Iraqi extremist groups are receiving funding from the trafficking of looted antiquities, according to an investigation by Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos, who is also a New York assistant district attorney. But Antonia Kimbell, an art trade manager at The Art Loss Register, says “We haven’t come across a direct link.”

A red sandstone sculpture of the Buddha created in the second century A.D. has been uncovered at a monastery in Pakistan. “It was brought by monks traveling from the religious centre Mathura in Central India, as a gift for the monastery here at Badalpur. It’s unique in the Gandhara region that stretches from Jalalabad in Afghanistan to Taxila,” said Muhammad Ashraf Khan, director of exploration and excavation for the Department of Archaeology and Museums.  

An intact hoard of silver coins dating between 600 and 400 B.C. was discovered at Wari-Bateshwar in Bangladesh. The coins indicate that the site was a Mahajanapada, or one of the earliest states on the Indian subcontinent.  

Stanford University archaeologists and students are excavating the ruins of the school’s original gymnasium, library, and museum annex, destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. They want to know why the spanking new buildings collapsed.  

Russian archaeologists hope to continue digging in Yekaterinburg, at the site where the remains of a teenaged boy and a teenaged girl thought to be the two youngest Romanov children were uncovered last summer.  

A rare 2,000-year-old silver coin known as a half shekel was discovered in Jerusalem’s main drainage channel.  

The world’s largest forensic anthropology laboratory is located at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu. Teams here work to identify America’s war dead.

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

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.