treasure

British Tourist Finds Lost Underwater City

2009-12-29T11:25:00.000-08:00

A British holidaymaker has uncovered what is believed to be a lost, ancient temple while snorkelling in the Mediterranean.
Michael Le Quesne, 16, was swimming off a popular beach in Montenegro with his parents and his ten-year-old sister Teodora when he spotted an odd looking 'stone' at a depth of around two metres.
It turned out to be a large, submerged building which may have been the centrepiece of an important Greek or Roman trading post, swallowed up by the sea during a massive earthquake.
A British team of experts led by Dr Lucy Blue, presenter of BBC Two show Oceans, is to investigate the significant find in this largely unexplored corner of south east Europe.
Dr Blue said that if the discovery is confirmed to be an underwater temple it would “put Montenegro on the map”.
She added: “Montenegro is largely an undiscovered underwater world.”
The discovery was made while Charles and Vera Le Quesne and their two children, from Princes Risborough, Bucks, was on a trip to their holiday home in the tiny Balkan country last month.
The family has been holidaying in Montenegro since 1994, but had never visited Maljevik, a small bay of sand and shingle, sheltered by pines, near the city of Bar.
Once his son reported the find, Mr Le Quesne, a professional archaeologist, fetched a snorkel and dived down to investigate. He discovered fluted columns, 90cm in diameter, on plinths, which appeared to form part of an ancient Greek or Roman temple, basilica or major public building, similar to those at other archaeological sites around the Mediterranean.
On a clear day, the columns are visible from the surface of the water, but it appears that the remains, which include ancient pottery, have stayed untouched for thousands of years.
Michael said: “When I first swam out, I thought they were just rocks, as most people would, but then I noticed that they were cylindrical and knew that they couldn’t be natural, so I called my dad over.
“I’ve been dragged around a lot of ancient ruins, so if it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t have looked twice.”
The potential size of the structure and the discovery of other architectural remains nearby suggest the ‘temple’ could have formed part of a large Greek or Roman settlement, dating back as far as the 2nd century BC.
No historical records exist of a major settlement on the site, although the Montenegrin coast is dotted with ancient ruins yet to be documented.
The discovery has been described as “something that could rouse curiosity in the world of science” by Mladen Zagarčanin, the curator of the museum in Bar and archaeologist, who inspected the site the following day.
Work on site later this month as Mr Le Quesne returns to Montenegro as part of a team working for the University of Southampton’s Department of Maritime Archaeology.
Dr Blue and Professor David Peacock, both of the department, will join Mr Le Quesne to explore the underwater settlement next spring.
Mr Le Quesne, an archaeology expert and author on the subject, said: “If it is a monumental building it is not going to be part of a small hamlet, but it is not a missing Atlantis, as we would already know about it. It remains a bit of a mystery.”
“The area was an important, ancient trading route, so it may have been a port.
“There are ancient shipwrecks all along this coast which, unfortunately, are being damaged and looted and which need protecting.”
In recent years, Montenegro’s rich, unexplored ancient history has lured organised crime gangs, which have flourished in the region since the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Valuable Roman and Greek pottery from shipwrecks is being plundered and sold to collectors in western Europe, it is believed.
So far, 2009 has proved an exciting year for underwater archaeology in Montenegro, which is promoting its stunning coastline as a tourism hot spot while building a reputation as a cut-price version of Monaco thanks to a relaxed tax regime.
Before the discovery of the ancient temple, a local team working alongside American experts discovered the remains of two Roman cargo ships at the bottom of Kotor Bay, one of Montenegro most popular tourist attractions.---telegraph.co.uk

British Researchers Unlock the Mystery of Ancient Town

2009-12-29T10:55:00.000-08:00

Archaeologists from Britain's University of Nottingham and Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Ministry of Culture are using digital equipment to unlock the mystery behind the ancient Greek town of Pavlopetri, thought to be the oldest submerged town in the world. Discovered and mapped by researchers of the Institute of Oceanography at Cambridge University in 1968, no other work has since been conducted at the site. This project could fuel underwater archaeology in the future.

The ruins of Pavlopetri, which lie in three to four metres of water just off the coast of Laconia in the Peloponnese, date from at least 2 800 BC. Buildings are still intact, and streets, courtyards, and chamber tombs exist as well. Experts believe the ruins belong to the Mycenaean period (circa 1680-1180 BC).

Dr Jon Henderson from the Underwater Archaeology Research Centre (UARC) at the University of Nottingham is the first archaeologist in 40 years to obtain special permission from the Greek Government to examine the submerged town. This project will help shed light on how the town was developed, when it was occupied, what it was used for, and why it disappeared under the sea.

'This site is of rare international archaeological importance. It is imperative that the fragile remains of this town are accurately recorded and preserved before they are lost forever,' explained Dr Henderson. 'A fundamental aim is to raise awareness of the importance of the site and ensure that it is ethically managed and presented to the public in a way which is sustainable and of benefit to both the development of tourism and the local community.'

The submerged buildings, courtyards, streets, tombs and graves are located close to an area frequented by tourists and campers. The researchers assert that both tourism and industry are having a negative impact on the ruins; tourists looking for souvenirs can be found snorkelling in the area, and boats cause damage as their anchors are dragged along the seabed.

Dr Henderson and his team, working together with Mr Elias Spondylis of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, are using equipment initially developed for the military and offshore oilfield market. Experts believe the equipment could transform underwater archaeological survey and recording.

The researchers will perform a millimetre-accurate digital underwater survey of the area using an acoustic scanner developed by a North American offshore engineering company. The equipment is able to generate photo-realistic, three-dimensional (3D) surveys of seabed features and underwater structures to sub-millimetre accuracy very quickly.

'The ability to survey submerged structures, from shipwrecks to sunken cities, quickly, accurately and more importantly, cost effectively, is a major obstacle to the future development of underwater archaeology,' Dr Henderson pointed out. 'I believe we now have a technique which effectively solves this problem.'

Dr Nicholas Flemming, the man who discovered the site in 1967, is on board. His team from Cambridge surveyed the area with hand tapes in 1968. Dr Chrysanthi Gallou of the University of Nottingham is currently carrying out a systematic assessment of the finds recovered back then.---europa.eu

Boy Finds Old Shekel Coin in Temple Mount Dirt in Jerusalem

2009-12-29T10:45:00.000-08:00

A rare half shekel coin, first minted in 66 or 67 C.E., was discovered by 14 year-old Omri Ya'ari as volunteers sifted through mounds of dirt from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The coin is the first one found to originate from the Temple Mount.

For the fourth year, archaeologists and volunteers have been sifting through dirt dug by the Waqf, the Muslim authority in charge of the Temple Mount compound, in an unauthorized project in 1999. The dig caused extensive and irreversible archaeological damage to the ancient layers of the mountain. The Waqf transported the dug up dirt in trucks to another location, where it was taken to Emek Tzurim. 40,000 volunteers have so far participated in the sifting project, in search of archaeological artifacts, under the guidance of Dr. Gabriel Barkay and Yitzhak Zweig. The project is sponsored by Bar Ilan University and funded by the Ir David Foundation with the assistance of the National Parks Authority.

The half shekel coin was first minted during the Great Revolt against the Romans. The face of the coin is decorated with a branch of three pomegranates and ancient Hebrew letters reading "holy Jerusalem." On the flip side, the letters say "half shekel".

The coin that was found in the sifting project, though it was well preserved, showed some damage from a fire. Experts believe it was the same fire that destroyed the Second Temple in 70 C.E.

Dr. Gabriel Barkay explained that "the half shekel coin was used to pay the temple taxes... The coins were apparently minted at Temple Mount itself by the Temple authorities."

The half shekel tax is mentioned in the book of Exodus (Portion Ki Tisa), commanding every Jew to contribute half a shekel to the Temple every year for the purpose of purchasing public sacrifices.

Dr. Barkay added that "this is the first time a coin minted at the Temple Mount itself has been found, and therein lies its immense importance, because similar coins have been found in the past in the Jerusalem area and in the Old City's Jewish quarter, as well as Masada, but they are extremely rare in Jerusalem."

So far, some 3,500 ancient coins have been discovered in the Temple Mount dirt sifting, ranging from earliest minting of coins during the Persian era all the way up to the Ottoman era.

An additional important archaeological discovery in the sifting project was another well preserved coin, minted between 175 and 163 B.C.E. by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, against whom the Hasmoneans revolted. This revolt brought about the re-dedication of the Temple after Antiochus seized the Temple's treasures and conducted idol worship in it. The coin depicts a portrait of Antiochus the Seleucid King.---.haaretz.com

Archeologists Study the Treasures of Wealthy Roman Citizens

2009-12-29T10:39:00.000-08:00

The archaeological work around Portus tells us more about how the Romans lived and how important the port was. The Roman empire marched on its stomach and even after the huge artificial harbour of Portus was built – when the volume of freight had become too much for the original harbour at Ostia – ships would still have had to queue to get to the wharves and unload.
They carried basic foodstuffs such as grain, wine, oil and olives, the ubiquitous sauce made of rotted fish which was the ketchup of its day, and luxuries including exotic fruits and spices.
Although thousands of workers would have lived in the port, they might well have seen noble visitors pass by. Emperors kept a close eye on Portus, staying in a palace by the water: if the grain supply failed, there would be riots in Rome.
Luxuries coveted by Rome's increasingly wealthy citizens streamed through the port. Shipwrecks have revealed the scale of the trade: marble to face new imperial buildings, lead and bronze ingots, unguents and fragrances, silks and dyes, Baltic amber, linen and cotton from Egypt and India, gold, silver and gems, marble and bronze statues stripped from temples in Greece.
Other ships bore living cargo: exotic animals from Africa and India and slaves, all destined for rich households – or to provide one bloody afternoon's entertainment in the amphitheatre. - guardian.co.uk

Archaeology as Part of Human History

2009-12-25T11:53:00.000-08:00

Archaeology, like many academic words, comes from Greek and means, more or less, ‘the study of old things’. So, it is really a part of the study of history. However, most historians use paper evidence, such as letters, documents, paintings and photographs, but archaeologists learn from the objects left behind by humans of long ago. Normally, these are the hard materials that don’t decompose or disappear very quickly - things like human bones and skeletons, objects made from stone and metal, and ceramics
Sometimes, archaeologists and historians work together. Take, for example, the study of the Romans, who dominated the Mediterranean area and much of Europe two thousand years ago. We know a lot about them from their writings, and some of their most famous writers are still quoted in English. We also know a lot about them from what they made, from their coins to their buildings. Archaeologists have worked on Roman remains as far apart as Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England and Leptis Magna in Libya.
Of course, for much of human history, there are no written documents at all. Who were the first humans, and where did they come from? This is a job for the archaeologists, who have found and dated the bones and objects left behind. From this evidence, they believe that humans first appeared in Africa and began moving to other parts of the world about 80,000 years ago. The movement of our ancestors across the planet has been mapped from their remains — humans went to Australia about 70,000 years ago, but have been in South America for just 15,000 years. The evidence of archaeology has helped to show the shared origin and history of us all.
It is very unusual to find anything more than the hard evidence of history — normally, the bacteria in the air eat away at soft organic material like bodies, clothes and things made of wood. Occasionally, things are different.
A mind-boggling discovery
In 1984, two men made an amazing discovery while working in a bog called Lindow Moss, near Manchester, in the north of England. A bog is a very wet area of earth, with a lot of plants growing in it. It can be like a very big and very thick vegetable soup — walk in the wrong place and you can sink and disappear forever. After hundreds of years, the dead plants can compress together and make ‘peat’, which is like soil, but is so rich in energy that it can be burned on a fire, like coal.
The men were cutting the peat when one of them saw something sticking out - a human foot. Naturally, the men called the police, who then found the rest of the body. Was it a case of murder? Possibly — but it was a death that occured nearly 2,000 years ago. The two men had found a body from the time of the Roman invasion of Celtic Britain. Despite being so old, this body had skin, muscles, hair and internal organs — the scientists who examined him were able to look inside the man’s stomach and find the food that he had eaten for his last meal.
Why was this man so well preserved? It was because he was in a very watery environment, safe from the bacteria that need oxygen to live. Also, the water in the bog was very acidic. The acid preserved the man’s skin in the way that animal skin is preserved for leather coats and shoes.
How did he die?
Understandably, archaeologists and other scientists wanted to know more about the person that they called Lindow Man. His hands and fingernails suggested that he hadn’t done heavy manual work in his life — he could have been a rich man or a priest. They found that he hadn’t died by accident. The forensic examination revealed that he had been hit on the head three times and his throat had been cut with a knife. Then a rope was tightened around his neck. As if that wasn’t enough, he was then thrown into the bog.
So, Lindow Man was killed using three different methods, when just one would have been sufficient. The archaeologists believe that he was sacrificed to three different Celtic gods, called Taranis, Esus and Teutates. Each god required a different form of death, for example, a sacrifice to Teutates required drowning, which is why he was found in the bog. Nobody can tell the complete story of Lindow Man. The Romans said that the Celts made sacrifices every May to make sure that there was enough food that year. Was he a typical ‘routine’ sacrificial victim?
An archaeologist called Anne Ross has suggested that Lindow Man was a special case. Why would an important man be sacrificed to three gods? Perhaps it was in response to the Roman invasion of Britain, which started in the year 43 AD, close to the time that Lindow Man died. He might have been killed to gain the help of the gods against the Romans. It didn’t work. The Romans stayed in Britain for 400 years and Lindow Man stayed in his bog for 2,000.
Lindow Man’s home is now the British Museum in London (although he is currently on long-term loan to a museum in Manchester). Whereas the bodies of the Egyptian kings and queens were intentionally preserved, Lindow Man is with us by accident. Whatever his origins, it is a fascinating experience to see him face to face. I recommend it.
Vocabulary
Five words/phrases from the text:
* decompose: to break down gradually by bacteria or fungi
* sink: to go down below the surface
* compress: to push something into less space
* preserved: kept from being changed or destroyed
* drowning: dying in water because you can’t breathe
Exercise one
Vocabulary gap fill. Now use the five words/phrases to fill the gaps in the sentences below:
The remains of a 2,000-year-old man were found near Manchester in the 1980s. The man may have died by ………[1] when his fellow Celts made his body ………[2] into a bog. The skin and internal organs of the man didn’t ………[3], because dead vegetation combined with the mud to ………[4] and form peat which ………[5] the body
Exercise two
Comprehension: true or false. Decide whether these sentences are TRUE or FALSE according to the text:
1. Which language does the word archaeology come from?
2. How many years have humans been in Australia?
3. What was Lindow Man’s ethnic group?
4. How many years has Lindow Man been buried?
5. What is the name of the museum that has the remains of Lindow Man?
Answers
Vocabulary
1. drowning; 2. sink;
3. decompose;
4. compress;
5. preserved
Comprehension
1. Greek; 2. 70,000;
3. Celtic; 4. 2,000;
5. British

Archaeologists Unearth Jurassic Nest in Tamil Nadu

2009-12-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

Geologists in Tamil Nadu have stumbled upon a Jurassic treasure trove buried in the sands of a river bed. Sheer luck led them to hundreds of fossilized dinosaur eggs, perhaps 65 million years old, underneath a stream in a tiny village in Ariyalur district.

Researchers from the Salem-based Periyar University found clusters of eggs of what they believe to be the most aggressive Carnosaur and the docile, leaf-eating Sauropod at Sendurai village.

While Carnosaurs were large predatory dinasaurs, Sauropods were long-necked, herbivores which grew to enormous heights and sizes.

That dinosaurs once roamed the area was known from the fossils found there on earlier expeditions. But this is the first time that hundreds of nests embedded with hundreds of clusters of dinosaur eggs have been unearthed in the district.

Located on the highway between Chennai and Tiruchi, the Ariyalur and the neighbouring Perambalur geological sites nestle in the northern plains of the Cauvery river. The place is a veritable museum of ancient organisms, dating back to 140 million years. Ever since a British couple -- the Wines -- collected 32 boxes of "strange stone objects" in 1843, the Ariyalur region has drawn geologists from across the world for its rich fossil presence and diversity.

Scientists have found the tiniest marine algae or the nano fossils besides the rare shell-like bivalve, gastropoda, telecypoda and brachiopoda in the geological sites spread across 950sqkm in Ariyalur and Perambalur districts.

"We found clusters and clusters of spherical eggs of dinosaurs. And each cluster contained eight eggs," says Dr M U Ramkumar, geology lecturer of the Periyar University. Each egg was about 13 to 20 cm in diameter and they were lying in sandy nests which were of the size of 1.25 metres.

In the 1860s, a British geologist first recorded the presence of bone remains of dinosaurs in Ariyalur. Over a century and a half later, the egg of a dinosaur was found in a cement factory of the state-owned Tamil Nadu Cements Ltd in 1990s. But officials realized that it was a dinosaur egg only 10 years later.

On a sultry afternoon on September 12 this year, Ramkumar and his research students went to Ariyalur to scour the rocks and sediments as part of a study funded by Indian and German scientific institutions. As they paused by a stream on a grazing land at Sendurai, they found spherical-shaped fossils peeping out of the sand beds. "We got really excited. As I have seen a dinosaur egg, I was sure these were dinosaur eggs," said Ramkumar.

A quick digging revealed clusters of eggs beneath seven layers of sand spread over two sqkm. The eggs may not have hatched due to the Deccan volcanic eruptions or seasonal flooding, surmise the team. "We suspect the extinction of dinosaurs was triggered by the Deccan volcano. Volcanic ashes cap the eggs," said one researcher.

"This is a very significant finding as never before have we found so many dinosaur eggs in the country. Besides the spherical size of the eggs covered with sand and volcanic ash provide significant insight into the possible reasons for extinction of the species," says Dr Jyotsana Rai, senior scientist, Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany in Lucknow. Her team will collect samples of these eggs to determine its exact age.
Because a similar discovery in Jabalpur led to a plunder of the fossilized treasure, the researchers have requested the Ariyalur district administration to cordon off the site. Samples of the eggs will travel to Germany for further research. The vicinity of Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh is considered the richest dinosaur field in the country.---timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Archaeologists Found the Palace of Japan's Warrior Queen

2009-12-25T11:27:00.000-08:00

Archaeologists believe they have discovered the palace of Japan's "Boadicea" – the warrior Queen Himiko.
The building covering nearly 300 square metres was located close to the city of Sakurai and the former Japanese capital of Nara, 300 miles south-west of Tokyo.
Built on stilts, the structure was found beside three other aligned buildings, leading archaeologists to believe it is the site of Himiko's Yamatai palace.
"A building cluster that is placed in such a well-planned manner is unprecedented in Japan at that period in time," Hironobu Ishino, director of the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Archaeology, told Kyodo News.
The discovery coincided with celebrations today to mark the 20th anniversary of the enthronement of the present emperor.
Queen Himiko is a popular character in Japanese history. She was apparently able to wield great power in the Yamatai Kingdom from around the end of the second century. Legends handed down from the time describe her as "being skilled with magic".
Japanese revere her as a heroic Boadicea-type figure who unified the kingdom after years of fighting with rival tribes, before her death around 248AD.
The precise location of Yamatai has been one of the most bitterly disputed issues in Japanese archaeology, with some claiming the kingdom was in present-day Kyushu. The latest finding supports the claim of central Japan to the queen's lands.
The researchers' conclusions on the palace are supported by a huge traditional keyhole-shape tomb which is nearby and may be the last resting place of the third-century relative of Emperor Akihito.
Excavation of the tomb could settle that debate once and for all, although the Imperial Household Agency appear to have ruled that out.
Security in Tokyo has been stepped up ahead of official celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of the emperor's accession to the Chrysanthemum Throne, the longest royal dynasty in the world.
Akihito took over the throne after the death of his father, Emperor Hirohito, in 1989.
Ceremonies are to be held at the Royal National Theatre and 30,000 people are expected to attend a public ceremony later in the day.
More than 16,000 police have been mobilised to provide security and demonstrations by extreme left-wing groups opposed to the imperial system are planned just outside the grounds of the palace in central Tokyo. Clashes with nationalist groups are expected.---telegraph.co.uk

Archaeologists Find New Egyptian Pyramid

2009-12-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

Archaeologists have discovered a five meters tall subsidiary pyramid of queen Sesheshet at Saqqara necropolis in Egypt.
Queen Sesheshet was the mother of King Teti I, the founder of the Sixth Dynasty.
According to a report in Al-Ahram Weekly, the discovery of the new pyramid not only brings the number of pyramids discovered in Egypt to 118, but it enriches archaeologists” knowledge of the Sixth Dynasty and its royal family members.
Sesheshet’’s pyramid, found seven metres beneath the sands of the Saqqara necropolis, is five metres in height, although originally it reached about 14 metres. The base is square and the sides of the pyramid slope at an angle of 51 degrees.
The entire monument was originally cased in fine white limestone from Tura, of which some remnants were also unearthed.
Ushabti (model servant) figurines dating from the third Intermediate Period were also found in the area, along with a New Kingdom chapel decorated with a scene of offerings being made to Osiris.
Also found were a group of Late Period coffins, a wooden statue of the god Anubis, amulets, and a symbolic vessel in the shape of a cartouche containing the remains of a green substance.
These objects will be transported to the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square where they will be restored and put on display.
According to Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), who led the excavation team, the finds show that the entire area of the Old Kingdom cemetery of Teti was reused from the New Kingdom through to the Roman Period.
Culture Minister Farouk Hosni described it as “a great discovery” and said he wished that within the next couple of weeks, excavators could find more of the funerary complex of the queen.
“Sesheshet’’s pyramid is the third subsidiary pyramid to be discovered within Teti’’s cemetery,” Hawass said.
He added that earlier excavations at the site had revealed the pyramid of King Teti’’s two wives, Khuit and Iput.
“This might be the most complete subsidiary pyramid ever found at Saqqara,” he said.
The archaeologists found that a shaft had been created in Sesheshet’’s pyramid to allow access to her burial chamber, so they do not expect to find Sesheshet’’s mummy when they reach the burial chamber within the coming two weeks.
However, they anticipate finding inscriptions about the queen, whose name, according to Hawass, was only known from being mentioned in a medical papyrus.---thaindian.com

Archaeologists Discovering Forgotten Ancient Monuments at Lizard Peninsula

2009-12-25T11:12:00.000-08:00

Budding archaeologists are discovering previously uncovered and forgotten monuments and buildings around the Lizard Peninsula.
The Lizard Ancient Sites Network has already discovered a settlement of prehistoric round houses near Kynance Cove and the spectacular rampart of an iron age cliff castle at Chynall's point has been unearthed for the first time in many years.
It consists of local enthusiasts and is currently seeking new members.
To get involved call Cheryl Straffon on 01736 787186 or turn up at the next event, which meets at the Traboe Cross car park at Goonhilly Downs this Monday at noon.
More details are in today's Packet.---falmouthpacket.co.uk

Archaeologists Discover Rare Gold Coins in Jerusalem

2009-12-11T13:28:00.000-08:00

Some Israeli archaeologists are having a particularly happy Hanukkah, thanks in part to a British volunteer who took time off from her job to work on a dig. The Israel Antiquities Authority reported a thrilling find - the discovery of 264 ancient gold coins in Jerusalem National Park.
The coins were minted during the early 7th century.

"This is one of the largest and most impressive coin hoards ever discovered in Jerusalem -- certainly the largest and most important of its period," said Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets, who are directing the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Researchers discovered the coins at the beginning of the eight-day Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which started at sunset on Sunday.
One of the customs of the holiday is to give "gelt," or coins, to children, and the archaeologists are referring to the find as "Hanukkah money."

Nadine Ross, a British archaeological volunteer, happened onto the coins during the dig just below the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.

"To be honest, I just thought, 'Thank God I didn't throw it in the rubbish bucket,' " said Ross, who had taken four weeks off from her engineering job in England to work at the site. "I was just glad I sort of spotted it before I disturbed it too much."

The 1,400-year-old coins were found in the Giv'ati car park in the City of David in the walls around Jerusalem National Park, a site that has yielded other finds, including a well-preserved gold earring with pearls and precious stones.

They were in a collapsed building that dates back to the 7th century, the end of the Byzantine period. The coins bear a likeness of Heraclius, who was the Byzantine emperor from 610 to 641.
The authority said that while different coins had been minted during this emperor's reign, the coins found at the site represent "one well-known type."

In that style, the emperor is clad with military garb and is holding a cross in his right hand. On the other side is the sign of the cross.

Authorities said the excavation of the building where the hoard was discovered is in its early stages. They are attempting to learn about the building and its owner and the circumstances of its destruction.

"Since no pottery vessel was discovered adjacent to the hoard, we can assume that it was concealed inside a hidden niche in one of the walls of the building. It seems that with its collapse, the coins piled up there among the building debris," Ben-Ami and Tchekhanovets said.
The find is a a golden moment for Ross, who said "it is a pity that I can't take it home with me. But there you go."--cnn.com

Antique Furniture - Best Treasure

2009-12-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

Antique furniture has a major advantage over other antique items like porcelain and painting: It can be used in everyday life and isn't just for appreciation.
What's more, no matter how trendily your home is decorated, a few pieces of antique furniture will inject it with unexpected radiance.
Panjiayuan, Beijing's most renowned antique market, is always swarming with tourists and is definitely not the right place to go.
Gaobeidian Antique Furniture Street
Located in Gaobeidian, on the outskirts of Chaoyang district, this street has been home to antique furniture businesses for more than two decades. It is now lined with more than 150 furniture shops and workshops.
Despite having narrow fronts, many shops are attached to warehouses, where antique furniture is available in many forms, from jewelry cases, chairs and couches, to beds, altar tables and niches for Buddhist statues.
The only pity is that some pieces are smothered in dust and are not displayed in an orderly way.
Many of shop owners come from the south, including Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces, so they sell southern-style furniture featuring delicate woodcarving and elegant shapes.
One shop owner, Chen from Jiangxi, has run a business there for years. Like other businessmen in the street, the three-story building is not only his shop but also his home, in which the family lives on the top floor and the rest is used for business.
"We open the shop everyday and stay late if customers come around at night," he explains.
According to Chen, his best sellers are second-class items costing around 1,000 yuan ($140), or small items for 200 yuan ($28). They are mainly made in ordinary wood, for example China fir and camphorwood.
Shopkeepers can usually tell the item's geographical origins and rough age but if they can't, you have to use your own judgment.
Gaobeidian's prices tend to be lower than those in Panjiayuan but you can often bargain 20 per cent off from the listed price. What's more, the further you go into the street, the cheaper the prices get.
One thing should be pointed out. Once the item is yours, especially if it is a woodcarving, you will need to clean it yourself. It's a painstaking job but it's great fun to see how the antique gradually reveals its original beauty.
The street also has some imitation antique furniture shops, offering more options for buyers.
One thing the street lacks, though, is a place to eat, drink or take a rest. I even find it difficult to buy a bottle of water.
Lujiaying Antique Market
While some collectors hardly ever visit Panjiayuan, it's different with the ever-popular Lujiaying.
Located in the southeastern outskirts, the market is known among insiders as the "Hebei warehouse".
In the 1980s, many Hebei natives gathered here to repair antique or old furniture before reselling it. As time passed by, it developed into one of the country's top distribution centers of antique furniture, much of it from Hebei, Shandong and Shanxi provinces.
Unlike Gaobeidian, Lujiaying Antique Market (LAM) mainly conducts wholesale business. It attracts not only city distributors, but also film and TV drama production units. The film Red Cliff, for instance, bought several set items here.
The price in LAM is even lower than Gaobeidian's but wandering around it will tax your stamina.
Although most shops have more than 100-sq-m floor area, some are still not big enough to display all their furniture so that much is piled up or left outside.
Summer is definitely not the right time to visit LAM - the warehouse has no air conditioning and is hot and stuffy.
Having said that, though, a beautiful woodcarving or jewelry case more than makes up for it.
Putiange Antique Furniture
Putiange is a well-known antique shop among expatriates living in Houshayu, northeastern Beijing in Shunyi district, but will soon be on the move to Yangzhen, a 40-minute drive from the city.
Its 6,000-sq-m warehouse is an eye-opening experience for antique furniture lovers. There seems to be an infinite variety on offer. What's more, each piece is clean and has a fine sheen.
"I don't think antique furniture should be covered with dust and spider's web to prove its age," says the owner, Liu Haihong. "The main attraction of a piece of antique furniture is its style and 'Bao Jiang' (literally, treated with TLC and still looking great after all these years)."
According to Liu, the furniture is collected from around China, for example Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Fujian and Shanghai. About 80 percent of her clients are foreigners.
Putiange features folk articles, such as kang tables (a kind of small short-legged table for use on a heatable bed), bookshelves and cabinets.
Putiange in Houshayu, Shunyi district, has many antique furniture pieces such as bamboo beds (left) and camphorwood cupboards (right).
"I believe they are all interesting pieces of artwork", says Liu.
"Even though they were from an ordinary farmer's home rather than from an official's family, the sizes and styles all followed certain roles, and every detail was tended to. They are the fruit of one person's painstaking work and worth collecting."
Tips:
1. You can get to Gaobeidian by metro line 2 and it should be no more than a 15-minute walk from Gaobeidian station. Besides, it is very difficult to get a taxi back, so some friendly shopkeepers will give you a lift to the nearest main road to catch one.
2. Autumn is the best time to visit Lujiaying. There is no cash machine around, so you'd better take some cash just in case you find something really interesting. The cheapest way to get there is to take metro line 10 to Jingsong station, then a taxi to Lujiaying.
3. As a beginner, it's better not to pay more than 1,000 yuan for one item. If you really like it, just take a photo and show it to some experts to see if it's worth the price.
4. Ask the owners how to clean and maintain the furniture after you buy it.--sina.com

Ancient Treasures Found in Western Turkey

2009-12-09T11:35:00.000-08:00

Archeological treasures including a Greek amphitheatre have been unearthed in the ancient city of Laodicea, which is being excavated in western Turkey. Local businesses have been working with regional leaders in the western province of Denizli on the project, the first of its kind in Turkey.

"Something has taken place here that is unseen in the rest of the country," Celal Simsek, head of the excavation team, told the Anatolia news agency.

"The industrialists and businessmen of Denizli contributed to the Laodicea excavations in 2003-2004. This is the finest example of taking care of an ancient city."

Laodicea, originally called Diospolis, or the City of Zeus, was built by Antiochus II Theos, in 261-253 BC, in honour of his wife Laodice.

Local authorities in Denizli are in charge of the excavation of the ancient Greek city.

"For the past year and a half, we have been responsible for the excavation site," said local mayor Nihat Zeybekci.

While the university conducts the excavations, the municipality provides protection, security, and finance under supervision by the culture ministry.

Simsek is also head of the archaeology department at Denizli Pamukkale University.

He has been working at the ancient site for seven years and said he loved the place as if it were his own child.

"There was nothing here when we started working," said Simsek.

He said he and his team had unearthed a street, a city door and its towers, a monumental fountain, a temple, theatres, and the biggest coliseums in ancient Anatolia or Asia Minor, where the modern Turkish Republic is located.

Simsek said they had created a "living park of archaeology" in one of the longest excavations in Turkey.

Businessmen from Denizli Chamber of Industry also provides funding for the excavation team.--adnkronos.com

Ancient Roman Coins Once Again Found in the UK

2009-12-09T11:30:00.000-08:00

This is yet another story from the UK, where a metal detector hobbyist stumbled upon a treasure of a lifetime. Keith Bennett was using his metal detector on a Stratford farm owner’s field when his metal detector suddenly alerted him of a strong signal. This strong signal turned out to be over 1,400 Roman coins (or Denarii as they were called back in the day) dating back between 2006 BC to 195 BC! The coins have already been deemed “authentic treasure” which is good in case someone was trying to play a big practical joke on Mr. Bennett.
Apparently, the silver Roman coins were stashed in a large pot (4 feet deep) that was broken on the top half. It seems that the pot had been struck when the field was being plowed, causing a few coins to be scattered around the pot. Since this was a rather large collection of coins, it is possible that they could be tied to a wealthy land owner back in Emperor Augustus (or perhaps earlier) reign.
Even though this treasure is expected to bring in tens and thousands of pounds, and Mr. Bennett supposedly allowed to keep half; I can only imagine the sensation of coming across such a historic find. As you can imagine he was quite stunned as you can reflect from his words:
“I just had an incredible feeling of history and going back in time. I felt a sense of connection with the person who buried these coins all those years ago. I wondered who they were and why they didn’t come back for it. It was brilliant – an experience everyone should have.”
Congratulations Mr. Bennett on such a stellar find, we hope that you find much more to come in your days of treasure hunting! Below are photographs of the Roman coins, check them out to get a feel for how old they are.--treasurehunting.com

370000 Dollar Ring Lost, Reward for Treasure Hunters

2009-11-14T07:59:00.000-08:00

A man by the name of Robert Gismondi was eating at a Daytona Beach restaurant when he accidentally dropped his $370k Ring off the pier. He said he was reaching into his pocket to answer his phone when he pulled his hand out the ring slipped off, and made a splash in the water below. Gismondi is offering a reward in the THOUSANDS for finding his ring. You might have to contend with his insurance agency, but I would act quick as they are probably slow to act.
Ok, so for you treasure hunter divers out there lets go over some clues to help you find that treasure:
-Location is: Main Street Pier in Daytona Beach
-Band is said to be white gold.
-Diamond is large orange color.
-Pier worker was told where it dropped. (With a little questioning and detective work you may want to find out where on the pier it fell at to narrow your search)
As I see it the ring could either be washed out with the current, or more likely buried in the sand around the pier. Either way I would wait for calm weather as diving under piers is extremely dangerous and the water will be more clear to help find the ring. So what are you waiting for!?

10000 Ancient Roman Coin Aged 1700 Discovered in Near Shrewsbury

2009-11-14T07:53:00.000-08:00

What a lucky day for a guy who just started a hobby of metal detecting for a month. UK Dailymail reported that Nick Davies found this amazing haul of 10,000 Roman coins on his first ever treasure hunt. The stunning collection of coins, most of which were found inside the broken brown pot, was uncovered by Nick during a search of land in the Shrewsbury area - just a month after he took up the hobby of metal detecting. Experts say the coins have spent an estimated 1,700 years underground.

The silver and bronze 'nummi' coins, dating from between 240AD and 320AD, were discovered in a farmer's field near Shrewsbury, in Shropshire, last month. His amazing find is one of the largest collections of Roman coins ever discovered in Shropshire. And the haul could be put on display at Shrewsbury's new £10million heritage centre, it was revealed today. It is also the biggest collection of Roman coins to be found in Britain this year. Nick, from Ford, Shropshire, said he never expected to find anything on his first treasure hunt - especially anything of any value.

He recalled the discovery and described it as 'fantastically exciting'.

Nick said: "The top of the pot had been broken in the ground and a large number of the coins spread in the area. All of these were recovered during the excavation with the help of a metal detector." "This added at least another 300 coins to the total - it's fantastically exciting. I never expected to find such treasure on my first outing with the detector."

The coins have now been sent to the British Museum for detailed examination, before a report is sent to the coroner.Experts are expected to spend several months cleaning and separating the coins, which have fused together. They will also give them further identification before sending them to the coroner. A treasure trove inquest is then expected to take place next year. Peter Reavill, finds liaison officer from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, records archaeological finds made by the public in England and Wales, He said the coins were probably payment to a farmer or community at the end of a harvest.

Speaking to the Shropshire Star, Mr Reavill said the coins appear to date from the period 320AD to 340AD, late in the reign of Constantine I.

Mr Reavill said: “There seems to be a minimum of 10,000 coins, the majority of which are corroded together in the pot.

“The coins are all bronze, and some of them have been silver washed. They are known as nummi and were common during the 4th century AD.

“The top of the pot had been broken in the ground and a large number of the coins spread in the area. All of these were recovered during the excavation with the help of a metal detector. This added at least another 300 coins to the total.

“It is likely that the hoard represents a person or communities wealth, possibly as a payment for a harvest. Why it was not collected by the owner is a mystery, but one that we can share and enjoy 1,700 years after the fact.”

However, Mr Reavill declined to put a figure on either the value of the coins or the pot until the findings of the inquest are known, but he described the discovery as a 'large and important' find.

Mr Reavill said the exact location of the find could not be revealed for security reasons.-www.dailymail.co.uk

2000yo Iron Age Materials Should Return to Anglesey

2009-11-14T07:48:00.000-08:00

Ancient artefacts, more than 2,000 years old, should be brought back to Anglesey (Wales) claims an island politician. A large hoard of Iron Age materials were discovered in Llyn Cerrig Bach, Llanfair-yn-Neubwll, in 1942. The items are currently kept in Cardiff, but local councillor Gwilym O Jones believes the treasure troves should brought back and displayed at Llangefni's Oriel Môn. And the council agrees, explaining they are currently in talks on that very subject.

Cllr Jones said: "I understand why the treasures were taken down to the National Museum in Cardiff. At the time there was nowhere secure enough on Anglesey to keep them. But that has changed in recent years. I feel that now is the time to campaign to bring the treasures back. I'm not talking about bringing them back permanently, but I feel they should here for part of the year, say through the summer months. I think many people would be interested in seeing them."

Anglesey County Council's head of museums, archives and culture, Pat West, said: "We have a good working relationship with the National Museum and are in negotiations with them about holding a short term exhibition of the artefact found at Llyn Cerrig Bach. "As yet we have no set date for an exhibition but it would be in the next two to three years."

Chariots, weapons, tools and decorated metalwork items were cast from a causeway or island into Llyn Cerrig Bach between 300 BCE and 100 CE. They were discovered in 1942 by William Roberts as the airfield was being extended to accommodate the US air force bomber, The Flying Fortress. The site was investigated by Sir Cyril Fox, the then keeper of archaeology at the National Museum of Wales in 1946.-www.theonlinemail.co.uk

Austrian Archaeologists Discovered Babylonian Seal in Egypt

2009-11-07T10:46:00.000-08:00

Austrian archaeologists have found a Babylonian seal in Egypt that confirms contact between the Babylonians and the Hyksos during the second millennium B.C.

Irene Forstner-Müller, the head of the Austrian Archaeological Institute’s (ÖAI) branch office in Cairo, said today (Thurs) the find had occurred at the site of the ancient town of Avaris near what is today the city of Tell el-Dab’a in the eastern Nile delta.

The Hyksos conquered Egypt and reigned there from 1640 to 1530 B.C.

She said a recently-discovered cuneiform tablet had led archaeologists to suspect there had been contact between the Babylonians and the Hyksos.

Forstner-Müller added that Manfred Bietak had begun archaeological research on the period of Hyksos dominance at the remains of a Hyksos palace at Avaris in 1966.

She said ÖAI would open a museum at the Avaris site that the Egyptian government and sponsors would fund to make the seal and other objects accessible to tourists.

Forstner-Müller added Avaris would remain ÖAI’s main project site in Egypt but that ÖAI and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) were working together at a site at Philae/Aswan and ÖAI and Berlin’s Humboldt University were working together at another in Luxor/Asasif.

Ephesos, Turkey, remained the site of ÖAI’s so-called "flagship" project since it had been important historically from the Copper Age to the time of the Ottoman Empire, she said.--- ustriantimes.at

2000-year-old American Indian Masterpieces Can Be Observed in Cleveland in 2010

2009-11-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

"Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection", a major traveling exhibition, developed by the Fenimore Art Museum, making its debut at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) in March 2010, explores Native North American art from the Eastern Woodlands to the Northwest through more than 140 masterpieces spanning 2,000 years. The exhibition provides visitors with a broad understanding and appreciation of the aesthetic accomplishments and cultural heritage of this country’s first peoples. "Art of the American Indians" opens at CMA on March 7, 2010 and runs through May 30 before traveling to Minneapolis , Indianapolis and San Francisco.

The objects in the exhibition are drawn from 'The Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of Native North American Art', which was carefully assembled over the past two decades by Eugene V. Thaw, one of the art world’s most distinguished connoisseurs and collectors of art. This is the first time this collection is being treated as an exhibition and several key objects will only be seen at the Cleveland venue.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to see an extraordinary range of Native North American works of the highest quality, each piece a paragon of creativity and artistic excellence,” said Sue Bergh, associate curator of Pre-Columbian and Native North American art, CMA. “In Gene Thaw’s own words, ‘Indian material culture stands rightfully with ancient art masterpieces of Asia and Europe as their equivalent.’ We are delighted to offer visitors this opportunity to more deeply examine this fascinating dimension of the American experience and history.”

The works in "Art of the American Indians" are organized by geographic regions, moving from the ancient ivories and ingenious modern masks of the Arctic to the astonishingly beautiful and dramatic arts of the Pacific Northwest , which form one of the pillars of the Thaw Collection. The basketry of Native weavers appears in a section devoted to California and the adjacent Great Basin , home of Louisa Keyser (also known as Dat So La Lee), a renowned Washoe basket weaver and one of the most celebrated Native artists. Beacon Lights, Keyser’s most famous creation, will be a centerpiece of the exhibition.

The abstract art of the culturally complex Southwest will be shown in both its ancient and modern manifestations. From the Plains come outstanding examples of the colorful beaded, feathered, and painted works for which the region is most famous. Finally are the Eastern Woodlands, including the Great Lakes , and their visually quieter and more contemplative arts, which are another of the collection’s great strengths.

The majority of the 120 piece collection dates to the 19th-century, but archaeological and contemporary works also are included to demonstrate the continued vitality of Native North American cultures. Twenty CMA objects will also appear at the Cleveland venue.

Exhibition highlights include:
• Shaman's Mask, Tlingit people, Northwest Coast – A magnificently malevolent mask that directly manifests a powerful spirit being who helped a shaman intermediate between the worlds of matter and spirit: an octopus, signaled by sucker disks on the cheeks and the peaked, beak-like mouth.

• Crane Mask, Yup'ik people, Arctic – This mask, one of the finest that survives, is part of a nearly identical female-male pair that danced together. Each crane strains forward and flutters its wings protectively around a figure on its breast, one a sick shaman and the other perhaps a helper coming to the shaman’s aid. (Cleveland only.)

• Painted Drum, Pawnee people, Plains – Throwing lightning from its beak, a thunderbird dives from black clouds into a threatening yellow sky as a flock of swallows, the storm’s harbingers, scatters like wind-blown leaves. Beneath, in a small center of calm, a man offers a pipe upward. (Cleveland only.)

• Basket, Louisa Keyser (Dat So La Lee), Washoe – A national treasure made by one of the most legendary basket-makers in North America. (Cleveland only.)

. "Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection". is organized by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown , N.Y. The Cleveland Museum of Art is generously funded by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this exhibition with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.---www.artdaily.org

1910 Soda and Beer Bottles Discovered at Construction Sites

2009-11-05T08:44:00.000-08:00

Two construction sites less than a mile apart in Auburn have yielded historical finds.
Digging up the Placer County Courthouse parking lot, a construction crew discovered a two-foot- deep hole that recently yielded several dirt-encrusted bottles dating back to 1852.
Last week, a sharp-eyed backhoe operator saw glass glinting in the light of a mound of dirt at the city’s Central Square Streetscape project. That yielded a sizable stash of soda and beer bottles buried around 1910.
Cliff Kennedy, a Penryn historical artifact expert, is now working with the county Museums Division to research the past of the newly found collection of bottles. They’ll shed more light on both Auburn’s Gold Rush days and, with the Central Square find, the A.W. Kenison bottling business.
“Auburn is the endurance capital but it’s also a city of bottles,” Kennedy said.
The Kenison plant, located next to the now-long-gone Auburn Opera House on Central Square, was at the center of the bottle business from the 1890s well into the 1910s. A.W. Kenison, who also served as opera house manager, died at age 49 in 1904. The business continued on, selling soda as well as beer to parched foothills throats through about 1916.
The courthouse bottles were found in a hole that was once at the bottom of a privy. The first permanent courthouse was built over it in 1853, replacing several houses that were located on the knoll. They sat undisturbed until workers resurfacing the front courthouse parking lot discovered them.
The half-dozen bottles from the courthouse are made in Philadelphia. They were shipped empty around Cape Horn to California, where they were filled with soda or beer either in Sacramento or San Francisco. From there, they made their way to the gold fields.
The privy hole also yielded a broken clay pipe, a lock plate for a trunk, a serrated beam for a scale, a spice bottle base and a chamber pot remnant.
“This stuff is exciting because it dates from Auburn’s infancy,” Kennedy said.
Herb Yue, a bottle collector whose family roots in Auburn date back to the late Gold Rush period, said a good specimen of a bottle like the ones from the county courthouse recently sold for $56.
Bottle finds – particularly from digs in dirt that once made a privy – happen every few years in Auburn. This time, the city and county are the ones that have taken possession of a notable discovery. Melanie Barton, museums administrator, said the city may display theirs at the Civic Center and the county is also looking at some way to share the find. The city collection numbers about 20 bottles.
Yue said that the historic locations where they were found adds to their historical value.
“It’s neat to hang onto a piece of history that a gold miner probably held in his hand,” Yue said. “If they could talk, you know, what stories they could tell.”

Was the Nazi Gold Really Discovered?

2009-10-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

At the start of World War II, Germany was in a deep financial depression. Its currency was worth nothing. In order to fund its war effort, the Nazi regime routinely looted gold from occupied countries. During the course of the war, the regime stole at least $400 million in gold from occupied nations and at least $140 million in gold from individuals, particularly those imprisoned in concentration camps. They were meticulous, raiding Jewish homes, safety deposit boxes and even removing gold dental fillings from people's teeth.
Most of the stolen gold was stored in Germany's Reichsbank, the bank of the Third Reich. But after a 1945 bombing raid, the Nazis moved the gold to a safer location. Much of it was taken to a potassium mine about 200 miles from Berlin. When Germany was overtaken and the Allied forces took over, laborers from this mine told American soldiers that they had watched as Nazi troops moved gold and art into hidden caves within the mine. At the end of the war, hundreds of millions in gold and silver bars, paper currency and art was recovered at the mine. However, not all of the loot was found, and there could be millions more in stolen gold that's left in and around Germany.
A recent discovery has renewed world interest in the quest. Have treasure hunters really discovered the famed Nazi gold stash? Some say they have. Some even say they've found the Amber Room.

The Hunt for Nazi Treasure
The legendary Reichsbank treasure is said to be worth millions of dollars. In 2000, German treasure hunters believed they'd found the hiding place (deep in the German Alps) where the rest of the gold was stashed. But the harshness of the terrain made it impossible for them to find the buried loot, and they eventually gave up.
But in February 2008, the search took on new life when treasure hunters converged on the German hamlet Deutschkatharinenberg. The mayor of a nearby town called Deutschneudorf, Heinz-Peter Haustein, has been looking for the gold there for a decade. When a man named Christian Hanisch turned up, the search became something of a frenzy. He seemed to have evidence that confirmed what Haustein believed: the gold was in Deutschkatharinenberg.
Hanisch's father was in the German air force during WWII, and Hanisch had apparently found an old journal of his father's that indicated the location of the missing gold. He joined forces with Haustein, and they gathered a full treasure-hunting team to go looking for the man-made mountain cavern that supposedly holds the loot. They claim they've not only found the gold, but also the legendary Amber Room.
The Amber Room was a chamber in the U.S.S.R.'s Catherine Palace, near St. Petersburg. The room's walls were covered in amber-colored, solid gold paneling. The panels were stolen by the Nazis during the war, and were last seen in an art exhibition in Germany in 1945. After that, they disappeared. A few of the panels have since been recovered, but most have never been found.
Haustein's team claims to have found pieces of the Amber Room. They say they've confirmed with an electromagnetic metal detector that the gold lies somewhere beneath the surface of the East German mountainside, probably about 60 feet (20 meters) down. They estimate a find of about 2 tons of gold, and they believe this discovery includes the Amber Room. They seem to be basing this belief on the idea that if there's that much gold down there, it must include the gold from the Amber Room, which is a significant piece of the Nazi treasure.
But the dig has so far been unsuccessful and the hunters can't seem to find the cavern. As of late February 2008, they have retained the services of a geophysicist to help them figure out exactly where to dig.
Even with the help of a geophysicist, Haustein's team doesn't expect to get into the chamber any time soon. They believe the stash might be booby-trapped, and they want explosives engineers to check out the situation before they dig any further.
In the midst of all this treasure hunting, the question arises: If they find Nazi gold, do they get to keep it? When wartime loot is recovered, to whom do the spoils go?

The Legal Side of Recovered Treasure
Many experts don't believe the Amber Room is buried in Deutschkatharinenberg. Some think the panels were lost at sea, or destroyed by Allied bombs in the final days of the war. Nonetheless, if the cultural treasure does turn up, it's unclear who will have ownership rights. Haustein says the Amber Room panels would belong to Russia, but that any other gold -- the non cultural-artifact type -- would legally belong to Germany
Others might disagree. Counties have been making an effort to return stolen gold (or its monetary equivalent) to the individuals and nations from whom it was taken. This effort was meager at first, but it picked up toward the end of the twentieth century when the world took a renewed interest in restitution. Forty-two countries showed up at the London Conference on Nazi Gold in 1997 to form a joint effort to uncover stolen gold and return it to its rightful owners. Ten countries still lay claim to more than $60 million in lost gold (about 5.5 metric tons). At the conference, many of those countries agreed to relinquish their claims on some of this gold and contribute it instead to various humanitarian groups, especially those benefiting Holocaust survivors, from whom the Nazi regime appropriated bank accounts, gold and everything else of value.
It's fairly clear, at least, where the Amber Room gold will end up if it's ever found. The Geneva Conventions outlaws the wartime looting or destruction of cultural artifacts and requires that anything of cultural significance be returned after the war if it's taken. So it's likely the Amber Room would be returned to Russia.
However, the treasure hunters in Deutschkatharinenberg have more pressing issues to deal with. As of Feb. 28, 2008, Haustein has reportedly kicked Hanisch out of Deutschneudorf. The two treasure hunters argued about where to dig and whether to suspend the search until scientists and engineers arrived to assess the situation. Hanisch now says he does not believe the treasure hunters have found the Amber Room at all. He says it's just plain-old gold.

UNESCO Teams Up With TripAdvisor to Protect World Heritage Sites

2009-10-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has teamed up with TripAdvisor, the largest global online travel community, to mobilize support to preserve natural and cultural sites inscribed on its World Heritage List.
“Because of TripAdvisor’s excellent reach to their member community, we can, together, raise awareness of World Heritage as well as receive member feedback about sites,” said Francesco Bandarin, Director of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre.
“This certainly helps us flag site issues and provides useful information on how World Heritage travellers engage with the sites and their communities. We are looking forward to partnering with TripAdvisor on this initiative,” he added in a news release announcing the two-year initiative.
TripAdvisor founder and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Kaufer pledged to donate up to $1.5 million over the next two years to help UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre monitor the conservation of the 890 natural and cultural sites inscribed on the World Heritage List.
The Centre also provides technical and administrative support for States that have ratified the 1972 World Heritage Convention, enabling them to translate its provisions into action.
“We’re calling on the world’s largest travel community to help preserve the places around the world that we all love,” said Mr. Kaufer.
“In support of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, we will give not only dollars but also the collective wisdom and support of TripAdvisor’s millions of travellers, and their trusted insights. We’re eager to build global awareness about World Heritage sites, and about sustainable and responsible travel.”
More than 25 million online visitors use its TripAdvisor’s websites every month to find and share travel information.---www.un.org

Strange Ways Different People Discovered Treasures

2009-10-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

Some people take out loans or apply to get grant money, others stumble upon money. Treasures can be found in the strangest of places, in the oddest of ways. Here are some of the unlikely but true stories of discovered treasures:

1) From my cold, dead, and lucky hands
A retired man in Connecticut named Donald Peters (79) bought two lottery tickets at a 7-Eleven, just hours before dying of a heart attack. A few weeks after his death, his wife Charlotte (78) was going through his things, and came across the tickets. Charlotte brought them to the shop, only to find out that she just won $10 million! According to the Peters’ son, Brian, their father would certainly have appreciated the irony of the event. “He’d be very mad, he just passed away and she won a lot of money.”

2) Money down the crapper
In January of 2009, an Arizona plumber named Mike Roberts, found a 7-carat diamond, worth $70,000. It seems the ring had been flushed down the toilet at the “Black Bear Diner” in Phoenix.

3) Contract killer
Apparently, bathrooms can be pretty useful spots to hide your money, as contractor Bob Kitts from Cleveland, Ohio discovered. Kitts found $182,000 of Depression-era money hidden in a bathroom wall. He told the homeowner about the money; arguments broke out quickly on how to repartition the findings. This led to a legal battle between the homeowner and the contractor, and eventually between the found money’s family descendants who had been traced back from the return address on the envelope the money was found in. The contractor would have done well to keep his mouth shut.

4) A Hole: Lotta Gold
Jeff Bidelman, a Johnstown Rare Collectibles owner, was helping a family clean out the house their relative had abandoned over twenty years ago. As he was dragging a bag of old coins downstairs, he noticed a hole in an upstairs wall. When the first floor got torn down, a mounting pile of gold coins worth about $200,000 was found. Apparently, they had been thrown down the hole Bidelman had noticed earlier.

5) Old Money
Full-time plumber and part-time fossil hunter, Greg Riecke, was on one of his expeditions near the Riverside County Flood Control and Water Conservation District in Perris, California, when he discovered a nearly intact Mastodon tusk (one of the rarest fossils on the planet), dating anywhere from 16,000 to 2 million years old!

6) Tired of poverty
Three Mount Comfort state highway workers found $100,000 in an abandoned tire as they were picking up litter. Unfortunately, drug-sniffing dogs found the scent of drugs on the bills. Their lucky find had to be turned in to the Indiana state police.---www.cosmoloan.com

Rare Anchor of a Pirate Ship Shown in Greenville

2009-10-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

A rare piece of North Carolina's early history was pulled from the Beaufort Inlet this week and displayed in Greenville.
An anchor believed to be from Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, was taken from the water by researchers with the QAR Project, a state-funded research expedition that will eventually bring up 700,000 individual artifacts.
The anchor was displayed at the QAR Conservation Lab on the East Carolina University West Research Campus on Thursday afternoon.
Historians say that the infamous pirate and his ship ran aground in 1718 in Beaufort Inlet. The wreckage, which was first found in 1996, is located about a mile from Fort Macon in 25 feet of water.
As more artifacts are recovered researchers are more and more confident that the wreckage is what remains of Blackbeard's ship.
“This is the oldest shipwreck we have worked on in North Carolina,” Mark Wilde-Ramsing, QAR project manager, said. “It is associated with Blackbeard and every artifact is important for understanding what was going on at the time.”
The 160-pound anchor is one of the largest pieces recovered from the ship so far, but researchers will eventually bring up very large pieces, including cannons weighing about one ton each, Wilde-Ramsing said.
The five-pronged anchor was not the primary anchor for the Queen Anne's Revenge, it would have been too small. The Queen Anne's Revenge was a 100-foot ship that could carry 200 people.
Wilde-Ramsing said the anchor was probably for a smaller vessel that was associated with Blackbeard's flagship.
Researchers brought up the anchor because it had broken loose from the ground and they worried that is could be lost if not recovered now.
Years of dredging in the inlet exposed the wreckage and loosed many items that are at risk of being washed away. The wreckage was previously covered with sand for hundreds of years, Wilde-Ramsing said.
He said it will be more than seven years before all of the items associated with the ship are brought out of the water.
It will take about six months to get the anchor cleaned and then it will be placed in a special bath for two years before it can be displayed in a museum. Most of the items from the shipwreck will wind up at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, Wilde-Ramsing said.
“Archeologists work with real things and to literally have items that were used 300 years ago is a great find for the public,” Wilde-Ramsing said. “I'm really proud that North Carolina has this wreck and is doing such a good job recovering it.”---www.reflector.com

Workers in India Discover 13th Century Silver Coins

2009-10-10T02:42:00.000-07:00

Indian laborers recently accidentally found 62 silver coins which appeared to be from 13th century Delhi Sultanate period in the northern Uttar Pradesh state, the private Indo-Asian News Service said Thursday.
A group of 50 labourers digging a drain in Bareilly district, 250 kilometers from the state capital of Lucknow, came across the silver coins Tuesday, the report quoted a local official as saying.
The laborers did not reveal their finding and distributed the coins among themselves. However, some of the laborers were not satisfied with their share and told the authorities about the coins, said the report.
Authorities have taken over the coins and put them in a treasury. The area from where the coins were recovered has been cordoned off and no one is allowed to enter it, said the report.
The coins bear Arabic inscriptions and are dated equivalent to the period 1218-1229. A team of the Archeological Survey of India officials from Lucknow has been called to study the coins.
A great part of India was controlled by Delhi Sultanate Muslim rulers from 1206 to 1526.---news.xinhuanet.com

UK Archaeologists Dig Out Roman Amphitheatre

2009-10-10T02:10:00.000-07:00

British archaeologists have unearthed a Roman amphitheatre overlooked by previous excavations at a site to the north of the Tiber that once served as the maritime gateway to imperial Rome.
During their three-year dig close to Rome's Fiumicino airport, the researchers also found a shipping canal, luxuriously decorated rooms and a colonnaded garden, suggesting the port was a regular way station for Roman emperors.
Portus, ancient Rome's Mediterranean harbour, now lies two miles inland because of sedimentation. But it was once a basin a little over a mile wide serving 350-tonne vessels unloading grain, silk and wild animals.
The £1m dig, led by the University of Southampton, assisted by Cambridge University and the British School at Rome, focused on the remains of a palace built between the port's main basin and a hexagonal inner harbour where goods were unloaded into 300-metre-long warehouses supported by 15-metre brick arches before being transferred by canal to the Tiber for transport to Rome.
While researchers had uncovered warehouses previously, the presence of a theatre was only hinted at by the archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani during an 1860 excavation, the last big dig at the site.
This time, the British team, aided by the archaeology superintendent of Ostia, brought in magnetic sensors, ground radar and metal probes. "The current passes between the probes and we can see the resistance from buried remains," said Graeme Earl, one of the team leaders. The careful search disclosed the curved walls of the amphitheatre, dated by the project's director, Professor Simon Keay, to the 3rd century AD. "Its design, using luxurious materials and substantial colonnades, suggests it was used by a high-status official, possibly even the emperor himself … it could have been games or gladiatorial combat, wild beast baiting or the staging of mock sea battles. But we really do not know."
The ground scans revealed a garden, cisterns, a 250-metre by 60-metre room attached to the palace and a 90-metre-wide canal linked to nearby Ostia. Keay also found a head – using the more low-tech method of almost tripping over it. "The bulldozer was clearing topsoil and I saw to my horror a human face looking at me. It is one of the most spectacular finds to date," he said. The exquisite sculpture, which could depict Ulysses, "was the property of someone with a lot of culture and disposable income", said Keay.
The luxury fittings extend to fine blue and white marble in a lavatory. "There was probably running water beneath the marble toilets to prevent smells," said Rose Ferraby, an archaeologist. Holes in the front panel of the loo seat let users clean themselves with a brush, she added.
Built by Claudius in AD46, Portus was expanded by Trajan in the second century. The importance of grain shipments getting through to Rome became clear in AD62 when a storm sank 200 ships in the main harbour, prompting bread shortages and riots. "By that time Rome had long outgrown Italy's ability to feed it and the city owed its existence to the port," said Keay. "That makes Portus one of the most important archaeological sites in the world."---www.guardian.co.uk

Treasure Hunt in England Might Rewrite History

2009-10-10T02:01:00.000-07:00

An amateur treasure hunter prowling English farmland with a metal detector stumbled upon the largest Anglo-Saxon treasure ever discovered, a massive collection of gold and silver crosses, sword decorations and other items, British archaeologists reported Thursday.
One expert said the treasure would revolutionize understanding of the Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic people who ruled England from the fifth century until the Norman conquest in 1066. Another said the find would rank among Britain's best-known historic treasures.
"This is just a fantastic find completely out of the blue," Roger Bland, who managed the cache's excavation, said in a statement. "It will make us rethink the Dark Ages."
Leslie Webster, the former curator of Anglo-Saxon archeology at the British Museum, said the amount of gold uncovered — about 11 pounds (5 kilograms) — suggested that early medieval England was a far wealthier place than previously believed.
She also said the crosses and other religious artifacts mixed in with the mainly military items might shed new light on the relationship between Christianity and warfare among the Anglo-Saxons.
The seventh-century hoard found by 55-year-old Terry Herbert in western England, consists of about 1,500 pieces of gold and silver, mostly weapons and other military artifacts, some inlaid with precious stones. Experts say the finely crafted pieces could have belonged to Anglo-Saxon royalty.
Herbert, from the town of Burntwood, found the gold on a friend's farm on July 5 and spent the next five days scouring the field for the rest of the hoard.
Herbert recovered the first items before professional archaelogists took over the excavation.
"Imagine you're at home and somebody keeps putting money through your letterbox, that was what it was like," Herbert said. "I was going to bed and in my sleep I was seeing gold items."
The hoard was officially declared treasure by a coroner, which means it will now be valued by a committee of experts and offered up for sale to a museum. Proceeds would be split 50-50 between Herbert and his farmer friend, who has not been identified. The find's exact location is being kept secret to deter looters.
Bland said he could not give a precise figure for the worth of the hoard, but he said the treasure hunter could be in line for a "seven-figure sum."
Herbert said the experience had been "more fun than winning the lottery," adding that one expert likened his discovery to finding Tutankhamen's tomb.
"I just flushed all over when he said that. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up," Herbert said.
The hoard is in storage at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Some of the items are due to go on display starting Friday.---pravda.ru

Treasure Discovered in Anglo-Saxon Cemetery

2009-10-10T01:54:00.000-07:00

A GROUP of 58 items from a ploughed-out Anglo-Saxon cemetery were among the finds unearthed by Isle of Wight metal-detecting enthusiasts.

The majority of the artefacts were declared treasure by Island coroner, John Matthews.
He heard they came from the same West Wight Saxon graves where silver and gold jewellery was first discovered by metal-detecting enthusiast Stewart Thompson in 2004.

Mr Matthews also ruled as treasure this Anglo-Saxon silver hooked tag, pictured, dating back to the ninth or tenth century, found by Robert Fry while metal-detecting in May.---www.iwcp.co.uk

The Lost Ancient Treasures of Albania

2009-10-09T00:39:00.000-07:00

Just 20 years ago, when communism was starting to crumble across Eastern Europe, the idea of isolated, totalitarian Albania embracing Western project management would have been fanciful.
But it has happened - at Butrint, a Unesco World Heritage Site.
Just 5km (three miles) from the vibrant Greek holiday island of Corfu, Butrint preserves the tranquil, classical atmosphere beloved of 19th Century tourists such as Lord Byron.
Ancient ruins are lapped by water and shrouded by foliage. Massive Hellenistic walls share the site with precise Roman structures, Byzantine mosaics and two Venetian castles. The local ferry is still a raft, the views are sublime and the sunsets magical.
How has Albania managed to safeguard Butrint, when so much of its recent history has been turbulent, with communist dictatorship giving way to freewheeling capitalism?
The answer lies in partnership between local, national and international bodies, and the careful nurturing of systems new to the country.
The creation of a national park, and modern legislation to control it, led to a protected zone, which is now backed by international bodies including the World Bank.
A UK-based charity, the Butrint Foundation, is working with Albanian officials to develop the heritage site in a way that is sustainable and attractive to tourists. Archaeology, conservation and museum management are all areas where Albania is benefiting from Western expertise.
Pioneering project
Diana Ndrenika, director of Albanian heritage, says the national park "is not only a story of success in its own right, but it has set the pace within the Albanian context of how such a resource should be run".
She says it has had a big impact on other sites in Albania and has become "the model, the standard to which everyone working in this sector refers".
The site occupies a low wooded hill, with vistas of the Ionian Sea to one side and the expanse of Lake Butrint to the other.
Its mythical foundation was by refugee Trojans, with archaeology indicating that Butrint has been occupied since at least the 8th Century BC.
It was a local tribal centre by the 4th Century BC, part of the Kingdom of Pyrrhus, the inveterate enemy of the Romans. Then it was a Roman colony founded by Emperor Augustus a few years after his great victory over Anthony and Cleopatra, which occurred at Actium, only a few miles to the south.
Butrint's later history was turbulent, amid power struggles between Byzantium and its Western enemies - Normans led by Robert Guiscard, Angevin French under their dour King Charles of Anjou, scheming Venetian politicians and the banner of Islam borne by the victorious Ottoman Empire. Since 1912 it has been part of independent Albania.
Continuing challenges
The collapse of communism in 1992 caused much damage. Then civil unrest in 1997 led to looting of the museum at Butrint, though many artefacts have now been returned thanks to international co-operation.
The breakdown of old organisational structures has inevitably brought problems as well as opportunities for Albania, impacting on Butrint. Development pressure, often illegal, remains an issue.
There remains much to do at the site itself. Car parking, given rising visitor numbers, is inadequate, toilet facilities need considerable improvement, conservation of both the natural and historic environment is an ongoing challenge, and rising water levels threaten mosaics and walls. But investment in the local community should help tackle these issues.
International donations are paying for the training of young Albanian professionals. Some are already working in other parts of the country. The projects include an archaeological training school at Butrint, run by Albanian archaeologists for both domestic and foreign students.---news.bbc.co.uk

Shipwreck from the Civil War Era Found, Again

2009-10-09T00:29:00.000-07:00

Like a toy surprise in a box of Cracker Jacks - er, slightly water-logged Cracker Jacks, that is - a Civil War era shipwreck turned up among Hurricane Ike debris.
The discovery, thought to be previously uncharted, was made by crews last week scanning the bays around Galveston to chart debris.
While the find came as a kind of fun surprise to the contractors doing the work, State Marine Archeologist Steve Hoyt was pleased - but not terribly surprised.
"There have been nearly 2,000 ship wrecks (in Texas coastal waters), with a lot of those concentrated around the Galveston area," Hoyt said.
A surprising amount of Texas history is underwater.
With many immigrants arriving here by ship, along with the goods and supplies they needed for frontier life, traveling by water was common.
The bays of the Galveston area were particularly busy.
"Much of the history of Texas is maritime history," Hoyt said.
Hoyt added it's possible the shipwreck had been buried in mud and Ike's surge might have uncovered it. Or, it could just be that it had simply been overlooked until now.
The post-Ike sonar operation is likely the most extensive ever undertaken in the Galveston Bay area.
In the past, smaller areas have been surveyed for different projects, such as pipelines, to ensure that the work won't disturb any significant sites, Hoyt said.
"This is the first time I know there's been such widespread coverage," he added.
When the Texas Historic Commission finds out about a "new" historic ship wreck site, personnel begin to comb through a database of thousands of shipwrecks known to have occurred in the region.
"Most wrecks in the database, we don't know where they are - we only know of them through historic records," he said.
Hoyt wouldn't say what ships he thought the sonar scanners' find might be.
"We're looking at several," he said. "It wouldn't be appropriate to say till we have a better idea."
The next step for the Texas Historic Commission is to assess the site.
"We will get a crew together and try to dive on it," Hoyt said, adding that weather would play a role in scheduling the dive.
Diving in the bay will be challenging.
"Visibility is not good - it can be quite dangerous," he said. "You do get the occasional day when diving conditions are nice and you can get several feet of visibility."
Otherwise, divers will assess the site by "Braille work," Hoyt said, meaning they'll literally have to feel for it.
The wreck, thought to be from the Civil War era, could yield a treasure trove of historic artifacts.
An iron-hulled ship would withstand the long immersion better than one of wood, but even a wood ship would contain many iron or ceramic parts and fixtures that could have survived.
Door hinges, drawer pulls, engines, anchors, mast and rigging paraphernalia are typical items to be found.
"It's amazing how much can still be left on a large ship," Hoyt said, adding that even a small, wooden hull ship yielded more than 1 million artifacts.
The sonar crews will soon begin work in Sabine Lake.
Hoyt said there's no telling what might be found there.
"At Sabine Pass there were a number of wrecks, but once you get into the lake, there were fewer," he said.
The location of the wreck is undisclosed, in accordance with Texas administrative code. Hoyt said this is to protect the historic sites from plunder.---www.beaumontenterprise.com

Seven Ancient Cambodian Treasures Return Home

2009-10-09T00:26:00.000-07:00

Thailand returned seven treasures from Cambodia's Golden Age to its neighbor as the countries pledged to prevent further smuggling of antiquities.
The statues from the 12th century Angkorian era, including six heads of the Hindu god Shiva, were handed to Cambodian officials during an official one-day visit by Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. Thai authorities seized them from smugglers in 1999.
Widespread looting of Cambodia's ancient temples has occurred in recent decades, with many items smuggled into Thailand for sale on the international antiques markets or to private collectors.---www.culturalheritagelaw.org

Roman Wall Painting Point to Tomb Site of Biblical King Herod

2009-10-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

Israeli archaeologists excavating what they believe is the tomb of biblical King Herod said they have unearthed lavish Roman-style wall paintings of a kind previously unseen in the Middle East and signs of a regal two-story mausoleum, bolstering their conviction that the Jewish monarch was buried here.

Ehud Netzer, head of the team from Jerusalem's Hebrew University, which uncovered the site at the king's winter palace in the Judean desert in 2007, said his latest finds show work and funding fit for a king.

"What we found here, spread all around, are architectural fragments that enable us to restore a monument of 25 meters high, 75 feet high, very elegant, which fits Herod's taste and status," he told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday at the hillside dig in an Israeli-controlled part of the West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Herod is known for extensive building throughout the Holy Land.

Netzer said that since finding fragments of one ornately carved sarcophagus in 2007, he and his team have found two more, suggesting that the monumental tomb may have been a royal family vault.

"A mausoleum like the one which we have here was generally built by a king but not (necessarily) only for himself, many times for his children and his family, like the famous mausoleum of Augustus in Rome, of Hadrian in Rome," he said. It's not a surprise that we found here more than one sarcophagus.

Herod was the Jewish proxy ruler of the Holy Land under imperial Roman occupation from 37 B.C. and reigned for more than six decades.

The ruler is known to have had a taste for extravagance.

Netzer described the winter palace, built on a largely man-made hill 680 meters high, as a kind of country club, with a pool, baths, gardens fed by pools and aqueducts and a 650-seat theater.

"In Herod's private box at the auditorium, the diggers discovered delicate frescoes depicting windows opening on to painted landscapes, one of which showed what appeared to be a southern Italian farm," said Roi Porat, one of Netzer's assistants on the digs.

Just visible in the paintings, dating from between 15-10 B.C., are a dog, bushes and what looks like a country villa.

Site surveyor Rachel Chachy-Laureys said they were executed using techniques unknown in the Holy Land at the time and must have been done by artisans especially imported from Italy.

"There has been no other discovery of this type of painting in the Middle East, as far as we know, until now," she said.

Gidon Foerster, a professor of archaeology at the Hebrew University not connected with this dig, agreed that the art is unique here. The artists were most likely brought in from Italy to work on this, he said. This kind of art has never been found in Israel before. King Herod is said to have been buried there and this proves it as much as it can possibly be proved.

Herod's most famous construction project was expanding the Jewish Second Temple in Jerusalem, but the Herod of the Bible and of Christian tradition was a bloodthirsty megalomanic, who flew into a paranoid frenzy when he encountered the three wise men on the way to Bethlehem with gifts for the baby Jesus and telling of the birth of a new king of Israel.

"Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceedingly wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under..." (Matthew 2:16).

The account, however, does not appear in other Gospels, and experts are not convinced of its accuracy.

Historians do agree that toward the end of his reign, Herod slaughtered many political rivals and perceived plotters, among them one of his 10 wives and three of his sons.

The first century AD historian Josephus Flavius wrote that as the elderly Herod lay riddled with disease, he ordered the cream of the local Jewish aristocracy to be executed on his death, so that his passing would bring widespread mourning.

Josephus describes Herodium and Herod's lavish funeral there.

"After Herod's death in the first century B.C. Herodium became a stronghold for Jewish rebels fighting Roman occupation, and the site suffered significant battle damage before it was conquered and finally destroyed by Roman forces in A.D. 71, a year after they destroyed the Jerusalem temple."

The insurgents reviled the memory of Herod as a Roman puppet, and Netzer and his team believe that the violence with which the first stone casket was smashed suggests they knew it held his bones.

"That sarcophagus was found shattered all over the place, it seems it was taken from its place and was destroyed in a fit of rage," Porat said. "That, among other things, is what tells us it was the sarcophagus of Herod."

No human remains or inscriptions proving conclusively that the tomb was the king's have been found, but excavation work continues.---www.haaretz.com

Namibian Geologists Discover Ancient Treasure Ship

2009-10-08T06:57:00.000-07:00

Namibia’s largest diamond miner, NamDeb, said its geologists have found the wreckage of an ancient ship laden with treasure, including six bronze cannons, thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins and more than 50 elephant tusks.
NamDeb, owned 50-50 by the Namibian government and global diamond miner, De Beers, said it had discovered evidence of what might turn out to be the oldest sub-Saharan shipwreck.
The wreckage was discovered in the area behind a sea wall used to push back the Atlantic Ocean in order to search for diamonds in Namibia’s ’Sperrgebeit’ or Forbidden Zone’.
NamDeb said that the shipwreck could date back to the late 1400 or early 1500, making it a discovery of global significance.
Geologists identified the cannons as Spanish Breach-loaders of a type popular in the early 1500s.
The site yielded a wealth of objects, including six bronze cannons, several tonnes of copper, over 50 elephant tusks, pewter tableware, navigational instruments, weapons, personal items and thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins.
"All mining operations were halted, the site secured and Dr. Dieter Noli, an archaeological expert in the Sperrgebeit, was brought into the project and identified the cannons as Spanish breach loaders of a type popular in the 1500s," NamDebs aid.
On April 1, Bob Burrell, NamDeb’s head of Mineral Resource Department, found some rounded copper ingots and the remains of three bronze cannons in the sand.
Most coins are of gold and all appear to have been mined in the late 1400s and 1500s. "This combined with all other evidence, raises the distinct possibility of the ship concerned having been a contemporary of those used by the likes of Diaz, Da Gama and Columbus - thus making the site of immense national and international importance," NamDeb said.
Diamonds have been mined along the south-western coast of Namibia and in its coastal waters for the last 100 years. Panapress.---afrik.com

Man Discovers Gold Nugget Estimated at $10,000

2009-10-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

After seven years spent prospecting for gold as a hobby in the California desert, Terry Hughes of Moorpark hit the mother lode.
On Memorial Day, the former Marine and disabled Vietnam veteran scored a “one-in-a-million” find: an 8.7-ounce gold nugget worth an estimated $10,000.
“We’re all hoping to find the big one and Terry did,” said Patrick Keene, co-owner of Keene Engineering, reportedly one of the world’s largest suppliers of portable mining equipment.
A nugget that big — about the size of an egg — is “extremely rare,” Keene said.
Hughes purchased all his mining equipment from the Chatsworth company, and on Thursday morning he took his trophy nugget to Keene for an official weighing-in.
He would not reveal the exact location of where he found the nugget, although he said it was near Randsburg.
Although gold is currently bringing more than $1,000 an ounce, the nugget is “worth nothing,” Hughes said. “It’s all relative, about what it’s worth to me.”
And he has no plans to cash it in.
“It’s not the money value; it’s the treasure value,” he said.
Hughes, 62, was hit with the prospecting bug years ago while on an outing at Lake Isabella with his oldest son, who found a “dot of gold.”
“When you get your first gold, it gives you the gold fever,” said Hughes who retired seven years ago after 32 years with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.
He said his Memorial Day weekend venture started Friday when he headed for the desert near Randsburg. Others were also prospecting, but he was alone when his metal detector signaled a find.
“The last one had left about two hours before I found it,” Hughes said. “I thought I would make one last run with my metal detector.”
Previously, the largest nugget Hughes had unearthed was a 1-ounce, 7-pennyweight nugget found the week between Christmas and New Year’s. A pennyweight is about 1.5 grams.
That was “a huge find and this one is 100 times bigger,” he said.
Keene, 45, who has been prospecting for about 35 years, said Hughes’ nugget is a special find.
“From what I know, it’s the largest piece to come out of the desert in the last 20 years, at least,” he said. He has mined all over the world, and the largest nugget he’s found weighed 2 ounces, 7 pennyweight, he said.
A nugget’s estimated worth, Hughes said, is based on spot value of gold on the current market and its “collectors’ value.” He said he’s received collectors’ value estimates as high as $20,000 on his nugget.
According to the Web site for Gold Mart Inc., less than 2 percent of the world’s gold remains in the form of nuggets that may be found in rivers and streams, those filled with water as well as in dry riverbeds.
Gold in the United States is primarily found in California, Alaska and Oregon but is also unearthed in other southwestern states. Hot spots throughout the world include Australia, Africa, Russia, Bolivia and Canada.
Hughes has kept his prospecting to California and done mostly dry washing (digging, shoveling and sifting) to unearth his finds. In about 10 days, however, he plans to try his hand at underwater dredging and sluicing in the Yuba River in Northern California.
“There’s still a lot of gold out there waiting to be found,” he said. But for him it’s not about the money; it’s the adventure.
Hughes figures he has a couple thousand dollars invested in prospecting equipment; his latest acquisition is the dredging tools he’ll use on the Yuba River. Right now, though, his metal detector is in the spotlight.
He isn’t planning to return to mine the spot of his big find, comparing the exhilaration he felt Monday to being on an Easter egg hunt or a fishing trip.
He figures he’s not going to find another egg or catch another fish in the exact same spot.
“You move on,” he said. “You never, never know. Gold is where you find it.”---www.venturacountystar.com

Gold Pendant Discovered Using Metal Detector

2009-10-08T06:47:00.000-07:00

A 15th century gold pendant that lain buried beneath Hertfordshire farmland since the time of Henry VIII until it was discovered by an amateur metal detector was offered for sale at Sotheby’s Old Master Sculpture and Works of Art auction in London on Thursday 9 July 2009.

The remarkable gold object that depicts the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is no bigger than a postage stamp and caries an estimate of £150,000 – 250,000. The engraving is of superb quality and is comparable to mounts in two major international museums – the Victoria and Albert in London and The Cloisters in New York. It was discovered by an amateur metal detector just a few inches underground whilst walking in fields near her home. The detecting enthusiast had no idea of the value and importance of the piece when it was first uncovered.

Discussing the mount, Carolyn Miner, a Specialist in Sotheby’s Sculpture and Works of Art Department, said: “Finds such as this are extremely rare. It is remarkable that a gold pendant has survived intact and in such wonderful condition since the second half of the 15th century. The craftsmanship is staggeringly ornate for such a small piece and traces of the original enamel can even be seen in some of the grooves. I am absolutely thrilled for the lucky metal detector who has uncovered a piece of history.”---www.artdaily.org

Gold Coin Along with Other Ancient Artifacts Found near Ashwell Declared Treasure

2009-10-08T06:44:00.000-07:00

A gold coin is among a collection of artifacts dating back to the Roman, Bronze, and Iron ages that have been declared treasure at a recent inquest at Hatfield Coroner's Court.

The items were discovered near Ashwell in 2003 and included the base of a figurine, bone fragments and, according to the Cambridge News.

It is possible that the objects were buried as part of an offering to a Celtic goddess, experts suggested.

However, this would be an unusual thing to do during the Roman period, said Gilbert Burleigh, an honorary member of the North Hertfordshire Archaeological Society.

He added: "Treasure hoards of this nature are very rare things."

The items were found near the site of the discovery of the original Ashwell Hoard, which was uncovered in 2002 and included a number of gold items that went on display at the British Museum's Weston Gallery of Roman Britain in 2007.---www.marketintelligence.gold.org

Gadgets for Treasure Hunters - Metal Detecting Sandal

2009-10-07T07:27:00.000-07:00

These sandals use a copper coil in the right foot, connected by USB port to a base unit strapped to your leg, to find metal objects in the sand up to 0.6 metres away. In theory.
The Price: $US60
Does It Work?: Yes, but not really. Only objects placed directly to the midsole triggered the metal detector. You’ll know if you’ve found something by the tone, LED or, if it’s in vibrate mode, feeling the rumble. Most of the time, however…
Did I Find Treasure?: Nope. I didn’t find shit. The detector would beep when I put it against metal objects like keys within an inch, and even found the screws in my leg’s titanium rod, but no dice in the real world actually hunting for booty.
Did Anyone Make Fun Of You for Wearing Them?: Not to my face, but I was still ashamed of myself.
The Verdict: Forget about it.---www.gizmodo.com.au

Divers Can Now Observe the Scotland's Shipwrecks

2009-10-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

HISTORIC shipwrecks that have been out of bounds to divers are to be opened up for the first time.
Currently it is illegal for scuba divers to visit eight protected sites – such as the HMS Campania in the Firth of Forth – without a licence from Historic Scotland.

However, under the Scottish Marine Bill, currently going through parliament, the r
estrictions will be lifted.

Divers have long argued that there should be greater freedom to visit wrecks on a "look but don't touch" basis.

Wrecks where restrictions would be lifted include the remains of a warship called The Swan in the Sound of Mull, which sank in 1653 and the Kennemerland in Out Skerries, Shetland – an armed merchant vessel belonging to the Dutch East India Company that sank in 1664, while loaded with a cargo of treasure and jewels.

The eight sites are currently designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973, which instated a blanket ban on visiting them without a licence.

However, the Scottish Marine Bill will see them turned into Historic Marine Protected Areas, and access will be permitted. If it is deemed necessary to restrict access, Historic Scotland could slap a Marine Conservation Order on the site. However, even then there would be some flexibility to allow visitors – such as divers who had special training at dive centres.

Philip Robertson, Historic Scotland's senior inspector of marine archaeology, said the new system would help encourage "responsible access to our underwater heritage".

He said: "For years we have worked closely with the diving community to monitor and protect wrecks and this Bill will make it easier for those diving to get access on a 'look but don't touch' basis".Shipwrecks that are classed as war graves by the Ministry of Defence, such as HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow, Orkney, will still be out of bounds. The MoD, rather than the Scottish Government, controls these sites.

Gary Lawson, who runs a dive centre in North Berwick, said he has wanted to visit HMS Campania for a long time.

"This is very good news," he said.

However, he believes divers should be able to visit all wreck sites, even those classed as war graves.

"It's almost like we are being branded as some scrap-collecting, stealing-lead-off-church-roof types of people.

"There's not a graveyard in the country that we couldn't go around and read the headstones and take photographs and yet they won't let us swim around these sites and pay our respects."

Environment secretary Richard Lochhead, speaking yesterday at Holyrood's Marine Bill Conference in Edinburgh, said: "The popularity of shipwreck driving in Orkney and the Sound of Mull means Scotland can already lay claim to the title of 'shipwreck diving capital of Europe'.

"Diving generates millions of pounds for our economy. And thanks to these new measures there is scope to open up a whole new world of hidden treasures for divers."---scotsman.com

Construction Stopped After Ancient Gold Coins Found

2009-10-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

Construction of the Gautrain in Johannesburg has been halted for six months after workers found a large quantity of gold coins minted between 1892 and 1898 at the construction site in Rosebank. Excited historians believe the coins could be the missing Kruger millions.
Historians pointed out that they will need to further comb the area for any additional coins or other clues. Work on the Gautrain will be suspended from today.
The Gautrain has been praised for creating 63 000 jobs so far. As a result of this, Gauteng Local Government MEC Qedani Mahlangu said last month that the project has empowered citizens in terms of skills development and transfer, job creation and improving Gauteng's economic capacity.
Project CEO Jack van der Merwe also addressing the media on progress regarding the project's socio-economic development last month, gave assurance that the global economic meltdown will not affect the cost of the project. The Gautrain project is estimated to cost about R25 billion and Van der Merwe says to date they have spent about R15 billion.---www.sabcnews.com

Controversy Around Sunken Treasure

2009-10-07T07:09:00.000-07:00

A U.S. diving company has vowed to contest a judge's suggestion that the treasure retrieved from a sunken Spanish ship be returned to Spain.

On June 3, 2009, a magistrate judge in Tampa, Fla., stated that the loot found on the Spanish warship Mercedes rightfully belongs to Spain and not Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., the U.S. diving company that found the ship in the Strait of Gibraltar in 2007.

Reuters reported that while the judge's opinion is nonbinding, Odyssey Marine Exploration said it will contest the recommendation, which is part of extensive wrangling between the compoany and the governments of Spain and Peru.

The ship contained silver and gold coins worth about $500 million, according to Reuters.

In January 2008, The Associated Press stated that Spain said it had never “expressly abandoned any of its vessels lost at sea.”

James A. Goold, a lawyer for Spain, said in a Bloomberg article, “The decision recognizes that there is a vital interest for the United States and Spain and other nations to respect the resting place of sailors who died at sea.” Goold continued, “The Mercedes is the Spanish equivalent of the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor. How can anyone think it would be OK to strip the site of valuables?”

Odyssey Marine Exploration announced in May 2007 that it had discovered a shipwreck in the Atlantic. The boat contained some 500,000 silver coins.

The company shipped the artifacts to the United States from the British protectorate of Gibraltar, but according to a Voice of America clip, kept the exact location of the discovery a secret.

Spain filed a formal complaint with a U.S. federal court in Miami to recover the boat and its contents on the premise that warships remain the property of their flag country.

The sunken ship also sparked an insider-trading dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ernesto Tapanes, an oceanographer doing consulting aboard the Odyssey’s exploration vessel, violated an agreement that forbade him from trading the exploration company’s stock. But he still bought up Odyssey stock, dumping it once the shares had doubled in price after the announcement of the discovery.

According to the Telegraph, Spain's minister of culture said the Odyssey ruling is “hugely important” and “one that will set a precedent for future claims.” Odyssey is currently in talks with the British government about recovering the contents of the wrecked HMS Sussex, a warship that may have been hauling 10 tons of gold in 1694 when it sank off the Spanish coastline.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ruled in its Draft Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage that any vessels, artifacts and human remains continuously under water for 100 years or more fall into the category of “underwater cultural heritage,” which cannot be “commercially exploited.” The full text of the convention is available as a PDF document.---www.findingdulcinea.com

Ceramic Shard Might Be the Oldest Hebrew Inscription

2009-10-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

An Israeli archaeologist digging at a hilltop south of Jerusalem believes a ceramic shard found in the ruins of an ancient town bears the oldest Hebrew inscription ever discovered, a find that could provide an important glimpse into the culture and language of the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.

The five lines of faded characters written 3,000 years ago, and the ruins of the fortified settlement where they were found, are indications that a powerful Israelite kingdom existed at the time of the Old Testament's King David, says Yossi Garfinkel, the Hebrew University archaeologist in charge of the new dig at Hirbet Qeiyafa.

Other scholars are hesitant to embrace Garfinkel's interpretation of the finds, made public on Thursday. The discoveries are already being wielded in a vigorous and ongoing argument over whether the Bible's account of events and geography is meant to be taken literally.

Hirbet Qeiyafa sits near the city of Beit Shemesh in the Judean foothills, an area that was once the frontier between the hill-dwelling Israelites and their enemies, the coastal Philistines. The site overlooks the Elah Valley, said to be the scene of the slingshot showdown between David and the Philistine giant Goliath, and lies near the ruins of Goliath's hometown in the Philistine metropolis of Gath.

A teenage volunteer found the curved pottery shard, 15 centimeters by 15 centimeters, in July near the stairs and stone washtub of an excavated home. It was later discovered to bear five lines of characters known as proto-Canaanite, a precursor of the Hebrew alphabet.

Carbon-14 analysis of burnt olive pits found in the same layer of the site dated them to between 1,000 and 975 B.C., the same time as the Biblical golden age of David's rule in Jerusalem.

Scholars have identified other, smaller Hebrew fragments from the 10th century B.C., but the script, which Garfinkel suggests might be part of a letter, predates the next significant Hebrew inscription by between 100 and 200 years. History's best-known Hebrew texts, the Dead Sea scrolls, were penned on parchment beginning 850 years later.

The shard is now kept in a university safe while philologists translate it, a task expected to take months. But several words have already been tentatively identified, including ones meaning judge, slave and king.

The Israelites were not the only ones using proto-Canaanite characters, and other scholars suggest it is difficult - perhaps impossible - to conclude the text is Hebrew and not a related tongue spoken in the area at the time. Garfinkel bases his identification on a three-letter verb from the inscription meaning to do, a word he said existed only in Hebrew.

"That leads us to believe that this is Hebrew, and that this is the oldest Hebrew inscription that has been found," he said.

Other prominent Biblical archaeologists warned against jumping to conclusions.

Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said the inscription was very important, as it is the longest proto-Canaanite text ever found. But he suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far.

"It's proto-Canaanite," he said. "The differentiation between the scripts, and between the languages themselves in that period, remains unclear."

Some scholars and archeologists argue that the Bible's account of David's time inflates his importance and that of his kingdom, and is essentially myth, perhaps rooted in a shred of fact.

But if Garfinkel's claim is borne out, it would bolster the case for the Bible's accuracy by indicating the Israelites could record events as they happened, transmitting the history that was later written down in the Old Testament several hundred years later.

It also would mean that the settlement - a fortified town with a 10-meter-wide monumental gate, a central fortress and a wall running 700 meters in circumference - was probably inhabited by Israelites.

The finds have not yet established who the residents were, says Aren Maier, a Bar Ilan University archaeologist who is digging at nearby Gath. It will become more clear if, for example, evidence of the local diet is found, he said: "Excavations have shown that Philistines ate dogs and pigs, while Israelites did not."

"The nature of the ceramic shards found at the site suggest residents might have been neither Israelites nor Philistines but members of a third, forgotten people," he said.

"If the inscription is Hebrew, it would indicate a connection to the Israelites and make the text one of the most important texts, without a doubt, in the corpus of Hebrew inscriptions," Maier said. "But it has great importance whatever the language turns out to be," he added.

Saar Ganor, an Israel Antiquities Authority ranger, noticed the unusual scale of the walls while patrolling the area in 2003. Three years later he interested Garfinkel, and after a preliminary dig they began work in earnest this summer. They have excavated only 4 percent of the six-acre settlement so far.

Archaeology has turned up only scant finds from David's time in the early 10th century B.C., leading some scholars to suggest his kingdom may have been little more than a small chiefdom or that he might not have existed at all.

Garfinkel believes building fortifications like those at Hirbet Qeiyafa could not have been a local initiative: The walls would have required moving 200,000 tons of stone, a task too big for the 500 or so people who lived there. Instead, it would have required an organized kingdom like the one the Bible says David ruled.

Zionism has traditionally seen archaeology as a way of strengthening and explaining the Jewish claim to Israel, and regarded David's kingdom as the glorious ancestor of the new Jewish state. So finding evidence of his rule has importance beyond its interest to scholars.

The dig is partially funded by Foundation Stone, a Jewish educational organization, which hopes to bring volunteers to work there as a way of teaching them a national and historical lesson.

"When I stand here, I understand that I'm on the front lines of the battle between the Israelites and the Philistines," said Rabbi Barnea Levi Selavan, the group's director. "I open my Bible and read about David and Goliath, and I understand that I'm in the Biblical context."

While the site could be useful to scholars, archaeologist Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University urged adhering to the strict boundaries of science.

Finkelstein, who has not visited the dig but attended a presentation of the findings, warned against what he said was a revival in the belief that what's written in the Bible is accurate like a newspaper. That style of archaeology was favored by 19th century European diggers who trolled the Holy Land for physical traces of Biblical stories, their motivation and methods more romantic than scientific.

"This can be seen as part of this phenomenon," Finkelstein said.---www.haaretz.com

British Researchers Unlock the Mystery of Ancient Town

2009-10-06T03:03:00.000-07:00

Boy Finds Old Shekel Coin in Temple Mount Dirt in Jerusalem

2009-10-06T02:59:00.000-07:00

Archeologists Study the Treasures of Wealthy Roman Citizens

2009-10-06T02:55:00.000-07:00

Archaeology as Part of Human History

2009-10-06T02:51:00.000-07:00

Archaeologists Unearth Jurassic Nest in Tamil Nadu

2009-10-06T02:37:00.000-07:00

Geologists in Tamil Nadu have stumbled upon a Jurassic treasure trove buried in the sands of a river bed. Sheer luck led them to hundreds of fossilized dinosaur eggs, perhaps 65 million years old, underneath a stream in a tiny village in Ariyalur district.

Researchers from the Salem-based Periyar University found clusters of eggs of what they believe to be the most aggressive Carnosaur and the docile, leaf-eating Sauropod at Sendurai village.

While Carnosaurs were large predatory dinasaurs, Sauropods were long-necked, herbivores which grew to enormous heights and sizes.

That dinosaurs once roamed the area was known from the fossils found there on earlier expeditions. But this is the first time that hundreds of nests embedded with hundreds of clusters of dinosaur eggs have been unearthed in the district.

Located on the highway between Chennai and Tiruchi, the Ariyalur and the neighbouring Perambalur geological sites nestle in the northern plains of the Cauvery river. The place is a veritable museum of ancient organisms, dating back to 140 million years. Ever since a British couple -- the Wines -- collected 32 boxes of "strange stone objects" in 1843, the Ariyalur region has drawn geologists from across the world for its rich fossil presence and diversity.

Scientists have found the tiniest marine algae or the nano fossils besides the rare shell-like bivalve, gastropoda, telecypoda and brachiopoda in the geological sites spread across 950sqkm in Ariyalur and Perambalur districts.

"We found clusters and clusters of spherical eggs of dinosaurs. And each cluster contained eight eggs," says Dr M U Ramkumar, geology lecturer of the Periyar University. Each egg was about 13 to 20 cm in diameter and they were lying in sandy nests which were of the size of 1.25 metres.

In the 1860s, a British geologist first recorded the presence of bone remains of dinosaurs in Ariyalur. Over a century and a half later, the egg of a dinosaur was found in a cement factory of the state-owned Tamil Nadu Cements Ltd in 1990s. But officials realized that it was a dinosaur egg only 10 years later.

On a sultry afternoon on September 12 this year, Ramkumar and his research students went to Ariyalur to scour the rocks and sediments as part of a study funded by Indian and German scientific institutions. As they paused by a stream on a grazing land at Sendurai, they found spherical-shaped fossils peeping out of the sand beds. "We got really excited. As I have seen a dinosaur egg, I was sure these were dinosaur eggs," said Ramkumar.

A quick digging revealed clusters of eggs beneath seven layers of sand spread over two sqkm. The eggs may not have hatched due to the Deccan volcanic eruptions or seasonal flooding, surmise the team. "We suspect the extinction of dinosaurs was triggered by the Deccan volcano. Volcanic ashes cap the eggs," said one researcher.

"This is a very significant finding as never before have we found so many dinosaur eggs in the country. Besides the spherical size of the eggs covered with sand and volcanic ash provide significant insight into the possible reasons for extinction of the species," says Dr Jyotsana Rai, senior scientist, Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany in Lucknow. Her team will collect samples of these eggs to determine its exact age.

Because a similar discovery in Jabalpur led to a plunder of the fossilized treasure, the researchers have requested the Ariyalur district administration to cordon off the site. Samples of the eggs will travel to Germany for further research. The vicinity of Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh is considered the richest dinosaur field in the country.---timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Archaeologists Find New Egyptian Pyramid

2009-10-03T05:57:00.000-07:00

Archaeologists Discover Rare Gold Coins in Jerusalem

2009-10-03T05:54:00.000-07:00

Some Israeli archaeologists are having a particularly happy Hanukkah, thanks in part to a British volunteer who took time off from her job to work on a dig. The Israel Antiquities Authority reported a thrilling find - the discovery of 264 ancient gold coins in Jerusalem National Park.
The coins were minted during the early 7th century.
"This is one of the largest and most impressive coin hoards ever discovered in Jerusalem -- certainly the largest and most important of its period," said Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets, who are directing the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Researchers discovered the coins at the beginning of the eight-day Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which started at sunset on Sunday.
One of the customs of the holiday is to give "gelt," or coins, to children, and the archaeologists are referring to the find as "Hanukkah money."
Nadine Ross, a British archaeological volunteer, happened onto the coins during the dig just below the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.
"To be honest, I just thought, 'Thank God I didn't throw it in the rubbish bucket,' " said Ross, who had taken four weeks off from her engineering job in England to work at the site. "I was just glad I sort of spotted it before I disturbed it too much."
The 1,400-year-old coins were found in the Giv'ati car park in the City of David in the walls around Jerusalem National Park, a site that has yielded other finds, including a well-preserved gold earring with pearls and precious stones.
They were in a collapsed building that dates back to the 7th century, the end of the Byzantine period. The coins bear a likeness of Heraclius, who was the Byzantine emperor from 610 to 641.
The authority said that while different coins had been minted during this emperor's reign, the coins found at the site represent "one well-known type."
In that style, the emperor is clad with military garb and is holding a cross in his right hand. On the other side is the sign of the cross.
Authorities said the excavation of the building where the hoard was discovered is in its early stages. They are attempting to learn about the building and its owner and the circumstances of its destruction.
"Since no pottery vessel was discovered adjacent to the hoard, we can assume that it was concealed inside a hidden niche in one of the walls of the building. It seems that with its collapse, the coins piled up there among the building debris," Ben-Ami and Tchekhanovets said.
The find is a a golden moment for Ross, who said "it is a pity that I can't take it home with me. But there you go."---www.cnn.com

Antique Furniture - Best Treasure

2009-10-03T05:50:00.000-07:00

Ancient Treasures Found in Western Turkey

2009-10-03T05:44:00.000-07:00

Ancient Roman Coins Once Again Found in the UK

2009-10-03T05:40:00.000-07:00

370000 Dollar Ring Lost, Reward for Treasure Hunters

2009-10-03T05:37:00.000-07:00

10000 Ancient Roman Coin Aged 1700 Discovered in Near Shrewsbury

2009-10-03T05:33:00.000-07:00

2000yo Iron Age Materials Should Return to Anglesey

2009-10-03T05:26:00.000-07:00

Ancient artefacts, more than 2,000 years old, should be brought back to Anglesey (Wales) claims an island politician. A large hoard of Iron Age materials were discovered in Llyn Cerrig Bach, Llanfair-yn-Neubwll, in 1942. The items are currently kept in Cardiff, but local councillor Gwilym O Jones believes the treasure troves should brought back and displayed at Llangefni's Oriel Môn. And the council agrees, explaining they are currently in talks on that very subject.
Cllr Jones said: "I understand why the treasures were taken down to the National Museum in Cardiff. At the time there was nowhere secure enough on Anglesey to keep them. But that has changed in recent years. I feel that now is the time to campaign to bring the treasures back. I'm not talking about bringing them back permanently, but I feel they should here for part of the year, say through the summer months. I think many people would be interested in seeing them."
Anglesey County Council's head of museums, archives and culture, Pat West, said: "We have a good working relationship with the National Museum and are in negotiations with them about holding a short term exhibition of the artefact found at Llyn Cerrig Bach. "As yet we have no set date for an exhibition but it would be in the next two to three years."
Chariots, weapons, tools and decorated metalwork items were cast from a causeway or island into Llyn Cerrig Bach between 300 BCE and 100 CE. They were discovered in 1942 by William Roberts as the airfield was being extended to accommodate the US air force bomber, The Flying Fortress. The site was investigated by Sir Cyril Fox, the then keeper of archaeology at the National Museum of Wales in 1946.---www.theonlinemail.co.uk

Pre-Civil War Artifacts to be Revealed at Archeological Meeting

2009-09-19T04:38:00.000-07:00

Jim Wosochlo will unveil pre-Civil War discoveries from his family's farm in Schuylkill County, Pa., at the Sept. 18 meeting of the Incorporated Orange County Chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association.
"According to my great-grandparents, a blacksmith lived at the site just before the Civil War," Wosochlo said. "Among the items discovered on this site are prehistoric Lehigh Broad (spear) points and other native artifacts. For the historic finds, I have a great coin collection including a counterfeit 1854 half dollar, a large group of buttons, pipe stems, marbles and other historic artifacts."
The group will meet at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 18 in the community room of the Goshen Methodist Church, 115 Main St, Goshen.For more information, e-mail ioccnysaa@gmail.com or go to http://ioccnysaa.blogspot.com/---www.recordonline.com

Old Timber Structure Discovered in London

2009-09-19T04:35:00.000-07:00

London's oldest timber structure has been unearthed by archaeologists from Archaeology South-East (part of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London). It was found during the excavation of a prehistoric peat bog adjacent to Belmarsh Prison in Plumstead, Greenwich, in advance of the construction of a new prison building. Radiocarbon dating has shown the structure to be nearly 6,000 years old and it predates Stonehenge by more than 500 years.
Jacobs Engineering UK Ltd acted as the managing consultants, on behalf of the Ministry of Justice, and the work was facilitated by Interserve Project Services Ltd.
The structure consisted of a timber platform or trackway found at a depth of 4.7m (about the height of a double decker bus) beneath two metres of peat adjacent to an ancient river channel (image available). Previously, the oldest timber structure in Greater London was the timber trackway in Silvertown, which has been dated to 3340-2910 BC, c. 700 years younger.
Wetlands adjacent to rivers such as the Thames were an important source of food for prehistoric people, and timber trackways and platforms made it easier to cross the boggy terrain. The structure discovered at Plumstead is an early example of people adapting the natural landscape to meet human needs. The peat bogs which developed at Plumstead provided ideal conditions to preserve organic materials, which in other environments would have rotted away. The peat not only preserved wood, but also other plant matter - down to microscopic pollen grains - which can inform us about the contemporary landscape.
English Heritage, the government's advisor on the historic environment, provides planning advice in respect of archaeology within Greater London and was involved in the discovery at the Plumstead site.
Mark Stevenson, Archaeological Advisor at English Heritage said: "The discovery of the earliest timber structure in London is incredibly important. The timber structure is slightly earlier in date than the earliest trackways excavated in the Somerset Levels, including the famous 'Sweet Track' to Glastonbury, which provide some of the earliest physical evidence for woodworking in England.
"This large area of development has been the subject of extensive building recording of the old Royal Arsenal (East) site as well as detailed work to map the buried ancient landscape."
Archaeology South-East Senior Archaeologist Diccon Hart, who directed the excavation, commented: "The discovery of the earliest timber structure yet found in the London Basin is an incredibly exciting find. It is testament to the hard work and determination of those who toiled under very difficult conditions to unearth a rare and fascinating structure almost 6,000 years after it was constructed."
Other notable finds from the archaeological excavation include an Early Bronze Age alder log with unusually well-preserved tool marks made by a metal axe. This item has been laser scanned at UCL's Department of Civil, Environmental and Geometric Engineering and is currently undergoing conservation treatment prior to its display in Greenwich Heritage Centre, Woolwich (image available).
The study of the samples will continue for the next couple of years as the archaeological team learns more about this intriguing structure and the environment in which it was built.---www.sciencedaily.com

More People Interested in Ancient Sites

2009-09-19T01:43:00.000-07:00

All things considered, the potential to uncover indigenous peoples’ remains or artifacts on the proposed Village Centre commercial site appears insignificant to most people.

With all of the debate about traffic, impact on Cape Henlopen High School and downtown Lewes businesses, and on the wellhead area, artifacts are an issue that seems to get lost.
But not for Jules Jackson, an indigenous peoples’ advocate. She says there should be no development anywhere near known burial sites or where Native American artifacts have been found. “There is no compromise. It’s about basic respect and decency,” she said. “It’s a human value issue.”
Once a find has been made, she said, other remains are likely to be nearby. “You can never be sure an area is 100 percent clear,” she said.
Over time, she said, many sites in the Cape Region have been destroyed by construction, farming and development.
Hundreds of Lewes residents were expected to turn out for a public hearing Thursday, Sept. 10, before county planning and zoning commissioners on a request by LT Associates to rezone a parcel to commercial along Kings Highway and Gills Neck Road. If the rezoning request is granted, the developers plan to build the 320,000-square-foot Village Centre shopping complex on the parcel.
Another public hearing is scheduled at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 29, before county council. Frank Kea, spokesman for developers LT Associates, says extensive research has been done throughout the area, and there are no archaeological sites on the 46 acres where the planned Village Centre would be built.
That is not the case elsewhere on the parcel known as the Townsend property.
Finds over the years
Parcels along Gills Neck Road have a long archeological history. There have been significant, although little publicized, archeological finds on Townsend-owned properties over the past 55 years.
One was so significant back in the 1950s that the renowned Smithsonian Institution had 50 Native American remains removed from the property. The remains are at the Natural Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Kea said Paul Townsend hired other archaeologists to make a complete survey of other parcels, spending $100,000 in the process, and other sites were found in the area of the Senators and Governors housing projects. He said pottery shards and other items were found during their survey.
The housing projects, approved by county officials, will be built on 700 acres with more than 700 housing units adjacent and connected to the proposed Village Centre.
Kea said the areas where artifacts were found will not be designated, at the request of state archeologists, but will be left undisturbed in a natural state. The same was done with the area where the 50 human remains were found back in the 1950s.
Kea said the areas are unmarked to keep out trespassers and amateur archaeologists. Kea said it was two amateur archeologists who were trespassing that discovered the site back in the 1950s.
He said it has not been uncommon for people to trespass on Townsend land in search of artifacts.
Jackson said the finds, and others, including one near Five Points, only prove one thing – the area was home to a large settlement of Native Americans, the first inhabitants of the region.
“The area was one of the largest indigenous settlements on the East Coast,” Jackson said. “There are remains outside the parameters where they say they are.”
She said one could only wonder what would have occurred and what action would have been taken if the remains had been of a European settlement.
One of the major sites, known as the Wolfe Neck site, was nominated in 1976 for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
According to a report filed by state archeologists, excavations at the 132-acre site along the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal indicated an almost continuous prehistoric occupation from 505 B.C. through 330 A.D.
“The early occupation of the site was apparently a small seasonal camp. The later occupation may have been a more permanent village,” the report concluded.
That’s more than 2,100 years before Dutch explorers landed near present-day Lewes, the first Europeans to touch Cape Region soil. Historical records show that the first inhabitants of the Mid-Atlantic region date back as far as 12,000 years ago.
The site was not included in the National Register.
Jackson said officials should take note of what occurred at Thompson Island, located where Rehoboth Bay and the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal converge.
The entire island is preserved as part of Delaware Seashore State Park. Artifacts found on the island date back to 3000 B.C.
Jackson said county officials, developers and planners are paying more attention to what is under the soil.
“It’s been brought to the forefront and they are staring to take it seriously,” she said.
The chiefs of the Nanticoke and Lenape recently testified in opposition to a rezoning and conditional use for an apartment complex off Plantation Road. They say construction of the project would infringe on an existing Native American burial site.
The long-standing lack of interest in indigenous sites is not surprising to Jackson. “It’s gone on for so long, it’s become part of the culture,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s all about money.”---www.capegazette.com

Money Given to Research Archaeological Sites in Cwmbran

2009-09-19T01:38:00.000-07:00

A PROJECT launched to research sites of archaeological interest in Cwmbran received a £48,000 funding boost.
The Ancient Cwmbran and Cistercians Partnership will spend the money from the Heritage Lottery Fund to investigate several sites in Thornhill and Greenmeadow, many of which have never been previously explored and one of which dates back more than 3,500 years.
Archaeologists will work with volunteers from the local community to carry out the research over the next year.
The project will also celebrate the medieval pilgrim heritage of the area through an arts project and the production of a heritage walks leaflet.
The project’s research co-ordinator Richard Davies said: "These unrecorded sites are a real mystery, I have shown them to several archaeologist and we are all still scratching our heads."
The partnership consists of Cwmbran Historical Society, Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust, University of Wales, Newport, Torfaen Museum Trust, Communities First Thornhill, the Co-Star Partnership and Torfaen council.
It has also received funding from Cwmbran Regeneration Partnership and Torfaen council.---www.southwalesargus.co.uk

Huge Collection Of Roman Coins Discovered

2009-09-19T01:33:00.000-07:00

The largest cache of rare coins ever found in a scientific excavation from the period of the Bar-Kokhba revolt of the Jews against the Romans has been discovered in a cave by researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar-Ilan University.
The coins were discovered in three batches in a deep cavern located in a nature reserve in the Judean hills. The treasure includes gold, silver and bronze coins, as well as some pottery and weapons.
The discovery was made in the framework of a comprehensive cave research and mapping project being carried out by Boaz Langford and Prof. Amos Frumkin of the Cave Research Unit in the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University, along with Dr. Boaz Zissu and Prof. Hanan Eshel of the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, and with the support of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
The some 120 coins were discovered within a cave that has a "hidden wing," the slippery and dangerous approach to which is possible only via a narrow opening discovered many years ago by Dr. Gideon Mann, a physician who is one of the early cave explorers in modern Israel. The opening led to a small chamber which in turn opens into a hall that served as a hiding place for the Jewish fighters of Bar-Kokhba.
Most of the discovered coins are in excellent condition and were overstruck as rebels' coins on top of Roman coins. The new imprints show Jewish images and words (for example: the facade of the Temple in Jerusalem and the slogan "for the freedom of Jerusalem"). Other coins that were found, of gold, silver and bronze, are original Roman coins of the period minted elsewhere in the Roman Empire or in the Land of Israel.
Bar-Kokhba coins of this quality and quantity have never before been discovered in one location by researchers in the Land of Israel, although over the years antiquities looters have found and sold large numbers of coins from this period. The high value of such coins has served as an incentive for thefts in recent decades, especially in the Judean hills, where many such caves exist.
Prof. Frumkin points out the significance of this particular cave, owing to its size, its proximity to Betar, and the large collection of coins found there. Ancient Betar was the site of the "last stand" of the rebels led by Bar-Kokhba in their struggle against Roman rule in Judea from 132-35 CE.
"This discovery verifies the assumption that the refugees of the revolt fled to caves in the center of a populated area in addition to the caves found in more isolated areas of the Judean Desert," said Prof. Frumkin. He also noted that the discovery adds significantly to our knowledge of the Bar-Kokhba revolt, about which there is not a great deal of historical information.
Dr. Zissu points out that one of the fascinating aspects of the Bar-Kokhba revolt is the intensive use of the rebels and Jewish refugees of natural and man-made caves as hiding and refuge places in the face of extensive Roman search-and-destroy missions. Those who fled to the caves took with them food, weapons, drinks, coins and various documents. Sometimes they even took with them the keys to their houses that they abandoned in the hope that one day they would be able to return to them.
Apparently, the people who left behind the cache of coins that has now been found did so during the period of the revolt, following their flight from their homes or from battle with the Romans; however they were unable to return to their hiding place to recover their valuables.---www.sciencedaily.com

Was the Blackbeard's Treasure Really Found?

2009-09-19T01:28:00.000-07:00

In news that should make pirate fans weep for joy and ninja fans cringe, researchers now believe they have found the wreckage of Blackbeard’s famous ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, in the briny depths of the Atlantic Ocean. Blackbeard, known as Edward Thatch or Edward Teach, is thought to have run around near Beaufort Inlet, South Carolina. The wreck was first discovered in 1996, but is now only conclusively thought to have belonged to the world’s most famous pirate.
One of the most interesting facts about the find on the Queen Anne’s Revenge is that it contained not just gold and silver coins (though it had those), but it also contained a great deal of looted equipment. Apothecary weights, a mortar and pestle, and even some nautical navigation equipment were recovered from the boat. Apparently, useful tools were very popular among pirates, because they could be resold easily to other sailors and pirates, whereas used gold teeth wouldn’t be easy to get rid of. I guess it’s the 1600’s equivalent of a chop shop.
Since we’re feeling a little nautical now, why not share one of my favorite Flogging Molly songs? It’s called, appropriately enough, Queen Anne’s Revenge.---www.popfi.com

Treasure trove discovered in an old curiosity shop

2009-09-19T01:25:00.000-07:00

A shop in Accrington, Lancashire, is just like something from Charles Dickens' "The Old Curiosity Shop."

The shop has probably been closed since the late 1970s - and all its contents from that time have been left intact.

Stepping into the shop is like stepping back in time.

The shop is full of ancient medicine bottle, and magazines from the Thirties. There is even a bill from 1927 to repair the building at a cost of £36 15s 7d....... [[£36, 15 shillings, 7 pence]] ....... (this was from the good old days before 1971, when Britain's currency was decilmalised, i.e when it simply became 100 pence = £1, just to make it easier for foreigners to understand, rather than using several different divisions of the currency. Before 1971, Britain was unique in using more than two divisions of currency. There were 20 shillings in a £, 12 pence in 1 shilling, and 240 pence to a £. It confused foreigners, though it was quite simple for the British people to understand).

The shop was re-opened this week for safety checks...

It could have been the set for Ronnie Barker's television comedy Open All Hours.

Builders were astonished to find this shop frozen in time, with a 1927 bill to repair the building for £36 15s 7d, ancient bottles of medicine and magazines from the Thirties.

Council workmen went to check out the boarded-up terraced shop in Accrington, Lancashire, after concerns were raised over the building's safety. But when they removed the boarding, they found a perfectly preserved old-fashioned corner shop and ice cream parlour.

Cigarette adverts from the Fifties, a magazine giving a day-by-day account of the young Princess Elizabeth's tour of Australia in 1938, ice cream spoons and old-fashioned sweet jars were on display. It is believed the owners moved out more than 30 years ago, leaving the contents intact, and the shop has been empty ever since.

It wasn't until safety checks were carried out this week before a developer demolishes the building that it was discovered what lay inside. Town hall workers described the shop as a 'treasure trove' and nostalgic local residents have even asked to look around.

A spokesman for Hyndburn Borough Council said: 'It should be kept as a living museum. The old white-tiled ice cream area is near perfect. But there are problems with safety at the property.' Noel Wilson, 80, who lives nearby, said he remembered the family-owned shop when it was open during the Sixties, adding: 'It was a typical corner shop - newsagent, tobacconists, remedies... everything under one roof.

'It was always known as Boyds and was passed down their family.

'The last one I remember was a Curly Boyd who was as bald as a coot and always wore a bobble cap.

'It was well over 40 years ago when he was there.' After rooting around the shop, developers found 80-year-old paperwork belonging to the Boyds and displays of cure-all Fennings Fever Mixture and an original tin box used for Victory V lozenges.

Titbits magazine from 1971 had a headline about that week's Coronation Street - 'Elsie Tanner is as common as muck', referring to star-of-the-day Pat Phoenix. The shop has been bought by developer Terry Duffy, who wants to turn it into a house.

He has cleared out much of the contents and one of his builders took a collection of Ruby Murray records that were found under the counter.

He said: 'It is like time stood still. There are items 60 years old where they were left.

People keep asking me if they can make a visit because it brings back so many memories.

'I kept expecting to see Ronnie Barker appearing from behind the counter like Open All Hours.'---www.forums.canadiancontent.net

The True Story of Treasure Chests

2009-09-18T00:47:00.000-07:00

Imagine uncovering an elaborately decorated treasure chest and lifting the lid to find an abundance of shimmering coins and jewels. Surely this scene would take place on a deserted stretch of beach after years of searching with a crumpled, yellowed map.

Unfortunately, these images only exist in dreams and movies. In reality, most treasure is recovered at the bottom of the ocean, not on land. The coins discovered were packaged in functional crates rather than fancy chests. However, there is unfound bounty from known shipwrecks hiding on the ocean floor.
History
1. As soon as ocean trade began, organized crime on the seas was born. Vikings, the early pirates, preyed upon merchants in the Atlantic Ocean. The Mediterranean Sea was home to the Barbary coastal pirates. No countries, with goods to trade, were safe from piracy. The European and Asian continents were especially vulnerable.

By the time Europeans began to explore what they called the "New World," pirates were bolder, with better vessels. Spaniards began pilfering from the Indians inhabiting the new lands, later called America. When they shipped gold and silver back to Spain, pirates were ready to relieve them of their treasures.

The idea of a treasure chest originated with the "tall tales" of pirates glamorizing their exploits at sea. The popular classic "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson exemplified the myth with a fictional tale of buried treasure and the treasure map. The fantasy is kept alive through the years by movies.
Function
2. The few researchers lucky enough to recover treasures say chests were not ornately detailed, glimmering chests. Treasure chests were functional, meant for safe voyage. An elaborate chest would call attention to the booty. Coins and other treasures were transported in "shipping crates," made of wood and securely nailed shut. The few treasures found were packaged in this manner without hinges or carvings on the crates.
Features
3. A treasure chest contained crude, melted chunks of gold and silver. Though the treasure is referred to as "coin," it was oddly shaped, bearing little resemblance to the coins we trade today. Some gold and silver was melted into Spanish doubloons and pieces of eight. Ironically, the Spanish forced the Indians to melt down the gold and silver they stole from them, only to have the coins confiscated by pirates or lost in storms on the way back to Spain.
Time Frame
4. Evidence of lost treasure dates back to the 1500s. Spanish shipwrecks off the coast of Texas and Florida occurred from 1554 to 1733. Other ships, said to contain vast cargo, sank in storms through 1743. In addition to Spanish, there were British, Portuguese and Dutch treasures lost at sea. Evidence of these wrecks exists in coins that washed up on the coasts and litter the ocean floor.
Considerations
5. Though tales of elaborate treasure chests are exaggerated, the treasure itself was bountiful. The Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West Florida details recovered bounty from two wrecks.

In 1965, the recovery from the "1715 Nueva Espana fleet," provided a true portrayal of the functional treasure chest. A 1985 discovery referred to as the "motherlode" represented real bounty. The recovered wreck of the "Nuestra Senora de Atocha" yielded 52 chests of silver coins, bars and copper ingots as well as a realistic look at how treasure was transported.---www.ehow.com

The History of Treasure Hunting in California, US

2009-09-18T00:41:00.000-07:00

Golden State

GOLD

Gold was first discovered by the Spaniards as early as the 1500s, but mining operations did not begin until the 1780s along the Colorado River. Gold was next discovered in the San Gabriel River (near Los Angeles), San Francisco, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, San Jose, and Santa Cruz by Mexican prospectors who kept these finds secret. Of course, gold was then found at the infamous Sutter's Mill near Sacramento in 1848 and made headlines worldwide. The ensuing great California Gold Rush spawned massive gold discoveries in 40 counties. The richest, Tuolumne County, boasts 8 million troy ounces of gold taken since then. Lucky for you, gold has been discovered everywhere in the state!!

Placer Deposits

A placer deposit is a concentration of a natural material that has accumulated in unconsolidated sediments of a stream bed, beach, or residual deposit. Gold derived by weathering or other process from lode deposits is likely to accumulate in placer deposits because of its weight and resistance to corrosion. In addition, its characteristically sun-yellow color makes it easily and quickly recognizable even in very small quantities.

The gold pan or miner's pan is a shallow sheet-iron vessel with sloping sides and flat bottom used to wash gold-bearing gravel or other material containing heavy minerals. The process of washing material in a pan, referred to as "panning," is the simplest, most commonly used, and least expensive method for a prospector to separate gold from the silt, sand, and gravel of the stream deposits. It is a tedious, back-breaking job and only with practice does one become proficient in the operation. Thankfully, technology finally caught up with our gold fever and brought us metal detectors!

Many placer districts in California have been mined on a large scale as recently as the mid-1950's. Streams draining the rich Mother Lode region--the Feather, Mokelumne, American, Cosumnes, Calaveras, and Yuba Rivers--and the Trinity River in northern California have concentrated considerable quantities of gold in gravels. In addition, placers associated with gravels that are stream remnants from an older erosion cycle occur in the same general area.

You can always ask for permission to hunt on any private property, but there are also several places you can pan and metal detect in public access areas. As always, please respect other's claims.

Some of the following Public Access Areas are controlled by the BLM or the National Forest Service. Contact the designated authority for more information including maps and regulations before you go out.

GEMS

GARNET - Gem- and specimen-quality white to pale green grossularite garnet occurs on Indian Creek in Siskiyou County and along Traverse Creek near Georgetown in Eldorado County. Other locations for these types of grossularites are the south side of Watts Valley in Fresno County, near Selma in Tulare County, near Big Bar in Butte County and near El Toro in Orange County. Some of the finest quality spessartite garnet known come from pegmatites in San Diego County. Spessartites have been found on Gem Hill near Mesa Grande and in mines in the Rincon and Pala Districts. The most productive area with the finest quality garnets is on the western side of Hatfield Creek Valley near Romona. Near Indian Head Hill in San Diego County is a deposit of fine-quality hessonite garnet, and another deposit is near Dos Cabezas.

AGATE - California's "Mojave Blue" agate has gained a great deal of attention in the past several years. This pastel blue or blue-gray agate cuts into attractive cabochons for jewelry and, in the hands of an expert carver, makes outstanding carvings.

Specialty Stones - Deposits in the State are blessed with a variety of collector/specialty stones. Stones have been cut from fine-quality, pink apatite from San Diego County. Some small colorless stones have been cut from analcine, but the location from which the material was recovered is unknown. Fine-quality, brown colored stones have been cut from axinite from deposits in Calaveras, Madera, Riverside, and San Diego Counties. Benitoite, the State gemstone, is the collector/specialty stone for which the State is best known. San Benito County is the only source of this fine, blue colored gem. Large, fine-quality, light to medium green colored stones can be cut from fluorite found in Los Angeles County. Large, colorless stones are cut from scheelite from deposits in Kern and Inyo Counties. Nearly flawless, colorless stones have been cut from natrolite from San Benito County. The author also has seen natrolite stones that were labeled as being from Los Angeles County. Deposits in the State also yield fine-quality, brown epidote, colorless calcite and colemanite, and augelite.

QUARTZ CRYSTALS - Deposits in California are another source of significant amounts of quality quartz crystal. For many years cobbles and round crystals have been found in streambeds in Amador and Calveras Counties. The best quality, largest, and most abundant crystals come from ancient stream channels in the Mokelumne Hill area of Calveras County. Over the years, various mines in the area have produced thousands of kilograms of rock crystal, with some of the individual crystals weighing as much as 275 kilograms and many of the crystals measuring more than 600 millimeters in length and 250 millimeters in diameter. The American Museum of Natural History has a 150 millimeter sphere cut from a Mokelumne Hill rock crystal. Additionally, the pegmatites of Hiriart Hill, San Diego County, have produced hundreds of kilograms of fine-quality rock crystal from which a number of 60 to 90 millimeter spheres have been cut.

TOURMALINE - Tourmaline was, until recently, the single largest contributor to the value of gemstones produced from California. And for the past 5 years, California has ranked as high as second and as low as sixth in the value of natural gemstone produced in the United States. The State's fabulous tourmalines were discovered by the gemstone industry in the late 1870's or early 1880's. The caveat, discovery by the gemstone industry, is used because Native Americans discovered and used these beautiful tourmalines long before that.

Since their discovery, the tourmaline deposits in Riverside and San Diego Counties have had more tourmaline produced and of greater value than any other deposits in the Northern Hemisphere. In fact, it is probable that only the deposits in Brazil have been more productive.

One of the reasons for the productivity of the area is the longevity of the individual mines. Many of them have operated intermittently from the 1890's until the present. The famous Himalaya Mine is quite likely the best example.

Records indicate that from 1898 until 1914, the Himalaya was the world's largest producer of tourmaline. Furthermore, the records indicate that in 1904 production from the mine was at least 5.5 metric tons. In 1989, 84 years later, a single pocket in the mine produced more than 0.5 metric ton of tourmaline.

The history of production from the mine is not one of steady continuous operation. The mine operated continuously from 1898 until 1914, after which it operated sporadically until 1952. At this time, it once again began continuous operations that lasted until 1964 when it returned to intermittent operation until 1977. Since then the mine has been in operation under the direction of Pala International.

California tourmalines come in all colors except certain shades of blue and yellow. They also occur in bicolors, tricolors, and concentrically and laterally zoned combinations. Crystals vary in diameter from about 3 millimeters to as much as 125 millimeters, and vary in length from about 12 millimeters to as much as 250 millimeters.

Because of the large size of the crystals available, some large stones have been cut from California tourmaline. A 400-carat pink-red stone has been cut, as well as a flawless 75 carat green to pink bicolor and flawless 30- to 40 carat green to colorless to pink tricolored stones.

California deposits should continue to produce quantities of faceting, carving, and cabochon grade, as well as specimen-grade tourmalines for some time into the future. In late 1992, a new deposit of tourmaline was discovered in Riverside County that could result in greater production over even a longer period of time.

TURQUOISE - The production of turquoise from deposits in California can be traced back to pre-Colombian Native Americans. Prehistoric mining tools have been found in some of the old workings of the turquoise mines in San Bernardino County.

Over the years, the State's deposits have produced a substantial amount of turquoise. Deposits are located in San Bernardino, Imperial, and Inyo Counties. The material occurs as nodules and as vein filling. Most of the nodules are small in size, about the size of the end of your thumb, and the vein material is about 4 millimeters thick. In the better grade materials, the color varies from a pale to a dark blue, poorer grade materials are greenish-blue and green in color. Some of the material has yellow-brown limonite spiderwebbing.

In the past, a number of turquoise mines operated in the State, several or more mines in each of the counties. Today, only a single mine, the Apache Canyon Mine, is commercially producing turquoise. Material from the mine is a fine blue color, hard, and takes a good polish.

LOST TREASURE

As in other areas of the US, there are several tales of lost California treasure concerning caches buried for safety. In many of these stories, people either died or forgot where they buried the stash.---www.prospectorsdepot.com

Stone tools and rare animal bones discovered in the Dominican Republic

2009-09-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

A prehistoric water-filled cave in the Dominican Republic has become a "treasure trove" with the announcement by Indiana University archaeologists of the discovery of stone tools, a small primate skull in remarkable condition, and the claws, jawbone and other bones of several species of sloths.
The discoveries extend by thousands of years the scope of investigations led Charles Beeker, director of Academic Diving and Underwater Science Programs at IU Bloomington's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and his interdisciplinary team of collaborators. The researchers' focus has been on the era a mere 500 years ago when the Old World and New World first met after Christopher Columbus stepped ashore in the Caribbean -- and on scintillating pirate lore. This rare find is expected to give insights into the earliest inhabitants of the Greater Antilles and the animals they encountered.
"To be honest, I couldn't believe my eyes as I viewed each of these astonishing discoveries underwater," Beeker said. "The virtually intact extinct faunal skeletons really amazed me, but what may prove to be a fire pit from the first human occupation of the island just seems too good to be true. But now that the lithics (stone tools) are authenticated, I can't wait to direct another underwater expedition into what may prove to become one of the most important prehistoric sites in all the Caribbean."
Beeker and researchers Jessica Keller and Harley McDonald found the tools and bones in fresh water 28- to 34-feet deep in a cave called Padre Nuestro. Nearby, and also underwater in the same cave, were found more recent Taino artifacts. The Taino were the first Native American peoples to encounter Europeans. Beeker and his colleagues have been diving in this particular cave, which sits beneath a limestone bluff and is only accessible after submerging into a small pool, since 1996 as they studied its use as a Taino water-gathering site.
Geoffrey Conrad, director of the Mathers Museum of World Culture at IU Bloomington and professor of anthropology, said the tools are estimated to be 4,000 to 6,500 years old. The bones might range in age from 4,000 and 10,000 years old. While sloth bones are not uncommon, he knows of only a handful of other primate skulls found in the Caribbean.
"I know of no place that has sloths, primates and humanly made stone tools together in a nice, tight association around the same time," said Conrad, also associate vice provost for research at IU Bloomington. "Right now it looks like a potential treasure trove of data to help us sort out the relationship in time between humans and extinct animals in the Greater Antilles. This site definitely is worthy of a large-scale investigation."
The three stone tools and remnants, made of basalt and limestone, were examined by internationally known IU anthropologists Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick, who told researchers the palm-sized stones showed unmistakable signs of human craftsmanship. Toth and Schick are co-directors of the Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of Technology (CRAFT) Stone Age Institute in Bloomington.
IU primate expert Kevin Hunt told researchers the primate could have been a howler monkey which is extinct in the Caribbean. Keller said the sloth bones came from six, and possibly seven, sloths and include several species, including one the size of a black bear and another the size of a large dog. She said the primate skull is significantly different than the other primate skulls found in the Caribbean.
"Very few primate skulls have been found in the Caribbean," she said. "The others, found in the late 1800s and early 1900s, are three times as large. We have received a permit to bring the skull to Indiana University for further study. It's all very exciting."
Conrad said the lithics and bones, which have arrived at Beeker's laboratory in the School of HPER, have not only expanded the research program to an earlier time but also to an issue of concern worldwide -- the extinction of native birds and animals upon the arrival of humans. Caribbean sloths are among the many species that became extinct soon after the presence of humans.
Researchers with the Office of Underwater Science in the School of HPER work closely with cultural, historical, and tourism agencies and organizations in the Dominican Republic to protect and explore the country's cultural heritage and natural history. Keller said local interest in the discoveries has been phenomenal. The cave where they were discovered, which is part of an aquifer and cave system that supplies water to nearby resorts, has been closed for research purposes.
"There's a strong interest in protecting it, in having the research continue," Keller said. "Our partners were excited before we even found the primate."
The study is being conducted in cooperation with the Secretariat of State for Culture through the Office of Underwater Heritage and the Museum of Dominican Man, the Secretariat of State for Tourism, and the Secretariat of State for Environment and Natural Resources.---www.sciencedaily.com

Something about the National Treasure

2009-09-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

There's serious Nick Cage, and there's paycheck Nick Cage. Strictly speaking, the two are as different as Oscar and Jerry ? as in, the little gold trophy and the schlock merchant Bruckheimer.
Nicolas Cage and Mr. Bruckheimer, the producer whose name is synonymous with overkill, have turned up in the same credits before, in movies such as "Gone in 60 Seconds," "Con Air" and "The Rock" ? entertaining, sure, but distant relations of serious Cage movies "Leaving Las Vegas" (for which he won best actor) and "Adaptation" (for which he lost to an inferior Jack Nicholson in "About Schmidt").
So when something such as "National Treasure," a safe-for-kids Disney caper, comes along, you expect paycheck Cage, right? Right. He willingly and cheerfully embarrasses himself here in a B-grade role.
Mr. Cage is Benjamin Franklin Gates, a nerdy historian who quixotically chases after a family legend about a lost cache of priceless booty from ancient Egypt. The map to these riches is encrypted on the back of the Declaration of Independence.
The treasure fable has a "Da Vinci Code"-like sexiness, revolving as it does around some of the Founding Fathers' connections to the shadowy Freemason fraternity. The movie, directed by John Turteltaub (I'll nominate "While You Were Sleeping" as his best), has a cartoon villain in Ian Howe (Sean Bean of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy) and some woefully bad acting from Diane Kruger (Helen of "Troy").
That said, "Treasure" has some surprising charms. The screenplay, from the teamwork of Jim Kouf and Cormac and Marianne Wibberly, is a cleverly conceived cat-and-mouse game of clues and riddles wrapped in a web of historical minutiae, including letters to the editor written by Benjamin Franklin (no coincidence that his namesake is the movie's hero) under the pseudonym Silence Dogood; forgotten names such as John Snow and John Pass, who recast the Liberty Bell; and ciphering techniques used in Revolutionary War-era spy letters. That historical footnotes such as these figure decisively in a heist picture is a real feat of imagination.
If nothing else, "Treasure" will live on as a handy teacher's aid. It spends quality time in historically important American cities, including the District, Philadelphia and New York.
In terms of pure entertainment, though, the movie frustrates. At two-plus hours, it's too long, and key plot points are frequently silly. Gates and Howe, initially partners in treasure hunting, then rivals, both penetrate the National Archives, which houses the Declaration, with incredible ease. Though appealing to the eye, Miss Kruger, as an archives curator, fails to sell her character for a second.
The eternally busy Harvey Keitel plays an FBI agent in the command-and-control mold of his "Pulp Fiction" character, the Wolf. But here, as a good guy on the trail of thieves, the Wolf has no fangs.
The most likeable thing about "Treasure" is Gates' pious love of history. The treasure he seeks has dogged his family for generations. (Jon Voight plays his skeptical historian father.)
So, while he's attracted by the prospect of riches and restoring the family name in academia, Gates is motivated above all by a desire to protect the country's patrimony. You see, if Howe ? a Brit, naturally ? gets to the Declaration before he does, it's as good as trashed.---www.washingtontimes.com

Shipwrecked treasure discovered using Google Maps

2009-09-17T05:37:00.000-07:00

Treasure hunter Nathan Smith testifies that he used Google maps to find buried treasure in South Texas. Smith also monitored the treasures location with updated satellite images to ensure that no one was poking around long enough to gain legal rights to his findings.
The 39-year-old musician from Los Angeles located a 19h century boat, which has a supposed cargo of gold and silver off the Texas Gulf coast. Smith is attempting to gain rights to dig at the location where he believes the missing ship is. He believes this to be the location because of written accounts found on Google and the readings of gold and silver from metal detectors at the site.
Refugio County estate is making claim to owning the land and wants Smith to stop excavating immediately. He is currently looking for investors to take part in the dig. The treasure Smith estimates to be about $3 billion in all. The inspiration comes from the Nicolas Cage film National Treasure. The ship supposedly sank only to later be found by the Comanche Indians who buried some of it. Smith testifies that the locations appears to look something like a shoe print and that you can see an actual “X” where he thinks part of the ship’s capstan is.---www.slashgear.com

Several important facts about treasure hunting

2009-09-16T00:31:00.000-07:00

Treasure Hunting, searching for lost or hidden riches, especially jewels and gold or silver in the form of coins, bullion, ornaments, candlesticks, utensils, or other objects. Treasure hunters also search for lost or hidden statues, cannons, and other objects that are worth money because of their artistic or historic value. Treasure worth millions of dollars lies underwater in the remains of sunken ships. Pirate treasure is buried on some seacoasts and islands. Hoards of money and other valuables are concealed in buildings, in caves, and in the ground where they were hidden for safekeeping by their owners. Other riches lie in archeological sites such as tombs, buried cities, and abandoned ruins.
Sunken Treasure
The major sunken-treasure areas are the Gulf of Mexico, the western Caribbean, and the waters off the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the Azores. They hold the hulks of Spanish treasure ships that sank while carrying riches from the New World, 1500–1820. Some of the treasure has been recovered, but gold, silver, and jewels worth millions of dollars probably still lie below the sea. Other rich waters are those near the Philippines and the Marianas; a number of Spanish ships sank here while carrying silver coins from Mexico to the Philippines to purchase Oriental luxuries.
Many other areas of the world hold valuable shipwrecks. In the Indian Ocean, for example, are a number of European trading ships that sank while sailing between Europe and the Far East. In the Mediterranean Sea are ancient and medieval vessels that were wrecked while carrying statues, vases, cannons, and other items. Among the 1,100 known shipwrecks in United States waters are some with gold cargoes.
Treasure wrecks are sometimes found accidentally by a fisherman, a sponge diver, or a lucky treasure hunter. More often, they are found as the result of a search. Professional treasure hunters may spend months in research to discover the general location of a wreck and the value of its cargo. They study such records as naval histories, insurance company records, logbooks, old newspapers, and reports of earlier salvage attempts.
Then they search in the general area of the wreck, often with instruments such as metal detectors and depth recorders. Even with these instruments sunken ships, especially those made of wood, are difficult to find. Wooden timbers may rot away, leaving only ballast stones, metal parts (cannons, anchors, hardware), and nonperishable cargo. The remains of the wreck may be covered by coral, sand, gravel, or mud.
After a wreck is found, divers may spend months in recovering its treasure. Their equipment—besides diving gear—usually includes a hydraulic blaster, which cuts away loose sand, and an air lift, which sucks water, silt, and small objects up a pipe to the surface.
In ancient and medieval times, skin divers were able to recover some valuables from wrecks. Spanish crews used diving bells to rescue several hundred million dollars' worth of riches from their sunken ships. In 1687 William Phips, an American shipping merchant, recovered treasure worth about $1,000,000 from a sunken Spanish galleon.
The development of diving suits in the 19th century and of scuba equipment in the 20th century greatly increased the extent of underwater treasure hunting. One of the richest finds was made in 1985 off the Florida coast by Treasure Salvors, Inc., a professional treasure-hunting company. After a 16-year search, the company discovered the Spanish treasure ship Nuestra Señora de Atocha, which had sunk in 1622, and recovered more than 100,000 silver coins, hundreds of gold and silver bars, and thousands of
Hidden Treasure
Money and other valuables have been hidden for safekeeping since ancient times. Many hoards still lie untouched in their original hiding places.
Pirates who raided shipping in the waters off northeastern South America buried some of their booty on Caribbean islands, as well as along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of North America. These buried treasures inspired hundreds of tales and led to many unsuccessful treasure hunts.
Before banks came into wide use in the 20th century, many people kept their savings hidden at home. Favorite hiding places were in attics, inside walls, behind loose chimney bricks, under floorboards, and under fenceposts. In the western United States are caches hidden by outlaws who robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains. Some abandoned mining shacks probably conceal bags of gold dust hidden by prospectors.
Hidden treasure is seldom found by following the directions to a spot marked by a cross on a faded map. Such treasure maps are usually fake or hopelessly vague. Less romantic but more useful are maps compiled from treasure reports, showing general locations where treasure has been reported lost or hidden.
Treasure hunters on land, as on sea, may spend months studying old books and other sources for treasure information. They may use instruments such as metal detectors to help them search likely places. However, most hidden treasure is found accidentally in the course of activities such as demolishing buildings and digging excavations.
Other Sources of Treasure
Tombs, burial mounds, buried cities, and abandoned ruins were rich sources of treasure in earlier times. Egyptian pyramids, for example, often contained jewels, gold ornaments, richly decorated furniture, statues, and other precious objects. Nearly all pyramids were looted by treasure hunters in ancient times. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, treasure hunters carried away many art objects from the sites of ancient civilizations. They often carelessly destroyed other relics in their rush to obtain treasures that could be sold to collectors. By the 20th century many countries had laws controlling the excavation and exportation of historical relics and art objects.
Treasure Hunting Laws
The rights to a treasure trove (recovered treasure that has no apparent owner) vary in different countries. In the United States treasure trove is treated in the same way as any other found property. State laws vary, but the finder is usually allowed to keep the treasure. Some states require permits for treasure hunting on state lands. The U.S. Treasury Department issues excavation permits for public lands. The federal income tax laws apply to discovered treasure.
The law on sunken treasure is complicated. Many shipwrecks are the property of shipowners, insurance companies, or state or national governments. Treasure hunters may make an agreement with an owner to recover the treasure for a fee or a percentage of the find. If a wreck has no known owner, its cargo usually belongs to the finder.---history.howstuffworks.com

Searching for Treasure

2009-09-16T00:25:00.000-07:00

Ever been curious about what lies beneath? Well, these men take it a step further by literally “digging” for the answers. Meet the new generation of bounty hunters.
Just moments after the killer tsunami ripped through Banda Aceh in northern Sumatra in 2004, the telephone lines in 27-year-old Steven Ng’s workplace rang off the hook.
“Mr Steven, I need an ACE 250 a.s.a.p. Make sure it gets here before the debris clears up!” an Indonesian-accented voice crackled through the receiver.
Similar orders poured in from all over Indonesia within the next few months. Ng’s clients were not a very emotional lot. Rather than spending their time grieving over the massive loss and destruction in Aceh, they descended on the town like flies, with alien-like contraptions slung across their arm, beeping away.
These were metal detectorists (yes, don’t snicker, that’s what they’re called), out looking for some coins, perhaps, and, oh, yes, lots of precious jewels from the family heirloom.
“Business was great back then,” reminisces Ng, the founder of KK Instruments, a Malaysian company that specialises in metal detectors. However, he’s quick to point out that his clients aren’t as heartless as they sound. Passion’s the word, the raison d’être. It’s the classic metal detectorist syndrome.
These are just like any other hobbyist: they’d go to great lengths for their hobbies.
Just how great? A simple online search yielded hundreds of metal detector clubs, from the US to Australia, with wholesome names like Weekend Wanderers and Tameside. Some go as far as to offer free rescue services for the diamond ring you’ve dropped in your backyard. Heck, there’s even a website on how to form your own metal detecting club if none of those appeal to you.
Then, there are the forums.
These are like virtual madhouses in which metal heads can brag about their latest finds, or if that’s not convincing enough, upload pictures of their finds. One may also participate in discussions about the various metal detector models (as if they were cars) or how to master the art of persuasion in order to obtain government permission for on-site excavation (or else, the hobby could turn felonious).
No hunting buddy? Easy; just find one in the forum!
This is treasure-hunting 21st century style. Long John Silver does it with an eye patch and a map; these people do it with GTP 1350, Infinium and Sea Hunters.
According to Emily Yoffe, the writer of Slate magazine who dubbed metal detecting “the world’s worst hobby”, the modern history of metal detecting is ignominious. Alexander Graham Bell used an experimental model in 1881 in order to locate the assassin’s bullet lodged in President James Garfield.
Unfortunately, no one remembered that Garfield was lying on a mattress with newfangled metal coils, causing the machine to emit a continuous whine, resulting in failure to accurately locate the bullet. Garfield’s heart gave out when doctors cut into him.
Since then, those clunky machines the size of my dinner table have evolved into something lighter and easier to use. In the 60s, metal detecting officially became a “sport”.
Gold diggers
It wasn’t until 2003 when news broke that the government had successfully uncovered several historical artifacts underneath Malacca’s old city using a metal detector that metal detecting started taking off as a hobby in Malaysia.
“A friend asked me to source the gadget for him, and pretty soon, I was also getting requests from people I barely knew. Naturally, I made a business out of it,” Ng says.
However, metal detecting remains a relatively untapped market in Malaysia. It’s a male-dominated sport composed of mainly lonesome adventurers in their 30s and unemployed baby boomers.
Enthusiast Saiful Ahmad, 39, an aircraft technician, has about a million “strike-it-rich” stories to tell.
“The Filipinos just uncovered some German gold in one of their caves,” he says. “It was buried there by the Japanese during World War II, but they couldn’t bring it back to Japan after surrendering because they failed to relocate the site.”
Another hot off the rumour mill: “The Singapore government was burrowing a hole for their new LRT line when their drill hit something solid and broke. They found an actual treasure chest from the pre-war days and it’s probably worth millions of ringgit!”
Meanwhile, Saiful himself has amassed quite a collection since he started about a year ago.
“I usually do it with a couple of my buddies over the holidays,” he reveals. “We’ll hike to Kota Tinggi and camp for a few nights. I do my own thing and they do theirs. I’ve found some gold on my trip, but it was in tiny chunks. I still have them with me.”
Ng believes Saiful has hit the jackpot more often than he lets on.
“My clients are very discreet about their finds. But when they keep purchasing newer and more sophisticated upgrades from me, that just leaves me wondering: why would they bother buying anything else if they didn’t find anything?
“You have to probe them for the right answers. Many of them would only tell me after numerous assurances that I could be of some help, that I could recommend them the right add-ons to improve their future searches.”
That’s how metal detectorists work in Asia. They are highly secretive, and work independently, unlike their Western counterparts. Not only that, the professionals (or the people who do this for a living) won’t admit that they are professionals. They’d rather live a hermit’s life than share their knowledge with newbies like me.
Could this stem from “kiasu-ism” or the fear that their favourite hunting grounds will be inundated with other treasure hunters? Or is it something much more serious?
“Ya la, in a sense, if you found a stash of fortune that doesn’t belong to you, you’d have to declare it straightaway, or the Government will seize it from you,” says Saiful. “That’s why people don’t share their stories.”
And what astounding stories these are. Some have found historical artifacts, others gold coins — oh, the list is endless.
In my quest to find out how true these stories are, I ask Ng if I could give metal detecting a shot. So off I set to the hilly forest of Bukit Kiara one Sunday morning with Ng, Saiful and several metal detectors in tow.
No pain, no gain
The one thing that Saiful forgot to mention is that people would stare — some inquisitively, and others suspiciously, as if we were convicts on the loose. I can’t help but feel my face growing hot with embarrassment, as we heave the Scorpion Gold Stinger and Master Hunter CX Plus into a wooded area.
“Oh, get used to it,” remarks Ng. “The time I did this in Malacca with my friends, a huge crowd started gathering around us. All the other passers-by must have been wondering what the heck was happening.”
Since Bukit Kiara was once a rubber plantation, I’m curious about what I would find there. Only recently, Ng and another metal head, Shafiq Adnan, 21, a research engineer, had unearthed a few ancient relics, including a Celtic cross and even a sword, in an oil palm plantation in Johor. I wonder if beginner’s luck could help me score a Celtic cross, or at least some century-old coins, of my own.
“Here, use this,” says Ng, thrusting the Master Hunter into my hands.
The Master Hunter, I’ve been told, could detect objects up to one foot below ground and is the choice gadget for beginners. Although hardly the epitome of style, it has a slick, wire-coiled body and a digital display console that shows you where the hidden treasure is and whether it is iron, gold, bronze, silver or (as if to mock you) a tin foil. This nifty function makes it much easier than conventional detectors, which rely on different sounds to indicate different metals.
Parks are great places to test out your metal detector.
I switch my device on. It buzzes to life, drowning out the constant hum of mosquitoes around me. I am simultaneously scratching myself silly and swinging the bottom of the metal detector over the earth, leaving no bases uncovered.
“Oh, I got one!” quips Saiful, bending down for a closer look. “Cheh, just a tin foil.”
Ten minutes and a couple of miserable tin foils later, the drone of my metal detector gets louder each time it hovers over a certain spot, indicating that something is there.
I push on the pinpoint button like I was told to, and the console says “silver”, seven inches deep. The first thing that flashes in my mind is, “Omigod why didn’t I bring a friggin’ shovel?!”
I move on reluctantly, overwhelmed with the “to dig or not to dig” question that every metal detectorist must face at least once in their lives. Deep down, however, I know my fate has been sealed: I’m not about to start digging up public premises like a rabid prairie dog without getting permission from the Government first.
You shouldn’t either, unless you’re hankering for some downtime in a jail cell. Now I know why the women aren’t interested: it is a painstaking and morale-shattering process.
My next two finds are not as sensational. They are iron, five and seven inches below ground respectively. I wouldn’t know what to do with scrap metal or steel rods anyway.
Ng is not at all surprised with my luck.
“Unless it’s a really crappy day, metal detectorists usually have an 80% chance of finding something,” he says. “Though I can’t really guarantee what kind of stuff you’ll end up with.”
Shafiq, for instance, considers his luckiest treasure-hunting day to be the time when he went scuba diving with his waterproof metal detector off Mersing and uncovered a shipwreck. He took home a few precious items, including a silver cup and some old coins which he has kept to this very day.
On the other hand, Ng had a customer who found a strange amulet the same way. What ensued later, he says, seemed very Exorcist-like: “He started having nightmares every day. Then he got into a car accident. Then his wife found out and gave him a scolding of a lifetime. So he sold it off out of superstition.”
Oh, well. It’s a bit like playing slot machines — you never know when you might hit the big time. The only difference is that with this sport, you could end up with a bad scare and a “metal detectorist elbow”, which is a debilitating case of holding the device at an awkward angle for a prolonged time.---www.thestar.com.my

Researchers Found Possibly the Earliest Caribbean Inhabitants

2009-09-16T00:21:00.000-07:00

Researchers from the University of Indiana Bloomington have announced the discovery of a “treasure trove” of stone tools and the bones of several now-extinct Caribbean animals in a prehistoric water-filled cave in the Dominican Republic. The findings include a small primate skull in remarkable condition (possibly a howler monkey, which is now extinct), and the claws, jawbone and other bones of several species of sloths, one of which was the size of a black bear and another the size of a large dog. The freshwater cave, 28 to 34 feet deep, is known as Padre Nuestro (Our Father) and it is accessible only by diving into a small pool beneath a limestone bluff.
The tools are estimated to be about 4,000 to 6,500 years old, according to Geoffrey Conrad, director of the Mathers Museum of World Culture at IU Bloomington. He said the animal could be between 4,000 and 10,000 years old. The discoveries extend by thousands of years the scope of investigations led Charles Beeker, director of Academic Diving and Underwater Science Programs at IU Bloomington’s School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and his interdisciplinary team of collaborators. The researchers’ focus has been on the era a mere 500 years ago when the Old World and New World first met after Christopher Columbus stepped ashore in the Caribbean — and on scintillating pirate lore. This rare find is expected to give insights into the earliest inhabitants of the Greater Antilles and the animals they encountered.
“I know of no place that has sloths, primates and humanly made stone tools together in a nice, tight association around the same time,” Conrad said in a statement. “Right now it looks like a potential treasure trove of data to help us sort out the relationship in time between humans and extinct animals in the Greater Antilles. This site definitely is worthy of a large-scale investigation.”
“To be honest, I couldn’t believe my eyes as I viewed each of these astonishing discoveries underwater,” Beeker said. “The virtually intact extinct faunal skeletons really amazed me, but what may prove to be a fire pit from the first human occupation of the island just seems too good to be true. But now that the lithics (stone tools) are authenticated, I can’t wait to direct another underwater expedition into what may prove to become one of the most important prehistoric sites in all the Caribbean.”
Nearby, and also underwater in the same cave, were found more recent Taino artifacts. The Taino were the first Native American peoples to encounter Europeans. The three stone tools and remnants, made of basalt and limestone, were examined by internationally known IU anthropologists Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick, who told researchers the palm-sized stones showed unmistakable signs of human craftsmanship. Toth and Schick are co-directors of the Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of Technology (CRAFT) Stone Age Institute in Bloomington.
Conrad said the lithics and bones, which have arrived at Beeker’s laboratory in the School of HPER, have not only expanded the research program to an earlier time but also to an issue of concern worldwide — the extinction of native birds and animals upon the arrival of humans. Caribbean sloths are among the many species that became extinct soon after the presence of humans.
Researchers with the Office of Underwater Science in the School of HPER work closely with cultural, historical, and tourism agencies and organizations in the Dominican Republic to protect and explore the country’s cultural heritage and natural history. Keller said local interest in the discoveries has been phenomenal. The cave where they were discovered, which is part of an aquifer and cave system that supplies water to nearby resorts, has been closed for research purposes.
“There’s a strong interest in protecting it, in having the research continue,” Keller said. “Our partners were excited before we even found the primate.”
The study is being conducted in cooperation with the Secretariat of State for Culture through the Office of Underwater Heritage and the Museum of Dominican Man, the Secretariat of State for Tourism, and the Secretariat of State for Environment and Natural Resources.---www.repeatingislands.com

Probably one of the greatest treasure hunts

2009-09-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

In 1981, Indiana Jones made his big-screen debut re-igniting world-wide interest in history's most hunted relic: the Ark of the Covenant.
That same year, two real-life raiders went on their own search for the Ark. There were no Nazis and no snake pits - like the movie.
Just two renegade Rabbis on a mission. Their search came to an end in Jerusalem.
"God signed, like with a pen, the location where the Ark of the Covenant was located. You can see it today even, on the rock," said Gershon Salomon, Founder of Temple Mount Faithful.
Designed by God, created by Moses, and revered by the Israelites, from the Sinai Desert to the Temple of Solomon, the Ark of the Covenant was the place of meeting between God and man.
In 586 B.C., Israel was conquered by the Babylonians. The Temple was raided by Nebuchadnezzar's army and the Ark disappeared from the pages of history.
"What happened, why did this most dramatic instrument of God's glory and power in human history suddenly vanish?," questioned Joel Rosenberg, Author of Dead Heat.
"All what we know is legends," said Archaeologist Gabriel Barkay who believes the legends are what makes so many people interested in finding the Ark.
Those legends stretch all over the ancient world - starting with Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon.
"The Ark of the Covenant was made of wood and it was gold plated. Such an amount of gold would be melted down at the time of war immediately after it was captured," Barkay told CBN.
When asked if he thought the Ark itself was destroyed at that time, Barkay told CBN that is what he believed.
Jewish writings say the prophet Jeremiah hid the Ark on Mount Nebo in Jordan. Another legend claims it was smuggled to Ethiopia by the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
In Israel, most Rabbis agree that when it comes to the Ark all roads lead back to Jerusalem. They say the Ark never left the city. To them, the so-called "Lost Ark" was never really lost.
On June 7, 1967, Israeli troops recaptured Jerusalem in the Six-day War. The Western Wall was in Jewish hands and those hands were ready to dig.
Archaeologists exposed parts of the wall that had been buried for 2000 years. Not all of the digging was done legally. In 1981, two of Israel's highest-ranking Rabbis, Shlomo Goren and Yehuda Getz picked up their pick-axes and started chiseling their way under the Temple Mount.
"And he knew that at the end of the gate he will come to the secret room where the ark of covenant is located," said Salomon, who was also one of the paratroopers who liberated the Western Wall in 1967.
Salomon was there 14 years later the night Rabbi Getz opened a secret passage in the Wall and remembers their conversation.
"It was after midnight. And he called me and said to me, Gershon, come immediately, don't wait, your dream is going to be fulfilled. 'What happened?,' I told him. 'The Messiah came?' And he told me, 'He is coming almost.'"
What came next was a subterranean slugftest according to Salomon.
"Arab demonstrations, you know? The Israelis are coming to build their temple underneath the dome of the rock."
At the end of the day, the passage to the Temple Mount was permanently sealed by Israeli Police.
"No doubt, I tell you. No doubt, we needed just two days more to come to the place where the ark of the covenant is located," Salomon explained.
"The work was done without archaeological supervision and when I was the official archaeologist of Jerusalem, I decided to stop the work," said Archaeologist Dan Bahat, who directed the excavation of the Western Wall tunnels.
According to him, the search for the Ark stops with Jeremiah 3:16.
"Prophet Jeremiah says, there will come a day when the ark of the covenant will not be seen, nor will it be visited which means that somehow, he sees the days when it will not be there. In other words, this was a hint from God. Don't look for the Ark of the Covenant!"
Scholars may not agree on the fate of the Ark but many of them agree on one thing: it's discovery could set in motion another event that's been 2000 years in the making - the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple.
"Perhaps when it's time to build the third temple, the second temple treasures will be found. Why? Because in Ezra and Nehemiah the Bible indicated that when it was time to build the second temple, God restored the treasures from the first temple which of course have been carted off to Babylon," said Rosenberg.
"When it's time to build a third temple, the second temple's treasures would be found. Wouldn't that be dramatic?," he concluded.
"It is soon to come, I tell you, I promise you, and you check me. Test me. It will be in our lifetime," added Salomon.--www.cbn.com

Making cash hunting for pirate treasures

2009-09-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

Making money while on a vacation isn’t a common occurrence — unless you get lucky on the slots. But if Vegas isn’t your style, don’t worry, you can still come home from a trip with your purse a little fatter.
There are legends of buried pirates’ treasure that was never found, gold that has still been seen in California rivers, and caves in the Midwest that abound with jewels and gems of all kinds. Although treasure hunting vacations may not make you millions, there is a good possibility of finding diamonds or gold — and even if you don’t, looking is half the fun.
Chances are you won’t be disappointed at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, an extremely rare diamond site where you get to keep what you find. Last year alone 946 diamonds were found, 27 of which were over one carat in weight. Most diamonds found are less then one carat and not big enough to be cut, but many visitors take their winnings home as souvenirs or have them made into jewelry. Though there is the occasional large find: In 1975, a whopping 16.37-carat rock was found. Finding bling of this size is rare, but it depends on how hard and deep you look.
Besides mining for diamonds, lots of other gems like emeralds, aquamarines, garnets, rubies, amethysts, and sapphires are still buried deep in the mountains. At Gem Mountain in North Carolina, gems of all shapes and sizes have been found, some even large enough to be cut and set in jewelry. Visitors can dig through real gemstone flumes with the help of mining experts while comparing their findings with friends and family to see who has the biggest and best.
Kay Buchanan owner of Gem Mountain says, “People love the idea of treasure hunting because it’s like gambling. You’re always hoping for the 'big' find. It’s something that everyone can do, young or old.” A real aquamarine mine is also open for tours and guests can watch miners search through the rocks for precious gems.
With the price of gold skyrocketing these days, panning for gold like the 49ers did during the California Gold Rush may be best way to strike it rich. Gold mining trips available through the California Gold Company take willing participants to Woods Creek, one of the richest creeks in California that still yields a good amount of gold.
The chances of finding gold are very likely and you can even keep what you find (up to a half ounce). Rob Goreham, founder of the California Gold Company thinks the reason why people like mining so much is the thrill of finding gold. He says, "It doesn’t matter the size of what is found, people are just excited to be out there searching.” Expert gold miners lead the trips to help with the digging, sluicing, and panning for gold.
The areas surrounding California Gold Country offer all different aspects of a gold miner's life like real working mines which are open for tours and gold and silver mining towns that can be explored. And after a long day in the mines or at the river, you can end it all off at a saloon with a sarsaparilla.
Nova Scotia's Money Pit mystery
Speaking of gold, you might be able to find a lost buried treasure among some old pirate islands. One in particular—Oak Island in Nova Scotia, Canada—has many legends surrounding what’s buried deep in its caves. The mysterious Treasure Pit (also known as the Money Pit), reportedly houses booty from the 18th century. No one knows for sure where it may have come from, a few theories have been suggested.
Even though this treasure hunt has been going on for more than 300 years without a single cent being recovered, excavations are conducted by determined groups who hold a Treasure Trove License in hopes of recovering an unforeseen amount of money.
And while tourists can’t explore its treasure sites by themselves on any given day, each year a festival, Explore Oak Island Days, is held where everyone can join in on the fun and legend of the Oak Island treasure. Hundreds of people attend Explore Oak Island Days each year because “the Money Pit mystery appeals to our childhood instincts. It ticks all the boxes in terms of those exciting stories which captured our imagination, and in a world where everything is so certain, it's compelling to ponder one of the very few remaining mysteries,” says Jo Atherton, founder of Oak Island Treasure.
So whether you love the legends or the jewels, a treasure hunt is the type of "working" vacation even homebodies can get behind.---www.cbc.ca

Hunting for Iraqi treasure

2009-09-07T06:39:00.000-07:00

U of T expert helps track priceless artifacts looted in 2003 invasion and scattered worldwide
The looting of Iraq's National Museum was one of the greatest scandals of the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Archaeologists had repeatedly warned Washington that, without protection, the Baghdad museum – which held the priceless cultural heritage of not just of Mesopotamia, but of mankind – would be ransacked by looters.
And it was.
But U.S. troops didn't react when Iraqis ravenously tore through the galleries for two straight days, carrying off 15,000 precious artifacts from the first 7,000 years of civilization.
The oldest known sculpture of a natural human face, the Warka Head, known as the Sumerian Mona Lisa, gone. A 4,500-year-old bronze figure of an Akkadian king, gone. At least 5,000 Sumerian cylinder seals engraved with the earliest form of writing, all gone.
"Stuff happens" was the notorious reaction of then-U.S. defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But the world's reaction was swift and furious.
The International Council on Monuments accused the U.S. of committing a "crime against humanity." Interpol immediately set up a task force to track the stolen property. Scholars flinched.
Even before the dust settled, it became clear that the most valuable artifacts, hidden a month before in basement lockers, had been targeted by organized thieves.
"I knew it was organized crime when I saw the storerooms had been unlocked and certain items removed," said then-museum director Donny George. "They knew where these items had been put."
And they knew where they were going – into the rapacious hands of unprincipled dealers and private collectors who didn't care how they'd been obtained. "People with no scruples but a lust for possession," says Edward Keall, a Royal Ontario Museum senior curator who is periodically called by Canada Customs to check incoming Mid-Eastern antiquities.
Five to seven years is the average lag time for famous stolen art or antiquities to surface and it's now six years since the museum's plunder. But despite an ongoing international crackdown on smuggled Iraqi artifacts, fewer than half the stolen treasures have been recovered.
Many were returned in the first few months, after the U.S. snapped into action and appointed Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a Manhattan district attorney in private life, to head a 13-member investigation team.
Bogdanos announced an amnesty, and by the fall of 2003 more than 3,000 items were returned voluntarily by locals, including the famed alabaster Warka Vase, albeit brought back in 14 pieces in a plastic bag. Another 900 objects were seized in raids and at checkpoints, among them 10 of the 42 most valuable artifacts. They included the Warka Head, found buried at a farmhouse, and the Bassetki statue, a 4,300-year-old copper lower torso and legs of a seated male figure. It had been hidden in a cesspool, submerged.
In the first few years, most of the still-missing objects were too hot to handle internationally. But in time, they began to emerge:
• In 2006, the headless stone statue of the Sumerian king, Entemena, was recovered after it was offered for sale to a dealer in New York. A year later, a 4,000-year-old inscribed clay tablet was pulled from eBay's Swiss website minutes before the close of bidding.
• In 2008, 11 cylinder seals, made of agate and alabaster, were found by customs agents in Philadelphia.
• Also last year, more than 700 items – ranging from gold necklaces and daggers to clay statues and pots and collectively worth millions of dollars – were returned by Syria after being seized from traffickers. It was the first mass return of artifacts. But not the last.
• Four months ago, Iraqi government officials handed over 531 items, including ancient coins and 165 statues and cylinder seals, which had been in the possession of two unidentified members of parliament.
• Last month, 69 artifacts were surrendered by Dutch art dealers after Interpol disclosed their illegal origin; among them, a terracotta relief of a bearded man praying, believed to be more than 2,000 years old.
Symbolically handed back, that is. The Dutch will display them until they can be safely returned to Iraq's museum. Further looting remains a threat, which is why the museum opened on Feb. 23 this year, only to be shut down again within hours.
As horrific, however, as the original ransacking was, "it was only the initial catastrophe," says Clemens Reichel, a Mesopotamian archaeologist at the University of Toronto and a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum. In the years since, industrial-scale pillaging of thousands of southern Iraq's unprotected excavation sites has resulted in the disappearance of another 500,000 artifacts, he says.
"Most of the big sites have been hacked to pieces. You can see the destruction from satellite pictures taken before and since the war."
The looters not only steal, but destroy items of inestimable value, he says: "In retrieving one object, they'll throw away 50,000 smaller pieces that would be greatly important to archaeologists."
Before his recent move to Toronto, Reichel was at the University of Chicago's eminent Oriental Institute. Within a day of the museum rampage, he immediately became head of a unique project – to create a computerized database of the precise objects taken and track their status in the coming years.
No mean feat. Not all of the museum's collection had been catalogued or photographed. Though the official holdings count was 150,000, the full tally was closer to 500,000. A complete list of the losses could only be drawn up after an inventory of all the remaining items were compiled. With the help of other museums and scholars who'd photographed in the museum, Reichel painstakingly put together images of as many objects as possible.
The terrible irony is, he says, that for all his other sins, Saddam Hussein enforced a strict anti-smuggling policy. Looters were executed. "There was no market for Iraqi antiquities until the first Gulf War in 1990."
Now the market is flooded with them and there are collectors known in the U.S. and Europe, especially Germany, Switzerland and Norway. "That's the 'visible' market, where things are tightening up. But there's also the 'invisible' market, Japan and the wealthy Gulf states. Who knows what's there."
Reichel often sees objects on auction house websites that are suspicious. But suspicion, he sighs, isn't proof.---www.thestar.com

Auschwitz treasure discovered in a destroyed synagogue in Poland

2009-09-07T06:35:00.000-07:00

The town where Auschwitz was located has yielded a trove of Judaica.
During an excavation last month of the site of the destroyed Great Synagogue in Oswiecim, the town in southern Poland where Auschwitz was built, archeologists working from a Holocaust survivor's memory unearthed a unique trove of Jewish ritual objects.
The objects, which had been buried since the Holocaust, include three bronze candelabras, a bronze menorah, 10 chandeliers and a ner tamid, or eternal lamp, that once hung before the synagogue ark. Tiles, marble plaques, charred wood and other material from the synagogue, which was burned to the ground in 1939 by invading Nazi forces, also were uncovered.
"We didn't include a miracle in our operating budget, but now we have to deal with one," said Tomasz Kuncewicz, director of the Auschwitz Jewish Center, a prayer and study complex near the site of the notorious death camp.
The find represents the complete interior moveable furnishings of the synagogue.
"It's amazing to have found something so complete," Kuncewicz said. "It seems as if such a discovery never happened before."
Before World War II, Oswiecim was a bustling town of 12,000 people, more than half of them Jews. Most local Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and only one of the town's synagogues survived the war.
Long used as a warehouse, it was restituted to Polish Jews in 1998 and then refurbished and reconsecrated as part of the Auschwitz Jewish Center complex, which opened in 2000. The center tells the story of prewar Jewish life here and elsewhere in Poland.
Funded by Polish and Israeli sources and filmed for Israeli television, the four-week excavation got under way at the end of May.
The only clue where to dig had been the account of an elderly Holocaust survivor who recalled seeing the synagogue caretaker bury two large boxes near the synagogue shortly after the Nazi invasion in September 1939.
Archeologists from the University of Torun first dug at two sites based on the recollection of the survivor, Yishayahu Yarot.
Yarot was born in Oswiecim and moved to Israel after the war, where he became a shopkeeper in Ramat Hasharon. In 1998, when he was 90, Yarot had a chance encounter with a customer, Yariv Nornberg, a young Israeli just out of the army who was about to tour death camps in Poland. That led Yarot to recount his memory of synagogue officials burying two metal boxes.
He drew Nornberg a map showing where he thought the boxes were buried.
"He thought Torahs were buried, but no Torahs were found," Kuncewicz said.
After archeologists found nothing at the original digging places, they began a general excavation of the synagogue foundations.
"They excavated several trenches," Kuncewicz said. "The objects were found in the last place they were digging, just a few days before the end of the four-week excavation."
He said the recovered objects appear to have been hidden under the floor of the synagogue, below a staircase.
"When you find remnants of Jewish life so close to where the Nazis committed their horrors, it's extremely moving," Israeli filmmaker Yahaly Gat, who filmed the search, told Ma'ariv newspaper.
The uncovered objects appear to be generally in good condition, though covered with green corrosion.
Kuncewicz said they must go through a year-long restoration process that will cost about $100,000. They then will be displayed in the Jewish center.
"We feel a great responsibility to rescue and save this treasure and make it available to people who come to visit," Kuncewicz said. "These objects will definitely be evidence about the diversity and richness of Jewish life in Poland and in this town, which before the war was a thriving Jewish community."
The site where the Great Synagogue stood long had been an empty lot, with no indication that a building that could seat 2,000 people, constructed around 1800, had stood there.
In a related development, the Jewish center is developing a project to turn the house of Oswiecim's last Jewish resident, a Holocaust survivor who died four years ago, into a museum that will show typical Jewish family life in Poland.
The house stands next to the Jewish center complex.
The Auschwitz Jewish Center's exhibitions and activities, Kuncewicz said, serve to "give a broader context of the place. Here in this site, which symbolizes the destruction of the Jewish people, it shows that before this there was a thriving Jewish community, which lived here for over 500 years. This center is about this life, which was so tragically destroyed."---www.ujc.org

Earn a Lot from Treasure Hunting

2009-09-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

The air tastes warm and salty, and the midmorning sun glints off the turquoise waves that sway the Dare.

Thirty feet below the deck of this 83-foot salvage ship, a half-dozen scuba divers are scouring the remains of a 400-year-old Spanish galleon, which is laden with emeralds, pearls, silver and gold. I lean over the side and watch a diver emerge from the depths, his arm held high. He clutches what looks like a spiky black rock. He spits out his regulator and shouts, "Yeah!" The divers on the boat break into cheers. They instantly recognize the object he's holding as a mass of oxidized silver coins -- perhaps 50 all together -- that could be worth as much as $500,000.

Aboard the Dare, divers pass around the rock. One of them lifts the black mound to his nose and sniffs deeply. "Smell it," he tells me. "It smells like silver." The scent takes me back to my grandmother's kitchen and the aroma of her polished flatware.

These divers have been on this ship for more than a week, making four or five daily searches on an expedition that, until today, has been largely a bust. "This makes our whole trip worthwhile," says Josh Fisher-Abt, a 28-year-old diver whose grandfather created Mel Fisher's Treasures, the small outfit that organized this trip.

The family-owned business runs treasure exploration and recovery operations year-round in the warm tropical waters surrounding Key West. Over the past two decades, Mel Fisher's Treasures has grossed as much as $14 million in one year from the booty it has found. Seven of the past 10 years have not been profitable, however, so to ensure cash flow the firm raises $2.8 million a year from individual investors, who currently number about 200. Buying shares worth $10,000 to $80,000, the investors -- divers, small business owners, history buffs -- become part owners of Fisher's treasure-hunting operation and get paid in silver coins, gold chains, pearls and other spoils.

"This is about history," says Dave Pfent, 42, a lean, tan dentist who runs his own practice in Fort Myers, Fla. Pfent has been an investor in the company for two years at the $10,000 level and has made a dozen dives to various shipwreck sites that the company is excavating. But Pfent admits to other incentives too: He and his wife, Elizabeth, also a dentist, once had the thrill of finding emeralds (although they weren't worth much).

"Right now, I think it's better to invest in something you can hold, not something on paper," he says.

Mel Fisher, who died in 1998, was an early scuba aficionado and dive instructor. In 1953 he opened the first dive shop in the United States, in Redondo Beach, Calif. Fisher spent 16 years hunting for the Nuestra Seсora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon that disappeared in 1622 en route from Cuba to Spain. He moved to Key West to coordinate the search and hired researchers to comb through marine archives in Seville.

Although Fisher found the first artifact from the ship in 1971, it wasn't until July 20, 1985, that his divers finally found the main wreck 35 miles offshore, along with its sister ship, the Santa Margarita. Both vessels were loaded with treasure, about half of which the Fishers have since recovered.

"He went bankrupt five times before he hit it," says Sean Fisher, 31, another of Mel's grandsons, who is currently taking over business operations from his dad, Kim, 53.

After the initial find, the Fishers spent years mired in a legal battle with the state of Florida, which also laid claim to the wreck. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Fishers won a 5-to-2 decision in 1982. On the day of the high court's ruling, a state inspector was on the family's salvage ship, to keep track of any treasure in case Florida won. The Fishers were all too happy to see the inspector go.

"They radioed the news that a boat was coming to pick him up," says Kim, who, like most of the company's employees, wears a casual short-sleeve shirt, shorts, flip-flops and a weighty silver Spanish coin around his neck. "We waited until we could see the boat on the horizon, and then we tossed him overboard."

The next day we embark in a small speedboat for an hour-long ride on gently rolling seas. On arrival at the Dare, the crew transfers our bulky dive bags to the larger boat. The ship's underwater fans have just finished clearing some of the sand that covers the coral bedrock below, creating a hole about 25 feet wide and 20 feet deep. That's where we're headed.

The noon sun shines bright and hard overhead, as six investors and I stand on the rocking deck, pulling on our lightweight wet suits. We hook up our tanks, check the air gauges and secure our masks and fins. Standing on the edge of the deck, I put my hand up to hold my mask and regulator and step overboard. I fall 10 feet and splash into the foot-high waves.

At first the water is silty. We have only a few feet of visibility as we float 30 feet down to the ghostly white bedrock. The visibility quickly clears to about 20 feet, and I can see my fellow divers crawling around on the ocean floor.

We peer into holes and overturn large coral rocks to check underneath. Pfent is digging away in the sand with a large clamshell. Two company divers scan the coral and sandbanks around the hole with metal detectors. I feel a tug on my fin and turn around; Fisher-Abt is motioning for me to follow him. He points to a small rock a few feet away. I pick it up and stifle the urge to squeal; underneath is a pottery shard from the Atocha.

Divers frequently find these remnants of olive jars, which were used to store oil and food in the ship's galley. My little brown triangle is about three inches across and speckled with a few white barnacles -- my first find. I unzip the neck of my wet suit and tuck the artifact inside for safekeeping.

After 20 minutes the divemaster sounds an electronic signal, and we all ascend to the aluminum ladder on the side of the Dare. On deck I hand over my pottery shard to be catalogued in the treasure log, as does Pfent. As an investor, he can request the shard he found as part of his next dividend. "I'll display it," he says with a grin, "and have a great story to tell."
Booty time

That afternoon, back on dry land, investors are waiting to receive their annual dividends at Fisher headquarters. Expectations are running high as Sylvia Van Dyke and Margaret Freeburg, who split a $10,000 share, enter the office of Shawn Cowles, the company's investment-relations manager. They sit at a large desk as the energetic Cowles swivels his computer monitor around so they can see the screen and launches into an explanation of the year's salvage efforts.

"The news isn't good," he says.

In 2008 divers found only $980,000 worth of treasure. Fortunately for Van Dyke and Freeburg, Cowles explains, the Fishers guarantee their investment plus a 10% return; the two women will receive about $11,000 worth of treasure directly from the company vault. Their payment comes in the form of two coins. The first is a worn silver piece worth approximately $600. But Van Dyke and Freeburg perk up as Cowles pulls out the second coin: a rare silver Star of Lima worth $9,500. He explains that these coins were minted in Peru on Christmas Day 1588, and are famed for their beauty and fine detail. The women lean in, spellbound.

"I just don't know how we're going to cut this coin in half," jokes Van Dyke, 56, who works in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, D.C. She tells me later that they plan to set the coin on a necklace and then probably take turns wearing it. They'll also reinvest in the coming year, as do 70% of the company's backers.

After a week of diving and distributing loot, the Fishers and their crew gear up for their annual beachside costume party. This year's theme is pearls. The festivities start at 6:30 p.m. at Casa Marina, a posh Mediterranean-style resort. As the sun sets over the glassy ocean, partygoers dive into cocktails and sway to Jimmy Buffett covers played by a local band.

About two-thirds of the 440 revelers use the pearl motif as an excuse to dress in white and flash major bling. The more creative guests model elaborate costumes of their own design. One couple dress up as a pair of pearl rings; others come as jellyfish, oysters and Neptunes. Dave and Elizabeth Pfent make a dapper pair of pirates. Van Dyke's green toenails match her fitted mermaid costume. Sean Fisher and the rest of his family schmooze and pose for photos with investors.

"Yeah, running a company is stressful," Sean says. Then he stops and smiles as he looks out at the ocean. "But I could be in Indiana selling insurance," he adds. "Instead I'm in Key West selling treasure."
Source: melfisher. com

Viking Silver Coins Discovered on Gotland

2009-08-31T05:42:00.000-07:00

The treasure cache consists of silver coins, weighing a total of around 3 kilos. They were discovered by 20-year-old Edvin Svanborg and his 17-year-old brother Arvid, who were working in the grounds of their neighbour, artist Lars Jonsson.

"I just stumbled by chance across an Arab silver coin that was around 1,100 years old," Edvin Svanborg told news agency TT.

Svanborg says he is studying history, and recognized the coin as one that is commonly found on Gotland. He said he had seen pictures of similar coins in the past.

The brothers started looking for more coins, and quickly realised that they had found something very valuable. In quite a small space they found around 1,100 coins and a few bracelets. Most of the treasure was in good condition, although rabbits had left their mark on some of the coins.

This was the first time that the Svanborg brothers had found treasure, although Edvin said he hoped to find more in the future.

"I'm planning to study to become an archaeologist," he said.

The brothers are now likely to get a reward, after handing over the treasure to the authorities. It is so far unclear how much they will receive.

"But that's not the most important thing. The point is finding a treasure trove," Edvin said.

Majvor Östergren at Gotland county administrative board praised the brothers for handing in the treasure.

"They acted in an examplary fashion."

Gotland is an archaeologist's paradise, where there have been discoveries of a large number of Viking treasures. Farmer Björn Engström found the world's largest ever haul of Viking treasure on the north-eastern part of the island a few years ago.

The loot included coins, necklaces and other jewelry, which altogether contained 65 kilos of silver and 20 kilos of bronze. He was given 2.1 million kronor as a reward.
Source: thelocal. se

Treasure Valued at $10M Discovered in Sunken Pirate Ship Off Coast of Borneo

2009-08-29T03:56:00.000-07:00

Not all the pirate news is bad these days. German newspaper Bild reports that Dresden-based treasure hunters have found riches in a pirate ship that sank off the coast of Borneo in 1806.
“At first, everything on the ocean floor looks encrusted and worthless. But when you hold the treasure in your hands, it’s an indescribable rush of adrenaline. You’re witness to times past,” expedition leader Martin Wenzel told Bild, according to German news website The Local.
Wenzel told Bild that divers have so far found 1.5 tonnes of silver coins, gold jewellery, cannons, crystal and porcelain in the wreck, The Local reports. The value of the coins alone is believed to be more than $10-million Cdn.
Over the past two years, Wenzel and his team searched 35 ship wrecks in the area but only two before now turned up anything of value.
The name of the pirate ship that finally paid off? Forbes. That should have been their first clue to its treasure.
Source: network. nationalpost. com

Shortly About Treasure Hunting

2009-08-28T06:44:00.000-07:00

The search for sunken ships and underwater treasure is a standard plot line in Hollywood movies. In real life, the most successful treasure hunters aren’t a band of rough adventurers but companies, sometimes publicly traded, with smooth-talking CEOs. One such company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, is led by CEO Gregg Stemm, an individual who has earned notoriety in the underwater archaeological community by aggressively exploiting, some would say destroying, shipwrecks. Odyssey is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with the Spanish government over ownership of a sunken ship located some 180 miles west of Portugal in international waters. The discovery became public in May 2007 when Odyssey removed tons of coins from the wreck site to Florida.
Spain’s basic claim is that any ship flying the national flag belongs to the state and only the state has the right to recover the wreckage. The ship’s identity has not been established but it may be Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, a Spanish ship blown up in 1804 by the British. On June 4, 2009 a judge in Florida ruled that the U.S. lacks jurisdiction over the case and the property should be returned to Spain. On this news, Bloomberg.com reported that Odyssey’s share price fell 43%.
Marine recovery is a challenging and expensive. Treasure hunters and salvagers aren’t just after any ships, though, they’re often after historical ships known to carry valuable cargo—archaeological artifacts and human remains whose recovery is a boon to scholars seeking to understand such ships, the people who sailed them, and the history of the seafaring. Sometimes such ships, like the Tang Dynasty wreck featured in the June issue of National Geographic, are discovered by accident, only later to be salvaged for treasure and sold. Like all good science, underwater archaeology is slow, painstaking work in the field followed by years of conversation and study in the lab. In this sense, the exploitation of ships like the Mercedes and the Tang Dynasty wreck for profit is incompatible with their long term study and management as cultural heritage.
Odyssey's struggle with Spain may very well continue. In the meantime, the treasure hunting and site destruction continues as well. National Geographic's audience should learn more about the need to protect underwater cultural heritage. You can start by downloading a copy of UNESCO’s colorful and informative brochure. Read it and let us know if it changes your mind about underwater archaeology, salvaging, or treasure hunting.
Source: blogs. ngm. com

Rare Treasure Plant Discovered in Sichuan's Tibetan Area

2009-08-26T01:23:00.000-07:00

About 600 plants of Isoetes hypsophila, a first-level state-protected wild plant, have been found in nine places in Baiyu County, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province.

It is the second time that Isoetes hypsophila has been seen in this area following its initial discovery here in 2006.

The subsistence of Isoetes hypsophila is greatly affected by the shrinking of wetlands, drought and biological competition. Each of the nine distribution places covers an area less than 100 sq m, and in some places, the number of Isoetes hypsophila is smaller than 30.

Researchers said that follow-up investigations aim to discover more about its distribution and habitat in order to better understand how to protect the species.

Isoetes hypsophila, the most precious species of the first-class state-protected Isoetes, only grows in alpine wetlands, marshlands and meadows, and by lakes at an altitude between 3,000 m and 4,400 m.

It has also been found in marshlands, wetlands and ponds in northwestern Yunnan Province and western Sichuan Province in China.
Source: xinhuanet. com

Man Finds Treasure, Can't Dig It

2009-08-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

It's a mystery going back more than 140 years. Many have searched, but no one has found the millions of dollars in gold lost during the Civil War in Elk County.
Now, one treasure hunting team from Clearfield says it knows where the gold is.
The story dates back to around the battle of Gettysburg in 1863. According to legend, Abraham Lincoln ordered a gold shipment to help pay Union soldiers and the route for the shipment came right through Elk County.
The soldiers transporting the gold made it to Ridgway and St. Mary's, but after that they disappeared -- except for the wagon train's guide, a man known only as Conners.
"(Conners) was the guide of the whole expedition and when he made it into Huntingdon, he claimed he couldn't remember anything. He couldn't find the dead bodies; he couldn't find anything," said Dennis Parada, who runs Finders Keepers USA, a treasure hunting crew from Clearfield.
For years, treasure hunters have speculated about the fate of the gold shipment. The story has become a local legend and has been passed down from generation to generation. Some say a raiding party killed most of the soldiers escorting the gold. Parada, however, said he believes the gold's disappearance was part of an inside job.
"Conners ambushed and killed the rest of the guys -- and killed them off completely. He planned this whole thing from the Ridgway point of this trip," Parada said.
The gold shipment was originally worth around $2 million, but Parada estimates its value at around $30 million today.
Though many have searched for it without success, Parada said he finally knows where it is: near the Cameron County border around the village of Dents Run.
"This site is on the same mountain that the dead bodies were found. It's on the same mountain that the wagons were found; the location of the site is perfect. ... It seems so easy that if I had the wagon train and I was going to hide something, this site is perfect. I just wonder why nobody has got on to this before," he said.
After detector readings indicated that gold and iron were 6 feet below the site, Finders Keepers workers were ready to dig. But that's where things got complicated.
"The state doesn't want it dug up, that is basically where we're at. It appears they are stalling from every direction to prevent us in digging anything up. For what reason? Maybe -- at a later date -- so they can dig it up and claim part of it," he said.
Parada said the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources told him he will be arrested if he digs at the Dents Run site. Officials with the department's Bureau of Forestry said Parada isn't following the proper process.
"He could actually get a bond to do some specialized testing that wouldn't have any impact to the land itself. In other words he could do stakes, put out stakes and do testing with specialized equipment with radar that would go under the ground and give him a better idea of what's under there," said Jeanne Wambaugh of the bureau.
However, Parada said he has already found objects at the site including a bottle and a bullet that he says are from the Civil War. Bureau officials said the artifacts are from around World War I and said they need to see more evidence.
"If he would fulfill the bond and go ahead and do the testing and if there is something there, the ground will be dug up," Wambaugh said.
Parada said that would be too expensive because it would cost several thousand dollars for a bond and $500,000 to dig. For now, he said he will keep trying to get approval from the state to dig at the site.
"It's just sitting there until someone lets us do what we can," Parada said.
Parada said he has gone to federal officials asking for help in digging up the treasure, but he said they can't do anything until he proves the gold at the site is federal gold.
Stay with Channel 6 News and WJACTV.com for continuing coverage.
Source: wjactv. com

Man Discovers Treasure Using Google Earth

2009-08-24T01:36:00.000-07:00

Some people log onto Google Earth and spy men sitting on the toilet. Others find buried treasures of a different kind.
At least that is the claim of Nathan Smith, a Los Angeles musician. Mr. Smith was noodling around on Google Earth one day, randomly examining parts of the Aransas Pass in Texas. Suddenly, his eyes darted to a shoeprint-shaped outline near Barketine Creek.
His suspicions and, presumably, his vast knowledge of history, were sufficiently aroused for him to believe that what he had found was the wreckage of a Spanish barquentine (think large boat with three or more masts) that supposedly met its final resting place south of Refugio, Texas, in 1822.
Mr. Smith scuttled off to consult a few experts and concluded the ship and its treasure was worth $3 billion. With all due promptness, he grabbed hold of a metal detector and drove all the way to the site. One small problem: the land appears to be part of a ranch owned by the late Morgan Dunn O'Connor.
You will feel palpitations in the deeper part of your throat to discover that this has all ended up in court. Mr. Smith's lawyers believe that the land beneath which the ship is submerged is navigable waterway. If they're right, U.S. law says the first person to find abandoned treasure gets first dibs on the spoils.
However, if the court decides it's land, then Mr. O'Connor's family gets first crack at the jewelry, trinkets and, um, those metal contraptions they hung recalcitrant sailors in.
The O'Connor family's lawyer, Ron Walker, was very forthright with ABC News: "It was offensive that somebody could go on Google Earth, look down, and see what they think is under the ground...and come in and say, I want to dig up your property. They have no proof anything is there and no experience."
Yes, but Mr. Smith has watched Nicolas Cage in National Treasure.
Please allow me to add some more characters to this wonderful tale of Google-eyed adventure, avarice, and advocacy.
The state of Texas also has lawyers. And they're pretty darn sure that there's no commercial waterway there. No, as far as they are concerned, if it's in water, it's in Texas's water. So the state has lodged its claim.
And, through all this, the precise location of the supposedly full vessel is being kept under wraps. (So come on, Google Earth obsessives, please find it for me. Perhaps we can stake a claim too.)
Next month, U.S. District Judge David Hittner will rule. In two months' time, Sean Penn will be asked to play Nathan Smith. With Billy Bob Thornton as Ron Walker. And, hey, how about Josh Brolin defending the state of Texas? I thought he played 43 rather well, didn't you?
Source: cnet. com

Fossils Discovered In Limestone Cave Southwest of Chicago

2009-08-22T00:33:00.001-07:00

Remnants from a cave embedded in a limestone quarry southwest of Chicago have yielded a fossil trove that may influence the known history of north central Illinois some 310 million years ago. Initial research findings were presented April 12 by University of Illinois at Chicago earth and environmental sciences professor Roy Plotnick at a regional meeting of the Geological Society of America in Lawrence, Kan.
Plotnick's talk presents the broad strokes about what's in the cave and the research opportunities it affords. His research colleagues include Fabien Kenig, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at UIC and Andrew Scott, professor of palaeobotany and coal geology at Royal Holloway University of London.
"What's really valuable about the cave is the level of preservation of the material," said Kenig. "We see charcoal that preserves biological features at the cellular level. Charcoal is an indication of fire burning ancient trees. The cave also beautifully preserved molecular indicators of these fires."
Plotnick and a group of students discovered the cave while on a class field trip about four years ago. It is revealed by darker color surrounded by the lighter limestone, and by the sand and mud containing fossilized material that choke the cave from bottom to top.
"Finding this was pure serendipity," said Plotnick. "We didn't go out looking for it, but after finding it we said, 'Wow, look at all of this!' The cave is basically a trap for sediment, and things get preserved that usually may not get preserved."
Findings include nearly-pristine plant spores, leaves and scorpion parts. Needles from a conifer were dated and discovered to be the oldest ever from North America. "The oldest conifers previously described are at least 2 million years younger," said Plotnick. The specimen is now in the collection of Chicago's Field Museum.
The scientists think that a shallow sea covering today's north central Illinois during the geological Ordovician period about 450 million years ago formed the limestone. The caves were eroded in the limestone at the beginning of the Pennsylvanian period, about 315 million years ago. Within a few million years, sand, mud and organic debris from plants and animals -- some burned and turned to charcoal -- washed into the cave through surface openings, where it remained preserved but not compacted since that time.
Fossil material the scientists analyzed corroborates earlier hypotheses that a change from wet to dry conditions, along with vegetation fires, took place in this region during this geological period. Plotnick said he and his colleagues have dated much of the organic material they found to be around 310 million years old.
The cave is in Illinois's Kendall County, about 10 miles north of the town of Morris. Owned by Central Limestone Company, the scientists are permitted to conduct field trips and excavate material from the cave usually on Sundays when there is no regular mining work.
The exposed area where the scientists work is more than 900 feet long and about 30 feet high. Area geologists have found evidence that the cave may snake under the region for miles.
"We could be sampling for years to come," said Plotnick. "There's just a tremendous amount of material."
www.sciencedaily.com

Ancient Treasure of Satricum Was Hidden in Bookshelf in Italy

2009-08-21T05:30:00.000-07:00

Italian police have found the long-sought treasure of Satricum, consisting of more than 500 delicate miniature pots crafted about 2,600 years ago, in a farmers bookshelf.

According to a report in Discovery News, the treasure was discovered during a police investigation in the countryside near the village of Campoverde di Aprilia, some 25 miles south of Rome.

The archaeological squad of the Carabinieri police noticed suspicious mounds, which are typical of a dig, near a small lake known as Laghetto del Monsignore.

After spotting fragments of pottery in the soil, the Carabinieri placed the farmer who was working that land under investigation.

He told us that he had found just a few fragments. Given the fact that he had already violated the law by not reporting to authorities his finding, we did not believe him and searched his house. Indeed, we seized 500 well-preserved miniatures, the Carabinieri wrote in a report called Operation: Satricum.

Meticulously stored in a bookshelf in the farmers house, the miniature jars were made of Italo-Corinthian pottery and Etruscan bucchero pottery, a kind of ceramic made in the Etruscan region between the 7th and 5th centuries B.C.

They were thrown into the lake, which is fed by a perennial spring, as votive offers during ritual festivities.

The lake was basically an open votive deposit. The Latin-speaking people who lived there offered their ceramic artifacts to a deity probably connected to the spring. We believe that a 7th to 6th century B.C. sanctuary can be found at its bottom, said Stefano De Caro, director of archaeology at the Italian Culture Ministry.

Symbolic of storage and cooking vessels that were used in daily life, the miniature jars may have contained food, liquid offerings and perfumes that were dedicated to the lake deity.

The Laghetto del Monsignore is a most important open-air sanctuary where the Latin peoples living in the surrounding areas dedicated offerings from the early Iron Age onward, said Peter A.J. Attema, director of the Pontine Region Project and professor in classical and Mediterranean archaeology at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.

It is of the utmost importance that the looted material be studied by specialists, and it is hoped that a regular excavation will be started to save what is left of this unique find, he added. (ANI)
Source: thaindian. com