Cronaca interrupta

Time for a break! Reversing the normal order of things, we'll be back posting in time for the 4th of July weekend. In the meantime, take a look at some of the links to the left -- especially Mirabilis, which shares many of our own interests. For ongoing coverage of the situation of cultural properties in Iraq, take a look at Palaeojudaica -- which has also been giving extensive coverage to the James ossuary story.

Ancient laws take a bite out of English landowners

A couple are to be ordered to pay £95,000 for repairs to a 13th-century parish church because their nearby farm was formerly church land. The House of Lords ruled yesterday that ancient laws meant that Gail and Andrew Wallbank are liable to help with the upkeep of St John the Baptist Church in Aston Cantlow, Warwickshire.

The test case affects thousands of smallholders. About 5,000 parish churches could now enforce similar orders on private individuals who own former glebe land — church land that was often rented out to bring in funds for parish maintenance. . .

The Wallbanks became liable for the repairs to the church chancel when they inherited Glebe Farm in Aston Cantlow — where Shakespeare’s parents were married — from Mrs Wallbank’s father. The land is a quarter of a mile from the church but it formerly belonged to the church as glebe land. After the Reformation, the glebe land passed into private ownership and the owner was appointed “lay rector” of the parish.

About 5,000 parishes have lay rectors, of which nearly 3,000 are private individuals. In return for their liability for chancel repairs, lay rectors were once entitled to tithes, a tenth of the value of parishioners’ labour. However, these tithes were abolished in 1936.

The penalty for refusing to pay for chancel repairs used to be excommunication, backed up by a possible committal by the High Court for contempt of the ecclesiastical court. Since 1932, parochial church councils have been entitled to sue lay rectors in civil courts.

From the Times of London.

Wine in India

Do you know the annual per capita consumption of wine in India? According to this NY Times article on the growth of Indian wine production, it currently comes out to one teaspoon.

Definitely sounds as if there's room to go (French per capita consumption for 2002 was 56 liters; worldwide average came to 3.5 liters).

Reevu bike helmet

Hadn't heard about this helmet, which incorporates a wide-angle rearview mirror working through a periscopelike crest. It is now due to be introduced in the USA -- here's the article in the Times of London which tipped me off. For the full story, the company website is here.

If you thought American politicians were bad . . .

. . . have a look at the latest from Japan:

Offensive statements of a racist, sexist or chauvinistic character have become so regular among Japanese politicians as to be almost routine. But even by these standards, Seiichi Ota’s remarks were breathtaking.

The former cabinet minister faced unprecedented criticism yesterday after a speech in which he appeared to cheer on rapists for their courage and manliness. “Gang rape shows that the people who do it are still virile,” Mr Ota said at a public debate on Thursday. “I think that might make them close to normal.”

As the article goes on to point out, Japan is, well, not quite like us, in some rather fundamental ways:

Much Japanese popular culture displays an indulgent attitude towards sexual assault bordering on the jaunty. The image of a helpless woman being born down on by a predatory man is a staple of manga, the comic books consumed by Japanese commuters — one popular manga used to feature the superhero Rapeman.

More coverage here at MSNBC, though it lacks these past zingers appended to the Times of London article:

‘Japan is becoming a considerably intelligent society, far more so than the US. A large number of blacks, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans live in the US. On average the level is still extremely low’
Yasuhiro Nakasone, former Prime Minister

‘The most harmful thing that civilisation has brought about is baba (old hags). It is sinful for a woman to continue to live after she loses her reproductive capacity’
Shintaro Ishihara, Governor of Tokyo

‘The voters could not have vanished faster if I’d been an Aids patient’
Yoshiro Mori, former Prime Minister, after a poorly attended rally

Shock of the new

Many look on art as an investment. But what if the artworks are inherently unstable?

Art collectors are spending huge sums on colour photographs and videos that will fade away over the next 50 years. . .

Scientists from Basle University say that thousands of photographic images and other media will deteriorate, losing their integrity as art objects . . . They say that they want to warn public and private collectors that the instability of the photographic materials will eventually cause the imagery to disappear altogether. The situation is particularly serious because an increasing numbers of artists are choosing to work with colour photography and digital media. . .

Claudio Cesar, an American collector, is setting up an international organisation dedicated to finding a long-term solution to conserving digital artworks. He said that institutions were burying their heads in the sand over the issue. “Priceless photographic images are fading and deteriorating. Most museums have spent so many dollars in conservation and storage. Public money is going to be wasted. It is unthinkable that one of the most important art movements of our time has so little permanence . . . Colour photographs experience significant cyan dye-fading within 25 to 30 years. Unlike with a Rembrandt oil painting or an Italian fresco, there is nothing a conservator can do.”

He owns two images by Serrano, who is also collected by Charles Saatchi. Each print is now valued at $250,000 . . . “I can see the deterioration. These are just 12 years old. The yellow is deteriorating and going grey. It is in perfect storage conditions. I stand to lose millions of dollars”. . .

Experts say that storage in controlled environments will only slow the rate of deterioration. Ultimately, the stored photographs will deteriorate as much as exposed works. . .

The problem is relatively recent because colour photography was previously looked down on by most artists.

From the Times of London.

Gardener's lawsuit backfires

A London woman has sued an English do-it-yourself store chain for defamation after a heated argument over potted plants; she claims to have been falsely and publicly accused of switching price labels (rather arch commentary here).

But -- whoops! -- in the UK, the losing side picks up the legal bills. And now that the court ruled against her, she is now facing a £45,000 legal bill.

Art History survey courses

The Harvard Crimson reports today on the commencement speech by University President Lawrence H. Summers, in which he set forth his aims for the Harvard undergraduate curriculum.

Boring stuff? Perhaps, but at least one part jumped out at me -- and will likely jump out at anyone who enjoyed taking art history in college:

Summers said that when he told a Harvard art historian about his wish for a survey course “as an introduction for students who would probably never take another art history course in their lives,” she reacted “with a mixture of consternation and hilarity,” arguing that no “self-respecting” scholar could teach all of art history in one year.

By way of background, this attitude is by no means peculiar to Harvard: the traditional art history survey course has been in retreat nationwide for quite some time, with many prominent schools over the past 10 years dismantling well respected surveys in favor of more specialized, less comprehensive introductory classes.

I will not hide my skepticism about this trend. While some argue that a superficial exposure to selected highlights of the entire history of art does not allow the focus in depth necessary for students to learn how to "do" art history, many survey courses have managed this quite well. Neglecting to expose students to the big picture, too, is much like teaching a language by concentrating on grammar while dismissing the importance of vocabulary: one may easily end up speaking with precision, but understanding nothing.

This is also the pitfall of specialization -- and the history of art is, like almost everything else nowadays, more specialized than ever. Survey courses have long been unpopular among ambitious academics, who would much prefer to teach advanced courses that tie in to their current research. Survey teaching has thus often been delegated to junior faculty, adjuncts, and grad students -- and not always to the course's detriment. But if survey courses do manage to survive without top scholars, to what extent might the scholars be the ultimate losers? Protesting that one cannot teach everything in a year cuts the tree off from its roots. One has to begin somewhere.

Schwitters hunt on in Lake District

Kurt Schwitters . . . sold portraits and collages for only a few pounds when he lived in the Lake District, for the three years before he died in 1948. . .

On Tuesday, the Armitt Museum in Ambleside started a search for forgotten works by the German Dada-ist. Peter Jackson, chairman of the Armitt, said: "We know that they are out there lying in garages and lofts, there is certainly a large amount of stuff we know he did" . . .

His biographer Gwendolyn Webster said: "He was very ill when he was in Ambleside but was desperate to finish his last project. "He sold paintings and portraits for £3 or £4, or would sketch people for a cup of coffee. His avant-garde work was not popular in Ambleside."

From the BBC.

Protests at York Minster

Access to the library's book collection dating back to the 8th century is planned to be closed as a way of reducing the Minster's £600,000 annual deficit.

There are also plans to introduce a compulsory admission charge to visit the Minster. . .

On Saturday, campaigners opposed to the planned closure of part of the library held a protest outside the Minster.

Read more here.

Neues Museum restoration to begin

Renovation work is to begin on Berlin's Neues Museum, one of the city's last remaining war ruins. The museum, which is housed on Berlin's museums' island, is expected to be ready to open again in 2009.

It was built between 1843 and 1859, but was damaged during World War II and has been left unused since then. . .

When it is completed it will house Egyptian Museum and Pre- and Ancient History Museum collections, which are both currently located elsewhere in Berlin.

It will be strange to see the Museum Insel fully restored, after so many decades of spooky ruin. From the BBC.

Teaching prisoners to dig

Not sure if this is the wisest idea:

As part of a university-accredited educational course, four residents of a young offenders' institution are about to learn how to dig holes next to the perimeter fence.

They will be supervised by an archaeologist, a TV crew - and, needless to say, a prison officer.

The reason for the investigative digging is that Her Majesty's Young Offenders Institution and Remand Centre, Onley, in Warwickshire, is next to a deserted medieval village.

The article then goes on to note:

Onley's more recent history adds an unusual twist. "It was a munitions depot in World War II ... and in the past someone has dug up a bayonet inside the prison," Dr Hill said. "So you never know what we might find. I hope we don't find any unexploded bombs or anything."

Ancient gold cup, digitally reconstructed

A rare gold cup from the Bronze Age has been secured for display by the British Museum. It is only the second example of its type to come from the UK, with just five cups of this type known across the whole of Europe.

Found in Ringlemere, east Kent, in 2001, the cup has helped provide further evidence of the extensive trading networks that covered Europe during the Bronze Age.

And, what is equally fascinating in its own right:

It was "virtually reconstructed" using an endoscope, radiography and x-rays following scientific examination of the cup at the British Museum.

Pictures of the cup and the digital reconstruction accompany the full BBC article.

UK country house raids

The specialist art and antiques insurers AXA Art have issued advice to their clients following the increasing incidence of art theft from country houses during the last few months. The burglaries – including that at Waddesdon Manor where a group of around 100 Rothschild gold boxes were stolen – have all followed a pattern. They have been carried out by a group of males aged between 20 and 40 years who have visited earlier to gain familiarity with entry points, security systems and the location of targeted objects.

Typically, stolen four-wheel drive vehicles or fast Japanese cars have been used to enter grounds and these have been driven right up to houses, enabling the thieves to make a fast getaway with stolen objects across uneven terrain.

The recommendations -- you can read them here -- are all pretty much common sense, but still beg the question why such bold raids have become so commonplace. Perhaps it is time for the owners of the larger houses to dig moats, or at least defensive ditches. . . .

WHOOPS -- so much for my brilliant ideas:

Two people have been arrested in connection with a daring £2m raid on the country house that inspired the novel Brideshead Revisited. A dinghy was used to help burglars get across the moat at Madresfield Court, near Malvern, in Worcestershire, in March of this year.

The offenders are believed to have coped with the boat partially capsizing, before loading it with antiques, art, silver and porcelain and making their escape.

First Americans: by land or by sea?

A book review in the Christian Science Monitor takes a look at the ongoing controversy over how the Americas were first populated:

Does your heart swell with pride every time you think of those sturdy first immigrants, ancestors of today's Amerindians, who walked over the land bridge from Siberia hunting wooly mammoths with stone-tipped spears as they came? Would it deal a serious blow to your sense of self-worth to discover that those first comers took a boat and dug clams, instead? Brace yourself: A corps of archaeologists armed with spades and obsidian spear-points is preparing to overturn the received wisdom regarding the peopling of the Americas. And they're facing stiff opposition.

In "Lost World," journalist Tom Koppel gives us not merely good reporting on field archaeology in action, but a blow-by-blow account of a major scholarly battle in full spate.

Meteorites and the conversion of Constantine

I wasn't originally going to post on the recent discovery of a late antique impact crater north of Rome, but it's been presented in such sensationalistic terms ("Christianity: Came from Outer Space?"; "Space impact 'saved Christianity'") that some comment is called for. While the headlines all seem to be linking the meteorite with Constantine's vision prior to the battle of the Milvian Bridge (AD 312), the dating seems to be a bit of a stretch: as one article reports, "radiocarbon analysis of a drill core indicated that the crater was formed between 370 and 450 A.D."

Moreover, the articles all seem to be slanting the story -- one of two, it should be noted -- of the vision that led to Constantine's conversion. For Eusebius's account does not state that the vision occurred immediately before the battle, but rather at some indeterminate time previous -- likely prior to Constantine's crossing of the Alps, and almost certainly predating his march south from Verona -- while the description of the vision above the early afternoon sun does not call to mind a meteor impact nearly so much as the traditional scientific explanation of a solar halo. Or a genuine miracle, in that Eusebius recounts that the words "in hoc signo vinces" (by this sign you will conquer) also appeared in the sky . . .

eBay loophole for sellers of looted Hawaiian artifacts

From Honolulu:

Traders on eBay's online auction site continue to traffic in Hawaiian artifacts, sidestepping prohibitions by being vague about the items' origins.

"The unfortunate thing about it is: If the seller won't volunteer where he/she obtained the artifacts from, it likely represents a legal sale in eBay's eyes," state parks archaeologist Alan Carpenter said.

EBay said it is investigating the latest sale of fishhooks and a stone cutting tool that the unidentified seller admits were dug up at the site of an old fishing village. The State Historic Preservation Office also is looking into the case, "but it's not clear what, if anything, we can do," said historic preservation archaeologist Sara Collins.

In April, eBay changed its policies on Hawaiian historical items after state and federal officials complained that a seller was marketing a Hawaiian bowling stone, called an 'ulu maika, that had been illegally taken from Kaho'olawe. The new policy placed Hawaiian cultural items in the same category as Native American items given certain protections.

Although it's kept beneath the radar pretty well so far, eBay unquestionably facilitates trade in whatever class of object it allows to be listed. As the museum world begins to catch on, there may be more and more pressure on eBay to further tighten its rules on the selling of archeological material. And though I don't have the exact figures handy, the minimal contribution of such material to eBay's total revenues leaves open the eventual possibility of a complete ban (note that eBay quit accepting listings for firearms somewhere around 1997, without any significant outside pressure).

Cultural losses in Iraq and the Hague Convention

There's been a lot of rash talk about how coalition forces violated the Hague Convention's provisions regarding protection of cultural assets. Jim Davila has posted a long, point by point discussion of what the relevant protocols actually call for (post of Jun 22). In fact, if anyone was in violation of the Hague Convention, it was the Iraqis, as this new report in ArtNews relates:

During a week in May in Baghdad, I interviewed about 30 people concerning the looting: Iraqi museum officials, the U.S. troops accused of failing to protect the museum, members of the U.S. team investigating the thefts, foreign archeologists who led international protests against the U.S. role, and more than a dozen people who lived in the neighborhood and who witnessed the looting and the combat that preceded it.

The most striking fact to emerge from dicussions with those living or working around the museum is that, in the days before and during the looting, they saw the museum being turned into a major military defensive position by Iraqi forces.

In plain violation of the Hague Convention of 1954, Iraqi fighters occupied the museum complex and used it as a combat position for at least three days after museum staff had fled. Neighborhood residents corroborated the charges made by American forces that the Americans had come under attack from inside the museum grounds and that fighting in the area was heavy. Even as they criticized the Americans for not protecting their national treasures, Iraqi witnesses to the looting said that Saddam Hussein’s forces had turned the museum into a small arsenal.

"The Ba’athists were in there, shooting at the Americans. Many people saw it," said Jabar al-Azawi, referring to members of Saddam Hussein’s party. An elderly man wearing a gray robe, he offered me a cold drink in his garden on a quiet street around the corner from the museum. He said that the fighting was so intense that everyone on the block except him fled. "I loved the museum, and I blame the Americans and the British forces because they didn’t stop the looting," he said.

U.S. forces have cited armed resistance from inside the complex as the main reason they could not seal off the museum and prevent the looting. In the end, they protected it only after they had defeated the last remnants of Saddam’s forces in the area.

The report corroborates all of Dan Cruikshank's charges, with much else besides. The overall picture is devastating. [CORRECTION: I shouldn't have written "all", since Cruikshank has certainly made his share of errors; his most serious charges, however, regarding the militarization of the museum, are indeed here confirmed -- D.]

Ibrahim Taha and his colleague were guarding the office of the bus company where they worked when they saw people rushing into the museum, a few doors down. Taha followed them in and came to a small concrete building at the back of the museum, where he saw something that surprised him: weapons. Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were propped against the wall, more guns were hanging from hooks, and there were boxes of ammunition on the floor. The Iraqi fighters who had brought this arsenal had fled, and looters were busily helping themselves to the weapons. . .

About a week before American tanks rolled into Baghdad, Iraqi forces dug three trenches in the museum’s front lawn and covered them with corrugated metal and earth. Partly camouflaged by the overgrown lawn, these trenches—underground bunkers, the Americans called them—were later used to store weapons and launch attacks on U.S. tanks on the avenue in front of the museum.

Identical to combat pits dug in parks, vacant lots, and soccer fields all over Baghdad, the trenches in front of the museum are about five feet deep and seven feet long—large enough to accommodate three or four people lying down with weapons. American forces found an unexploded grenade in one of the trenches. There were at least five sandbag emplacements on the museum grounds and on the sidewalk in front. I asked museum director Nawala al-Mutawili what the trenches were for. "They were dug long ago," she said, declining to elaborate.

Elsewhere in the museum complex, snipers fired at American forces from at least three locations: a storage room in the main building and the roofs of two other museum buildings. Weapons or ammunition were found later at all three spots.

A fourth building in the rear of the museum was used as an arsenal and reloading station, with easy access to an avenue that saw some of the heaviest fighting in Baghdad. The door that connected that building to the avenue was, in fact, the door through which most of the looters entered the museum.

The use of the museum as a military position by Iraqi forces literally opened the door to its looting. "It was that side door," said Khalil Ibrahim, who lives nearby. "All the fighting was over there, and that’s where the thieves were carrying out things from the museum."

Read the whole article -- there's much, much more.

Practical origami

A prisoner facing a life sentence made a fake gun out of paper and cardboard and escaped from a courtroom Monday.

Harold McCord used the fake gun to threaten guards, then shed his jail clothes and hijacked a pickup truck, sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said.

Read it here.

Caps vs Helmets

Not long after Baghdad fell and Saddam's forces were pronounced defeated, we began to read how American forces were persisting in maintaining an unreasonably menacing stance. American soldiers, we were told, kept wearing their helmets and body armor -- unlike the more worldly Brits, who were reportedly winning hearts and minds by leaving off the protective gear and switching to unintimidating cloth caps.

Yet as the weeks passed, and casualties from ambushes and hit-and-run attacks continued, staying on alert came to seem entirely reasonable and prudent. Now the British have started taking casualties, too. Are the troops patrolling Basra now wearing their body armor and helmets again? One thing is certain: those who were asking why American soldiers couldn't be more like the British aren't coming back to the issue now that the answer is at hand.

Arts looting: another inside job

The security chief at eight Buddhist temples north of Beijing has been arrested for his involvement in China's biggest case of trafficking in cultural relics, state-run media reported today.

The relics, many of them Buddhist figurines that once belonged to Beijing's Palace Museum, surfaced at an auction by Christie's auction house in Hong Kong last October. The New China News Agency said Li Haitao, the director of security at the Eight Outer Temples, allegedly stole 158 relics over 12 years in Chengde, a city north of Beijing that was an imperial summer resort.

Li was accused of replacing stolen objects with copies, the news agency said. After some time, he began taking pieces home without replacing them, the report said. The thefts went undetected because five successive directors of his department failed to check the number of relics.

From the Washington Post.

Bronze Age barrow for sale by owner

From the BBC:

One of the biggest Bronze Age burial chambers in Cornwall has been put on the market for £150,000. The barrow in West Penwith was built 4,000 years ago and was discovered two years ago by its owner, musician Nick Potter, who bought the land from relatives.

The barrow consists of two rings of stones. The largest is 11.5 metres in diameter and some of the bigger stones are up to 2m wide and 1.22m high.

Development potential, however, is limited. . . .

Dutch restitution of Nazi-looted art

The Dutch government has finally moved to correct a flagrant injustice in the restitution of art treasures looted by the Nazis in World War II. For a long period, between the end of that war and 1997, a veil of secrecy had been drawn over the so-called “NK collection”, works of art that had been recuperated but had remained unclaimed when the date for submitting an application for restitution passed.

These works–thousands of them–passed into the Dutch National Art Collection and were exhibited in museums. One example was the Rijksmuseum’s star piece, an Augsburg silver-gilt ewer by the 17th-century goldsmith Johannes Lencker (pictured). This had belonged to the Gutmann family and was one of over 200 works of art from that family, which in 2000 was still part of the NK collection. The children of the Gutmanns, who were murdered in the war, had been claiming these objects since before 1952. They were finally returned last year, and sold at Christie’s last month. . .

As well as being loaned to museums, works from the NK collection had been placed in embassies and ministries. In another case which the report examines, a painting had disappeared after being lent to the Ministry of Defense. The committee is still thinking about how to compensate the owners, the “H” family.

From the Art Newspaper. Meanwhile, a Schiele stolen by the Nazis, which a German museum recently returned to the heirs of its original owners, was just sold at Sotheby's for £11.3m plus commission.

James ossuary controversy continues

Though the evidence against the authenticity of the celebrated inscription would now seem to be overwhelming (the antiquity of the ossuary itself is unquestioned), there are those who cannot accept the verdict of forgery (that they are approaching the issue less than impartially is also evident from their leap of faith in accepting the inscription as "biblical" -- even though those who initially accepted its authenticity warned that it could potentially refer to any one of quite a number of Jameses).

Jim Davila at Palaeojudaica has been posting links; start here and scroll (key broadsides at The Bible & Interpretation).

Art in court: French vs world

Foreigners sometimes suspect that the French courtrooms favour their own experts over any other when dealing with cases in the art market. They cite the case of Christie’s owner François Pinault, who has been battling for years to get his money back on an Egyptian statue after a German specialist declared it to be a fake (see The Art Newspaper, No.131, December 2002, p. 42). The French court followed the opinion of two Louvre experts that the statue was genuinely old, despite some very strong evidence from Mr Pinault’s specialist.

Now a comparable judgement has been handed down in a case concerning some supposedly 18th-century statues bought by the singer Sir Elton John from the French dealer Jean Renoncourt. The four statues represent Olympian gods, which the singer bought in 1996 for a punchy $360,000 (about £250,000). According to the invoice, they dated from the mid-18th century and were signed Luigi Grossi, who died in 1795.

But when Sir Elton asked the British specialist Simon Yates to value them for insurance in 2001, Mr Yates’ conclusion was devastating: he pronounced them 20th-century copies, worth no more than £5,000 ($7,500). Sir Elton sued for the sale to be annulled, and Mr Renoncourt’s defence was unusual. According to his lawyer, Sir Elton was not particuarly interested in the age of the statues, and by noting on the invoice that they were signed by Luigi Grossi, Mr Renoncourt merely indicated that they were “works made in his studio.”

Last month the French judge, Jacques Gondron de Robert, known for his sometimes controversial decisions, threw out the case, and awarded costs of £15,000 against Sir Elton. The singer had brought no evidence that the statues were not authentic, said the judge, and dismissed Mr Yates’ report as mere “opinion”, not backed up by any evidence.

It's getting messier, too: not only is the decision being appealed, Renoncourt is now suing his former customer for damages, claiming further that Christie's is behind the whole imbroglio. Yet it is at Sotheby's, not Christie's, that Elton John will be selling items from his collection this September -- though perhaps if one is pointing fingers at the "Anglo-Saxon auction houses", concluding that they are all in collusion anyway may not be too much of a leap. From the Art Newspaper.

New breakthrough in ground-penetrating radar?

I really haven't kept up with the latest technology, but this sounds quite interesting. It sounds as if the advance may be as much due to software (that is, data analysis) as to hardware (the radar receiver) -- much as was the case with infrared reflectography for paintings:

Mark Grasmueck . . . a University of Miami geophysicist . . . has developed a device that he slowly and methodically pulls backward like a reverse lawn mower, each time targeting a four-inch strip of ground.

A particularly sophisticated form of ground-penetrating radar, the device visually slices the earth into fine layers. When reassembled, the exquisitely thin images create a movie that takes the viewer on an underground tour.

He tested his ground-breaking technology two years ago near Coconut Grove, creating a one-minute subterranean view of Ingraham Terrace Park. Now, he and noted archaeologist Robert Carr are fine-tuning the device in downtown Miami, hoping it will help them find ancient pottery, primitive tools and other artifacts below the six acres of parking lots north of the Dupont Plaza.

A 24-second movie produced by Grasmueck already has identified promising archaeological targets there, perhaps evidence left by the now extinct Tequesta Indians who carved the Miami Circle on the other side of the Miami River. . .

''I was stunned when I saw this,'' Carr said. ``He produces what appears to be an X-ray movie of what's below the ground. It's like the greatest science fiction film you ever saw. Nothing like this has ever been done in the history of archaeology" . . .

On May 25, he and a team of four scientists methodically pulled his device through 200 passes -- called transects -- over a 66-foot-by-76-foot grid in a parking lot between Southeast Second and Third streets and Second and Third avenues. It took them all day. . .

When assembled by a sophisticated computer program and analyzed by Grasmueck and his team, the data can point archaeologists to the most promising areas for limited excavation. The computer ''stacks'' the images in a cube, then slices the cube horizontally, providing the viewer with the illusion of embarking on an underground trip.

Read the full article in the Miami Herald.

Stolen Turkish art returned

Directorate General of Security officials . . . revealed that glazed tiles, which had been stolen from Sinan Pasha Mosque in Yenisehir town of northwestern province of Bursa, were smuggled to Britain.

Upon initiatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, British Interpol sent a message saying that the tiles would be handed over to Turkish Embassy in London.

Meanwhile, a handwritten book of famous mystic and philosopher Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, which was discovered in a catalogue of Christie's Auction Hall in Britain, would be returned to Turkey. . . the 22-page handwritten book dated October 24, 1205, was one of the works stolen from the Yusuf Aga Manuscript Museum in central province of Konya.

From Turkishpress.com.

When monks go bad. . .

The assets of a Thai Buddhist monk who amassed a personal fortune of more than £3 million have been frozen after he was uncovered as a suspected gangster.

The monk, Phra Kru Nanthapiwat, was shot dead in his chambers in a temple in Bangkok with a single bullet to his head. Police believe it was a case of karma, or “what comes around goes around”, and the suspects seem limitless.

Although he wore the holy saffron robes and renounced all worldly possessions, Nanthapiwat ran a number of rackets and seemingly disrobed quite often with women at the Wat Koo temple in Nonthaburi, northern Bangkok.

He had survived an earlier attempt on his life at another temple in Bang Sue, also in northern Bangkok, last year when he produced a 9mm pistol from under his robes and he and his bodyguards fired back.

From the Times of London.

Rylands to the salt mines

One of Europe’s most precious manuscript collections is to be moved to a cavernous salt mine in Cheshire. The John Rylands Library in Manchester, built as a memorial to a cotton baron, is shortly to have a £15 million refurbishment designed to open up its neo-Gothic splendour to a wider audience. The library’s 600,000 volumes and vast collection of historical documents dating back 4,000 years must meanwhile find a safe place for the next two years.

Many rare books and manuscripts will be moved to its sister library at Manchester University, but valuable material occupying more than four miles of shelving is being taken from vaults beneath Deansgate to the subterranean home. The collection will spend the next two years below the Cheshire town of Winsford, once the hub of the salt-mining industry. Over the centuries, workers have cleared vast caverns which are prevented from subsiding by salt pillars left standing at regular intervals.

From the Times of London.

16th-century Japanese psalms

Four Japanese boys escorted by the Jesuit Alessandro Valignano toured Europe between 1582 and 1590. A relic of that visit has recently been rediscovered in a Cracow university library:

"European countries that received the mission showed great interest and numerous books about it were published there," said Koichiro Takase . . .

Takase added that the finding was probably the second oldest Japanese biblical translation, only after one made around 1580 and found in Portugal. . .

The translated Latin parts are: "The Lord reigneth," in Psalm 93 and "O Praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people," in Psalm 117. . .

The document is kept in a glass frame, and on the back it tells of the Japanese mission that wrote the Japanese sentences in 1585. [Liudmila] Ermakova, [a professor of ancient Japanese literature at the Kobe City University of Foreign Studies] said that a Polish bishop probably asked the mission to translate some phrases when he was visiting Rome and later donated the document to the library.

From Mainichi Shimbun.

Shaw's defense of Stalin up at auction

Here's a reminder of a side of George Bernard Shaw not often adequately discussed in your average English literature class:

In a document to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London next month, the Nobel prize winner rejects claims that the charges Stalin brought were unfounded, on the basis that “the accused confessed to them”. The playwright said: “No motive for liquidating these men, except their guilt, is apparent.”

The document, expected to fetch up to €6,000, reveals Shaw’s extraordinary naivety about Soviet affairs and his unquestioning admiration for Stalin. The author of Pygmalion was answering a series of questions about the Soviet Union sent to him by Dorothy Royal, a journalist.

Asked whether the Russian Revolution had attracted “degenerative” leaders, Shaw replied: “On the contrary, it has attracted superior types.”

He said one show trial had been exaggerated since only 21 had been found guilty of corruption out of a population of 200m, which “suggests a level of public virtue which seems impossible in England and America”. . .

Stalin had targeted and executed many of those who led the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 but Shaw quipped that “the only wonder is that these old heroes survived so long”.

“I have said myself that the first business of a successful revolution is to shoot all the ‘revolutionists’. Old revolutionists with little administrative and financial experience often “have to be pushed off the ladder with a rope around their necks”, he said. . .

Shaw, a socialist, was a well-known supporter of Stalin, but the callousness of his remarks in this questionnaire is striking. “It is typical Bernard Shaw, slightly perverse and witty. But he believed what he was saying,” said Peter Beal of Sotheby’s.

In 1931, Shaw was the first prominent Western writer to meet Stalin. Following his return, Shaw infamously wrote that rumours of a famine in Russia were a fabrication. He had seen for himself that Russia was well stocked with food. Shaw is despised in Ukraine to this day.

The Sotheby’s sale on July 10, which will have 20 lots of Shaw documents, includes a postcard he sent to the writer Robert Graves’s father in which he disparaged Gaelic literature. “Nothing will induce me to be classed with the Irish Gaelic fans,” he said, adding that the literature had “charm without value” and its loss “would leave the world no poorer”. . .

A letter Shaw wrote about the 1938 film of Pygmalion is also being sold. The writer bitterly disputed the film’s ending in which Higgins realises that he loves Eliza. Shaw wrote that this “spoils the whole affair”.

“I can imagine nothing more disgusting than any attempt to give a sexual complexion to the relation between Higgins and Eliza,” he fumed. This has a guide price of up to €1,150.

From the Sunday Times. The Sotheby's sale catalog entry for the show trial letter is here; a full list of the Shaw lots is here.

Orwell, the KGB, and British intelligence

George Orwell supplied Britain’s security services with a list of suspected communist sympathisers, including the Scottish poet Hugh McDiarmid, because he feared being killed by the KGB . . .

Richard Blair . . . said his father may have acted for purely pragmatic reasons — suspecting the Soviets were amassing a file on him and wanting to ingratiate himself with the British government.

Newly discovered papers included a list of 38 people, including McDiarmid, Charlie Chaplin, J B Priestley and Michael Redgrave, compiled by Orwell shortly before his death in 1950. He had been asked to tell the government about people he thought would be unsuitable for use in putting out pro-western propaganda. Others named . . . included a senior Labour politician, journalists at The Guardian and Daily Express, and a Cambridge historian. . .

At least one of those named, Peter Smollett, an Express journalist, was subsequently found to be a Soviet agent. Suspicions remain about Tom Driberg, the former Labour party chairman who died in 1976 and is also on the list.

From the Sunday Times.