Reports from Karachi suggest that some of the Gandhara antiquities and fakes seized last month have been stolen from the police station where they were being held. Mohammad Shah Bokhari, director of Pakistan’s National Musuem, documented some 330 artifacts, but now the count is 308. “It is untrue that artifacts have been stolen [from the police station]. To our knowledge, there are only 308 pieces. We don’t have information about the rest,” replied station police officer Marwat of the Awami Colony police station.

This article offers some background information on Pakistan’s Swat region, where the Gandhara civilization existed 2,000 years ago. The Taliban blew up a 1,500-year-old Buddhist statue in the Jahanabad area of Swat in 2007, and later attacked the Swat Museum in 2009. Nasir Khan of the Taxila Museum says that Gandhara-period artifacts are in more danger now, since looters are able to access the archaeological regions. “I think the illegal digging of the historical structures has increased after the fall of the Taliban. They banned it and strictly punished those involved in it,” he said.

Highway construction in western Wisconsin has revealed a large village and skeletal fragments thought to have been left behind by the Oneota, who lived in the area between 1300 and 1600 A.D. Artifacts, including tools crafted from animal bones, were also found. The human remains will be reburied, according to the request of the modern Ho-Chunk, Ioway, Oto, and Missouria tribes, which are descendants of the Oneota.

Excavations along the Ilisu River in southeastern Turkey are continuing ahead of the construction of the controversial Ilisu Dam, which will flood historic areas of the Batman region. “Until 2000 not many excavations had been done in the area,” said Nevin Soyukaya of the Diyarbakir Museum. Thousands of artifacts have been sent to local museums from the excavations at a variety of sites.

Watch Stephen Houston talk about the discovery of giant stucco masks at the Temple of the Night Sun at the Maya site of El Zotz in Guatemala in this video from Brown University. The masks, which are located on the sides of the red-painted temple, depict the face of the sun god as it moves through the sky and changes during the day.

A study of Mongolia’s climate history using tree ring data suggests that consistent rain and warm temperatures may have provided Genghis Khan and the conquering Mongols with grass for their horses and livestock. “Their whole military operation was basically predicated on the fact that they had large numbers of grazing animals. These climate conditions would have given them more energy to fuel their empires,” said dendrochronologist Amy Hessl.

Researchers from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery have not been able to find any traces of Amelia Earhart’s plane in the waters off Nikumaroro Island. “After discussion and analysis of the results so far, they have decided that there is very little point in extending the trip,” said Patricia Thrasher, president of the group. Earhart and her navigator disappeared 75 years ago while attempting to fly around the world at the equator. Archaeological evidence suggests that castaways may have survived on Nikumaroro for a short time.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, July 23, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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