Merry Wanderer of the Night:
Americas

“This is a salvage operation to get as much as we can,” said archaeologist Jera Davis, who is part of the team excavating the site.

The sites along the bank overlooking the river have been endangered by rapid erosion caused by a shift in the river channel. The salvage effort is a stopgap measure until UA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can agree on a plan to stabilize the stretch of riverbank along the wooded northern border of the park, according to Matt Gage, director of the UA Office of Archaeological Research.

“Since 2010, we have really seen a major change in what is happening with the erosion in this area,” Gage said.

The university and the Corps are trying to work on a feasibility study, he said.

The stabilization work would likely be funded by local and federal matching funds, with the Corps responsible for the stabilization and the university assisting with the archaeological work at the site.

At a site below the raised walkway that runs along the edge of the bank, the team has been excavating a midden heap — or trash pit — for about a week.

The bank below the excavation is a steep slope of exposed sandy soil where the trunks of toppled cypress and gum trees protrude from the silt at the water’s edge.

Gage estimated the staff has about six to eight months of salvage work along the riverbank on the edge of the park. The salvage by the archaeologists needs to be done before the stabilization work begins and before the valuable archaeological deposits slide down the slope into the river.

Only about 15 percent of the massive Moundville complex has been excavated. The section threatened by the river is among the least explored, according to Davis.

The site overlooking the river was likely one of the first and last places to be occupied at the complex, which was inhabited from roughly the 11th to 16th centuries by Native Americans of the Mississippian culture. The site was a religious and commercial center, home to both elite and commoners of the culture.

Based on materials found in the trash pit, experts say the sites near the river were likely the residential areas for the elite members of the society. The items include such things as shards of elaborate ceramics and mineral pigments from the Midwest, Davis said.

The trash pits offer glimpses of daily life at the sprawling complex, once the second largest of its kind in what is now the United States.

Moundville is eligible as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage site, Gage said.

Erosion along the bank is speeding up, he warned.

“Every day, we are losing a little bit of Moundville,” he said.

In the past, a natural jetty formed by silt deposits at the mouth of Carthage Branch to the east of the park helped protect the stretch of riverbank by redirecting the current. The recent changes to the river channel eroded the natural barrier and began to cut away at the bank along the Moundville site, Gage said. He estimated that approximately 30 meters of riverbank has been lost since 1969. The Corps of Engineers stabilized a stretch of riverbank northwest of the park roughly 25 years ago with riprap and other stone to prevent erosion.

While the Corps was previously able to stabilize the riverbank on the northwest corner of the park with aggregate, the erosion occurring now is a more challenging engineering problem because of the steep slope of the bank, which drops almost immediately into the river channel, Gage said.

Gage anticipates the project could cost anywhere from $7 million to $11 million.

“It all depends on what the Army Corps of Engineers decides is a possibility,” he said.

Author: Ed Enoch | Source: The Tuscaloosa News [January 26, 2015]

Patrol Capt. Jon Nelson says several people were spotted removing the rocks, some dug out of the prehistoric floor of the site. The Forest Service has distributed a photo of three people who it says might be able to help with the investigation.

It's a federal crime to vandalize archaeological resources. Penalties range from a $5,000 fine and six months in jail to a $20,000 fine and a year in jail.

Source: Associated Press [January 21, 2015]

Jerry D. Spangler, executive director of the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance, confirmed Tuesday that members of his group discovered the vandalism at a primitive rock shelter in the canyon on March 16 and reported it to the Bureau of Land Management office in Price.

The vandals buried two wire cables in the floor of the shelter, Spangler said. They also moved delicate archaeological material around inside the shelter to build new walls, according to Ahmed Mohsen, manager of the BLM'S Price field office.

"It's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen," said Spangler, who has more than two decades of experience in the field.

Members of the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance first photographed and documented the "big rock shelter" in 2010, but did not excavate it at that time, Spangler said. By moving things inside the shelter and digging into the floor, the vandals have probably done permanent damage to "layers of past human habitation," he said.

"Those are like the pages of a book," Spangler said. "When you disturb the context of artifacts, you put the book out of order."

Spangler doesn't know precisely when the damage was done, but believes the vandalism was "fairly recent."

"It's sad that someone would chose to make this their own little playground," he said, adding that rock shelters often provide archaeologists with an opportunity to study "thousands of years of human history in one place."

A BLM law enforcement ranger has been assigned to the case, Mohsen said. Anyone with information about the vandalism are enouraged to call the bureau's Price office at 435-636-3600.

"It's going to be an uphill battle, since we don't know exactly when the vandalism occurred," Spangler said.

Author: Geoff Liesik | Source: KSL [April 08, 2015]

The museum on Wednesday handed over seven rare artifacts that it acquired without museum officials realizing they were ill-gotten items. Agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take the items back to New York and, from there, eventually return them to the government of India.

U.S. customs agents say the items were taken from religious temples and ancient Buddhist sites, and then allegedly smuggled to the United States by an art dealer. The dealer, Subhash Kapoor, was arrested in 2011 and is awaiting trial in India. Officials say Kapoor created false provenances for the illicit antiquities.

Someone on vacation visiting the museum last year recognized the name of Kapoor's New York gallery as the source of a 2,000-year-old terra cotta rattle and contacted authorities, said Stephan Jost, the museum's director. Museum officials then pored over their records and determined six other Indian items had ties to Kapoor.

Kapoor donated one of the items and sold five to the museum, Jost said. One was a gift from someone else.

Agents are hailing the Honolulu museum for being the first U.S. institution to publicly and easily cooperate with the investigation, dubbed "Operation Hidden Idol," involving four arrests and the recovery of thousands of pieces worth a total of $150 million.

"Owning stolen stuff is not part of our mission," Jost said. "I'm not sure we've done anything heroic. We just want to do the right thing."

At first glance, the site looks like an empty hill on the city's east side -- a bald spot surrounded by a slum, a new university and a shopping mall scheduled to open soon.

But then, a low structure becomes visible -- Puruchuco, an Incan palace with a 16th-century burial ground, and untold numbers of priceless artifacts buried within.

Just 10 percent of the 75-hectare (190-acre) complex has been explored, but that small slice held more than 2,000 mummies and some 100 artifacts in gold, silver and copper.

"The entire Puruchuco hill has monuments, cemeteries, pre-Hispanic mausoleums that have never been explored because of a lack of funding," said archaeologist Clide Valladolid, the director of a small museum at the site.

The problem is that as the Peruvian economy has boomed in recent years -- registering average annual GDP growth of 6.4 percent in the decade to 2013 -- Lima, a city of more than nine million people, has expanded voraciously, with rich and poor alike snapping up real estate.

Puruchuco sits right in the growing capital's path.

Authorities want to extend Javier Prado Avenue, one of the city's main arteries, to link it up with Carretera Central, the highway to the Andean region and the main route to the capital for food and other products from the country's interior.

Originally, the idea was to split Puruchuco in two and build the road straight through it -- a plan that initially got a green light from authorities.

But then the culture ministry intervened, asking for construction to be halted.

With a little creative engineering, planners came up with a system of two three-lane tunnels, each 45 meters (150 feet) long, that will pass through the narrowest part of the hill.

Work on the $8.9 million project began last August using non-disruptive digging techniques and no explosives, and is due to be completed in June.

"It was the engineering equivalent of heart surgery to avoid one of the cemeteries on the upper part of the hill," said engineer Onerio Robles, who designed the project.

"When we had defined the route and begun excavating, we found a mummy a meter away from the tunnel's path and had to recalculate everything."

An archaeologist at the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos had warned in 2010 that there was a pre-Inca palace hidden in that part of the hill.

Puruchuco means "feather helmet" in the Quechua language.

The complex is named for a headpiece on display at the site museum. Crowned with brightly colored feathers, it was worn by the curaca, or ruler, who lived in the palace.

More than five centuries ago, Puruchuco was an important administrative and religious center where the curaca led rituals.

Today, the palace has been painstakingly reconstructed and is open for visits.

Authorities have promised to expand the site museum, opening the largest collection of mummies in the country and a laboratory to study them.

Valladolid, the museum's director, wants to bring back 2,000 mummies that were discovered at Puruchuco in 2000 during a separate construction project -- a road through a slum that had sprung up atop the largest burial ground.

Some of the mummies' bones had been broken with sharp swords in combat -- apparently an early battle with the Spanish conquistadors, who descended on the area in 1532 and made Lima the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru.

One of the mummies' skulls was pierced by a musket ball -- it is believed to be the first person killed by gunfire in the Americas.

Many more discoveries are likely lurking in the hill, said Valladolid.

"In the lower part of Puruchuco, called Huaquerones, there are three pyramids with ramps and cemeteries. We need to fence them off to stop squatters from moving in," she said.

Author: Roberto Cortijo | Source: AFP [March 21, 2015]

That's what happened to University at Buffalo faculty member Philip Kiernan, who heard a rumor from a UB alumnus in 2010 that the UB Libraries housed the rare coins. Three years later, Kiernan, an assistant professor of classics, channeled his inner Indiana Jones and journeyed to the depths of the UB archives to find them.

The collection, he was shocked to learn, was real: 40 silver Greek coins, three gold Greek coins and a dozen gold Roman coins -- one from each era of the first 12 Roman emperors, from Julius Caesar to Domitian. They range in date from the fifth century B.C. to the late first century A.D.

Not your usual find.

"I must have been the first person to touch them in almost 40 years," says Kiernan, who brought in two experts to verify the coins' authenticity last semester and is now developing a graduate course to examine the items' history.

It's the first time the coins will be extensively studied, and Kiernan and his class will publish their findings.

Within the collection is a "remarkably rare" coin of Roman emperor Otho, who reigned for a mere three months. The Greek coins were struck by some of the most powerful city-states and rulers of the ancient world, such as Athens, Corinth and Alexander the Great.

The coins were donated in 1935 to the UB Libraries Special Collections by Thomas B. Lockwood as part of a larger collection of rare books. However, it wasn't until Kiernan examined them out of curiosity that the currency's rarity and value were realized.

Kiernan focuses much of his research on ancient currency and antiquities, and the experts he brought in to examine the coins were numismatists -- people who collect or study currency.

The coins are one of the many treasures stored in the UB Libraries, which also hold original works by James Joyce, Dylan Thomas and William Shakespeare.

"Libraries are becoming museums," says Michael Basinski, curator of the UB Libraries Special Collections. "Everything is going digital, but we remain tied to the physical objects."

Lockwood's collection includes more than 3,000 books, medallions and additional coins from early America and England. Other notable items include a medallion of Napoleon Bonaparte and 36 British gold coins, including one of Queen Elizabeth I.

Lockwood, an avid reader and collector of rare and special books, purchased the items to supplement his personal collection. Accruing relics and art was common practice among affluent men in the early 20th century.

"For book collectors, owning such extraordinary objects connects them to the history that's recorded in their books," says Kiernan. "They could read about the Emperor Augustus and then examine a coin with his image."

Most of the coins are in excellent condition, despite remaining in their original 80-plus-year-old casing. A few of the silver coins require conservation treatment. The collection's casing also will be improved.

The UB Libraries will open the collection of coins to members of the campus and local communities pursuing relevant research.

Author: Marcene Robinson | Source: University at Buffalo [March 11, 2015]

Among the items seized from a house in Klamath Falls were articles used during Indian funeral ceremonies and other items of cultural significance, Oregon State Police Sergeant Randall Hand said. No human remains were discovered.

A prolonged drought has dried up parts of a regional watershed in the Klamath Basin in southern Oregon and Northern California, exposing archaeological areas normally concealed by water, Hand said.

"These were tribal artifacts, and we believe that most of those that we've collected were from 200 years to 5,000 years old, or older," he said.

Hand said members of Oregon's Klamath Tribes had helped in a seven-month investigation into the archaeological disappearances from public lands.

Police said dozens of artifacts were reclaimed from the house, but did not provide an exact count.

Officials with the Klamath County District Attorney's office said they could not comment on the case or any pending charges.

Oregon law requires that anyone removing archaeological objects from public or private lands obtain permits, state police said.

Some researchers have complied with those requirements during the recent drought to gain greater understanding of an area that has been reshaped by dams and artificial reservoirs.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, for example, last fall oversaw excavations at the former site of Klamath Junction, a tiny community intentionally submerged by an irrigation project in the 1960s. As water levels have fallen, building foundations and scattered debris have emerged on a muddy plain that is normally under water.

Author: Courtney Sherwood | Source: Reuters [February 26, 2015]

The Albuquerque Journal reports that monument Superintendent Dennis Vásquez and a supporter of the monument were exploring a section of the monument last week when they found debris, evidence of campfires, motorcycle tracks and graffiti.

The monument has thousands of samples of ancient Pueblo Indian rock art and it's managed jointly by the National Park Service and the city.

The vandalized section is owned and managed by the city.

City crews have started removing litter and debris and restoring sections of downed fence, and Vasquez said the Park Service and the city will work together to remove the graffiti as quickly as possible.

Source: The Associated Press [February 11, 2015]

The pieces were collected over six weeks by a team of 29 archaeologists and other specialists along the canal's 173-mile (278-kilometer) route, said Manuel Roman Lacayo of Environmental Resources Management, which was hired by HKND of China to consult on the project.

The vast majority of artifacts were apparently shards of pottery or other materials such as obsidian, dating from around 500 B.C. to the 1500s. Such pieces are relatively commonly found in parts of the region.

Roman called it the first phase of archaeological studies related to the canal.

"These are artifacts of indigenous peoples that have significant value," said Bernard Li, an HKND spokesman in Managua.

The pieces were found above ground. Developers have not begun digging the canal itself, though in late December they broke ground on roads related to the broader project.

The canal has an estimated price tag of $50 billion and developers have targeted 2019 for completion. The government promises 50,000 directly related jobs and an economic boost for the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

But the project has also sparked protest from residents of towns in the canal's path who fear they will be displaced and not properly compensated.

Ecologists worry about potential environmental damage, and President Daniel Ortega's political opponents have called the canal deal a giveaway and a boondoggle.

Source: Associated Press [February 05, 2015]