The first of 16 Maori heads has been returned to New Zealand by French authorities. Such tattooed, mummified heads were sought by European collectors and explorers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. “This is a great step forward in a vital ethical debate over our museum collections, and above all over human remains that were at times acquired illegitimately,” said Valerie Fourneyron, mayor of Rouen.

The Telegraph has used the occasion of France’s return of the Maori head to discuss a few other contested cultural artifacts.

Fracking, the process of extracting natural gas from Marcellus Shale, has destroyed archaeological sites in Pennsylvania. “A bulldozer can destroy 9,000 years of history in 15 minutes,” explained concerned local farmer Mike Kotz.

A team from Bournemouth University will bring part of the hull of a 400-year-old shipwreck, located off England’s Dorset coast, to the surface and preserve it. “It’s been buried until now, but in the last four or five years it’s become exposed. The longer the wreck is exposed, the more damaged it will be. If nothing were done within the next five years there’d be nothing left,” said marine archaeologist David Payton.

Traces of an eighteenth-century mission to the Chumash Indians, including thick walls, terra cotta floor tiles, and an irrigation channel, have been uncovered in Ventura, California. Shell beads, a stone bowl, and cattle bones were also found. A hotel occupied the site in the late nineteenth century.

Jeanne Arnold of the University of California Los Angeles has found sites on the Channel Islands where she thinks Chumash children learned to craft shell beads. “Originally, I thought these were new, experimental forms executed by virtuoso bead-makers,” she said.

Some of the artifacts stolen from a museum in Mexico in 2008 were recovered from a known dealer during a bust at a steak house in West Texas.

An Aboriginal spear thrower was stolen from Australia’s Melbourne Museum during the early morning hours of May 7.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, May 9, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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