Month: May 2011

Romania recovers stolen Dacian treasure

Ancient, Museums, Social policy, Treasures

The Romanian government has recovered 232 artifacts looted over a decade ago from the ancient Dacian capital of Sarmisegetusa Regia. The authorities have been tracking the stolen treasure all over Europe and the US with the help of local police forces, Interpol, and historical experts.

The artifacts include two iron parade shields, 42 inches in diameter and decorated using a repoussé technique (beating the hot metal from the reverse side to form a decorative relief), one with a buffalo and the other with a griffin. These are extremely rare pieces. There are also 229 coins, 27 of them gold pieces of the Greek Lysimachus or Dacian pseudo-Lysimachus type, 39 silver Koson coins (named after the Dacian king Cotiso who is thought to have had them minted; the Greek version of his name, Koson, is on the coins), and 163 silver imitation Macedonian tetradrachma.

Dacian gold arm bracelet, 1st c. B.C.The star of the recovered material, however, is a two-pound gold bracelet from the 1st century B.C. that is one of 24 gold bracelets stolen from the archaeological site. Counting this one, 13 of the looted bracelets have now been recovered since 2005.

After the treasure of Pietroasele, which includes gold figurines weighing more than 19 kilos, “this is the most important find made on Romanian territory,” [Ernest Tarnoveanu, head of Romania’s national history museum,] said.

The 13 beautifully decorated golden spiral bracelets recovered so far were among 24 stolen between 1998 and 2001, when the Sarmisegetusa site in southwest Romania was plundered.

Elements of the hoard have been recovered from American, German and Swiss collectors who had bought them in good faith, prosecutor Augustin Lazar said.

That’s very generous of them, I must say. The artifacts recovered today were purchased from a German collector for $430,000. I’m not sure why Romania had to buy its stolen treasure back, no matter how good the collector’s faith was when he bought them. This isn’t the first time, either. Romania has been paying redemption money to every single private collector who has been found in possession of Sarmisegetusa Regia loot. Italy just threatens to prosecute unless they cough up.

While the wealthy collectors are getting paid, the local thieves are doing hard time. Romanian courts have indicted 28 people for involvement in the Sarmisegetusa robbery. In December 2009, thirteen of them were convicted and received prison sentences of between 7 and 12 years, totaling 100 years of imprisonment.

Einstein’s immigration papers found, displayed

Modern(ish), Museums, Treasures

Curators at the Merseyside Maritime Museum have found Albert Einstein’s landing card, an immigration document he completed in his own hand upon arrival in Britain in 1933, in the files of the UK Border Agency’s Heathrow office. They were looking for documents to exhibit in their new UK Border Agency National Museum, a newly established collaboration between the National Museums Liverpool and the UK Border Agency and HM Revenue and Customs, but were looking more for interesting seizures or illegalities. They were shocked to stumble on Einstein’s immigration papers from when he fled Germany and went to England for a short while before settling permanently in the US.

Einstein had been a professor at the Prussian Academy of Science in Berlin since 1914. He took a two-month winter teaching job at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in the winter of 1932, fully expecting to return to his regular job in Berlin once the term was over. Then Adolf Hitler came to power in January of 1933, and in February of 1933 Hitler staged the Reichstag Fire, suspending all political and civil rights in Germany in reaction. Then came the book-burnings (Einstein’s works among them), the “Boycott of Jews” day, the ban on Jews holding public sector jobs.

Einstein returned to Europe in March of 1933, but seeing the writing on the wall, he stopped in Antwerp, Belgium rather than returning home to Berlin. He found out that not only would he be actively persecuted, but also that his name was on a list of government assassination targets. A magazine in Germany actually printed such an enemies list. Einstein was on it, listed as “not yet hanged.”

He resigned his position at the Prussian Academy of Science, then he renounced his German citizenship. He got on a ferry to Dover from Oostende, Belgium on May 26, 1933. When he arrived at Dover, he filled in a landing card, as did all foreign nationals. He wrote in his name, stated his occupation as “professor,” and most tellingly of all, he wrote “Swiss” as his nationality. He added a note to the back of the document explaining that he was on his way to Oxford University to deliver a series of lectures.

Einstein remained at Oxford only for a few months. He was given an armed guard while he was there to protect him from any Nazi hit squads or individuals looking to cash in the $5,000 bounty on his head. He went to New York in October of 1933, planning to return to Oxford in a permanent teaching position, but as the political situation in Europe got increasingly scary, he decided instead to remain in the US as professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, New Jersey.

France returns 1st of 16 Maori heads to New Zealand

Modern(ish), Social policy

In a solemn ceremony, Maori elders reclaimed the tattooed and preserved head of a Maori warrior from museum and government officials in Rouen, France. Sebastien Minchin, the director of Rouen’s Museum of Natural History, carried the toi moko (the Maori term for the tattoo and the head that bears it) in a case draped with a Maori ceremonial black shawl while Maori elder Kataraina Pitiroi sang a karanga, a ceremonial call-out song, then formally returned it to the delegation of elders, New Zealand Embassy officials and representatives from Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand’s national museum. You can see video of the ceremonial hand-over here.

This is the culmination of years of legal wrangling in France. The head, a sacred cultural object to the Maori dating back to the late 18th century or early 19th century, was originally preserved as a reminder of a victory in battle. The tattoos indicate high rank and the heads of elaborately-tattooed warriors would be kept as prized objects by the winners.

After James Cook mapped the coast of New Zealand in 1769 opening the door to further European exploration and mercantilism, a brisk trade in toi moko developed, populating the museums of Europe, and later the US, with these objects of fascination/human remains. Eventually, demand in Europe for the tattooed heads was so high that tribespeople were murdered just for their heads. Slaves captured in warfare would be tattooed right quick, decapitated and their heads sold. Because of its increasing brutality, the trade in tattooed heads was officially outlawed by Britain in 1831.

Rouen’s toi moko had been donated by a Parisian collector named Drouet to the Museum of Natural History in 1875. It went on public display in the museum until it closed in 1996. Then it was kept in storage for a decade until curators doing inventory before the re-opening of the museum found it. This was in 2006, and the city council, headed by the mayor of Rouen, Pierre Albertini, immediately proposed to return the head to New Zealand. The Maori had been asking for their ancestral heads back for two decades by then; it wasn’t even a controversial position, really. Most countries had already returned their head collections or were working on it.

The French Culture Ministry, however, put an immediate stop to the plan. According to the ministry, the museum by law had to consult with a scientific committee before making any offers to return anything. France’s national government has a blanket policy of considering pretty much everything in its museums as part of France’s national heritage, no matter where it came from and under what circumstances, based on the age-old finders keepers philosophy of ethics. The underlying fear was that allowing Rouen to one-sidedly return the toi moko would open a Pandora’s Box of demands for repatriation.

An administrative court backed the government’s position so for years the toi moko remained in storage in Rouen. Recognizing the specific cultural significance of the toi moko, French senator Catherine Morin-Desailly submitted a bill the French senate in early 2008 that would allow the return of the Maori heads in France, not just the Rouen one but 15 others from public collections all over France as well. The bill was passed unanimously by the Senate in June of 2009, and finally by the National Assembly in May 2010.

They made a point, however, of emphasizing that this was a particular exception based on the human dignity of the remains and the strong cultural traditions of the Maori in modern-day New Zealand. “The minister emphasises that this very particular case must be placed within its specific context and should not be confused with the debate about other claims concerning certain items in the public collections.”

Now, a year later, the first toi moko, the one that started it all in Rouen, is on its way back home. It will be placed in a sacred space of the Te Papa museum on May 12th, along with a number of other toi moko retrieved along the way in Sweden, Germany and Norway. The rest of the French toi moko will be returned to New Zealand in 2012.

400-year-old wreck in danger of destruction

Renaissance, Treasures

The Swash Channel Wreck, so named after the location of its discovery off the coast of Dorset, England, dates to the early 17th century and was discovered in 2004 during an archaeological survey commissioned in anticipation of a harbor dredging. That same year it was declared a protected wreck site, and a diving team in 2005 photographed large portions of timber work, including the frames, ceiling, outer planting and a large segment of deck that is thought to be 130 feet long.

During ongoing exploration by maritime archaeologists from Bournemouth University, a 27.5-foot section of bow or quarterdeck decorated with an elaborately carved merman was recovered from the wreck. The dendrochronogical analysis found that the timbers were felled around 1585. [Correction: two years later, the tree-ring date has been revised to Spring of 1628.] That makes these pieces the earliest carved ship timber still in existence in Britain. A large number of artifacts was also found on the wreck site. Weaponry, barrels, ceramic vessels, leather shoes, barrels, drinking cups, all testify that this ship was extremely well-appointed. The richness of the ship and its artifacts plus its early date make this wreck the most important one found in British waters since the Mary Rose.

Unfortunately, it’s in grave danger from shifting currents and being in the middle of a busy shipping lane. More and more wood is being exposed as the sand moves, and the exposed wood is a tasty meal for bacteria and shipworms.

They can’t just rebury the ship, which would be the safest and most immediate solution to keep the wood from deteriorating further, because it would create a bump on the seafloor that would interfere with traffic in the shipping lane. They can’t lift the whole thing because so much of it is still buried; it would be prohibitively expensive and take a long time, more time than the timbers may have. The Bornemouth University team has therefore decided to raise and preserve the largest section of the exposed wood next month, then rebury the flatter pieces that remain.

David Payton, senior lecturer in marine archaeology at [Bournemouth University], said: “The damage there has increased dramatically since we first started studying it. It’s a race – you’ve only got a certain amount of time before it’s too late and there’s no point.

“It’s been buried until now, but in the last four or five years it’s become exposed. The longer the wreck is exposed, the more damaged it will be. If nothing were done within the next five years there’d be nothing left.”

The easiest and most effective way to preserve the ship would be to rebury it, but this is not an option for the whole vessel, as it would create a hump on the seabed in a crucial shipping channel. Instead, scientists plan to pull out those sections of the ship that would be in the way and rebury the rest.

The main piece to be raised will be six metres of the hull from the bow backwards. These timbers, once recovered, will go on display in Poole Museum.

Research continues, meanwhile, to determine the origin and name of the ship. The timbers came from the German-Dutch border, but even with the original point of the wood and its date of felling, so far no records have been found that identify the wreck.

There’s underwater footage of the wreck in this BBC video, and the ship’s preservation will be the subject of an upcoming episode of the BBC show Britain’s Secret Seas.

Original Frank Miller Batman art breaks sales record

Modern(ish), Treasures

An original drawing penned by Frank Miller for his 1986 Batman comic The Dark Knight Returns has sold at auction for $448,125, including a 19.5% buyer’s premium. That’s the largest sum ever paid for a piece of original American comic book art, beating the previous record holder (the cover art of Weird Fantasy #29 by Frank Frazetta) by $70,000.

The Frank Miller image isn’t even a cover, though. It’s page ten of issue No. 3, a splash page with Batman and the first girl Robin doing calisthenics in the air above Gotham. The previous record price paid for a piece of interior American comic art is a measly $88,500 spent on the art from a splash page in Amazing Spider-Man #50 written by Stan Lee and drawn by John Romita Sr. The fact that interior art from just a couple of decades ago could sell for such an astronomical sum is a testament to how The Dark Knight Returns and Frank Miller’s work have become almost instantly iconic.

The image is the single most memorable image from the entire comic book series and the greatest image from the decade of the 1980s ever to come to market, as well as now standing as one of, if not the most desirable pieces of original comic art from any era to come to market. It is a perfect stand-alone image of Batman and Robin (Carrie Kelley, the first female, full-time Robin) soaring high above Gotham City, emblematic of the entire storyline.

“I’ve always loved that drawing,” commented Miller, when asked before the auction what his thoughts on its imminent sale were. “Danced around my studio like a fool when I drew it. I hope it finds a good home.”

It was purchased by an anonymous collector, surprise, surprise, so I guess we’ll never know how good a home it has. Heritage Auctions hasn’t had much to say about the seller, either. All we know is that the art came from a private European collector who obtained it just after issue No. 3 hit the newsstands. He has kept it until now. That “fresh to market” cachet is something collectors look for, so that probably helped add to the sale price as well.

This is also the first splash page from The Dark Knight Returns that has ever been offered at auction. Despite its relative youth, original art from the series is much more rare than other comic art from the period. Another advantage this piece has is that the original drawing and the published versions are basically the same. That’s rare with Frank Miller’s work, because he is known to make frequent changes on pasteovers.