Over the weekend, a colossal statue of Amenhotep III that was discovered in 2004 was raised in its original Luxor location. The Luxor Times has posted additional photographs of the event.

Nearly 3,000 fragments of Buddha statues dating from 534 to 577 A.D. have been unearthed at the site of Yecheng by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Heritage. The statues, which varied in size, were carved from white marble or blue stone, and some were painted or gilded. Yecheng sits in an oasis on the southern rim of the Taklamakan Desert.

Why do people make pilgrimages, and why are they significant? This review of the possible pilgrimage sites of Cahuachi in Peru, Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, and the Hopewell earthworks in Ohio suggests that pilgrimages brought prestige to devout members of religious groups when they returned home. The authors also note that when these sites were the most active, signs of violence declined.

The Kingman Museum of southwest Michigan is one of many museums working to repatriate American Indian artifacts and human remains under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Some of the challenges the curators face are described in the Detroit Free Press.  

Tiles, pottery fragments, and pieces of cast iron from what is thought to have been a Roman fort have been found in southern Scotland.

Alia Al-Senussi, a member of Libya’s royal family exiled in 1969, has written about the importance of Libya’s ancient past and the renewed efforts of the Global Heritage Fund in Libya for CNN.

Greece has reported that tourism to archaeological sites and museums rose by more than ten percent last year, despite the country’s ongoing economic crisis. Rioting in the center of Athens, however, has led to a drop in tourism at the National Archaeological Museum and the New Acropolis Museum. “The cruise sector has greatly affected visitor numbers to archaeological sites,” said Martha Simantoni of the Archaeological Resources and Expropriations Fund.

Scientists at the FACES Laboratory at Louisiana State University are working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Maritime Heritage Program to reconstruct the faces of two men whose skeletal remains were recovered from the famous iron-clad ship, the USS Monitor. James Delgado of NOAA says the facial reconstructions are the last chance to try to identify the sailors. “At this stage we don’t know who these guys are. We can tell you a fair amount about them, but that’s about as far as forensic science takes us without a DNA match,” he explained.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, March 5, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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