim. "The laws of the US are much more favourable to the claims of the original owner than European laws. Purchasers who pay money in good faith cannot get title to stolen property," says Lawrence Kaye of Herrick, Feinstein, a New York law firm that has acted on behalf of governments trying to reclaim cultural objects.

On the other hand, American museums have not always taken the greatest of care to insure acquisitions have not been illegally excavated or exported, though international pressure has had a significant impact in recent years.

Health and the French diet: not red wine, but puericulture

I meant to post something about this when I first spotted it in the NY Times; it has now been reprinted in the International Herald Tribune:

. . . the French are eating more like Americans these days. Snacking between meals, and fast food and convenience food consumption, are up, particularly among children in big cities. That has fueled no end of editorials about childhood eating patterns. . .

Yet in the battle of the bulge, the French definitely have an edge. They may indulge in wine and butter and pastry, but they do so with a better metabolism and with an ingrained feeling about when, where and how much to eat.

Nothing new so far; but what follows is rather eye-opening:

Those advantages are grounded in at least 100 years of state-sponsored, or at least state-supported, programs that have helped create and perpetuate a thin population. In France, it's the state that helps one say no to the seductions of modern fat culture.

These government campaigns did not have weight control as their main objective. At the beginning of the 20th century, industrialization had forced many of the rural poor into the cities, and France's infant mortality rate had become so high that it provoked scorn from other European countries. In 1904, the French Public Health Act gave the central government authority to compel local governments to take actions to improve the birth rate.

One important response was a movement known as puericulture. Intent on improving prenatal and maternal health, puericulture advocates set up clinics all over the country to teach young mothers how to breastfeed.

Puericulturists also taught that overfeeding was as bad as, if not worse than, underfeeding. A prominent obstetrician, Pierre Budin, who shocked the 1903 Conference on Hygiene with this view, liked to tell his medical students, "I always prefer to err by giving a little too little than by giving too much."

In the 15 years after puericulture took hold, child mortality dropped significantly. Childhood health improved so substantially that, by the 1920s, the first cases of childhood obesity began to appear. In typical fashion, the state retooled the puericulture effort.

By far the most effective advocate was Augusta Moll-Weiss, who wrote books about home economics that were considered definitive. For Moll-Weiss, the key to good childhood health was parental control of the table. Children, she insisted, should always eat at set times. Portions should be moderate; seconds were out of the question. Snacking was forbidden. Virtually every young French child was raised based on her advice.

Such boundary-setting continues today. Simply put, the state regulates the excesses of modern life. You will not find Coca-Cola in a French middle school.

What was the long-term impact of all this? In a recent paper the British epidemiologist D.J. Barker said it is puericulture, not red wine, that may be the secret behind the low rates of cardiovascular disease and obesity in France. Regulated feeding, erring on the "little too little" side, meant that French infants did not grow too quickly, an important factor in causing obesity in children in the first place.

UNESCO report on looting in Iraq

More information, not all of it consistent with other recent reports, via the French edition of the International Herald Tribune:

A Unesco survey of Iraq's smashed and looted cultural treasures indicates that 2,000 to 3,000 objects may be missing from the National Museum in Baghdad alone and that the entire contents of the National Library are lost beyond retrieval.

Note that this assessment of the library losses would be in direct contradiction to this report from last week, which I have not seen repudiated or, for that matter, confirmed. The Tribune article does note, "a few of the most valuable manuscripts were held in the Saddam Center for Manuscripts and are believed to be safe."

In addition, more than 1,500 modern paintings and sculptures from the city's Museum of Fine Arts are still missing and only 400 have been recovered, according to Mounir Bouchenaki, assistant director general for culture at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. . .

He said that earlier reports by U.S. officials that as few as 25 pieces had been lost were “a distortion of reality” because they described only major pieces taken from the public galleries of the museum but not objects in the reserve collections.

Although there were mistaken claims that fewer than 30 item were missing, this does not seem so much the fault of the occupation authorities as of reporters who presented (or interpreted) official statements out of context.

Bouchenaki, an Algerian, is particularly well-placed to assess the damage. An Arabic-speaking archeologist, he has worked in the National Museum on several occasions, most recently in 1998 when he helped organize work to install air conditioning and video surveillance in the building. . .

Bouchenaki said that under an agreement signed earlier this month with Interpol, the international police organization, Unesco had already set up a database of missing objects that was being circulated to law enforcement organizations around the world.

Iraqi objects are already being offered for sale on the Internet, he said, and there is evidence of an organized traffic of looted objects from Mosul to Damascus.

Bouchenaki said that Unesco had asked governments in the region to prevent stolen items from leaving Iraq and that he had been impressed on arriving in Amman at how efficiently the Jordanian authorities were complying.

Devonian sponge find

News from upstate New York:

Wayne Myers and Paul Krohn said they nearly fainted from shock when they broke up the huge bluish-gray rock next to Michigan Creek on the Myers homestead. Laid out before them was a story of the ages -- a colony of 360-million-year-old glass sponges captured forever as fossils in the siltstone.

The big find was made last spring, but the two men have not publicized the find until now. They wanted to wait until Myers finished building a $2,000 glass-fronted display for the rocks.

"It sounds like it is better than any in any museum in the world," said Scott McKenzie, a professor of geology at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa. "This is the largest accumulation of these sponges found anywhere". . .

Glass sponges still exist today, Myers said, but his have a prehistoric bowl shape, as opposed to the modern tubular shape. This particular species, found only in the central Southern Tier, is very rare with usually only one individual sponge fossil found at a time, Krohn said.

St. Albans Psalter online

A very impressive website devoted to the 12th-century St. Albans Psalter is now up here, courtesy of the University of Aberdeen. There is also a German version.

Reviving Inca agriculture

Agricultural techniques perfected by Inca farmers 500 years ago are beginning to have a dramatic effect on the incomes of today's farmers in Pampachiri, one of the poorest areas of Peru. An ancient water transport system, developed by the Wira people and refined by the Incas, has been restored by the Cusichaca Trust NGO using traditional methods. Clay, stone, sand, and a certain type of cactus juice, have restored the system of canals and terraces, in turn helping repair the area's shattered economy.

Read the rest at the BBC.

New museum of contemporary ceramics in Japan

Just spotted this from the Japan Times a week and a half back:

It was 20 years ago today . . . that the famous Kikuchi Collection of Modern Japanese Ceramics was shown to "smashing" reviews at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The 300-piece collection sparked a great interest in modern and contemporary Japanese ceramics that has continued to this day. The exhibition was a milestone for 20th-century Japanese ceramic art.

For the two decades since, though, the collection has been in storage or on display for Madame Kikuchi alone. Now that's all changed, as her fabulous new museum -- Musee Tomo -- opened in Tokyo on April 20. The inaugural exhibition, "Japanese Ceramics Today, Part 1," running through Aug. 3, aims both to restage that overseas debut and give Japan its first look at the Kikuchi Collection.

The review is quite extensive, with mention of other doings in Tokyo as well.

Major Japanese print collection left to Smithsonian

A top American connoisseur has left the Smithsonian Institution his collection of more than 4,000 Japanese color prints from the late 1800s and the 1900s, a surprise bequest worth millions of dollars.

It will take some months to prepare a public exhibition, museum officials said. They only learned when Robert O. Muller's will was read that the Connecticut man intended to give them his pictures, which dealers had tried hard to buy before his death.

Read more here.

Wright Flyer landing soon

The 1903 Wright Flyer, the aircraft that ushered in the age of flight, will be lowered from the ceiling this fall and displayed at eye level, officials announced yesterday. This will be the first time since the Smithsonian Institution acquired the plane in 1948 that the public will be able to see it from that angle.

Officials at the National Air and Space Museum said yesterday they decided to move Orville and Wilbur Wright's plane so it could be the centerpiece of a centennial exhibition, "The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age." Orville Wright took the Flyer aloft for 12 seconds in Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17, 1903. He flew 120 feet and into every history book. . .

The plane has always been displayed above visitors' heads. "You will see this object in ways you have never seen before," said Peter L. Jakab, the exhibition curator and chairman of the museum's aeronautics division. The exhibition opens in October for at least two years.

Read all about it here in the Washington Post.

Etruscan gold book in Bulgaria

The world's only preserved copy of an Etruscan gold book was donated to Bulgaria's National Museum of History. The director of the museum broke the news on Thursday.

A Bulgarian who lives in Macedonia presented the museum with the unique artifact on condition of anonymity. The book contains six pages and is the only wholly perserved copy known to archeology so far. Except the ancient text, the 23.82-carat gold pages carry images of warriors and a siren.

Only single pages of Etruscan books have been discovered in Italy whose territory was the homeland of ancient Etruscans. The donator said that he came across the book in the valley of Bulgarian Struma River during a road construction works. The benefactor discovered it in an ancient tomb with frescoes - a piece of which depicting a warrior he took with him. This fragment was also donated together with the gold book.

From Novinite.

UPDATE: The book is now on display; here is the latest.

Confederate naval flags return to the South

A collection of seven Confederate naval flags that had been kept in Massachusetts is being returned to the South 138 years after the end of the Civil War. The collection includes flags from two of the most famous Confederate Navy ironclad ships, including the CSS Tennessee, captured by Admiral David G. Farragut's fleet following his famous ''Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!'' exclamation at Mobile Bay.

The banners were turned over to Port Columbus National Civil War Naval Museum officials as a gift from the Massachusetts Historical Society during a Wednesday ceremony in Boston. . .

Another flag in the collection was from the ironclad CSS Atlanta, captured after a brief battle off Savannah. Also included is the personal banner of the Confederate Navy's first admiral, Franklin Buchanan, who was captured aboard the Tennessee. Other flags were taken from various forts from the East coast and the Mississippi River.

Massachusetts Historical Society officials said the collection was assembled by Augustus Fox, assistant secretary of the Navy during the Civil War, and brought to Massachusetts. The flags were donated to the society in 1869 and have been in storage since. . .

William Fowler, executive director of the Massachusetts society, said it was time to return the banners to the South. Presenting the flags to the Columbus museum, he said, follows a tradition established in 1874 when South Carolina returned the captured battle flag of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment.

Read the rest at Boston.com.

Enigma captor reminisces

David Balme was a 20-year-old sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy in May 1941 when he led a boarding party down the conning tower of a German submarine south of Iceland and changed the course of World War II. The prize at the bottom of three vertical ladders was the unbreakable German code machine Enigma and a set of code books that would finally enable the British to read enemy radio traffic and turn the tide of war in the Atlantic.

Now 82, Balme, who retired with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, still remembers vividly the details of the dangerous descent into the bowels of the crippled submarine but admits he had no idea how crucial his discovery would be. "We didn't know what Enigma was. We thought it was a funny looking typewriter -- an interesting bit of kit," he told Reuters Friday. "It was only when we got back to Scapa Flow (naval base) 10 days later that the senior intelligence officer came aboard and told me what we had got and how hard they had been looking for one". . .

U-110 commander Fritz-Julius Lemp . . . set scuttling charges but in his rush left the Enigma machine aboard before he too leaped into the sea only to watch helplessly as the charges failed to go off, allowing Balme and his boarding party from the destroyer HMS Bulldog to board.

"It was terrifying. We knew there must be scuttling charges which could go off at any time. I had been in action before, but nothing quite like that," Balme said. "For 20 years I would regularly wake up at night thinking about that climb down into the conning tower," he added.

From Reuters.

Boxgrove: Stone Age Pompeii

Today the Boxgrove quarry offers little to the casual visitor: a few piles of earth, a big hole and acre upon acre of gravel. Half a million years ago, when Britain had a more continental climate and was still connected to Europe, Boxgrove had a raised beach at the foot of 70m-high chalk cliffs.

The landscape was changing fast. But for a few hundred years, a spring fed fresh water from the base of the cliff. And for something between five and 50 years, the water collected into a watering hole. This pond was a magnet to wildlife, for rhinos, horse, red deer and giant deer and bison came to drink. And with the herbivores came the predators - lion, panther, hyenas and humans.

Over the past decade, thousands of bones have been excavated from the former beach. Many of the animal bones had cut marks, evidence that they had been skilfully butchered with flint tools. A staggering 450 hand axes were found, along with some of the earliest antler tools used for finishing flint artefacts. There were even scrapings of flint that had fallen to the ground to reveal the silhouette of the toolmakers. "The preservation is like Pompeii," says Dr Matt Pope, an archaeologist at University College London archaeologist who works at the site. "It was very wet and inundated with silt at high tide. So we get snapshots of events preserved in time."

This long and detailed article from the Telegraph also discusses some of the detective work that has gone into interpreting the large quantity of well-preserved evidence:

In one of the more unusual examples of experimental archaeology, researchers piecing together the finds from Boxgrove, Britain's most important Stone Age site, recruited a university athlete to hurl a wooden spear at a dead deer.

The method was unorthodox. But the results may have helped to settle a long-standing row over whether our ancestors living 500,000 years ago were spear-throwing hunters or simply scavengers. . .

The remains of rhino, horse, bison and deer at Boxgrove and elsewhere reveal that Boxgrove Man was a skilled butcher. He had to be. A watering hole, visited by predators, was a dangerous place. He needed to strip the meat, smash the bones and remove the marrow as quickly and efficiently as possible, while defending the catch from other hungry predators and scavengers.

Experiments by the Boxgrove team have shown that a large deer can be stripped of meat, and the marrow removed from the bones, with flint tools in two to three hours. . .

More clues to the size of [the hunting] groups come from the horse carcass site. Around the remains lay "knapping scatterings", proof that Boxgrove Man made his own hand axes at the site after the kill.

Hand axes were fashioned from pieces of flint using flint hammers and hard, flexible tools made from antler. It is likely that Homo heidelbergensis crouched to make the tools on his legs. When he stood up, the pattern of scrapings on the ground left a "shadow" of the body. Eight of these scatters were found at the horse carcass site, plus dozens more at the main site.

John Hurst obit

Sad and shocking news, from the Telegraph:

John Hurst, the archaeologist who died on April 29 aged 75 after a violent assault near his home in Leicestershire, was a leading authority on medieval pottery and deserted medieval villages. . .

Hurst's involvement [in the archeology of rural Britain] dated from 1952 when he was invited by the economic historian Maurice Beresford to be his co-director in a research project at Wharram Percy, a field of hummocks surrounding a ruined church in a remote valley in the Yorkshire Wolds.

Wharram Percy saw the first excavation of a medieval peasant house; the first complete excavation of a parish church; and the first recovery of a medieval population from a cemetery. The remains were so important that they are still the subject of study, and they have revolutionised our understanding of medieval peasant life.

The excavations lasted 40 years and revealed that, far from living in cramped squalor as had previously been assumed, peasants in this remote Yorkshire village had lived in long, spacious houses which were kept meticulously clean by regular sweeping.

A level of sophistication was suggested by the discovery of latches and locks for doors, windows and furniture; and items of dress adornment and coins suggested that the medieval rural economy was a money-based system in which the wealthier peasants had spare cash to spend on luxury items at local markets.

The human remains revealed, intriguingly, that the level of left-handedness at Wharram was, at 16 per cent, twice the modern world average, possibly suggesting a level of "natural" left-handedness in a society without social pressure to favour the right. The discovery that cod was an important part of the diet in a village miles away from the sea, provided added evidence of a thriving market economy. . .

Beresford and Hurst went on to co-ordinate a nationwide listing of abandoned village sites, identifying an amazingly broad spectrum of village desertions, sites they described in two books: The Lost Villages of England (1954) and Deserted Medieval Villages (1971). Together they founded the Deserted Medieval Villages Research Group, which coordinates the work of enthusiasts up and down the country. . .

Looting of archeological sites in Iraq

Front page story in this morning's NY Times:

Mobs of treasure hunters are tearing into Iraqi archaeological sites, stealing urns, statues, vases and cuneiform tablets that often date back 3,000 years and more to Babylon and Sumer, archaeologists say.

Here at the site of what was once Isin, a city-state that first arose around 1,900 B.C., about 150 young men armed with shovels, knives and sometimes semiautomatic weapons have been digging from dawn to dusk and extracting ancient relics almost hourly. "In two weeks, they have ruined all the work that was done over 15 years," said Susanne Osthoff, an archaeologist who worked with a German team that excavated at Isin from the mid-1970's until 1989. On Wednesday morning alone, diggers unearthed two large and intact urns, a delicate vase, the leg to a statue of what might have been a bull or a calf and countless small engraved artifacts.

On the outskirts of the site, people furtively offered to sell sculptures and ancient cuneiform tablets. A man in his 40's displayed what resembled a large oval ornament that was entirely covered in lines of cuneiform writing. "Five thousand dollars," he demanded. . .

"We believe that every major site in southern Iraq is in danger," said Donny George, director of research at Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, which oversees all archaeological excavations in Iraq. "We used to have guards there," he added. "But now they are either pushed away by the looters or they are working with thieves themselves in one way or another". . .

Material from Iraq, which archaeologists said was fairly limited before the 1991 war, [afterwards] grew so prevalent that cuneiform tablets are even now regularly advertised on eBay, and can sell for less than $100.

Beyond the loss of potentially priceless artifacts, archaeologists say, looting such as that underway in Isan Bakhriat all but destroys the ability of researchers to assemble a mosaic of meaning from the shards of old art and sun-dried bricks. Where archaeological teams spend years and even decades cataloging sites, excavating with small knives and brushes, the looters have been overturning tons of dirt daily. . .

"If you find an artifact but you don't have the context, you lose 80 to 90 percent of the information," said Dr. George . . . "Every single hour, every single day this goes is a great loss of information."

Oldest sculpture found in Morocco?

A 400,000-year-old stone object unearthed in Morocco could be the world's oldest attempt at sculpture. That is the claim of a prehistoric art specialist who says the ancient rock bears clear signs of modification by humans.

The object, which is around six centimetres in length, is shaped like a human figure, with grooves that suggest a neck, arms and legs. On its surface are flakes of a red substance that could be remnants of paint.

The object was found 15 metres below the eroded surface of a terrace on the north bank of the river Draa near the town of Tan-Tan. It was reportedly lying just a few centimetres away from stone handaxes in ground layers dating to the Middle Acheulian period, which lasted from 500,000 to 300,000 years ago. . .

A 200,000-300,000-year-old stone object found at Berekhat Ram in Israel in 1986 has also been the subject of claims that it is a figurine. However, several other researchers later presented evidence that it was shaped by geological processes.

The Tan-Tan object was discovered in 1999, during a dig directed by Lutz Fiedler, the state archaeologist of Hesse in Germany.

From the BBC.

Don't pitch those "expired" drugs

Here's a piece by Dr. Alice, who notes that most medicines remain potent long after their nominal expiration dates (tetracycline and nitroglycerin being signal exceptions. Read it yourself to find out quite how long. . . .

Thanks to the ever-interesting Medpundit for the reference.

Castle found under ice cream shop

A discovery in County Antrim in Ireland:

Developers working at a site at Upper Main Street in Portrush have uncovered what is believed to be the walls and foundations of the long forgotten Portrush Castle, which dates back to the twelfth century.

A team of archaeologists are currently on site, where they today confirmed that they have found walls and steps which are believed to be part of the castle, most of the remains of which lie below a Victorian row of terraced houses.

The discovery of the remains, which were uncovered when a derelict ice- cream parlour was demolished to make way for two apartments, has prompted local historian Dr Bob Curran to call for work at the site to be halted and the remains to be preserved.

Roman calculator

No, not a machine to tabulate Romans, but a compvter for Roman numerals!

Medici archive online

It's been a while since I was a full-time academic art historian, so it came as a pleasant surprise when today's NY Times mentioned www.medici.org, the website of the Medici Archive Project.

Who's got culture?

Kind of an interesting challenge to widely-held stereotypes in this article on the decline of American tourism in Spain:

Spain loves American tourists, Mr. Porras said. For one thing, many of them come in the off season, while Europeans concentrate their visits in the sunny summer.

Where the Europeans tend to stick to the beach resorts, American visitors are more likely to head for the cultural sights, which are mainly inland. . .

Gema Sese, spokeswoman for the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum along the broad Paseo del Prado, said surveys done when the museum opened in the 1990's revealed that roughly 10 percent of its visitors were Americans. Their share of spending at the museum gift shop was far higher. "They like our bookshop," she said.

In fact, many educated Europeans seem to feel high culture is theirs by birthright, in contrast to their American counterparts who feel it is something that must be actively approached and engaged. On the other hand, I know quite a few Europeans who have visited much more of the United States than I have. . . .

Working manuscript for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony sold in London

The working manuscript for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has sold for more than £2.1m at auction.

Described as possibly the single most important musical work by the legendary composer, the document contains Beethoven's own handwritten revisions. The manuscript is the only full score ever to be auctioned, and was bought for £2.133m by a private collector at Sotheby's in London on Thursday. It had been expected to fetch up to £3m.

Read the full story here.

Artifacts in Iraq: another report

Just in from Australia, an interview with Professor Daniel Potts of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sydney, recently returned from Baghdad:

DANIEL POTTS: Well what I took was a powerful laptop computer, a scanner and a digital camera as well as some software so that they could start up the registration system again since the records have been very badly messed around.

It's hard to know precisely how many of the paper records have been destroyed and that's again why I suggested that DFAT or the Council for Australian-Arab relations might provide a scanner and a digital camera, so they can photograph damaged objects, they can scan documents if they need to.

So that's what we gave as a gift from the Australian government. And that was hugely appreciated, and that was in fact the very first material support that they have received from outside Iraq.

NICK GRIMM: Indeed, what does that say about the organisations that are charged with the rebuilding process in Iraq?

DANIEL POTTS: I think one can be cynical about all of the talk and no action; on the other hand I do appreciate that for an institution like UNESCO, they have to first send in a so-called team of experts which they have now done, which unfortunately with a bureaucracy the size of the UN, does take some time, and nothing in terms of material items had literally been given to them before this donation.

NICK GRIMM: Now what about the situation across Iraq in terms of the archaeological sites that are scattered across that country?

DANIEL POTTS: Well, that situation is really dire. . .

There are reports now, definitely confirmed reports I've heard, that a whole group of sites, and this is just one instance, a whole group of sites south of Nasiriyah, centring on the Sumerian city of Umma are being systematically looted by a gang of over 300 men who are digging while they are guarded by about 40 men with Kalashnikovs.

NICK GRIMM: And that's going on right now, still, after all this time?

DANIEL POTTS: Exactly. That's going on as we speak. And they're apparently driving away truckloads of antiquities and cuneiform tablets. . . .

Plunder of Afghan archeological sites continues

. . . even with the U.S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai in place and an international community eager to support cultural preservation, large-scale looting of Afghanistan's archeological sites goes on. . .

Powerful warlords help the smugglers in return for a cut of the profits, according to Afghan and Western officials. Opium dealers dabble in antiquities, using their supply routes to ferry ancient statues, coins and intricately painted pieces of ivory out of the country.

"We are at one of the worst stages of our history in terms of historic artifacts," said Sayed Raheen, Afghanistan's information and culture minister. Every few months, people contact Raheen and try to sell him back pieces of stolen art. Someone got in touch with him recently about a 1,600-year-old painting on ivory of a nude woman surrounded by serving girls. The smugglers wanted $1 million, but "I couldn't afford it," Raheen said.

Nancy Hatch Dupree, who traveled widely in Afghanistan in the 1960s and '70s with her husband, American archeologist Louis Dupree, and wrote a guide to the collection of the Kabul Museum, said she has bought back some items looted from the museum. But most of the time, she said, the prices are too high, and she doesn't want to reward the smugglers.

"They tell me you can make as much off of stolen artifacts as you can in the drug trade," said Dupree, a senior consultant to ACBAR, the umbrella group that coordinates Afghan aid. "You can't crack down on this unless the central government is recognized, and out in the provinces it's not recognized."

. . . seven clay heads . . . from the 5th to 7th centuries, were [recently recovered after having been] looted from Kharwar, a 19-square-mile site that has never been legally excavated. They are thought to represent members of Buddha's entourage, including a bodyguard and a monk. Afghan conservators are using turkey basters to blow fine dust from the faces and have patched one of the heads with plaster. . .

Situated in what is now Loghar province, Kharwar was part of ancient Kabulistan, the trading center at the heart of central Asia that linked civilizations of the Middle East and east Asia. The site is now honeycombed with holes and trenches, where looters, believed to be working with a local military commander, have dug and removed pottery, coins and statues.

Afghan intelligence and cultural officials say they know the military commander's name. In some parts of Loghar, his guards have been stationed at ancient sites, ostensibly to protect them, and are thought to be taking part in the looting.

The government says it cannot stop them. When intelligence officials learned of the clay heads stolen from Kharwar, they had to craft a plan to steal them back from the looters. They didn't arrest the commander or anyone else. "He has been appointed by somebody from the government, so only in one case can we arrest him: if we have a decree and order from the president," said Mayel, the intelligence official.

From PakTribune.

Edam builds church of cheese

More peculiar news this morning:

The Dutch town of Edam is planning to make a church entirely from its famous cheese. The model chapel will be a tenth of the size of the town's 15th-century church. . .

The cheese church will be built with more than 10,000 Edam bricks and will be nine metres long and four metres wide.

Another reason to stay at home

Just in from India:

Airports across India have reportedly siphoned off £1.7 million, intended for airport fencing and fire safety, to buy plastic potted plants.

The Indian Express says the Airports Authority of India has ordered all airports to replace the real plants in passenger terminals with artificial ones. . .

The AAI is concerned real plants have to be watered everyday and are a security risk as gardeners are employed to go into restricted zones to water the plants.

50-year reunion. . . with a turtle

A Jersey pensioner has come face to face with a giant sea turtle for the first time since rescuing the creature more than 50 years ago. Bernard Le Tourneur, 71, said it was like meeting an "old friend" as he fed the Loggerhead turtle chunks of squid at the country's oldest aquarium, in Brighton. The reunion came 53 years after Mr Le Tourneur found the tiny baby turtle while gathering seaweed with his father on the beach at Jersey for the family farm, on November 19, 1950. . .

The turtle is now over a metre long and weighs 28 stone [392 lbs/178 kg]. . .

Staff at the Sea Life Centre, traced Jersey's past when she was brought to the popular tourist attraction. They discovered the press cutting from the Jersey Evening Post dated 1950 and managed to contact Mr Le Tourneur, who was then invited to come and meet his find once again.

From Ananova.

Historical reality TV

I'm not much of a TV watcher (lack of time, not excess of snobbery), but I did make sure to see The 1900 House as well as Frontier House when they were first aired, and am currently watching Manor House.

A few friends were over the other night and the conversation turned to the current crop of reality shows. And before long, we were thinking of some more possibilities for making contestants suffer in historical settings (while trying to see their fellow contestants off, of course). Some of the more outstandingly tasteless proposals:

- Donner Party II.
- Plague House, 1349. Might not end up with any winners, however.
- Retreat from Moscow (pick your century).

Any other nominations?

UPDATE: We're getting some good ones. . . check out the comments.

Camelot . . . a silly place

From the land of Excalibur (without benefit of Python):

Police officers have reprimanded a mother-of-two for allowing her seven-year-old son to leave his plastic toy sword in her car.

Karen McFarlane, 38, has been told she could face charges for having an offensive weapon after two officer spotted the toy while her car was parked in Swindon.

Police told her the 30-inch sword might cause panic if it was spotted by a passer-by, reports the Daily Mail.

From Ananova.

Van Gogh or no, more popular than ever

A prized self-portrait by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh may be fake, but Norway's National Gallery couldn't be happier.

Visitors to the Oslo art museum have increased since April, thanks to curious Norwegians eager to see the painting which has become the center of controversy about its authenticity, gallery curator Frode Haverkamp said Tuesday.

Read more here.

I'll choose exercise instead, thank you very much

Men who undergo sex changes are likely to reduce their chances of developing heart disease, says a Dutch doctor.

From Ananova.

More burials found near Stonehenge

The remains of four adults and two children were found at a site in Amesbury, close to where the Amesbury Archer was discovered last year. The Archer was dubbed the King of Stonehenge because it is thought he had a major role in creating the monument.

Dr Andrew Fitzpatrick, of Wessex Archaeology, said: "This new find is really unusual. It is exceptionally rare to find the remains of so many people in one grave like this in southern England. "The grave is fascinating because we are seeing the moment when Britain was moving from the Stone Age into the Bronze Age, around 2,300BC."

The latest bones discovered are some 4,500 years old - the same age as the Archer. Radiocarbon tests will be carried out to find more precise dates for the burials but the people are believed to have lived during the building of Stonehenge.

From the BBC. There's also a bit more detail in the Scotsman:

. . . the grave, which is about three miles from Stonehenge, had narrowly missed being damaged by trench digging for electric cables and a water pipe.

The grave contained four pots in the Beaker style that is typical of the period, some flint tools, one flint arrowhead and a bone toggle for fastening clothing. . .

The number of Beaker pots in the grave, four, is only exceeded by the grave of the Amesbury Archer, where there were five. . .

The large number of bodies placed in this grave is something more commonly found in the Stone Age, but the Beaker style pottery is found in Bronze Age burials.

The new discovery was found almost exactly a year after the Amesbury Archer was found during excavation for a housing scheme at Boscombe Down, Amesbury, three miles from Stonehenge. His grave was the richest found in Britain from its time, containing about 100 items, more than ten times as many objects as any other burial site from this time, and included hair tresses that are the earliest gold in the country.

When did rice cultivation begin in Japan?

Researchers from the National Museum of Japanese History reported Monday that radiocarbon dating of charred samples from Yayoi period remains indicates rice cultivation in Japan began around 1,000 B.C.

The group, led by professors Hideji Harunari and Mineo Imamura, examined 32 samples -- charred pottery shards and wooden fragments -- from sites in Japan and South Korea, using the carbon-14 dating technique. The analysis work was done at a U.S. laboratory by accelerator mass spectrometry that provides dating of carbon isotopes at very low concentration levels. Samples from artifacts found in northern Kyushu were also examined. It is from there that Yayoi culture is thought to have started, following an influx of people from the Chinese land mass and the Korean Peninsula.

Team members said the analysis showed that 10 of 11 samples from the early Yayoi period remains were from 800 to 900 B.C., which led them to speculate this age in Japanese history actually dawned around 1,000 B.C.

The finding staggered archaeologists, who until now had accepted that rice cultivation started in Japan around the fourth or fifth centuries B.C. based on bronze ware used in Japan and its East Asian neighbors, as well as changes in pottery styles.

Satoru Nakazono, a history professor at the International University of Kagoshima, was flabbergasted at the news. ``It means one of two things: Either their analysis is wrong or past archaeological research is wrong,'' he said.

From Asahi Shimbun.

Modern day marksmanship

Despite the continuing obsession in the popular press with full-automatic "assault rifles" (the NY Times ran a picture the other day of confiscated "assault rifles and handguns" being piled up for destruction in Africa, almost all of which appeared to be old bolt-actions), after-action reports from Iraq suggest that the current trend in US infantry practice is to emphasize carefully-placed single shots and individual marksmanship (Stategypage; scroll down to "INFANTRY: A Proliferation of Snipers").

Petition Crown sets record at £120,000

A Charles II pattern crown from 1663, the Petition Crown, has set a new world record for English silver coins at auction. The hammer fell at £120,000 against a pre-sale estimate of £40,000-50,000 at Spink on Thursday last week, more than doubling the previous record of £57,500, also held by Spink.

The coin was part of the Slaney collection which highlighted the earliest dated English crown, the 1551 of Edward VI. It also trumped its estimate, bringing £36,000 against hopes of £8000-10,000.

Spink said the Pattern Crown went to a UK private buyer against a flurry of bidding in a packed room, while the Edward VI crown went to a private buyer from the US.

From the Antiques Trade Gazette.

The Spink catalog entry is here. This particular specimen last changed hands at auction in 1950, for £450.

It's tick season. . .

. . . and Medpundit has some good advice, especially for parents of young children.

I've not seen any followup on this, but I recall reading a letter to the NY Times some years ago in which a veteran outdoorsman claimed that Lyme disease hit more backyard grillers than day hikers. His explanation was that hikers typically showered once they got home, dislodging deer ticks before they had a chance to attach themselves firmly, while many who pick up ticks in their own backyards don't shower until the next morning.

Seemed logical enough that I've become much more careful about washing up after tramping about in grassy areas, including scrubbing arms and legs vigorously with a washcloth.

NASCAR drivers to get relief from carbon monoxide

Nascar began studying carbon-monoxide exposure when Rick Mast, a longtime driver, stopped racing last year after learning he had chronic and acute carbon-monoxide poisoning, which causes headaches, nausea and dizziness.

"We tested 25 products claiming to purify air and we settled in on one, which is a catalyst," said [Gary] Nelson, who runs Nascar's $10 million research and development facility near Lowe's Motor Speedway, which opened in December. "We injected high levels of carbon monoxide into this air stream. We tested it over and over and over again. When we put in bad air, it was improved by over 70 percent on the way out."

Nascar found that filters used by some drivers did not remove carbon monoxide, an odorless, colorless gas, from the air in their cars. But catalysts scrub air of carbon monoxide Cleansed air is then pumped through a hose directly into the driver's helmet.

Tony Stewart, the Winston Cup points champion last year, tested the catalyst system during a race in Martinsville, Va., in April. He became ill at a race in Martinsville last fall, requiring oxygen treatment afterward. Drivers have been more concerned about carbon monoxide at short tracks like Martinsville.

"I felt better than I probably had after any of the Martinsville races that I remember, to be honest," Stewart said during a conference call in April after testing the system. "I still did have a headache after the race was over, which is typical for a Martinsville race, but it was not nearly as severe as it typically has been in the past. I'm somewhat encouraged the filter did its job."

From the NY Times.

eBay to accept frequent flier miles

What will they think of next? Read the story here.

eBay's own announcement is here.

Michael Jackson settles with Sotheby's

A lawsuit accusing Michael Jackson of failing to pay almost $1.4m (£860,000) for two paintings he no longer wanted has been settled by auction house Sotheby's. It had sued Jackson after his company successfully bid on two 19th-century works in New York in October last year.

In its lawsuit Sotheby's said Jackson's company, MJJ Productions, had refused to pay because he no longer believed the paintings were right for his collection. Diana Phillips, Sotheby's senior vice president in New York, said the case had been resolved amicably. The terms were not disclosed.

From the BBC, which still can't seem to spell "Bougereau" correctly.

More on computer recreation of ancient theatres

Really just a followup article on the University of Warwick team's work on computer modeling of Greek and Roman theatres.

"We've created the world's first computer generated 3D models of early temporary wooden sets from paintings," said Professor Richard Beacham. These sets can be used to recreate virtual performances and virtual actors can be put on stage so viewers can see what it would have been like to be a member of the audience.

The following is a bit much, however:

The reconstructured wall paintings offer academics more than just a view of how theatres would have looked. "Theatre was an integral part of Roman culture and the wall paintings enable us to understand theatre, politics and culture during the transition from Republic to Empire," said Drew Baker from the University of Warwick's e-lab.

Note that the article uses a pretty lame "hook" in referring to the use of scenic perspective in Roman wall painting as "tricks similar to virtual reality", and giving the impression that this is in some way a new discovery.

Peat bogs threatened by home gardeners?

Peat bogs in Northern Ireland are coming under an increasing threat from gardening enthusiasts, according to a report. The conservation organisation WWF Northern Ireland says amateur gardeners are responsible for two thirds of all peat consumption and use almost twice as much peat as professional growers. . .

The report, published on Wednesday in association with Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring network, says the use of peat is increasing so rapidly local suppliers cannot not meet demand. As a result, peat has to be imported from the Republic of Ireland or countries such as Latvia and Estonia.

From the BBC.

Wal-Mart uncovers bones in Hawaii

The remains of 25 bodies discovered during grading work at the Wal-Mart store construction site on Ke'eaumoku Street are being treated with "great disrespect," according to the Hawaiian group Hui Malama, which wants something done immediately to rectify the situation.

Edward Ayau said the iwi, or bones, are covered with only flimsy plywood that can be easily removed, exposing the grave site, and that trash is blowing into the area and portable toilets are set up next to the site, possibly on top of more remains. . .

The remains were grouped in one area and the land department's State Historic Preservation Division will make a decision on their disposition. An archaeologist has determined that the remains may be from the 1853 smallpox epidemic that struck Honolulu. Some of the remains could be older than that.

Read the full article here.

Fingerprints track Roman potters

A police fingerprint expert has been helping archaeologists track the work of a 1st-century Roman potter. David Goodwin, head of Northamptonshire Police's Fingerprint Bureau, was drafted in to help prove fragments of pottery found in London were cast by the same man.

A ceramics specialist at the Museum of London, approached the police for help after discovering prints on the ancient Roman relics. It is thought to be the first time that criminal fingerprinting techniques have been used to assist an archaeological dig.

Alas, the results were inconclusive. From the BBC.

Woodrow Wilson: the man who would be Philip Dru

An interesting piece at History News Network by Thomas Fleming:

Not many Americans outside the historical fraternity have heard of Philip Dru. Even among that well-informed group, not many are willing to admit the powerful role Philip Dru played in shaping the history of the twentieth century.

You may be nonplused to discover that Philip Dru is a character in a novel, Philip Dru, Administrator. It is not a very good novel. But its main character and his message acquired enormous significance when the author, Colonel Edward Mandell House, became the intimate advisor to the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.

Philip Dru tells the story of a military and political genius who took over a wealthy disordered quarrelsome nation and led it into an era of superhuman contentment by persuading the people to make him their supreme autocrat. This vision was not very different from Woodrow Wilson's view of how things worked best politically. In one of his books he wrote that the "graver questions" of politics, such as the choice between peace and war, could only be decided by "the selected leaders of public opinion and rulers of state policy."

The more I read about Wilson, the more frightening a figure he appears (see this entry on his enthusiastic embrace and imposition of Jim Crow). The title of Fleming's essay is "President Bush's Woodrow Wilson Problem", which I'm not sure how to interpret -- not least because no explicit mention is made of current events or the present presidential administration. Fleming writes that Wilson had not expected to have to send troops abroad when he brought the US into WW1, concluding:

This is the sort of thing that can happen when the autocratic style pervades the presidency. Wilson seldom sought advice or information from anyone but Colonel House. His cabinet was a collection of mediocrities whom he rarely consulted. House had selected most of them. Philip Dru's autocratic style also pervaded Wilson's peacemaking. He seemed to think that the enunciation of lofty slogans was the equivalent of realizing them on a practical level. When he and House composed the famous "Fourteen Points" speech, stating the principles the world must accept to have lasting peace, the diminutive Texas colonel (an honorary title) told his diary with immense satisfaction: "Saturday was a remarkable day. We got down to work at half past ten and finished remaking the map of the world, as we would have it, by half past twelve o'clock."

Behind Wilson's back, the Europeans mocked his Fourteen Points. The French premier, Georges Clemenceau, sneered that God had been satisfied with ten commandments. At the Paris Peace Conference, Clemenceau and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George overrode Wilson's objections and wrote a vengeful peace treaty that sowed the seeds of World War II. It was poor compensation for the 120,139 Americans who had died in World War I.

Aside from the now widely contested view that the harshness of Versailles made WW2 inevitable (in hindsight, the failure to secure unconditional surrender would seem to have been more the issue), this summary's warning is entirely valid -- but to my mind, a warning more applicable to someone like Al Gore than to George W. Bush.

16th-century Mexican codex resurfaces at last

After nearly two decades of sitting in a cramped safety deposit box, a 16th-century manuscript called crucial to understanding Mexican history has resurfaced—and scholars from Harvard are joining an effort to decipher the long-lost historical gem.

Scholars from Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center will join Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Anthropologia, to study, restore and publish their findings about the rare codex, which survived the Spaniards’ purge of manuscripts in the 16th century. . .

The codex has a long and murky history. In 1963 the codex was declared a national treasure of Mexico, but sometime after that it disappeared from the public eye. . .

Only four ethnographic codices remain, of which “this is the best and the most important,” Espinosa said. “The codex comes from a family of documents from the same town,” Seiferle-Valencia said. “This is the largest, the most heavily illustrated and one of the most complex. It’s the jewel of the group.”

From the Harvard Crimson.

Italy awash in fake dentists?

This is rather frightening:

Bogus dentists outnumber genuine ones in Italy - where more than 45,000 unqualified people are believed to be working as dentists. Giuseppe Renzo, of Italy's Order of Dentists, says he has heard of tailors, plumbers and even traffic wardens removing teeth and fixing crowns. . .

Mr Renzo added that many had obtained worthless certificates from the internet or just bought a plaque, called themselves dentists and opened a practice.

You may want to get your teeth checked before that Italian vacation. . . .

Family celebrates birth of a girl -- first in 120 years

A family is celebrating after the birth of its first girl for more than a century. Baby Jessica Harold was born to delighted parents 19-year-old Natalie and 22-year-old Gerrard. She is the first daughter born to the family since 1882 - at the time of Jessica's great, great, great grandfather Frederick Harold.

From Ananova.

Iraqi archeological site plunder update

"The great majority of Iraqi sites are in great danger,'' warned McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago archaeologist who has been involved in Iraqi excavations since the early 1960s. He said the plundering of Iraq's hundreds of archaeological sites began much earlier than the looting of the Iraqi National Museum, which drew international attention in the hours and days after the capture of Baghdad by U.S. forces last month. . .

UNESCO said the looting has picked up since the U.S.-led war on Iraq began March 20 and that plunderers are thought to have started some digs as recently as early May. "I have seen with my own eyes new digging on sites that were never touched before,'' Gibson said. He singled out Nippur, the religious center of Sumerian and Mesopotamian civilization. . .

Gibson also mentioned the nearby site of Isin, where German archaeologists have worked for years; Larsa, in the south; and sites in Diala province, northeast of Baghdad. "We know of many more sites, mostly in the south and isolated areas, that are being systematically looted by 80 men, 100 men, and 300 men per day and the material is going out of the country at an increasing rate,'' Gibson said at a news conference.

Several important archaeological sites, including those in Nimrud and Kish, are being protected by U.S.-led coalition forces, he said.

Mounir Bouchnaki, assistant director-general of Paris-Based UNESCO, said the experts he led on his current visit to Iraq found that Baghdad's heritage sites remained unsecured. He speculated that it is worse outside the capital.

From the Guardian.

Ancient Rome: another Venice?

EARLY Rome was not as we imagine it. It was a “shimmering city on water” and — like Venice — subject to frequent flooding, according to a leading American archaeologist.

Professor Albert Ammerman, who was educated in Britain and is known for his work on the archaeology of Venice as well as the origins of the Roman Forum, says that he has established that the Tiber “was not where it is today. It was a much broader river, stretching to the foot of Capitol Hill. This means that we have to completely rethink our idea of early Rome”.

Professor Ammerman’s discovery shows that “a traveller approaching Rome in the Republican era — say at the time of the Punic Wars — would have seen an astonishing sight: the Temple of Jupiter towering above him on Capitol Hill, but also a line of other great temples on the river bank, appearing to rise out of the water.”

The remains of the riverside temples are now marooned in a busy thoroughfare 100 yards back from the present Tiber embankment, “and we tend to assume that that was pretty much the case in ancient times too. But, in fact, the river was where the road now is, right under Capitol Hill,” he says. . .

Under his Italian assistant, Dunia Filippi, Ammerman’s team may also have solved one of the the great remaining mysteries of ancient Rome: the site of the long-lost Temple of the Deified Augustus, erected after the death of Augustus, the first Emperor, who was hailed as a god.

The team found a massive travertine platform with a cemented basalt foundation 11-metre deep, by drilling in the courtyard of the present Rome police headquarters. “It could be the Temple of Minerva, which has never been found either, but my money is on the Temple of Augustus,” he says. “It’s certainly the mother of all temple foundations.”

Read the rest here.

Greek veto for Acropolis museum

Greece's highest court has ruled against the government's plans on a new museum at the Acropolis in Athens, according to court officials. They are quoted as saying the decision was influenced by fears that the construction work on the slopes of the Parthenon - the proposed site for the new museum - could damage nearby antiquities.

Correspondents say such a ruling is a serious setback for the Greek Government's efforts for the return of the Parthenon frieze known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles, which once adorned the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis, from the British Museum in London.

Greece had hoped a new modern Acropolis museum would put pressure on Britain to return the sculptures for display during the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

From the BBC.

While I have not been following this story, it seems praiseworthy that the court took a conservative stance in balancing the need for a new museum with concerns about disturbing an ancient site. When archeology is enlisted in the service of nationalism, the price paid can be steep indeed -- and in Greece, there has already been a major outcry over the destruction of archeological remains for Olympic Games construction.

Brimfield reminiscences, continued

My recent ramble on the state of the antiques market post-eBay started out with the Brimfield antiques market, but didn't really end up discussing Brimfield per se. So here we go. . .

Brimfield isn't a single market, but rather an agglomeration of independently-run fields clustered around the main road running through the town. Even before the Internet began to change things, Brimfield had been going through major changes all on its own.

Perhaps the biggest shift began when dealers began moving from field to field. Many years ago, the norm was for dealers to rent a space in a field and to remain set up there for several days, often camping out. Now not all fields opened at the same time: rather, openings were staggered across several days, most fields opening between Tuesday and Thursday. Brimfield is a big place, so buyers tended to follow the openings, looking to pounce as fresh merch was being put out. And as time went by, the serious buyers stopped coming back after the initial rush, leaving dealers sitting around in quiet fields populated largely by wandering tire-kickers (no offense intended to sightseeing amateurs, but the fact is, 80% of a dealer's sales in any multiday event will be on the first day, and usually early on). In response, dealers started moving from field to field, following (or rather, keeping ahead of) the wave of buyers.

Promoters benefited from this, of course, but buyers began to get increasingly frustrated as "fresh" fields grew increasingly filled with merchandise that had already been picked over on previous days. This was annoying, but what really began to drive off the buyers was the increasing number of fields fenced off by promoters so they could charge admission. The admission fees themselves didn't drive off anyone: it was that one now had to wait until the designated opening hour before the gates were opened -- allowing dealers set up in the field (and those who had managed to wangle extra passes) to get first crack at all the goodies, leaving little for those not so privileged. The promoters could have profitably dealt with the problem by openly selling early admission passes, but for some reason this was not done.

Such a situation is the kiss of death for a wholesale market, which Brimfield has always been. But perhaps the field owners and event promoters lost sight of this, thinking -- as have many show organizers before them -- that dealers could be neglected in favor of retail buyers (who then never seemed to materialize in sufficient numbers). In any event, many serious buyers soon got tired of watching through the chain link fencing while others cleaned out the fields they were waiting to get into. Nearly ten years ago I stopped bothering with fields I couldn't get into early, paying the usual under-the-table price of $50 for a spare pass. And that $50 was pennies on the dollar in terms of what it allowed me to buy in the hour or so before opening, an hour that guaranteed my competitors would be left nearly empty-handed.

Nonetheless, more often than not I could not snag a pass, so the incentive to keep shopping hard steadily faded. There were a couple of fields that were run differently, however. The exact details varied, but the basic idea was the same: until opening time, no one was allowed to set up, buy, or sell, so that all buyers were given the same chance at the merchandise. Those fields continued to be a big draw, even as many of the other newly-fenced fields' allure was fading. Yet one couldn't get beyond the fact that none of the fair-shot fields opened on Tuesday, the first day; so that while one did get an equal chance there, there too one was increasingly confronted by dealers who had already set up in another field the day before, and sometimes in yet another field the day before that.

All this happened before eBay's market penetration hit the tipping point, which for most smaller items came around 1998-1999. Brimfield's problems insured that it would be unable to offer even the slightest challenge to the migration of wholesale trade online, but the end result was probably inevitable no matter what the show promoters had done. Brimfield still draws big crowds, and money is still being made. Furniture, along with other items that are inconvenient to ship and more easily evaluated in person, remains a staple there, and good deals still turn up -- albeit vastly fewer. But overall, for someone like me, specializing in smaller items, the situation is grim. Piles of reproductions, imports, and "craft" goods, tables full of eBay rejects, display cases loaded with ordinary items offered at full retail -- no wonder that of the many colleagues from years past, virtually all have abandoned Brimfield entirely, even though they are all still in the business, and as active as ever.

Is the general public aware of this? I rather doubt it. It's a similar situation in London, where the venerable Portobello market is moribund as a working antiques venue, yet is now one of the top dozen tourist attractions in the UK.

FOLLOWUP: I ran into one of the veteran local dealers a few weeks after this post, and asked him if he had gone to Brimfield (noting that not so many years back, such a question would have been of the bear-in-the-woods variety). He said he had gone for three days, had looked at everything thoroughly, and had bought nothing but lunch.

Noooooo. . . anything but Barney!

US interrogators in Baghdad are using heavy metal songs to break Iraqi captives. Officials say subjecting prisoners to long sessions of the "culturally offensive" music encourages them to talk. . .

US officials say they also use children's music, such as the Sesame Street theme, and a selection of songs from Barney, the jolly purple dinosaur.

And now. . . the Comfy Chair! From Ananova.

Hadrian's Wall trail opens this week

From today's Times of London:

For the first time in almost 2,000 years, visitors can now walk the entire 84-mile length of Britain’s Roman frontier in the sandalsteps of the legionaries who built it. The wall is a scheduled ancient monument, and the sinking of every new fence stake and fingerpost had to be witnessed by an archeologist. . .

The wall itself makes a fickle walking companion, however. When built it was 15 feet high and 10 wide, bristling with fortified gatehouses and turrets, and designed to show the “wretched Brittunculi” who was boss. But it has been dynamited by centuries of looting and turbulent weather, and rarely reaches even half its original height. Mostly it is invisible altogether, but . . . the new trail never strays more than a stone’s throw from the original line.

Lost and found at the British Museum

Writeup in today's Times of London of a forthcoming British Museum exhibition titled "Treasure: Finding Our Past":

"Treasure" marks the first time that the museum has devoted a whole show to the ordinary man. Not only that, many of the discoveries have been found by metal-detector users — long the scourge of archeologists, who have tended to dismiss them as men in anoraks with a profoundly irritating hobby. So for the learned scholars of the British Museum to applaud them and invite many of them to the opening night is a bit like Jonah making peace with the whale that swallowed him.

A change in the law regarding treasure in England and Wales has brought metal-detector users to the forefront of modern archeology. The old common law meant that all treasure — gold and silver — was the property of the crown. It was only yours to keep if you could prove the owner of the valuables had no intention of returning. So if you were lucky enough to uncover a grave on your land that contained gold as part of a burial offering, it was yours, not the crown's — the owner wasn't coming back. But if you came across a hoard of gold coins dating from Edward IV, intended to be used as payment for mercenaries during the Wars of the Roses, as builders did in Sherwood Forest in 1966, it went to Her Majesty.

Treasure trove was never clear cut and, not surprisingly, many finds went unreported or found their way onto the illegal market. The Treasure Act of 1996 aimed to change all that. Under the new law, any object that is made of gold and silver and more than 300 years old is classed as treasure and must be reported to the local coroner. It still belongs to the crown — but now the Queen will pay you a reward. So if a museum is interested in acquiring it on her behalf, then a sum, determined by an independent body, is paid. If not, the object is returned to the finder.'The new act has changed the whole landscape of British archeology,' says Dr Richard Hobbs, curator of the Treasure exhibition. 'It's much more democratic now. It's not about gentlemen archeologists or us-and-them. Some metal-detector users do it purely for money, but they are a tiny minority. Most are genuinely interested and knowledgable about the past.'

To help the law along, the heritage lobby has set up a team of community archeologists to work with the public. Under the Portable Antiquities Scheme, funded by government and lottery money, each county will have its own officer to assess finds. When a 'his and hers' set of Iron Age jewellery was discovered near Winchester three years ago, the metal-detector user immediately contacted his local officer and the field was soon swarming with men in white gloves. The finder, Kevan Halls, got a £350,000 reward.

No wonder treasure is fast approaching a new industry in Britain. Metal-detector clubs with names such as White Cliffs and Thames Mudlarks abound. They even have their own magazines, including The Searcher. The British Museum now has its first treasure registrar, Lisa Voden-Decker, who works with the finders. 'I like the fact that people feel they can participate in history,' she says.

One of the luckiest people in Britain is Eric Lawes, who scooped the biggest reward since the act was introduced, when he went out looking for a hammer in Suffolk and came back with Roman gold and silver. The Hoxne treasure, the stash of a well-to-do 4th-century family, featuring charm bracelets, pepper pots and exquisite silver, is one of the highlights of the museum's collection. For his efforts, Lawes got £1.75m. And last month it was announced that a retired schoolmaster in Leicestershire had unearthed one of the largest hoards of Iron Age gold and silver coins ever found in Britain, plus a Roman cavalry helmet. Ken Wallace discovered more than 3,000 silver and gold coins, thought to have been made by the local tribe, the Corieltauvi, more than 2,000 years ago. The presence of the helmet raises the intriguing possibility that a local man may have travelled to the Roman empire and served in the cavalry before the Roman conquest of Britain, something hitherto unknown. Wallace's reward promises to be hefty.

A selection of the finds to be exhibited is listed here.

Orwell & Runciman: collaborators in black magic

George Orwell spent his life believing that he had killed a fellow pupil at Eton using voodoo, according to a new biography.

The late Sir Steven Runciman, the medieval historian, revealed in a letter written shortly before his death that he and Orwell practised black magic on a wax effigy of Philip Yorke, an older boy who had been threatening and offensive. They were horrified, however, when Yorke first broke his leg and then, months later, developed leukaemia and died. . .

Prior to this confession, Runciman had never previously mentioned the incident, which left him with a terror of the supernatural. Orwell, too, seemed profoundly affected. He never wrote or spoke about his experience or Yorke's death; however, he did tell friends that he changed his name from Eric Blair because he thought that his enemies might use his real name to work magic against him.

Read the full story in today's Telegraph.

Falcons stand guard at airports

The most frequent flyers at Montreal's Dorval airport these days are rewarded not with bonus miles and free travel, but rather with yummy bits of quail meat. That's all it takes to keep falcons such as Orion, Figaro, Gibraltar and Elie happy as they circle above the runways and keep passengers safe by scaring off the gulls and geese that can pose deadly threats to airplanes.

"The falcon's routine is: Fly around, have a good time and then come back when the work is done," says Mark Adam, founder and president of Falcon Environmental Services. And there's been a lot of work these days.

Read the rest here.

War of 1812 schooner sought

While British troops were attacking Washington on Aug. 24, 1814, a minor skirmish in the War of 1812 was taking place at Bodkin Point near the mouth of the Patapsco River, south of Baltimore. Writing in his journal for that day, a British Royal Marine lieutenant recorded that the HMS Menelaus, captained by Sir Peter Parker, had burned a "fine schooner named the Lion of Baltimore." Now archeologists are pursuing tantalizing clues that the remains of the Lion might lie under the muddy waters of Bodkin Creek.

"We are at the threshold of something exciting here," said Kim Nielsen, director of the U.S. Navy Museum in Washington. Finding the remnants of the burned schooner would provide evidence of a previously undocumented event in the military history of the young American nation. Archeologists used sonar in the fall to pinpoint the location of what might be the outline of a ship's hull.

Read the full story here.

Horses of the Little Bighorn

Here's something from Montana on the bones of the horses of the Seventh Cavalry -- soon to receive their own battlefield monument.

Brits try to keep their bones

The repatriation of human remains currently held in UK museums and universities to indigenous peoples around the world will do immense damage to science. That is the claim of leading researchers who fear many hundreds of specimens that hold vital clues to our evolutionary past could soon be dispersed to be reburied, burnt or even smashed up.

The scientists have been speaking ahead of a report due to be published this summer by a working group that will recommend changes to the legal status of human material held by UK institutions. The scientists are campaigning against the adoption of legislation already passed in Australia and the US which has seen thousands of specimens handed over to aboriginal communities.

Read the rest at the BBC.