Month: June 2008

400 years of packratting

Modern(ish), Treasures

The Emory family settled in Maryland in the 1660’s and pretty much kept every scrap of paper from then until World War II. This huge cache of documents mouldered in the attic of their estate, Poplar Grove, until this spring, when Washington College students began going through them all.

There are all kinds of papers in that attic, everything from sales receipts to letters to posters, including one trashing Martin Van Buren for voting to give every free black man the vote.

“Historians are used to dealing with political records and military documents,” said Adam Goodheart, a history professor at nearby Washington College. “But what they aren’t used to is political letters and military documents kept right alongside bills for laundry or directions for building a washing machine.”

Goodheart is working with state archivists and a crew of four student interns to collect the documents, which were found stuffed into boxes, barrels and peach baskets.

“Look at this: ‘Negro woman, Sarah, about 27 years old, $25,'” Goodheart says, reading from a 19th century inventory. “It was as though this family never threw away a scrap of paper.”

The documents include maps, letters, financial records, political posters, even a lock of hair from a letter dated Valentine’s Day, 1801. There’s a love poem from the 1830s (in which a young man graphically tells his sweetheart what he’d do if he sneaked into her room on a winter’s night), along with war accounts and bills of sale from slaves and crops.

The Civil War era documents illustrate the sad veracity of the brother-against-brother cliché. One son fought for the Union, the other for the Confederacy.

You can follow the researchers as they delve into this hoard of social history on their blog. They’ve just unveiled a War of 1812 roster in perfect condition from a week after the British torched the White House.

Jordan returns looted Iraqi antiquities

Ancient, Looting

First Syria, now Jordan. Jordan has Syria beat by almost 1800 or so looted artifacts intercepted at the border with Iraq.

In the chaos following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, looters snatched some 15,000 priceless artifacts and smuggled them out of the country. In the last few months, Jordanian authorities seized 2,466 items as they were being taken across the border.

Samples of the silver coins, necklaces, ancient Sumerian scrolls, ceramic pots and other artifacts were displayed for journalists during a brief ceremony at the Jordanian Antiquities Department in Amman.

Iraq’s acting state minister of tourism and archaeology, Mohammed Abbas al-Oreibi, told reporters the recovered antiquities will be packed and sent back to Iraq in the coming days.

Slowly, slowly, the pillaged cultural patrimony of Iraq is coming home. I wish Iraq’s archaeological sites were getting the protection they so desperately need as well, and it would be nice if the museum were fully repaired and operational, but still, repatriation of stolen antiquities is great to see.

Ancient Greek supertanker yields delicious DNA

Ancient, Treasures

Two years ago, a diver came across a huge field of 500 amphorae on the seabed, still arranged in the shape of a hull off the southern coast of Cyprus.

The authorities kept the find quiet to protect it from looters and the ship itself along with an estimated 300 other amphorae buried in the sand has yet to be excavated, but an international collaboration of scientists and archaeologists have now examined some of the vessels and found evidence of all kinds of goodies, like herb-infused olive oil and retsina wine.

There is little doubt the first amphora contained the herb-infused olive oil, which was likely used to dress and flavor meals. The scientists suspect the potent antioxidant properties of oregano helped to preserve the mixture over the millennia.

As for the second amphora, its DNA signature matched a plant from the Pistacia genus. That points to either pistachio nuts or mastic (scientific name Pistacia lentiscus).

Foley said the ancient Greeks were known to have shipped huge containers of nuts. One third-century B.C. wreck, in fact, contained jar after jar of them. But since the design of this particular amphora was most associated with wine shipments, mastic-flavored wine is the more likely choice.

This is a major discovery, the first time DNA has been extracted from a shipwreck.

“This (study) opens new possibilities for archaeologists — now perhaps we can figure out what was carried in almost every ’empty’ jar we find in land excavations or shipwrecks,” researcher Brendan Foley of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution told Discovery News.

“Maybe we can even go back to the amphorae, jars and cooking pots previously excavated and now sitting in museum storerooms around the world and ask new questions of each artifact,” he added.

So cool. I hope this starts a run of DNA testing on ancient vessels.

Chopin’s heart of cognac

Modern(ish)

Frédéric Chopin, very reasonably considering the era, had a tremendous fear of being buried alived, so much so that he asked that his heart be removed from his body after his death to ensure that he was in fact dead when buried in Paris’ Père Lachaise Cemetery.

This dovetailed neatly with his sense of Polish patriotism, so when Chopin died in 1849, his sister had his heart removed and took it back with her to Poland where it has remained all these years, happily preserved in cognac in the Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, surviving intact even the near-destruction of the church during the Warsaw uprising in 1944.

Now scientists want to examine the heart for DNA evidence of congential illness, specifically Cystic Fibrosis.

“From early childhood he was weak, prone to chest infections, wheezing, coughing,” Cichy said.

Records show that as an adult weighing 40 kilograms (about 88 pounds) at a height of 1.70 metres (five foot seven inches), Chopin was chronically underweight — another telltale symptom of cystic fibrosis.

Cichy also pointed out that despite a passionate romance with flamboyant French writer George Sand, Chopin had no known children, suggesting infertility — another telling clue. And few cystic fibrosis sufferers live past 40.

“If we can prove Chopin suffered from cystic fibrosis, it would be a huge inspiration for our patients, especially children, to know they can accomplish a great deal like he did,” Cichy told AFP.

There is some opposition to the idea from one of his descendants, and the church hasn’t even been asked yet, but it seems the ultimate decision is in the hands of Poland’s culture ministry.

Casualty in great Ohio-Kentucky rock war

Modern(ish)

Steven Shaffer, the Ohio historian who removed that big ol’ rock from the Ohio river, has been indicted by a Kentucky grand jury.

They’re not kidding around either. The charge is removing an object of antiquity, a felony that could garner him a 1-5 year prison sentence.

The divers who helped him fish out the boulder are also being considered for indictment by the grand jury. Shaffer is shocked and appalled at this sore miscarriage of justice.

Shaffer said he doesn’t understand why “a rock with just graffiti of Portsmouth, Ohio, is protected.”

He said there is mounting evidence that the face carving was not done by an Indian and that the rock is therefore not as significant as historians once believed.

“Nobody tried to prove that (the carving was done by an American Indian) harder than me,” Shaffer said. “I liked the theory, it was romantic.”

Perhaps the authorities consider his evaluation credentials are a tad tarnished, what with the theft and all. Seriously, what kind of historian gets his buddies together, rents some wet suits and removes an object he knows is protected? And what kind of stupid, self-defeating response is “eh, it’s just some graffiti on a rock; shouldn’t even be protected anyway”?