This is probably turning a lot of heads over at the BBC.
Posted May 8, 2008 10:38 PM | Link here
Spain demanded the return of sunken treasure worth an estimated half a billion dollars yesterday, accusing Odyssey, the deep-sea exploration company that discovered it, of looting its shipwrecks.From the Times of London.Spanish archaeologists said that they had determined "with complete certainty" that the record haul had come from the Spanish colonial-era galleon Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, sunk by a British fleet off the southern coast of Portugal in 1804. . .
Mark Pizzo, a US judge, ruled against Odyssey last month, ordering it to share information about the find with the Spanish. Yesterday Spain said that coins from the haul were documented to have been on the Mercedes, while the location of the find also indicated that it came from the galleon.
"The sinking of the Mercedes was a pivotal event in Spanish and European history, and the site and its contents are the inalienable historical heritage and patrimony of Spain," the Government said in court papers due to be filed today as part of a continuing trial to determine who owns the treasure. It added that it never authorised Odyssey to disturb the "gravesite of hundreds of Spanish sailors and their family members" who died when the ship sank.
Posted May 8, 2008 10:21 PM | Link here
Ancient whales were not master divers like their modern descendents. Biologists have discovered signs of decompression syndrome -- the bends -- in several different whale fossils, a finding that could revise the evolutionary history of deep diving.The full article is here; what is intriguing is the extent to which whales' ability to avoid the bends might be a matter of learned (and, implicitly, taught) technique.A team of paleobiologists surveyed hundreds of modern and ancient whale skeletons for decompression syndrome, which occurs when quick pressure changes force air or fat bubbles out of blood vessels.
Posted May 8, 2008 10:14 PM | Link here
Forget Godzilla -- it's the demographics:
Japan celebrated a national holiday on Monday in honor of its children. But Children's Day might just as easily have been a national day of mourning.From the Washington Post.For this is the land of disappearing children and a slow-motion demographic catastrophe that is without precedent in the developed world. . .
Japan, now the world's second-largest economy, will lose 70 percent of its workforce by 2050 and economic growth will slow to zero, according to a report this year by the nonprofit Japan Center for Economic Research.
Population shrinkage began three years ago and is gathering pace. Within 50 years, the population, now 127 million, will fall by a third, the government projects. Within a century, two-thirds of the population will be gone.
In what is now being called a "super-aging" society, department and grocery stores have recorded declining sales for a decade -- and new car sales have fallen for 18 consecutive years.
Posted May 6, 2008 3:01 PM | Link here
Technicians in New Zealand have begun to thaw a rare colossal squid specimen.And that's not all:The operation to defrost the 10-metre (34 feet) long, half-tonne squid began on Monday afternoon in Wellington following a postponement of 24 hours.
The Te Papa scientists are also defrosting a smaller, damaged colossal squid specimen, and two giant squid. The defrosting and dissection are being shown in a live webcast.From the BBC. More discussion here, including a video link. For the official NZ site with many more news, photo, and video links, look here; particularly recommended is the blog. Ever wondered about what the hooks on these squid's arms and tentacles look like? Check out this picture.
Posted April 29, 2008 10:05 PM | Link here
Cronaca was transferred to a new server a few days back, at relatively short notice, and with no support to speak of. I only just got everything (mostly) working again this evening. There seems to be a glitch with the search function, when one tries to do a second search from the search results page; if you find any others, please let me know in the comments section.
At least the new server appears to be running much faster than the old one. Searches are still much too slow, but that's going to take some further efforts that I cannot invest the time in now.
Posted April 29, 2008 9:58 PM | Link here
Archeologists have discovered a 3000-year-old pot in Fiji containing jewellery believed to have been made by the South Pacific's original settlers -- the Lapita people. . .Full article here.The Lapita people were the first colonists of Pacific Island groups, including the eastern Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.
The descendants of the Lapita people, who disappeared as a distinct cultural group around 550 BC, live in these countries today.
Posted April 25, 2008 3:24 PM | Link here
Having grown up in Berkeley, I had to follow up this link to Carousel News' account of the recent renovation work at the Tilden Park carousel. Apparently, California has not been content to leave historic rides alone. As an earlier article noted:
California just has "red-tagged" the historic 1911 Herschell-Spillman carousel at Tilden Park in Berkeley after over 90 years of safe operation with no accidents. This is yet another in the long line of attacks by California's DOSH (Division of Occupational Safety and Health) against the landmark carousels in the state.Follow-up here.
This ridiculous closure follows the numerous major alterations forced to be made to the antique carousels at Golden Gate Park, The San Francisco Zoo, Seaport Village in San Diego, Disneyland and many others in the state, all in the effort to try and make antique, historic carousels meet modern standards. This is destroying the original historic value of the carousels.This latest closure in Berkeley was due to the fact that the carousel operates without a fence. Never mind that in the 90-plus years of operation there has never been a problem, while fences have a long history of causing accidents. That doesn't seem to matter, according to the state. Nor does destroying the layout of a historic building that just underwent a major restoration last year using tax payers' dollars. . .
Of California's 22 historic carousels, all were well intact just 5 years ago. Sadly, most have dramatically changed since then and two major carousels are gone. With this view of carousels, the list of lost carousels will continue to grow.
Posted April 25, 2008 3:01 PM | Link here
Archaeologists have revealed plans to uncover the 2000 year-old tomb of ancient Egypt's most famous lovers, Cleopatra and the Roman general Mark Antony later this year.Full article here.Zahi Hawass, prominent archaeologist and director of Egypt's superior council for antiquities announced a proposal to test the theory that the couple were buried together.
He discussed the project in Cairo at a media conference about the ancient pharaohs.
Hawass said that the remains of the legendary Egyptian queen and her Roman lover, Mark Antony, were inside a temple called Tabusiris Magna, 30 kilometres from the port city of Alexandria in northern Egypt.
Until recently access to the tomb has been hindered because it is under water, but archaeologists plan to drain the site so they can begin excavation in November.
Posted April 25, 2008 2:55 PM | Link here
An 87-million-year-old praying mantis found encased in amber in Japan may be a "missing link" between mantises from the Cretaceous period and modern-day insects. . .Full story here; more recent news of finds in amber here and here.Kazuhisa Sasaki, director of the Kuji Amber Museum, found the fossil creature in January buried 6.5 feet (2 meters) below the surface in an amber mine in Japan's northeastern Iwate Prefecture.
"This part of Japan is famous for producing large amounts of amber, but it was very fortunate for me to find this specimen," Sasaki said.
"I found it in a deposit that had lots of other insects—ancient flies, bees, and cockroaches—but this was the only praying mantis."
Posted April 25, 2008 2:38 PM | Link here
An ancient Greek tomb thought to have held the body of Alexander the Great's father is actually that of Alexander's half brother, researchers say.Full article at National Geographic.This may mean that some of the artifacts found in the tomb -- including a helmet, shield, and silver "crown" -- originally belonged to Alexander the Great himself. Alexander's half brother is thought to have claimed these royal trappings after Alexander's death. . .
"[Archaeologists] announced that the burial in the main chamber of the large rich [tomb] was that of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, who was assassinated in 336 B.C," said Eugene N. Borza, professor emeritus of ancient history at Pennsylvania State University.
But recent analyses of the tombs and the paintings, pottery, and other artifacts found there, suggest that the burials are in fact one generation more recent than had previously been thought, Borza said.
Posted April 25, 2008 2:34 PM | Link here
Indian police say the organisers of the new tournament transforming world cricket could be fined if cheerleaders are deemed to be dressed indecently.From the BBC. Previous story here.The cheerleaders have been introduced into the Indian Premier League as part of moves to add glamour and entertainment to the game.
Posted April 25, 2008 12:34 PM | Link here
Well put:
The art, artifacts and objects produced in America during the first half of the 19th century constitute something of an artistic golden age, but a highly disorganized one that is still yielding surprises.This from a NY Times review of the Asa Ames exhibit now at the American Folk Art Museum. And indeed -- as this slide show demonstrates -- Ames' carved figures have a presence all their own, even for those who profess indifference to folk art as a whole. The museum exhibition website is here.
Posted April 25, 2008 12:10 PM | Link here
Heard this story on the radio on the way home from work today:
In the first analysis of proteins extracted from dinosaur bones, scientists say they have established more firmly than ever that the closest living relatives of the mighty predator Tyrannosaurus rex are modern birds.Of course, the mastodon results are much less dramatic: survival of proteins for tens of thousands of years is one thing, but tens of millions is quite another. From the New York Times.The research, being published Friday in the journal Science, yielded the first molecular data confirming the widely held hypothesis of a close dinosaur-bird ancestry, the American scientific team reported. . .
Similar molecular tests on tissues from the extinct mastodon confirmed its close genetic link to the elephant, as had been suspected from skeletal affinities.
Posted April 24, 2008 9:24 PM | Link here
The Grateful Dead announced today that the band will donate its archives to the University of California, Santa Cruz. . .That's going to take some work to store and catalog, let alone conserve. No surprise to read this, then:The Archive includes business records and correspondence, photographs, and show files with tickets and backstage passes--as well as promotional items such as flyers, posters, shirts, press clips and awards. Framed photos by renowned photographers and unreleased videos of interviews and TV appearances will be available for viewing. Large stage backdrops, stained-glass pieces, and props from live performances are also featured. An extensive collection of Deadhead fan mail and gifts is an important part of the collection.
Bunting noted that due to the monumental size and scope of the archive, a fundraising campaign is now being launched to support it and to endow a permanent Grateful Dead archivist position.Press release here.
Posted April 24, 2008 9:01 PM | Link here
Timbers from three medieval bridges in Leicestershire are being restored after a donation of 40 tonnes of sugar.From the BBC.The 11th Century timbers were found in Hemington Quarry in 1993 and are being preserved at Snibston Discovery Park.
The wood is immersed in liquid sugar as part of the conservation process. The sugar crystals gradually replace the water in the wood and prevent warping.
Posted April 23, 2008 12:50 PM | Link here
Compared with Stonehenge, they are humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (four out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 metres across. T-shaped pillars like the rest, two five-metre stones tower at least a metre above their peers. What makes them remarkable are their carved reliefs of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.From the Guardian.Never mind wheels or writing, the people who erected them did not even have pottery or domesticated wheat. They lived in villages. But they were hunters, not farmers.
Posted April 23, 2008 12:25 PM | Link here
A card sent by diarist Anne Frank to a friend in 1937 was found in a Dutch antiques store near Amsterdam.From Bloomberg.com. The Anne Frank Foundation press release, in Dutch, is here -- with a picture of the card.Anne Frank, who wrote her diary while in hiding during World War II, sent the card to Sanne Ledermann while visiting her grandmother in Germany
I see that some headline writers have referred to this as a "Christmas card", but the German greeting is for much luck in the New Year, with no overtly Christian references.
Posted April 23, 2008 12:19 PM | Link here
Israeli police had to break up a fist fight that erupted between Greek and Armenian Orthodox clergymen at one of Christianity's holiest sites.From the BBC.The scuffles broke out at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Orthodox Palm Sunday.
Brawls are not uncommon at the church, which is uneasily shared by various Christian denominations.
In this case, witnesses say an Armenian priest forcibly ejected a Greek priest from an area near the tomb of Jesus.
They say the attacker felt the Greek priest had spent too long at the tomb.
When police arrived to break up the fight, some were reportedly beaten back by worshippers using palm fronds.
Posted April 20, 2008 9:45 PM | Link here
The folks at Odyssey Marine can't be too happy about the writeup they received in the April 7th New Yorker. We've been reporting sporadically on their recent discoveries and their ongoing conflict with Spain. The New Yorker report digs much more deeply into Odyssey and its principals, however, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture. Not only is Odyssey made out to be a bunch of brazen treasure-hunting ocean-floor plunderers -- there is also the possibility that more money is being made out of manipulating the price of the company's own stock than from actual recovery of specie and artifacts.
Posted April 19, 2008 12:55 PM | Link here
A timely reminder that the Olympic torch was invented for the 1936 Berlin Olympics -- and that the controversy it is currently attracting as it makes its way to Beijing derives directly from its origins as a talisman of nationalistic supercessionism.
Now, despite China's attempt to put a smiley face on the torch relay -- "Light the Passion, Share the Dream" says the Chinese Web site (see torchrelay.beijing2008.cn/en) -- the Tibetan protests have laid bare its nationalist essence. There are reasons why the Chinese wanted a route that invoked glory (by touching Everest's peak) and power (by passing through Taiwan).The article notes and links to the upcoming exhibition at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936, which opens on the 25th.Of course in 1936 the relay reflected a more ominous threat. The torch was carried through Salonika, Greece; Sofia, Bulgaria; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; Budapest; and Vienna, and was welcomed along the way not by extensive protests but with pro-Nazi demonstrations. A prescient editorial in The New York Times, sensing the drumbeats of war, called the torch's route a "strategic highway" that traced the line of the German "Drang Nach Osten" -- the drive to the East that the Kaiser sought in the First World War, and which Hitler was soon to put into practice.
Posted April 15, 2008 10:06 AM | Link here
It's been some time since I relied on guides such as Let's Go and Guide du Routard; the Lonely Planet volumes held up better as one outgrew the backpacker/student mindset, but it's been a while since I've bought any of them, either.
And probably will be quite a while longer, too, after this story:
A Lonely Planet author says he plagiarized or made up portions of the popular travel guidebooks and dealt drugs to supplement poor pay, an Australian newspaper reported Sunday.Via Roger Simon, who comments in passing:Thomas Kohnstamm, who has written a book on his misadventures, also said he didn't travel to Colombia to write the guidebook on the country because "they didn't pay me enough," The Daily Telegraph reported.
"I wrote the book in San Francisco [California]," he is quoted as saying in the Telegraph. "I got the information from a chick I was dating -- an intern in the Colombian Consulate."
. . . funny thing, there was this supposedly great Pho joint in Phuket I traveled fifty miles for... and it turned out be a laundromatIn my experience, beyond the issue of out of date, garbled, or possibly badly plagiarized information, the youth-oriented budget guides' notions of what constituted good food often drastically differed from my own.
UPDATE: A must-read followup on the issues raised by this flap. Excerpt:
I spent a very pleasurable evening over beers in China with a fellow guidebook writer perhaps a year ago. We swapped amusing guidebook disaster stories for hours to the horror of a group of backpackers who shared the bar with us. Finally, he confided in me how, on one particular rush job for a guidebook publisher I won't name, he briefly visited a large lake in the far north of China. "I wrote in the book, 'Nice lake, take a walk around it,' " he told me. "Problem was, half of it turned out to be in North Korea, and the first person who did, ended up in prison."
Posted April 15, 2008 9:25 AM | Link here
The light is finally glimmering at the end of the tunnel.
The comments feature has been re-enabled (no, I didn't disable it -- but I couldn't manage to get the time to fix it until now, either), and maybe I'll be able to post some of the links I've accumulated over the past couple of weeks.
Posted April 15, 2008 9:21 AM | Link here
Will the art of thatching be extinguished in the UK?
Of a total of 50,000 to 60,000 thatched roofs in the UK, there are 30,000 to 40,000 listed 'straw' thatched properties. Unless the conservation lobby and English Heritage realise and correct the error they have made, there are going to be 30,000 to 40,000 disadvantaged listed thatched property owners with blue sheets over their roofs.Read the full article in the Telegraph.Any wriggling by English Heritage by passing the blame onto 'climate change' will be as offensive as their thatching policies.
In summary:
There is no new and suitable (for thatching straw) winter wheat seed available to plant.
Farm saved seed will deteriorate, and is already showing very poor germination rates.
Farmers with suitable seed are not allowed by law to sell the seed for planting.
It is more profitable for farmers to grow conventional cereals, than straw for thatching.
The temporary respite, of triticale, using known varieties, will not last.
Conservationists and English Heritage continue demanding "Like for like".
Thatchers and listed thatched home owners have been threatened with prosecution for attempting to find an alternative durable material.
The possibility of the establishment of other triticale varieties, or "conservation crops" of old varieties of wheat straw suitable for thatching? Uncertain.
Posted April 9, 2008 8:19 AM | Link here
The big New York sale was yesterday at Christie's; some record prices, but news reports so far have been fairly thin on detail:
A first edition of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" sold for a record $229,000 at Christie's auction house in New York Wednesday. . .The sale was written up rather extensively beforehand; the following is from the Guardian:First published in 1838, the copy at auction was inscribed by the author to a friend and fellow novelist, William Ainsworth.
A total of 208 lots went under the gavel, part of the William Self family collection.
The biggest auction of Charles Dickens' works for more than 35 years is to be held in New York this week. The lots include a rare manuscript page from The Pickwick Papers, written in the author's own hand with his corrections, and a special edition book inscribed by Dickens to fellow novelist George Eliot. The 400 items are expected to fetch between $1.8m (about £900,000) and $2.8m at Christie's, but there is no clear prospect of any returning to Britain.The BBC writeup is here. Meanwhile, more Dickens relics are coming up for sale soon:
Charles Dickens' writing desk and chair, which are thought to be worth up to £80,000, are to be sold at a charity auction in London.From the BBC.It is thought the furniture was where he wrote some of his later works, including Great Expectations, at his Gad's Hill Place home in Higham, Kent.
Proceeds will go to Great Ormond Street children's hospital in central London after they were donated by a relative.
UPDATE: Read more about Wednesday's sale at the Christie's site.
Posted April 3, 2008 9:23 PM | Link here
A medieval game that is almost exclusively played in the South East has been recognised as a sport.From the BBC. The National Stoolball Association website is here.The Sports Council agreed that Stoolball, which is played by up to 4,000 people in Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire, met its criteria.
A round willow bat and wickets made of wooden boards on stakes are used to play the game which has links to the development of cricket. . .
The game, which has a similar scoring system to cricket, is believed to date back to the 14th century with matches traditionally held during religious festivals.
There are also records of it being played in colonial Boston in North America.
Posted April 2, 2008 12:37 PM | Link here
A treasure-trove of about 100 artifacts, believed to be pre-Columbian, is on its way to Mexico, its presumed home, U.S. customs agents and Mexican diplomats said Tuesday.Seems that there's some doubt about where the pieces belong, however, so perhaps other Central or South American countries may end up putting in a claim:Among the antiquities is a stone mask of a broad-featured man, which is believed to come from the Olmec civilization, the oldest in the Americas, and it dates as far back as 1000 B.C., experts said. Other items include figurines in jadeite, precious stones symbolically linked to fertility for the people of ancient Mesoamerica and once valued more than gold. . .
The goods represent several seizures in Texas and New Mexico, including an initial seizure in 2001. . .
A spokesman at Mexico's Institute of Archaeology and History noted that no Mexican archaeologist has physically seen the pieces and they still need to be verified.Full article here.Robert Drolet, an archaeologist with the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History, said he surveyed about a dozen items in 2001, when the first seizure was made. Only three were Mexican and all were memorable, he said.
Posted April 2, 2008 11:58 AM | Link here
You pick 'em out: here they are.
Posted April 1, 2008 10:39 AM | Link here
A necklace found near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru is the oldest known gold object made in the Americas, archaeologists say.From the BBC.Radiocarbon dating puts its origin at about 4,000 years ago, when hunter-gatherers occupied the area.
The researchers say it appears to have been fashioned from gold nuggets.
Posted April 1, 2008 10:37 AM | Link here
A female agent of WWII was assessed as "not having the personality to act as a leader" before she was parachuted into France, files have revealed.From the BBC.Pearl Cornioley, who died in February, ended up in command of 3,000 French resistance fighters.
Documents released at the National Archives say Mrs Cornioley was later commended for "colossal bravery" and "outstanding powers of leadership".
She was eventually given her Parachute Wings at the age of 92.
Posted April 1, 2008 10:35 AM | Link here
For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words "Mary had a little lamb" on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison's invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.From the NY Times.The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable -- converted from squiggles on paper to sound -- by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.
Posted March 27, 2008 2:06 PM | Link here
Two medieval skulls found in the Tower of London belonged to a kind of lion that boasted a giant dark mane, according to a genetic study that sheds new light on one of the world's oldest zoos.From the Telegraph.
A Barbary lion skull that was part of the study
Infamous as a place of torture and executions, and home to the Crown Jewels, the Tower was also home to lions, which were charismatic symbols of monarchy.Now researchers have used DNA evidence to analyse two members of the royal menagerie, the oldest being late 13th to late 14th century (1280-1385) and 'youngest' 15th century (1420-1480), the only medieval big cat remains found in England.
They conclude that they were male Barbary lions, a species that hails from north Africa, where no natural lion population remains today.
Posted March 24, 2008 9:43 PM | Link here
Last May, the Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration announced that it had recovered 500,000 gold and silver coins weighing 17 tonnes from a wreck in international waters in the Atlantic and flown them back to the US from Gibraltar.From the Guardian.The company has refused to speculate on the identity - or nationality - of the vessel and has further ratcheted up the intrigue by referring to the find only as the Black Swan.
Despite the secrecy and Odyssey's unwillingness to confirm anything about its discovery, the Spanish government is convinced that the Black Swan is Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes. . .
After months of legal wrangling, Odyssey has agreed to reveal the wreck's location to Spain, hand over photographs and documents, and allow experts access to the artefacts it has recovered. . .
Since news of the find emerged last year, some Spanish newspapers have denounced treasure-hunting outfits as "the new pirates of this century" who are hell-bent on ransacking Spain's archaeological heritage for profit.
But Madrid and Odyssey are now facing growing calls from Peru for some, or all, of the Mercedes' cargo to be returned to the South American country.
Peruvian campaigners say that because the gold and silver coins were probably minted from metal taken without permission by the Spaniards, they belong to the modern-day country, not its former colonial master.
Posted March 24, 2008 9:31 PM | Link here
John Crago, an agricultural exporter from Colorado, took a business trip to Cuba last spring. He came back with 60 paintings, from island landscapes to abstract works, rolled up in his carry-on luggage.Not surprisingly, Americans are finding ways to get to Cuba, legally or otherwise, to shop for art. But it may be that those intrepid travelers are already late to the game:With art from Asia and Russia in demand, some in the art world are betting on Cuba to be the next hot corner of the market. Prices for Cuban art are climbing at galleries and auction houses, and major museums are adding to their Cuban collections. In May, Sotheby's broke the auction record for a Cuban work when it sold Mario Carreño's modernist painting "Danza Afro-Cubana" for $2.6 million, triple its high estimate.
Works by Cuban artists aren't necessarily less expensive in Havana than in New York or London. With international interest in Cuban art on the rise, Cuban galleries now charge international prices, and many insist on payment in euros.The article, in Saturday's Wall Street Journal, also notes the difference between Cuba and other countries that have seen dramatic recent increases in the market value of their artists such as India, China, and Russia, in that Cuba has seen no rise in prosperity to fuel homegrown collecting.
Posted March 23, 2008 10:13 PM | Link here
Two sisters from Virginia sold their Illinois-shaped cornflake on eBay Friday night for $1,350. . .Full story here.The winner of the auction, which lasted more than a week, is the owner of a trivia Web site who wants to add the cornflake to a traveling museum.
This isn't the first cornflake that Kerr has tried to buy. He said he purchased a flake billed as the world's largest, but that by the time it was delivered it had crumbled into three pieces.
Posted March 22, 2008 8:51 PM | Link here
The Times of London reports on a little Palma Giovane recently bought at a Windsor (UK) antique shop for £350. One happy buyer; one very unhappy seller. In the US, one could bet on lawyers getting involved . . . .
Posted March 22, 2008 5:26 PM | Link here
Yet another entry in the "excavating within the museum" category:
A Tudor quill pen thought to have been dropped through the floorboards of Whitehall Palace by some overworked, underpaid civil servant of the day has been discovered, to the astonishment of archaeologists. . .From the Times of London.It was among some 4,000 cardboard boxes in the archives of the Museum of London. They are full of material excavated from the historic palace but never studied or catalogued. The excavation was in the 1960s, but the archaeologists from the Ministry of Works then never got around to studying their finds.
Posted March 21, 2008 8:51 PM | Link here
A dinosaurs' graveyard of Britain's maritime past emerges eerily from a mile and a half of bank along the River Severn.More than 80 vessels, abandoned over a 50-year period. See it while you still can. From the Times of London.Bleached blond ribs of once proud schooners, lighters, barges and Severn trows poke from the silt, still stained with pitch and the carmine of rusting iron nails. Above them loom abandoned concrete grain barges built during wartime when steel was in short supply.
The Purton hulks have become a magnet for naval historians, marine archaeologists and photographers enraptured by the weatherworn timbers and the tales they hold. But this unique repository of marine history is disappearing quickly, prompting the launch of a campaign to protect it.
The main problem is not the tidal waters of the Severn that take their toll at every high tide but human scavengers who, for more than 100 years, have been picking over the hulks for timber or valuable metals.
Posted March 21, 2008 8:47 PM | Link here
Hanging on the wall of an upper floor in Jerusalem's Israel Museum is a fine early 20th century painting of a wintry church scene by the French artist Maurice Utrillo. On its own it is an artwork more than worthy of a new exhibition, but what makes this piece and the many others on display so compelling are the dark stories of their provenance and the long and often fruitless search for the original Jewish owners of thousands of works of art confiscated at the height of the second world war. . .From the Guardian. NY Times slideshow here.The Utrillo is one of 53 such paintings in the Israel Museum's latest exhibition, Looking for Owners. Alongside it is a parallel exhibition, Orphaned Art, of looted works and Judaica which all lack clear ownership history and are now held at the museum.
Posted March 21, 2008 8:38 PM | Link here
The Islamists threaten bloody murder over improper depictions of the Prophet. A Muslim artist is accused of painting improper depictions of Hindu divinities:
The New York office of the art auction house, Christie's, has rejected demands to withdraw the work of controversial Indian artist, MF Husain.Despite the protests, the painting at Christie's sold:In a letter sent to Christie's, the Indian American Intellectual Forum threatened to hold demonstrations unless the auction is dropped.
Mr Husain is one of India's best known artists.
In 2006 he publicly apologised for a painting in which he depicted the country as a nude goddess.
He promised to withdraw the controversial painting from a charity auction after Hindu nationalist groups accused him of hurting their religious sentiments.
They have accused him of painting Hindu gods and goddesses in a ''derogatory and vulgar'' form.
A painting by one of India's best-known artists, Maqbool Fida Husain, has sold for a record $1.6m at an auction in the American city of New York.The art work, titled "Ganga-Yamuna", was sold by auction house Christie's. It was painted in 1971.
Posted March 21, 2008 8:25 PM | Link here
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