This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Spiegel
August 17, 2011
...Hardly anyone is familiar with the name of the sculptor, Thutmose, but the bust is of the famous Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile, Great Royal Wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. And thanks to a coincidence, a minor detour of history, her likeness is not on display in a museum in her native Egypt, but in Berlin. Or was it not a coincidence at all, but rather fraud?
For the Germans, Nefertiti is their perceived property, a national cultural treasure, their entry in the canon of the sublime. The bust represents many things, but most of all it stands for both the splendid epoch of ancient Egypt and the age of spectacular digs around the beginning of the last century, when Europe's archeologists set out for the Nile.
Source: CNN
August 18, 2011
The Yankee soldier, who had meager possessions, must have been proud of his ring and its distinctive diamond-shaped centerpiece.Somehow, the size-11 ring was lost, discarded or left behind, only to be swallowed by the earth on a rise near Millen, Georgia.Untouched by human hands for nearly 150 years, the ring recently was discovered by archaeology students who have unearthed more artifacts at the site of Camp Lawton, a Civil War stockade and prison.The Georgia Southern University team is finding personal items that will help tell the desperate story of Union soldiers who tried to stay alive while food was scarce and disease rampant....
Source: BBC
August 17, 2011
An estate agent in Sweden is offering a house with the remains of a medieval resident included in the price.
The property, built in 1750 in Visby, on the Baltic Sea island of Gotland, has a tomb and skeleton in the cellar.
The starting price for the three-bedroomed house, where the skeleton is visible through glass in the cellar, is 4.1m Kronor ($640,000; £390,780).
The property was built on the foundations of a Russian church, abandoned during the Middle Ages....
Source: BBC
August 17, 2011
Three medieval walls, thought to be nearly 700 years old, have been found in the grounds of a Conwy hotel.
Drainage work at the Maenan Abbey Hotel, near Llanrwst, unearthed two walls - one thought to be the original abbey's cloister wall - underground.
On Monday, a third wall was discovered and ancient monuments agency Cadw are due to visit the site on Wednesday to decide how to proceed.
The abbey is believed to have been built in about 1282, to relocate monks after King Edward I ordered the removal of their Cistercian monastery from Conwy town, so he could build a castle there.
The abbey was destroyed in the 16th Century during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, and the current property was built in the 19th Century....
Source: BBC
August 18, 2011
Mikhail Gorbachev has accused Vladimir Putin of "castrating" Russia's electoral system and said he should not seek re-election as president.
The ex-Soviet leader was interviewed by the BBC's Bridget Kendall on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the failed coup which led to the collapse of the USSR.
The action was aimed at reversing reforms overseen by Mr Gorbachev.
Mr Putin, the current prime minister, radically changed the voting system during his two terms as president.
He is widely tipped to stand again in 2012 and previously won landslide victories in 2000 and 2004.
Mr Gorbachev, 80, the Soviet Union's first and last unelected president, stood for election as Russian president in 1996, when he took less than 1% of the vote against his old foe, Boris Yeltsin....
Source: AP
August 18, 2011
Chile officially recognized 9,800 more victims of its dictatorship on Thursday, increasing the total number of people killed, tortured or imprisoned for political reasons to 40,018.
A similar effort in 2004 determined that 27,153 survivors deserve monthly compensation from the government for human rights violations they suffered.
Together with the 3,065 people who were killed by Chile's military or were simply made to disappear and are presumed dead, the official victim list accepted by President Sebastian Pinera on Thursday totals 40,018...
Source: AP
August 18, 2011
A letter to President Abraham Lincoln from three military surgeons requesting a chaplain to tend to the wounded and dying soldiers after the Battle of Antietam, accompanied by the president's signed response, were returned to the National Archives on Thursday.
Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander Historical Auctions, in Stamford, Conn., helped negotiate the return and handed the documents over to David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, at a ceremony at the National Archives.
Investigative archivist Mitchell Yockelson spotted the letters in a New York dealer's catalog of rare items in 2009. The documents may have been taken while still in the custody of the War Department before they ever became part of the Archives' collection of billions of documents, officials said....
Source: Discovery News
August 16, 2011
What do the characters in The Grapes of Wrath, Icelandic shepherds in the Middle Ages and ancient Peruvians have in common? They all suffered from the effects of intensive agriculture on sensitive environments.Throughout human history unsustainable agricultural practices have turned fragile ecosystems into wastelands and left people starving. During the Dust Bowl, American farmers learned the consequences of removing the deep rooted grasses from the Great Plains when the soil blew away in tremendous dust storms. Icelandic shepherds learned that the sheep rearing practices their ancestors used on the European mainland destroyed the thin soils of their island and left them with starving herds and little to eat.The ancient inhabitants of what is now Peru also learned the unhappy consequences of farming in a delicate ecosystem. The Ica Valley, near the coast of southern Peru and the famous Nazca lines, is now a barren desert, but was once a fertile floodplain, anchored by the roots of the huarango tree.
Source: Discovery News
August 12, 2011
Italian archaeologists have retrieved a sunken treasure of 3,422 ancient bronze coins in the small Sicilian island of Pantelleria, they announced today.Discovered by chance during a survey to create an underwater archaeological itinerary,the coins have been dated between 264 and 241 BC.At that time, Pantelleria, which lies about 70 miles southwest of Sicily, in the middle of the Sicily Strait, became a bone of contention between the Romans and Carthaginians.Rome captured the small Mediterranean island in the First Punic War in 255 BC, but lost it a year later.In 217 BC, in the Second Punic War, Rome finally regained the island, and even celebrated the event with commemorative coins and a holiday.....
Source: BBC
August 15, 2011
A suspected Iron Age road, made of timber and preserved in peat for 2,000 years, has been uncovered by archaeologists in East Anglia.The site, excavated in June, may have been part of a route across the River Waveney and surrounding wetland at Geldeston in Norfolk, say experts.Causeways were first found in the area in 2006, during flood defence work at the nearby Suffolk town of Beccles.It is thought the road is pre-Roman, built by the local Iceni tribe.Exact dating has yet to be carried out but tree-ring evidence suggests a date of 75BC.That dates the timber road to more than 100 years before the Roman invasion, which saw the Iceni and their leader Boudicca lead a revolt which threatened to end Roman rule.....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 16, 2011
A rare statue depicting the Roman god Hercules has been discovered during an excavation in the Jezeel Valley in the north of Israel.The white marble figure stands at 0.5 metres and is thought to have originally decorated an alcove in a Roman bathhouse. It has been dated to the second century AD and is said to be of exceptional quality.Dr Walid Atrash of the Israel Antiquities Authority said: "This statue is unusual because it is small. Most statues of gods from this period were life-size. This is something special."The demigod is depicted leaning on a club, draped with the skin of the Nemean lion that he slew in the first of his twelve labours.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 16, 2011
French designer Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel spied for the Nazis during the German occupation of France in World War II, according to a new book, Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War , by Hal Vaughan.Vaughan expands on long-standing evidence that the iconic designer had a double life and was the lover of a spy, Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage." Sleeping with the Enemy pieces together how Coco Chanel became a German Intelligence operative; how and why she was enlisted in a number of spy missions; how she escaped arrest in France after the war," New York publishers Knopf said in a statement.Vaughan's book reveals that not only was Chanel recruited to the Abwehr military intelligence organization, but that von Dincklage was himself a "Nazi master spy."....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 16, 2011
A Rembrandt drawing valued at more than $250,000 (£152,000) that was stolen from a hotel lobby has been found in a church.Nobody has been arrested.Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore says detectives got a tip from an anonymous caller on Monday evening that the Dutch master's 17th century sketch "The Judgment" was in a church in San Fernando.The name of the church was not disclosed at a dawn Tuesday news conference.A curator confirmed the artwork's authenticity at 12:05 am on Tuesday.....
Source: CNN
August 16, 2011
When debris rained from the sky in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, the first responders to the terrorist attack did not turn away. They rushed to the World Trade Center buildings while the world around them crumbled.Yet now, after all the wreckage has been cleared and the rebuilding has begun, their path is again blocked -- not by flying chunks of smoldering rubble, but by space constraints.The first responders are not invited to this year's September 11 memorial ceremony at ground zero, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office confirmed Monday.In addition to the victims' families, several politicians, including two presidents, are expected to be in attendance. Bloomberg's office would not provide specifics on the ceremony's arrangements, but did note that the first responders have not been invited to the preceding nine memorial services, either.....
Source: AFP
August 14, 2011
Cars zoom by on the boulevards overhead as work progresses on expanding the subway underneath -- and in between a full-fledged Roman city has emerged right in the heart of the Bulgarian capital.
Archaeologists have little by little unearthed well-preserved stretches of cobbled Roman streets, a public bath, the ruins of a dignitary's house and the curved wall of an early Christian basilica, all dating back to the 4th century AD.
If all goes well, the ruins will be fashioned into a vast underground museum due to open to the public in late 2012....
Source: Bloomberg
May 8, 2011
A team of underwater explorers in Greece examined the shipwreck of the Mentor, which sunk in 1802 as it transported marbles from the Parthenon to London.
The sculptures, part of the Parthenon collection taken and sent to England by Lord Elgin, were recovered after the ship sunk and no additional pieces were found in last month’s or in three previous explorations, the Athens-based Culture and Tourism Ministry said in an e-mailed statement today.
Three ancient coins, two silver and a bronze, were found on the wreck as well as two pistols and navigation tools used by the 10-member crew, according to the e-mail. French sea explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau investigated the vessel with a team in 1975, the ministry said.
The Mentor, which lies near the island of Kythira in the Mediterranean sea, was explored from July 6 to July 15 and the team was funded by Kytherian Research Group, an Australian foundation, according to the e-mail....
Source: WSJ
August 15, 2011
The next time you try to bring antiques into the U.S., think again: if they look old enough and don’t have any documentation, customs officials might just seize them as potentially looted cultural artifacts.
That was the case in 2009 when the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild, a non-profit group that seeks to ensure a free market for the exchange and sale of collector coins, bought 23 ancient coins of unknown provenance from a London dealer. U.S. Customs seized the coins, which ranged from 1,000 to 2,000 years old, due to the possibility that they were looted objects, according to the Blog of Legal Times.
A federal judge in Maryland dismissed on summary judgment the Guild’s lawsuit against U.S. Customs and Border Protection last week, citing procedural issues but also ruling that it is better to err on the side of restricting imports when their origin is unclear.
Moreover, the judge found that the burden of proof rests with the importer of artifacts, who must demonstrate that they are legitimate; otherwise, the State Department can rightfully restrict their importation.....
Source: BBC
August 15, 2011
For the past 15 years, archaeologist Dr Alan Peacey has been digging into the history of Shropshire's tobacco pipe industry.
Making pipes was a cottage industry in the 18th century and the village of Pipe Aston near Ludlow had more kilns than most.
Now Dr Peacey has excavated his last, and best Shropshire kiln and is going home to Stroud in Gloucestershire to write up his findings and publish a book next year....
Source: BBC
July 15, 2011
The world will next month remember the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities in New York.
But 100 years ago another disaster rocked the city.
A new musical, From the Fire, at the Zoo Roxy as part of the Edinburgh Fringe, remembers the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.
The production dramatises the fire and also looks at the earlier uprising which saw 20,000 young women in New York stage a significant strike for the first time.
It celebrates the part the women played in labour reform but also draws parallels with the perilous conditions in which many people still work today....
Source: BBC
August 13, 2011
William Randolph Hearst lives on 60 years after his death as the mythical bogeyman of American journalism, the personification of the field's most egregious impulses.Hearst is typically remembered as the irresponsible media tycoon of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries who set standards by which journalism ought not be practised. It's little wonder why Hearst was, and remains, the object of so much myth and misunderstanding. As Hearst envisioned it, the "journalism of action" was to be a sustained force, defined by activism on many fronts and fuelled by frequent doses of self-promotion and self-congratulation....
