In Myanmar, construction of a railroad has damaged the ancient stone pagodas, stupas, walls, libraries, moats, and city walls at Mrauk U, which was once a trade hub and religious center, and is now an open-air museum and tourist destination.

Egypt’s Al-Ahly Bank has handed over more than 200 artifacts that had gone unclaimed in its vaults since the early twentieth century to the Supreme Council of Antiquities.  

Earlier this year, U.S. Customs officers discovered a 500-year-old artifact wrapped in a t-shirt while examining a passenger’s luggage at Oakland International Airport in California. The figurine was returned to Mexico earlier this week.  

Recent auction prices for Chinese antiquities have been making world-wide headlines. “These relics were smuggled, stolen, or looted in wars. If we offer huge sums of money to buy them back, it is legalizing these illegal activites,” said Li Jianmin of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  

A 61-year-old Colorado man has pleaded guilty to a felony charge of unauthorized excavation on federal land in southern Utah.  

When the Pirate and Treasure Museum moved to St. Augustine, Florida, owner Pat Croce had to install a handicapped-accessible ramp to his storefront across from the Castillo. The workers unearthed a bottle, a compass, some glassware, a tooth, and parts of an eighteenth-century British sword. “It tells us how the property developed over time. Finding an artifact that is representative of what the military would have used, the learning experience for me is exciting as it is for the visitors,” said city archaeologist Carl Halbirt.  This article has a better description of the artifacts.  

Chinese archaeologist Yuan Honggeng of Lanzhou University wants to search for a legendary lost Roman legion on the edge of the Gobi Desert because genetic testing of villagers living in this remote part of China suggests that some of them are descended from Europeans. But as Yang Gongle of Beijing Normal University points out, “The county is on the Silk Road, so there were many chances for transnational marriages. The ‘foreign’ origin of the Yongchang villagers, as proven by DNA tests, does not necessarily mean they are of ancient Roman origin.”

Happy Thanksgiving! The news will return on Monday, November 29.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, November 24, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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