Smuggling Stopped at the Post Office

LIMA, PERU—Archaeologist Gladiz Collatupa and art historian Sonia Rojas work with customs officers in a post office in Lima, where they examine packages for looted archaeological artifacts and other cultural items. So far they have rescued books from the National Library, a nineteenth-century oil painting, coins, fossils, and historic documents. Sometimes they identify looted pre-Columbian cloth that had been used to decorate reproductions of ancient dolls.  “You never know what you’re going to find. Every box could contain a surprise,” said Rojas. The seized items are handed over to the National Museum.

Subway Contractor Reportedly Destroys Ancient Tombs

GUANGZHOU, CHINA—Construction workers building a subway system in the Menggang district of Guangzhou have reportedly destroyed a number of ancient tombs on Da Gong Mountain. “Yesterday we were still conducting archaeological excavations, but all five tombs were gone this morning,” an unnamed archaeologist told a reporter from the South China Morning Post. The tombs ranged in age from 2,200 to more than 3,000 years old. Zhang Qianglu of the Guangzhou Archaeology Research Center said that the side of the mountain is covered with historically significant tombs. More than a dozen of them are thought to have been destroyed to date by the subway project.

Angkor City Mapped in Cambodia

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA—The city of Mahendraparvata has been mapped on Phnom Kulen Mountain, located to the north of the Angkor Wat Complex in Cambodia, by archaeologists using airborne laser technology carried by a helicopter. Some 36 buildings had previously been recorded on the jungle-covered mountain, but it wasn’t known how they fit together. More than two dozen temples, and traces of canals, dykes, and roads laid out in regular city blocks have now been mapped. “We see from the imagery that the landscape was completely devoid of vegetation. One theory we are looking at is that the severe environmental impact of deforestation and the dependence on water management led to the demise of the civilization,” said Damian Evans of the University of Sydney.

Leprosy Through the Ages

TÜBINGEN, GERMANY—A team of scientists has compared samples of the bacterium that causes leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae, taken from five medieval skeletons from Europe with samples from 11 modern strains. The DNA was so well preserved that the scientists were able to determine that a type of the disease found in Europe 1,000 years ago is the same as what is found in the Middle East now. Johannes Krause of the University of Tübingen says this suggests that the disease was spread by European armies during the Crusades. The disease carried to the New World by European explorers is also similar to the one found in the Americas today. The oldest known case of leprosy in the world has been identified in a 4,000-year-old skeleton from India. 

Gasometre Found in Canada’s First Industrial Neighborhood

MONTREAL, QUEBEC—Construction workers uncovered the brick foundations of a gas reservoir or “gasometre” that stored fuel in the late nineteenth century. The cylindrical container, owned by The New City Gas Works, lit Canada’s first industrial neighborhood. Coal was brought into the city by barges traveling on the Lachine Canal, which was then heated and transformed into gas that was stored in the gas-holder and then piped into homes and street lights, reducing the risk of fire posed by oil lamps and candles. “We will be able to create a 3-D image of the whole structure as it was when it was first built,” said archaeologist Bernard Hébert.

New HD Scans of Tut's Tomb

MADRID, SPAIN—Egyptologists will be able to view high-resolution images of the tomb of Tutankhamun with a new navigator prepared for Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities by the Factum Foundation, which is dedicated to using digital recording for the preservation and exhibition of artifacts. Such detailed images can protect ancient works of art from exposure to too many people. The scientists will be able to examine the entire tomb and monitor its condition remotely, using a web browser, and they will be able to leave notes for other researchers on what they’ve seen.

Lost Medieval Carved Stone Found in Wales

SILIAN, WALES—Nikki Vousden of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and Roderick Bale of the University of Wales were out for a walk when they found a stone inscribed during the medieval period with a linear Latin cross and a lozenge-shaped ring. The stone was sitting in a stream near St Sulien’s Church, and the water helped bring the carvings to their attention. The church was built in the late nineteenth century on the foundations of a medieval church building, but the stone, which had been recorded and studied, had been lost. The stone has been moved to the interior of the church.

Floods Wiped Out Pyramid Workers’ Town

AUSTIN, TEXAS—The administrative center known as Heit el-Ghurab, located on low ground near Egypt’s Giza Plateau, was inhabited by the workers who built the pyramids and the accountants and managers who kept the building projects running. Excavations conducted by Karl Butzer of the University of Texas uncovered layers of mud and sand that indicate the city was flooded and rebuilt ten times over a period of 45 years. Butzer thinks the building teams stayed in such a dangerous place because their pharaoh, Menkaure, may have thought a floodwall and his personal power protect the city. “He had a problem with his sense of importance. He was the divine offspring of the gods, and he thought if he prayed hard enough things would be OK. They weren’t,” Butzer explained. Menkaure’s son decided to build somewhere else.

Arrest Warrant Issued for Suspected Antiquities Smuggler

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK—U.S. authorities have issued an arrest warrant for American citizen Subhash Kapoor, 64, who is currently awaiting trial in India, where he is accused of being part of an international antiquities smuggling ring. Federal agents raided Kapoor’s Manhattan art gallery and storage facilities last year, and they have seized his business records. He is suspected of supplying stolen artifacts, accompanied with forged provenance documents, to museums around the world. “It’s one of our most significant antiquities and artifacts investigations that we’ve conducted,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent in Charge James T. Hayes said last year, after a raid.

Siberian Mammoth Hunters Wanted Ivory

MOSCOW, RUSSIA—Paleontologist Pavel Nikolskiy and archaeologist Vladimir Pitulko of the Russian Academy of Sciences think that people who lived in Siberia between 33,500 and 31,500 years ago hunted mammoths every few years, when they needed their ivory tusks for tool making. The bones of at least 31 mammoths that had been hunted over a period of 2,000 years have been uncovered at the Yana archaeological site. Stone spear points found in some of the bones suggest that hunters attacked their large prey from behind. 

2,500-Year-Old Warrior Burials Unearthed in Serbia

BELGRADE, SERBIA—Skeletal remains of three warriors who had been buried with spears, daggers, and bronze ornaments have been unearthed in southeastern Serbia, near the ancient Roman road, Via Militaris. The 2,500-year-old burials are the first of their kind to be found in the region, where archaeologists usually find cremations.