Italian police displayed more than 400 looted artifacts recovered across Europe, including a fresco from Pompeii, Etruscan goblets, and a Greek Kalpis, once used for holding oil or water.  There’s another article on the recovered archaeological loot in the International Herald Tribune.

The Roman city of Serdica lies beneath the Bulgarian city of Sofia. Modern residents want to excavate it and draw in the tourists traveling to the Thracian site of Perperikon.  

John Russell, vice president of the Archaeological Institute of America, is quoted in this article on the recent raid of California museums by federal agents looking for looted antiquities. “If museum directors think they might go to jail, they might start thinking more carefully…. But as long as there are no consequences, they’ll continue to do it,” he said.  

A shaman’s mask taken from “a medicine man’s grave on King Island,” Alaska, more than 100 years ago, has been returned to the Inupiat and put on display at the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum in Nome. This story has been around for a while, but this particular article has more background information than most of them.  

A 220-pound bomb from World War II exploded today in the southeastern Czech Republic, near the Austrian border. One construction worker was injured.  

German treasure hunters claim to have found two tons of gold, and they expect to unearth the Amber Room, which was stolen from the Soviet Union by the Nazis during World War II. “The chamber is likely to be part of a labyrinth of storage rooms that the Nazis built here. I knew it was in this area. I just never knew exactly where,” Heinz-Peter Haustein, mayor of a nearby village, told Spiegel Online.   You can still view a video on the Amber Room at National Geographic News.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, February 19, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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