Critics in Scotland are calling police “clumsy and incompetent” after they destroyed a rare 4,000-year-old burial chamber, thinking it was a crime scene. “If they were dealing with a real crime, they shouldn’t disturb the scene in any case,” said Jim Crow of the University of Edinburgh.

The police officers investigating bones uncovered in a Scottish churchyard recognized that they were not from a recent death, however.  

Hikers in Toowoomba, Australia, found a skull fragment that they thought was an artifact and took it to an archaeologist. The archaeologists referred the hikers to the police, saying the bone was only 30 to 40 years old.  

Three cannons from the gunboat CSS Pee Dee will be raised from South Carolina’s Pee Dee River. The cannons were thrown into the river when the vessel was scuttled at the Mars Bluff Naval Yard in 1865, in order to keep it out of Union hands.  

The Italian government has hired doctor and civil servant Guido Bertolaso to improve the safety and conservation of archaeological sites in Rome and Ostia. Bertolaso is known for his efforts to clean up the garbage problem in Naples.  

Conservation officers for England’s Yorkshire Dales National Park are urging visitors to resist the temptation to remove rocks from prehistoric cairns to build modern ones.  

Archaeologists are studying one of Iran’s oldest mosques, in the ancient Seljuk city of Decius.  

Here’s more information on the recently discovered tomb of one of Hatshepsut’s treasury officials. Spanish archaeologists found wall paintings and gold jewelry in the tomb.  

Learn more about the 1,000-year-old fish trap located just off the coast of Wales in this video from BBC News.  

And Ethiopian Review has a story on the discovery of a footprint thought to have been made by a Homo erectus, originally announced last week.   

A preliminary hearing was held for a California man accused of taking artifacts from an American Indian burial ground in a state park and posting a video of the act on YouTube. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

Before leaving office, George W. Bush signed an agreement with China that imposed import restrictions on Chinese artifacts from 75,000 B.C. to A.D. 907, and monumental sculpture and wall art at least 250 years old. Art dealers and museums complain that the deal won’t prevent looting in China, it will only keep the objects out of the United States. 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced it will cut 74 jobs from its staff, and that more cuts may follow.   

George Hedges, who helped to find the fabled city of Ubar in southern Oman, has died at the age of 57.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, March 18, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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