Month: March 2009

UK returns tons of stolen antiquities to Afghanistan

Ancient, Looting, Medieval, Museums, Social policy, Treasures

The British government has returned over 1500 artifacts confiscated at Heathrow over the past 6 years to Afghanistan.

That’s 3.4 tons of antiquities looted from thousands of archaeological sites all over the country.

The Heathrow collection includes more than 1,500 objects spanning thousands of years of Afghan culture: a 3,000-year-old carved stone head from the Iron Age and hand-cast axe heads, cut rock crystal goblets, and delicate animal carvings from the Bactrian era, another thousand years earlier. The oldest artifacts in the collection include a marble figure of an animal showing similarities to artifacts dating to the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, dating as far back as 8,000 years.

The collection also contains gilded bronze pieces, coins, and ornately inscribed slabs dating from Afghanistan’s early Islamic period (8th-9th centuries A.D.) and treasures from the Medieval Islamic period (10th-14th centuries A.D.) that serve to replace the decimated collection at the National Museum, which was hit by a rocket in 1993 during the civil war, then repeatedly looted.

The National Museum workers have somehow managed to save 90% of the museum’s holdings — I’ve written about their puts-movies-to-shame heroics before — but that still leaves 70,000 pieces lost.

None of the Heathrow hoard were previously held at the museum. They are all freshly looted directly from archaeological sites and have no trail of ownership whatsoever, but they are going to help plug some of those 70,000 holes.

I leave you with a chilling thought: 3.4 tons of antiquities is just a fraction of what gets stolen from Afghanistan every year. Most of them aren’t intercepted at customs. These artifacts were all found during random searches, so you can imagine it’s a rather hit-and-miss system.

Vampire/plague victim found

Medieval

In a mass grave of 16th c. plague victims excavated in Venice, one of the interred was found with a brick jammed in her mouth.

Archaeologist Matteo Borrini thinks her survivors shoved a brick into her mouth because they thought she might turn vampire and spread more plague.

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by “vampires” which, rather than drinking people’s blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear.

He claims this is the earliest vampire-treated remains, but similar finds have been made elsewhere, including by Peer Moore-Jansen of Wichita State University who scoffs at the “first vampire” claim.

Borrini is undaunted, insisting that his study reveals that this Venetian lady who died in 1575 is the first one to provide archaeological evidence of anti-vampiric exorcism.

The whole thing seems tenuous to me. Vampire legends were pretty much all over the map until Bram Stoker sealed the 19th c. Transylvanian version into the popular consciousness. The post-mortem shroud chewers sending plague vibes out from underground bear little resemblance to what people today think of as vampires.

There may just be a wee drappie of sensationalism driving Prof. Borrini’s claim. And understandably so given the sweet press he’s gotten.

High Definition Iceman

Ancient, Multimedia, Museums

Now you too can observe Otzi the Iceman in extreme-closeup detail from the comfort of your home, thanks to the Iceman Photoscan project.

They’ve taken 150,000 high definition images from 12 different angles, in normal and UV light. You can zoom in on his every tattoo, to the width of just a few millimeters, and you can even view him in 3D if you have the glasses.

The detail is crazy. You can see every pore, every hair follicle, every scrap of clothing.

To keep him as well-preserved as possible, his living space duplicates the conditions of the glacier in which he so happily slumbered for thousands of years. Otzi lives in a darkened chamber, climate controlled to a perpetual -6°C (21°F) with 98% humidity.

There’s a viewing window so visitors to the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology can file past and give him a peek, but it’s 40 x 40 cm (15 x 15 inches) area, so you don’t exactly get an eyefull. Hence this high definition picture scanning project.

Olympic construction yields ancient goodies

Ancient, Modern(ish), Treasures

Preparatory digs on the site of what in 2012 will be London’s Olympic Park have yielded all kinds of ancient artifacts and remains.

So far archaeologists have found a 4000-year-old flint axe, 4 Iron Age skeletons, medieval pottery, a 19th c. wooden boat, a 4th c. Roman coin, a Victorian cobblestone road, WWII gun embankments and more.

“We now know that the Olympic Park area was settled and utilised continuously from the prehistoric period onwards. These people lived and died here.”

The prehistoric skeletons were buried in graves around an area of Iron Age settlement, he said, and the boat was used for hunting wild fowl on the River Lea.

Mr Tyler added: “This new story of the Lea Valley is London before London – a previously unknown London.”

Unknown because what is now East London was outside the boundaries of the settlement and city for centuries. The Iron Age burials may indicate that the Lower Lea Valley area was actually settled before London proper was.

The range of artifacts is almost like a timeline of British history. The Museum of London is documenting and preserving the finds even as construction continues, and 1000 people have already visited the finds as part of an Olympic Delivery Authority community outreach program.

Cure for the common cold: dragon’s blood

Treasures

According to a handwritten 17th c. manuscript of nostrums, tinctures, and remedies going up for auction today, there’s nothing like boiling a shallot, herbs, and some bruised dragon’s blood in a pint of fairy water to kill a cold.

Here’s the full recipe for the next time you have the sniffles:

Take your Sallet Oyle and a pinte of faire water.

Boyle it with an earthen pott in your wax then shred the herbs very small and the rosemary and planting water into the pott.

Let it boyle a little then bruise the Dragons blood very small and putt them in letting them boyle a little.

Then take the turpentine and wash it three times in faire water and the last time in rose water them put it into the pott.’

The 64-page book is estimated to sell for a mere £400 ($568), which is a steal if you ask me. It was found under a pile of papers by one Philippa Mulley while she was cleaning her dead aunt’s house 25 years ago.

She threw it in a drawer and forgot about it until last month, when she had it appraised and put it up for sale at Bonhams.

I don’t even know how it’s physically possible to put something like that in a drawer and forget about it for 25 years. I’d be stroking it obsessively 24/7 from the minute of discovery.

The calligraphy alone is complete awesomeness, never mind the 100 recipes of more-or-less wacky folk medicine.

Update: Sold for £816 ($1,150). Now that’s more like it.