Four museums in southern California were searched by Federal agents looking for documents related to Southeast Asian and First Nations artifacts. The authorities think that two men, a gallery owner and a smuggler, helped art collectors obtain illegal antiquities in order to donate them to museums for tax breaks.

In northern Iraq, there are plans to turn the crumbling 8,000-year-old citadel of Irbil into a tourist attraction. But first, it needs a lot of work. “You have now a very important monument…in the heart of the city and it is dead,” said Shireen Sherzad, who is an advisor to the Kurdish region’s prime minister.

The dispute over the so-called Black Swan continues between Spain and the salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration. James Delgado of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A & M University was asked to comment on the case: “The question is, just because you’re the first one out there to get it, should you get to keep it–especially if it belongs to someone else?” he said.

A study of small toe bones shows that people started wearing shoes about 40,000 years ago. Barefoot folks develop robust middle toe bones, while shoe-wearers put less force on their middle toes and push off with their big toes.

The hull of a fourth-century B.C. ship will be excavated off the coast of Cyprus. The wreck is under only 144 feet of water, and can be reached by divers.

Here’s more information on the necropolis discovered at Deir Al-Banat in Egypt’s southern Fayoum.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, January 25, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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