Vote for the new 7 Wonders of the World

A new list is forming and you too can vote to pick the new 7 Wonders of the World!

http://www.new7wonders.com/index.php

Headless body in Peru

U.S. archaeologists say a recently excavated headless Peruvian skeleton has expanded their understanding of ancient Andean rituals.

Images of disembodied heads are widespread in the art of Nasca, a culture based on the southern coast of Peru from about 1 A.D. to 750 A.D. Despite that evidence and the discovery of many trophy heads in the region, only eight headless bodies have been recovered with evidence of decapitation, said Christina Conlee of Texas State University.

Conlee's analysis of the recently excavated headless body from the site of the ancient community of La Tiza provides important new data on decapitation and its relationship to ancient ideas of death and regeneration.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20070530-10332000-bc-us-headless.xml

New Egyptian tomb found

Belgian archaeologists have discovered the intact tomb of an Egyptian courtier who lived about 4,000 years ago, Egypt's culture ministry said on Sunday.

The team from Leuven Catholic University accidentally found the tomb, one of the best preserved of its time, while excavating a later burial site at the Deir al-Barsha necropolis near the Nile Valley town of Minya, south of Cairo.

The tomb belonged to Henu, an estate manager and high-ranking official during the first intermediate period, which lasted from 2181 to 2050 BC and was a time of political chaos in ancient Egypt

For more info...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070520/sc_nm/egypt_discovery_dc_2;_ylt=A0WTcU6x9FZG2m8AlwFFeQoB

Chinese writing '8,000 years old'

Chinese archaeologists studying ancient rock carvings say they have evidence that modern Chinese script is thousands of years older than previously thought.
State media say researchers identified more than 2,000 pictorial symbols dating back 8,000 years, on cliff faces in the north-west of the country.

They say many of these symbols bear a strong resemblance to later forms of ancient Chinese characters.

Scholars had thought Chinese symbols came into use about 4,500 years ago.

The Damaidi carvings, first discovered in the 1980s, cover 15 sq km (5.8 square miles) and feature more than 8,000 individual figures including the sun, moon, stars, gods and scenes of hunting or grazing.

For more info...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6669569.stm

Shipwreck Treasure

Deep-sea explorers said Friday they have mined what could be the richest shipwreck treasure in history, bringing home 17 tons of colonial-era silver and gold coins from an undisclosed site in the Atlantic Ocean. Estimated value: $500 million.

A jet chartered by Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration landed in the United States recently with hundreds of plastic containers brimming with coins raised from the ocean floor, Odyssey co-chairman Greg Stemm said. The more than 500,000 pieces are expected to fetch an average of $1,000 each from collectors and investors.

"For this colonial era, I think (the find) is unprecedented," said rare coin expert Nick Bruyer, who examined a batch of coins from the wreck. "I don't know of anything equal or comparable to it."

Citing security concerns, the company declined to release any details about the ship or the wreck site Friday. Stemm said a formal announcement will come later, but court records indicate the coins might come from a 400-year-old ship found off England...

For more info http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070518/ap_on_re_us/treasure_ship

Rothko sells for $73 mil!

Records were shattered on Tuesday at Sotheby's $255 million auction of contemporary and postwar art, the biggest in history, which was led by a $73 million Rothko and a $53 million Bacon.


Both works obliterated the old mark for any postwar work at auction of $27.1 million set last November and far exceeded their pre-sale estimates, ushering in a new world of higher prices for contemporary art...

For more info http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070516/en_nm/arts_auction_dc

MIT students making an 60 foot fiber Inca rope bridge!

"Conquistadors from Spain came, they saw and they were astonished. They had never seen anything in Europe like the bridges of Peru. Chroniclers wrote that the Spanish soldiers stood in awe and fear before the spans of braided fiber cables suspended across deep gorges in the Andes, narrow walkways sagging and swaying and looking so frail.

Yet the suspension bridges were familiar and vital links in the vast empire of the Inca, as they had been to Andean cultures for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. The people had not developed the stone arch or wheeled vehicles, but they were accomplished in the use of natural fibers for textiles, boats, sling weapons — even keeping inventories by a prewriting system of knots.

So bridges made of fiber ropes, some as thick as a man's torso, were the technological solution to the problem of road building in rugged terrain. By some estimates, at least 200 such suspension bridges spanned river gorges in the 16th century. One of the last of these, over the Apurimac River, inspired Thornton Wilder's novel "The Bridge of San Luis Rey."

Although scholars have studied the Inca road system's importance in forging and controlling the pre-Columbian empire, John A.Ochsendorf of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here said, "Historians and archaeologists have neglected the role of bridges."

Dr. Ochsendorf's research on Inca suspension bridges, begun while he was an undergraduate at Cornell University, illustrates an engineering university's approach to archaeology, combining materials science and experimentation with the traditional fieldwork of observing and dating artifacts. Other universities conduct research in archaeological materials, but it has long been a specialty at M.I.T.
Multimedia

Students here are introduced to the multidisciplinary investigation of ancient technologies as applied in transforming resources into cultural hallmarks from household pottery to grand pyramids. In a course called "materials in human experience," students are making a 60-foot-long fiber bridge in the Peruvian style. On Saturday, they plan to stretch the bridge across a dry basin between two campus buildings..."

For more info see...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/09/arts/snincas.php

King Herod's ancient tomb 'found' or is it?

"An Israeli archaeologist says he has found the tomb of King Herod, the ruler of Judea while it was under Roman administration in the first century BC.

After a search of more than 30 years, Ehud Netzer of the Hebrew University says he has located the tomb at Herodium, a site south of Jerusalem"...

For more info see...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6633979.stm

500 Historical Postcards of New York City

The New York Public Library's Picture Collection at Mid-Manhattan Library adds 500 Historical Postcards of New York City to the NYPL Digital Gallery A fascinating historical peek at all five boroughs of New York City from the 1890s until the 1920s is provided through the 500 postcards newly added to the NYPL Digital Gallery from the Picture Collection's holdings of more than 25,000 postcards.

In Print this week

In print this week:


In the new edition of Science News there is story on Stone Age kids creating cave art, April 28, 2007 Vol 171, no. 17, p264-266.

Time Magazine has a story on Jamestown, which is celebrating its 400th anniversary. Articles included are on Jamestown Archaeology, history, Pocahontas, John Smith, Slavery, the Location, the Native Americans, etc. May 7, 2007, Vol 169, No. 19.


A interesting article on Henri Matisse sculpture in the new ArtForum International Magazine. May 2007, p 330-335.

Ancient caves found in Nepal

"Explorers have discovered a series of caves decorated with ancient Buddhist paintings, set in sheer cliffs in Nepal's remote Himalayan north, leaving archaeologists excited and puzzled.

An international team of scholars, archaeologists, climbers and explorers examined at least 12 cave complexes at 14,000 feet near Lo Manthang, a mediaeval walled city in Nepal's Mustang district, about 125 km (80 miles) northwest of Kathmandu.

The caves contain paintings that could date back as far as the 13th century, as well as Tibetan scripts executed in ink, silver and gold and pre-Christian era pottery shards.

"Who lived in those caves? When were they there, when were (the caves) first excavated and how did the residents access them, perched as they are on vertical cliffs?" asked Broughton Coburn, an American member of the survey team"...

For more info...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070503/wl_nm/nepal_dc_1;_ylt=A0SOwmqCSTtG2MYAew5FeQoB

Bolivia pyramid

"Archeologists have uncovered the 1,300-year-old skeleton of a ruler or priest of the ancient Tiwanaku civilization together with precious jewels inside a much-looted pyramid in western Bolivia"...

For more info see...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070502/sc_nm/bolivia_archaeology_dc_1;_ylt=A0SOwmqCSTtG2MYAfA5FeQoB




(on a personal note, I visited Tiwanaku back in the 1990’s and it’s a totally amazing site!-Melissa)

Center for Book Arts in Second Life

The Center for Book Arts is building a campus in Second Life (in a New Media Consortium region) that will include a Book Art Museum and book production studios. The museum will include permanent exhibitions on the history of the book as well as exhibitions of contemporary book art. Rotating exhibitions of material from libraries around the world will include book art related special collections. If you have a proposal for an exhibition from your library, please contact Richard Minsky.
You might like the building–it’s a giant book with raised bands on the spine that are balconies. Some details are in this article, with pix of the building:
http://slartmagazine.com/cba.htm