Iraq’s new minister of tourism and antiquities, Qahtan al-Juburi, has fired the acting head of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), Amira Edan. Edan had argued against the minister’s proposal to reopen the Iraq Museum in Baghdad to the public by mid-February. “If the museum is open, that is a message to the world that everything is fine and that the Americans can leave,” said Donny George, former head of SBAH and the museum.

The Netherlands will hand over some 2,000 artifacts recovered from Dutch ships wrecked off the coast of West Australia to museums in West Australia. The objects, dating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, include a cannon, an elephant tusk, amber, stoneware and porcelain, and coins.  

Customs officials in Islamabad, Pakistan, found 42 ancient coins in an outgoing package in the mail.   

Philip Crummy, director of England’s Colchester Archaeological Trust, is looking for Colchester’s Roman amphitheater. “I think we are at a stage now where we can say that, if the amphitheater was within the town walls, there is only one space big enough and empty enough where it could have been,” he said.  

The writing on a wooden tablet, or mokkan, discovered in Japan has been translated. The 1,000-year-old text bans anyone from tilling a noble’s field without permission.  

A $3.5 million grant has been awarded to complete an exhibit at the President’s House on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall. George Washington lived at the site while he was president, along with nine slaves. Their quarters were uncovered by archaeologists in 2007.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, January 22, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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