The provincial government in Babil, Iraq, has unlawfully seized control of Babylon, according to the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, and has opened it to tourists. “The political situation in our country is not stable. The federal government is weak,” said Qais Hussein Rashid, acting director of the board of antiquities.

An article by archaeologist Eric Huysecom published in a Swiss newspaper criticizes an exhibit of African artifacts at the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva. He says that some of the ceramics in the show were looted and exported illegally from Mali. “Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller respects the legislation to the letter. But Swiss law is deficient in this regard,” he explained.  

In Bulgaria, treasure hunters are buying up land surrounding the archaeological site of Novae and “digging out everything around,” according to archaeologist Evgenia Gencheva.  

Chinese archaeologists will return to the site where Peking Man was discovered in 1929 to look for more fossils.  

The Old Stone Inn may turn out to be Pittsburgh’s oldest building. It had been thought that the Fort Pitt Block House, built in 1764, was the city’s oldest building, but new evidence, including a ledger in the Carnegie Library, suggests that the Inn may have been built by the French in 1756.  

Here’s an update on the three-year project to map the nine miles of the Saint Domitilla catacomb in Rome with laser scanners. The process has also revealed wall paintings that haven’t been seen in 2,000 years. “It is not a virtual image, it is not animation – what you are seeing is real data,” said Norbert Zimmerman of the Vienna Academy of Sciences.  

Two cannons found at Arch Cape on the Oregon coast will be conserved by experts at Texas A&M University.  

Did a tsunami hit the New York City region 2,300 years ago?

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, May 4, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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