An Alabama woman stopped last month at an airport in Macedonia with more than 250 ancient coins  and several artifacts has been convicted of attempting to smuggle them out of the country. She said she had been given the coins as a gift and was unaware of any criminal activity. She will serve a two-year parole in the United States and has been banned from returning to Macedonia for ten years. “A single coin which is worth good money, maybe was a gift, maybe… but 256 ancient coins?” commented one customs official.

In Fredericksburg, Virginia, archaeologists are excavating what is left of a brick row house that was destroyed by fire during the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. Historians and archaeologists think that Union troops took shelter in the home because they have discovered metal insignia from their uniforms, ration cans, pens, inkwells, smashed plates, and whiskey and beer bottles in the cellar. “The two images in that part of town, taken from two slightly different angles, both don’t have a building where you would expect one to be. In my view, that supports [the archaeologists’] interpretation that it was destroyed sometime in association with the battle,” said John Hennessy, chief historian of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The foundation of the home was uncovered from beneath a concrete slab before the construction of a new courthouse next to the city hall.

Botanist Giulia Caneva and a team of graduate students from the University of Rome have assembled a data base of plant images  from carved stone artworks, paintings, and textiles from Italy. One surprising thing they found was that Italian orchids appeared in the artworks much earlier than expected. The flowers were used in 46 B.C. to decorate the Temple of Venus Genetrix and on the Ara Pacis, built in 9 B.C. Orchids and other plants remained a popular theme in Roman art until the arrival of Christianity. “My idea is that they are eliminating pagan symbols, and [those] that are related to sexuality,” she said.

The scuttled remains of a wooden schooner  built in 1903 have been found in the Channel Islands Marine Sanctuary. Known as the George E. Billings, the ship carried lumber from the Pacific Northwest to Hawaii, Mexico, South America, Australia, and southern California. It was eventually used as a sport-fishing barge before it was scuttled in 1941 off the coast of Los Angeles. “Now we can write the final chapter of not only the largest, but the last sailing vessel built by the Hall Bros. during their 30-year career of designing some of the finest ships sailing the Pacific,” said Robert Schwemmer of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, October 24, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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