The right tool for the job

Bad preparation in Florida:

. . . the 16-year-old pointed the gun at the store clerk and then went to load the .22 caliber rifle.

With .40 caliber ammunition.

Probably couldn't figure out the shape-sorter back in preschool, either.

Three customers watched as the teen, who the Herald is not naming because of his age, raised the gun again. . .

A customer, realizing the gun wasn't loaded, tackled the teen. Two others helped until police arrived. One of the men kicked the teen, who was about six feet tall and 175 pounds, and stood on him.

Microsoft sewing machine?

Not exactly, but Bernina now has one that runs Windows.

Homing pigeons vs cellphone towers

From the BBC:

A growing number of homing pigeons are getting lost due to interference from the new "unseen enemy" of mobile phone masts, racing experts claim.

The birds' natural instincts are being confused by radiation signals from an increasing number of transmitters, the Royal Pigeon Racing Association said. . .

Pigeons are thought to find their way home using landmarks and the earth's magnetic field. . .

Previous research by German scientists in 1999 suggested that short wave radiation had an "undefined negative" impact on homing pigeons. It was found that exposed birds took longer to get home, flew at lower levels and were reluctant to go near transmitters.

I wonder how those German tests were done. Were the birds put in a microwave?

Early Christian finds in France: funerary basilica in Marseilles, more on Arles

I continue to marvel at how little French arts & archeology news gets reported outside of France; luckily, we have Charles Downey's Ionarts, which now has an extensive report on an early Christian funerary basilica found in Marseilles, along with further info on the cathedral at Arles.

Digging up Athens for the Olympics

This article paints a rather rosy picture of the rescue work necessitated by the extensive construction under way for the 2004 Olympic games. Reading between the lines, however, there is obviously much being wrested out of the ground without time for detailed study of context:

The 2004 Games have been a boon for archaeologists, bringing the biggest single antiquities treasure hunt in Athens and surrounding areas. Experts rushed in trying to beat the bulldozers at dozens of Olympic-related sites, from sports venues to highways.

The finds so far range from prehistoric settlements to 2,500-year-old cemeteries to ruins from the Roman period . . . "I don't believe there was ever such a large-scale archaeological excavation in Athens," said Dina Kaza, who heads the dig at the old seaside airport. . .

One excavation — at the site of a new streetcar line storage shed — found 150 graves as old as the seventh century B.C. Another archaeologist, Maria Platonos, uncovered a ceramic vessel depicting a victorious javelin thrower at a cemetery from the Classical period, 500-323 B.C., on a road to the Olympic Village north of central Athens. . .

At the Olympic Village, Miss Platonos' team discovered an extensive system of underground pipes put in during the Roman period to supply Athens with water from nearby Parnitha Mountain. The system was in use until the 19th century.

Chester's Roman amphitheatre excavation

I was in Chester several years ago, at which time there was little visible of its Roman amphitheatre. That is now set to change:

The first part of a major archaeological investigation of Chester's Roman Amphitheatre began this week.

The survey, jointly funded by English Heritage and Chester City Council, will use advanced technology to produce the most detailed map ever made of the city landmark and its surrounding area. . .

Work on site is expected to last three to four weeks, during which time teams of specialists will identify and map key elements of the amphitheatre. The aim is to provide vital information needed by archaeologists to understand the site better and help target possible areas for excavation in the summer.

The survey promises not only to provide information about Chester's Roman past but could also shed light onto early Christian life in Britain. The foundations of St John the Baptist Church, Chester's first cathedral, are near the amphitheatre and their existence indicates a complex adaptation of the original site by Chester's citizens over the centuries.

Read more here.

"Stolen" El Greco heads home

Some aver that collectors should avoid any artwork that lacks a perfect provenance. But few works' past ownership can be securely documented in any depth; this article discusses a pedigree that is particularly complicated and obscure:

An El Greco painting displayed recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was returned Thursday to the Greek museum that owns it after a state judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming it had been stolen by Nazis at the end of World War II.

Harold Holzer, a spokesman for the Met, said that the painting, "Mount Sinai," was returned to the Historical Museum of Crete, which had lent it to the Met for its El Greco exhibition, which closed Jan. 11. . .

In recent years numerous lawsuits have been filed to recover paintings looted during World War II. But this may be one of the most convoluted cases because of conflicting theories about who looted it and who owned it after the war.

In addition, the lawsuit was not filed by an heir of the painting's onetime owner, but by the son of an Austrian lawyer, now deceased, who once represented the owner's family. "We know it was stolen at the end of the war," said Konstantin Akinsha, a researcher in Washington who specializes in looted art. "We just don't know by whom."

The Germans? The Russians? And did its prewar owner in fact later repurchase it? No wonder the court released the painting -- not to mention the Federal law providing immunity from seizure for loans to exhibitions from foreign nonprofit institutions. From the NY Times.

A requiem for Mister Rogers

A 25-piece university orchestra and 65-member choir will present the world premiere next month of an 11-movement hourlong requiem for Fred Rogers, better known as television's Mister Rogers. The work is "In Memoriam: A Requiem for Mr. Rogers," incorporating English, Hebrew and Latin lyrics, poetry and dramatic readings. . .

The first performance, by the Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania orchestra, will take place on Feb. 29 at St. Justin [in Pittsburgh].

From the NY Times.

Long lost Lewis & Clark artifact rediscovered

As we have noted before, keeping track of everything in a museum is no minor task. Another illustration, from today's NY Times:

When a breathless Castle McLaughlin called last week to say she had found "the necklace," Gaylord Torrence knew exactly what she was referring to: the so-called grizzly bear claw necklace, acquired by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during their fabled exploration of the American West.

The item had been donated to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, where Ms. McLaughlin is the associate curator of Native American ethnography, but had been missing since the museum first cataloged it in 1899. . .

Of all the Indian objects Lewis and Clark collected during their trip, from 1804-6, only six others remain that can be traced definitively to the explorers: three raven belt ornaments, two basketry whalers' hats and one quilled otter bag. All six are in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology here.

It turns out the donors withheld the necklace in 1899; a family member finally quietly relinquished it in 1941. It was found by accident among the Peabody's stores of South Pacific items, misidentified as whalebone, of all things.

The Peabody's Lewis & Clark page is here; it includes some other grizzly claw ornaments, but no mention yet of the new find. It is illustrated here, however, as part of the Jan. 15 press release, which also notes that it will be placed on exhibit this spring.

Korean War POW's escape

A South Korean prisoner of war who returned home last month after being held 50 years in North Korea was formally discharged from the army Monday as a military brass band played on a snowy parade ground outside Seoul. . .

Jun [Yong-il] is the latest of more than 30 South Korean POWs who have escaped the North since 1994, as the communist country relaxed control over the movements of its hunger-stricken populace.

Jun's return has helped galvanize the South's resolve to pursue the fate of at least 300 others still believed held.

From the Guardian.

Bacon archive to Tate

The Tate Britain gallery has received a collection of 1,200 pieces from artist Francis Bacon, owned by a friend of the late painter. Barry Joule, a neighbour and friend of the artist since 1978, has in his collection photographs and documents of the painter, who died in 1992 aged 82.

Tate said it hoped getting the collection would help "scholars to resolve remaining issues about Bacon's working practice". The items will eventually go on show. Parts of the collection have already been shown at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2000 and at the Barbican Centre in London in 2001.

From the BBC.

Death and taxes

A tax official who died at his desk in Helsinki went unnoticed by colleagues for two days. The man, a tax auditor in his 60s, died last Tuesday while checking tax returns. . .

According to the Finnish tabloid newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, co-workers assumed the dead man was silently poring over returns. There were about 100 other staff in the auditing department on the same floor the dead tax official worked on.

From Ananova.

Mammoth skull find

A complete mammoth skull - only the second to be found in Britain - has been discovered in a gravel pit.

The skull is estimated to be about 50,000 years old and was found in the Cotswold Water Park, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire.

The ice age specimen was unearthed on January 11 by Dr Neville Hollingworth, a palaeontologist who works at the Natural Environment Research Council in Swindon.

"The skull is exquisite," Dr Hollingworth said. "It is very finely preserved and almost looks like modern bone. It could have been buried last week. This is definitely my best find in 20 years of collecting fossils. I am amazed."

Read the full article here.

Archeologists wrest spear fitting from octopus

I was about to post this as an update to the story we ran as Relics of Persian fleet found off Mt. Athos in mid-December, but the following merited a bit more:

The archaeologists also found a bronze spear-butt, called a sauroter, at a site where, in 1999, local fisherman raised two Greek classical helmets from the seafloor.

The sauroter was found in the possession of an octopus, which had dragged the spear-butt inside a jar in which it had made its sea-floor home.

From the BBC.

UPDATE: A bit more here, including the following:

"We were a high-tech operation, but our most useful research tool turned out to be the octopuses that lived in these waters," said Hohlfelder. One octopus living in a ceramic pot 300 feet down had dragged broken pieces of pottery, stones and a bronze spear point with part of the wooden shaft still intact into the entrance of its home.

"Happily for marine archaeologists, these animals love to collect antiquities and pull them into their homes. "Very often the first clue that a shipwreck is nearby is a pile of artifacts collected by these wonderful creatures with an antiquarian's passion for old things."

Life as punctuated equilibrium

. . . and it's seemed especially punctuated lately, between Louisa's arrival (four weeks ago already!) and the illnesses and manifold activities of her big sisters. Yesterday was the topper, however, and it began around 3 am with cold air coming out of the heating vents. Down to the basement I go, only to find the water line feeding the furnace humidifier has come loose, flooding the furnace and much of the area surrounding. There's also a cat that doesn't belong there, who seems to be the culprit; it's our neighbor's, and must have wandered in on Saturday only to get locked in. Several hours later I've mostly dried everything out (and freed the cat) but still cannot restart the furnace. Touch and go waiting to see if a service tech can make it; finally we get the good news midafternoon, and by dinnertime heat is restored.