World Cultural Preservation

My former professor, Richard Kurin, has been the Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture" at the Smithsonian Institution for over 25 years now. An interview with Dr. Kurin posted on the U.S. State Department's propaganda organ America.gov has been making the round among progressive news outlets like Scoop and cultural resources blogs like Saving Antiquities.

I am amazed that Kurin has not only survived but flourished as organizer and recruiter of international acts for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well as many of the Silk Road Project events and exhibits at museums in our nation's capitol. The profile advertising his appearance at the Canadian Museum Association conference in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Kurin describes many of his most recent accomplishments:

(Kurin)... has worked with cultural figures ranging from Pete Seeger, Yo-Yo Ma, Mickey Hart, and Bernice Johnson Reagon to the Aga Khan and the Dalai Lama. He helped draft an international treaty on safeguarding the world’s living cultural heritage. He has produced major events for the Smithsonian’s 150th anniversary, the opening of the World War II Memorial, the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian, and programs for numerous presidential inaugurals, including that of President Obama.

I highly recommend the interview with Kurin posted at America.gov.

Restoring the Arch of Ctesiphon?

The U.S. military plans to assist regional Iraqi autorities in the "restoration" of a ruined brick arch. According to the story written by Pvt. Jared Gehmann of the 82nd Airborne, the Arch of Ctesiphon was built nearly 16 centuries ago and was formerly a popular tourist attraction in this part of Iraq.

Tragedy Strikes the Atlanta Botanical Garden

No Looting In Iraq?

It all started with a story by Martin Bailey in The Art Newspaper, and it was really the headline as much as the actual story that drew fire. As reported by Mr. Bailey,

An international team of archaeologists which made an unpublicised visit to southern Iraq last month found no evidence of recent looting—contrary to long-expressed claims about sustained illegal digging at major sites.

Mr. Bailey did also mention that the archaeologists only visited eight major sites in southern Iraq: Ur, Ubaid, Eridu, Warka, Larsa, Tell el-Ouelli, Lagash and Tell el-Lahm. However, he also clearly expressed his view that the extent of looting has been exaggerated both by reporters and by archaeologists. A similar view has been even more directly expressed in a blog commentary by Dr. Dorothy King -

The false claim of looting - along with the claim that the US could have prevented the thefts from Baghdad Museum - has been a major part of the anti-War propaganda.

Whether pro- or anti-war, it is clear that propaganda and political advocacy do color our perception of the illegal digging and trade in antiquities which have occurred both before and after the United States deposed Saddam Hussein by military force. Issues about protection of cultural resources cannot be separated from political and military issues in Iraq and other countries of the Middle East. Archaeology and protection of cultural resources are deeply embedded within the ongoing political and religious conflicts.

Relying both upon her own inspection of aerial photographs and upon research by Dr. Elizabeth Stone, Dr. King supports the gist of the Bailey piece in concluding that most looting on the major sites occurred prior to the start of the current Iraq war. Opposing views on the issue are being expressed, however, by David Gill, Larry Rothfield, and a number of other scholars posting to the Iraq Crisis discussion list. A first hand account of looting in southern Iraq presented by the Director of Antiquities in Nasiriya Province, Dr. Abdulamir Hamdani, can be viewed online at Safe Corner.

What a blogstorm!

Disrespecting Indiana Jones



A minor blogstorm has errupted over the appointment of Harrison Ford to the Board of Directors of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). In this video a well-known scholar and advocate against the illicit trade in antiquities, Oscar Muscarella, expresses his opinion that Indiana Jones is not an archaeologist but rather a "plunderer."

What do you think?

The blogstorm began as a reaction to the AIA press release. Early reactions can be found in Numismatics and Archaeology and in Safe Corner. Both posts have many comments, largely agreeing with Muscarella in condemning Indy as a plunderer.

Death of Roxana Brown

Dr. Roxana Brown, an expert on southeast Asian ceramics who lived in Bangkok, Thailand, died while in custody in a Seattle prison on Wednesday morning. Dr. Brown had been arrested for a single count of wire fraud, the first arrest to come out of the federal government's aggressive probe into the antiquities trade and donations to Los Angeles museums. According to a story in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dr. Brown died of peritonitis from a perforated gastric ulcer. Her brother, Dr Fred Brown of Chicago, previously reported that she died of a heart attack which he believed was brought about by the stress of her arrest.

Dr. Brown was the director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University in Thailand, and she had been confined to a wheelchair after losing her leg in the 1980s. She was in Seattle visiting family as she prepared to speak before an academic conference.

Federal investigators asserted Wednesday that Dr. Brown allowed her electronic signature to be placed on appraisal forms that were part of a tax fraud scheme in California. The perpetrator of the tax fraud scheme, Jonathan Markell, operated the private gallery "Silk Roads." Markell allegedly inflated the value of ceramic artifacts donated to museums, allowing collectors to claim fraudulent tax deductions. Archaeologists and museum curators interviewed in Thailand by the Bangkok Post expressed considerable skepticism regarding the evidence so far presented against Dr. Brown.

Derek Fincham gives some of the back story of the federal antiquities probe in his post at Illicit Cultural Property. I also wrote a previous post in this blog about the museum raids back on January 27th.

Looting and Southern California Museums
Federal authorities raided at least five museums in southern California on Thursday on suspicion of receiving and exhibiting artifacts looted from archaeological sites. The photograph above shows the raid in progress at the Los Angeles County Museum. A private gallery, Silk Roads, was also targeted.

Hat tip to Derek Fincham, Lee Rosenbaum, and Matthew Taylor for their earlier and more detailed blog posts on this story.

Iraq Museum to reopen

Haven't we heard this before? Let us only hope that somebody competent is standing guard this time around.

Terri at A Soldier's Mind has the inside scoop on efforts by State Department cultural heritage liason officer Diane Siebrandt and Lt. Col. Kenneth Crawford of the 2nd “Spartan” Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cav Division to bring this about by working with Amira Emiran, the museum’s newly appointed director.

Update on Friday, 30 Nov 2007 - Derek Fincham of Illicit Cultural Property had a post up Sunday about this with a link to a more detailed and reliable story in The Sunday Times written by Jon Swain. The full name of the museum's newly appointed director is given and there are details about which galleries are being opened and which sculptures will be exhibited. According to Swain,

Visits will be confined to just two galleries on the ground floor containing Assyrian and Islamic treasures that are too large and heavy to be easily removed. The remaining 16 galleries will remain empty and closed and security will be tight.

Bombing of Temple at Marib, Yemen

A car bomber drove into a convoy of tourists and detonated at the "Queen of Sheba" temple in Marib at around 1800 (1500 GMT) on Monday. Nine people are reported killed; six Spanish tourists, the bomber, and two other Yemenis.

The 3,000 year old temple at Marib was lost to the desert sands after some initial digging there in the 1950's by Wendell Phillips until it was rediscovered using ground-penetrating radar (GPR). A multidisciplinary team from the University of Calgary headed by geographer Brian Moorman collaborated with Yemeni archaeologists beginning in 1998 to uncover and restore the temple. The Yemenis have hoped to attract tourists to provide economic development in this remote, northeastern corner of Yemen.

Reconstruction of the Al Askari shrine

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed by UNESCO and the Government of Iraq on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 for the reconstruction of the Al-Askari shrine. With a total budget of $8.4 million, the first phase of the project includes preventive works, an assessment of needs, and preparation of a scope of work for the restoration. In addition to the shrine’s Golden Dome and Ali al-Hadi shrine, the two minarets destroyed in the recent explosions on June 13th will be reconstructed. Alhamdulillah!

Meteorite Hazards in the Home

Last Monday morning, a space object of some sort crashed through the bedroom window of David and Dee Riddle’s home in Bloomington, Illinois. Geologists from Illinois State University (ISU)) who have examined the object are skeptical as to whether it is a true meteorite or perhaps a piece of "space junk" left behind by a satellite or spacecraft. While Robert Nelson notes that the object's density indicates a possible iron-nickel composition common to asteroids and the Earth's core, James Day finds the jagged ridge along one side of the object more typical of a manmade object. Fellow blogger Decrepit Old Fool voted with Dr. Day for the "space junk" hypothesis.

Regardless of its age and ultimate origin, the space object flew through Dee Riddle's window at a high velocity and lodged itself into a computer desk made of particle board. Now at ISU's geology department for analysis, the Bloomington "meteorite" weighs 402.41 grams and measures about 3 inches (7.6 cm) long by about 2.5 inches (6.35 cm) across and about half an inch (1.3 cm) thick. While the newspaper unfortunately converted the measurements to inches foran American readership, my back conversion suggests a volume of 62.7 cm³ and a density of 6.4 g/cm³. This is far denser than any rocks found at the Earth's surface, which average from 2-3 g/cm³.

The Riddles can be thankful that their space object was smaller in volume than the Peekskill meteorite, which traveled straight through Michelle Knapp's car as it sat in her driveway in the early morning hours of October 9th, 1992. The Peekskill meteorite weighed 12.4 kg, although its "chondritic" composition would indicate a lower density somewhat less than 4 g/cm³. A chondritic meteorite recently found near Statesboro, Georgia reportedly weighed 2.7 kg (6 lbs). That meteorite is undergoing detailed analysis by Dr. Michael Kelley of Georgia Southern University, with preliminary results suggesting an "L" type (low iron) composition. The rest of us can be thankful that the Riddles were sincerely interested in advancing scientific knowledge about their space object rather than angling for financial gain as was apparently done by Harold Cannon, who discovered the Statesboro meteorite.

Meanwhile, NASA is cutting out their search of the heavens for all but the largest of asteroids that may be on track to collide with the Earth in coming centuries. Approximately three-quarters of the objects over a kilometer (about sixth-tenths of a mile) in diameter that cross the Earth’s orbit have been discovered, their orbits calculated, and the potential for global catastrophe ruled out. That search is continuing while the agency has decided to abandon the search for smaller objects which might also represent significant hazards to desks, windows, cars, houses, cities, power plants, cities, counties, states, or even entire continents.

The Assemblage has a new piece by Will Anderson, commenting on Matthew Bogdanos' NYT op-ed which I discussed in a previous post.

Fighting for Iraq's Culture

Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, author of Thieves of Baghdad, had an op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times¹ repeating his call for Europe to do more to crack down on the trade in antiquities looted from Iraq since the beginning of the U.S. invasion. He also advances a new challenge to European archaeologists to have their nations recruit guards for the archaeological sites which they have excavated.

I do not expect much to come of Bogdanos' proposal, and I doubt that he expects or wants much from the Europeans himself. As Bogdanos notes, providing security for archaeological sites would be viewed by the Iraqis, Iraqi expatriates, and the rest of the world as a statement in support of the war. We should however acknowledge the assistance of both Poland and the Czech Republic in providing professional archaeologists and experts in cultural property.

Bogdano calls for a humanitarian effort to protect a cultural heritage rich with common ancestry that predates the splits among Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite. This is a noble proposal but one which I am certain he himself recognizes will fall on deaf ears given that it comes from a colonel in the U.S. Marine reserves. We can only hope that cultural treasures like the "Lion attacking a Nubian" shown above will be well cared for by whatever museum or private collector manages to obtain them through the illegal antiquities trade.

¹Bogdanos, Matthew, 2007, "Fighting for Iraq's Culture," New York Times, March 6.

Iraqi Museum to Re-Open

Zeyad, blogging at Iraqslogger, reports that the Ministry of Culture has formed a committee to make the necessary arrangements in order to reopen the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad early next year. Over 70 thousand archaeological pieces will be on display, many of which have been recently rehabilitated.

Zeyad's source for the above may have been this announcement from the Iraq Ministry of Culture. The ministry has set up a committee to re-open the Iraqi museum and to provide the necessary supplies, security and "to rearrange again (EXHIBITS?)." Electronic protection and iron gates are mentioned. Also that the museum was able to rehabilitate some of the artifacts and will be showing more than (70) thousand pieces in all museum halls. The opening of the museum will be a major event which will reflect the good image of the reality of the new Iraq.

Stolen Iraqi treasure sold at auction in Munich

Two stolen ancient Sumerian artefacts exhibited in a Munich art auction house and on the internet were sold on Tuesday, according to a Deutsche Presse-Agentur release. Although the legality of the auction was challenged by Iraqi authorities, German customs officials said the Munich sale had already taken place and could not be stopped. One item sold was a 227-millimetre-tall, headless limestone statue of a Sumerian man that dates back to 2500 BC. The other was an 117mm-long nail made of clay which bears Sumerian inscriptions dating back to King Shulagi of the Ur dynasty in 2097 - 2095 BC.

There is a "red list" posted here of artifacts that may be finding their way onto the antiquities market from Iraq, either stolen out of the Iraqi National Museum or looted from unprotected archaeological sites. There is also a partial list of artifacts stolen from the Iraqi National Museum on the webpage of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Matthew Bogdanos Lecture

Matthew Bogdanos, US Marine Officer and Author of Thieves of Baghdad will present a lecture on Monday, October 16th, 2006 at 4:00 PM in Room 248, Student Learning Center, University of Georgia. Mr. Bogdanos will be speaking about his investigation of the looting of the Baghdad museum and the current state of affairs with looting and conservation of archaeological material in Baghdad and Iraq. A book-signing and reception will follow the lecture, which is sponsored by the Wilson Center for Humanities and Arts, the Center for Archaeological Sciences, and the Department of Classics at the University of Georgia.

I am looking forward to this, although I expect that it will be too crowded to pose many questions or have much discussion. I wonder what Bogdanos will have to say about the recent departure from Iraq of the former museum curator, Donny George.