Thu Aug 15, 9:52 AM ET
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Thieves stole Byzantine artifacts, including 16 gold and 25 copper coins, from a museum in the Aegean resort city of Bodrum, reports said Thursday. The artifacts, which also included six weights for scales, were salvaged from a Byzantine shipwreck 40 years ago and were exhibited at the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, the Anatolia news agency said.
Police said the thieves broke into the museum overnight when it was closed, according to Anatolia. The coins were worth dlrs 2,000 each, Anatolia quoted museum director Oguz Alpozen as saying. http://story.news.yahoo.com/
The Art World: Fake bronzes flood market
By Frederick M. Winship
NEW YORK, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- Posting the warning "caveat emptor" (buyer beware) has never seemed more applicable than it does today in regard to the market for 19th and 20th century bronze castings of sculpture that has been flooded with at least 4,000 fakes. The fakes are the handiwork of Guy Hain, a French collector, dealer and publisher who has been incarcerated in Besancon Prison since last summer, serving a four-year sentence on conviction of a faking scam worth more than $60 million. Some 2,500 molds, models and bronzes were found in Hain's studio and confiscated, but some 4,000 finished pieces are believed to have entered the art market through dealers and auctions, according to French authorities. They say Hain faked the work of 98 artists -- including such modern masters as Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti -- whose sculptures fetch millions of dollars each in today's market. Nothing is new about fakes, posthumous castings and just plain reproductions in the tricky business of collecting art bronzes. The Rodin Museum in Paris continues to produce legal productions of Auguste Rodin's work long after his death, many of them collected and given to American museums by financier George B. Cantor and his wife, Iris. Rodin was one of Hain's favorite artists when it came to copying. He also produced many copies of works by Antoine Louis Barye, the foremost French sculptor of animals, who sold the rights to his work to a foundry to get out of debt. Others whose work he copied were Jean-Antoine Houdon, Frederic Bartholdi (sculptor of the Statue of Liberty), Honore Daumier, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Emil Antoine Bourdelle, Aristide Maillol, and Camille Claudel.
In the case of Rodin, Hain had access to original Rodin casts through his association with Georges Rudier, whose family foundry was the official caster of Rodin bronzes for many years. Hain would remove Georges' mark from the sculpture and put on the mark of his father, Alexis Rudier, to make the casts seem to be originals made while Rodin was still alive and able to supervise production of his bronzes. Hain copied other sculptors' work by using original plaster models or by making aftercasts from finished bronzes, using flexible silicon molds. He used foundries in remote parts of France, one to do the casting, another the chasing, and another the patination. He consigned the fakes to auction houses through third parties, one of them his daughter's father-in-law in Marseilles. Exposure of the breadth of Hain's fakery has put the entire market for 19th and 20th century bronzes in jeopardy Gilles Perrault, an art conservator and adviser to the French Supreme Court, now believes Hain may have made 6,000 sculptures over and above those confiscated, only one-third of which have been traced to date through sales at such venues as Drouot, Paris's top auction house, and the famous Maastricht Art Fair in the Netherlands.
Perrault and other art insiders advise collectors of art bronzes to be more wary than ever and to consult experts in the field before making purchases. They point out that under French law, an artist is allowed to make only 12 copies of any bronze sculpture, all to be numbered. If any more copies are made, even in the artist's lifetime, they are considered reproductions and must have "reproduction" marked on them. Hain never marked any of his fakes as reproductions. Instead he cast into the sculptures the signatures of the artists and the founder's marks to which he had no legal right, making their identification as fakes difficult. Good provenance -- especially being able to prove bronzes were in known collections long before Hain's activities began in the 1980s -- is important. "Even so, two out of three pieces of bronze sculpture I see today are problematic," Jerome Le Blay, senior specialist at Christie's auction house, told United Press International. "It makes for huge price differences depending on the piece. If all the reassuring elements are there, then the highest price can be made. If not, the price will be much lower" As an example, he cited the sale of an authentic Rodin "Eve" from a long-established French collection for $4.8 million at Christie's in New York in 1999.
"Without that provenance, the piece might only have made $500,000," he said. http://www.upi.com/
TREASURE LAW SUCCESSFUL IN GETTING MORE FINDS ON SHOW
Treasure law has been successful in getting more finds to museums for public display, a new report reveals today.
The DCMS’ third annual Treasure Annual Report shows that some 221 items of treasure were reported in the year 2000. This compares to an annual average of 24 finds per year reported before the 1996 Treasure Act came into force. Once reported, the items can be bought by museums for public display.
Among the items featured in the report are:
· An Iron Age silver brooch, a bronze mirror and pottery fragments from Shillington in Bedfordshire. Found by two metal detector users, the items are believed to come from a burial site. The mirror, which features an abstract early Celtic design, is one of the finest of its type found in recent years. Luton Museum and Art Gallery hopes to acquire this find.
· A collection of Iron Age gold jewellery found by metal detector users in the Winchester area of Hampshire. The find, including necklaces, brooches and bracelets, is one of the most important discoveries of Iron Age gold objects made in the last 50 years. The items have been acquired by the British Museum.
· Two Bronze Age gold torcs and three gold bracelets found by metal detector users in Milton Keynes. The British Museum hopes to acquire them.
Arts Minister Baroness Blackstone said:
“The Treasure Act has clearly been a success. It has led to more finds being offered to museums, which benefits the public, and has increased the knowledge of artefacts and where they can be found around the country. We are now in the process of improving the Act even further to include deposits of prehistoric base-metal objects and to introduce a better Code of Practice. I hope these changes will come into force next January.”
The changes, currently before Parliament, were proposed by an independent review of the Act commissioned because of initial strains on the system. It proposed changes to streamline the system of administration of finds, including how rewards are paid, how objects can be bought and how the treasure is valued. The review also recommended that the definition of treasure be widened to include prehistoric base metal objects. It is thought there might be up to 50 such finds a year. The Treasure Annual Report also looks forward to next April when an expanded Portable Antiquities Scheme starts. The aim of the scheme is to record for public benefit all archaeological objects found by members of the public on a voluntary basis. The Heritage Lottery Fund has this year agreed to fund in full a bid from Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries to extend the scheme across the whole of England and Wales for three years.
Notes to Editors
1. Photographs of all three hoards mentioned above can be downloaded free of charge from PA Picselect. Please go to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport folder situated within the Arts section of Picselect either at www.papicselect.com or through PA’s bulletin board.
2. The Treasure Annual Report 2000, containing further details of all the treasure found, is available on the DCMS website at www.culture.gov.uk. Printed copies are available from 020 7211 6144 (Public) or 020 7211 6272 (Press).
3. The Treasure Act 1996 removed the worst anomalies of the old common law of treasure trove and defined more clearly what qualifies as treasure. Under the Act the following finds are at present defined as treasure provided they were found after 24 September 1997: a) objects other than coins at least 300 years old with a minimum precious metal content of 10%; b) all groups of coins from the same find at least 300 years old (if the coins have a precious metal content of less than 10% then the hoard must consist of at least 10 coins) and c) objects found in association with treasure.
4. For more details of the Treasure Act review see press notice 288/01 of 7 November 2001.
5. Further information on the Portable Antiquities Scheme is available from www.finds.org.uk or from its coordinator Roger Bland on 020 7323 8611 or email rbland@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
Press Enquiries: 020 7211 6272/6276 Out of hours telephone pager no: 07699 751153 Public Enquiries: 020 7211 6200 Internet: http://www.culture.gov.uk
Further information on the Portable Antiquities Scheme is available at http://www.finds.org.uk
BY MATT STEARNS Knight Ridder Newspapers
STOCKTON, Mo. - KRT NEWSFEATURES
(KRT) - For thousands of years, the Sac River has guarded the remnants and mysteries of ancient civilizations in southwest Missouri. Now, as scientists near a discovery that could rewrite human history in North America, the river threatens to destroy all that has been saved - and all that scientists hope to find. Archaeologists investigating the site already have found what they call tantalizing evidence of human activity in the area more than 12,000 years ago - about 1,000 years earlier than the earliest confirmed human activity in North America. In archaeology, the older activity is called pre-Clovis culture. There has been no universally accepted pre-Clovis site in North America. Such a find would further scientists' knowledge of human evolution and migration patterns in the settling of the New World. This summer, archaeologists are back at the site, dubbed Big Eddy for a large whirl of water that occurs in the river nearby. They are searching for more artifacts - a carved piece of flint, a remnant of an ancient campfire - that will help them prove the existence of a pre-Clovis culture. "If we can conclusively prove without a doubt that pre-Clovis was here, it'll be international news," said Jack Ray, a research archaeologist at Southwest Missouri State University's Center for Archaeological Research, which is leading the site investigation. But Ray and his colleagues face several obstacles in their search. Funding to continue the work is in question. Plus, there is a heavy burden of proof for theories promoting pre-Clovis human existence, and most say the Big Eddy site isn't close to meeting it yet.
Then there is the river, inexorably washing away its banks and, quite likely, taking with it each day some part of the proof Ray needs. When excavation of the site began, about 17 feet of land separated the riverbank and the dig site. Now it's about 10 feet. In a few years the site will be gone. Modern human activity turned the river from guardian to destroyer. That same activity led to the archaeological exploration of the site. The completion of the Stockton Lake dam in 1970 meant that the Sac River, which flows north from the dam, would run higher and more quickly than it naturally would, for flood control and to generate hydroelectric power. That meant the river would undercut and erode its banks at some of its curves. Among the affected areas of the river was Big Eddy. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for preserving, protecting and collecting data from cultural resources in its jurisdiction, hired SMSU to investigate the site, which locals had long regarded as prime artifact-hunting territory. SMSU's first excavation occurred in 1997, and Ray and his colleagues were impressed by what they found. At many sites, artifacts from different eras get mixed up because of human activity such as plowing. By contrast, the Big Eddy site had retained what Ray calls "the layer cake effect," with a clear stratification between archaeological eras. The site's remoteness by the riverside kept it from being disturbed through thousands of years, and the river's slow meander kept it from moving too much across the valley, rare over a 15,000-year period, said Neal Lopinot, director of SMSU's Center for Archaeological Research. "There's no doubt that it's a very significant site" for that reason alone, said Bruce McMillan, director of the Illinois State Museum. "It's a stratified terrace deposit...from the end of the Ice Age. You can clearly sort out all the early cultures that settled in Missouri."
A second excavation in 1999 continued to yield useful information and artifacts - including one that could vault Big Eddy into the top ranks of the world's archaeological sites.
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To the untrained eye, it looks like a big broken rock.
To the archaeologists at Big Eddy, it's potentially much more than that. They theorize that it is an anvil stone from the pre-Clovis era of human activity. The 40-pound rock was found in two pieces, with a smaller piece that had broken off from the larger rock. The smaller rock had been turned 180 degrees and placed against the larger rock, with the same side facing up. "How did it get like that?," Ray asked. "That is the debate. We contend the river and natural forces could not produce that. We suspect some human broke that thing. … It looks too much like an artifact. But it's a controversial notion, so people come up with all the theories why it might not be an artifact." Nearby pieces of charcoal - from campfires, Ray thinks - date to about the same time period, more than 12,000 years ago. The discovery is controversial because for years, most archaeologists thought that the Clovis period - dating from about 10,900 to 11,300 years ago - was the oldest human culture in the Americas. But in 1997, a site in Chile called Monte Verde was confirmed as yielding evidence of human activity dating to at least 12,500 years ago. Since the generally accepted migration pattern of humans in the New World takes them from Siberia across what is now the Bering Strait, into North America and then south, the Chile discovery gave renewed vigor to the search for pre-Clovis sites in North America. "Ever since Monte Verde was found, it's been pretty much inevitable that pre-Clovis will be found here," said David Meltzer, an anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University. "If people were down there in South America, then certainly they were in North America. The problem is at this point, we don't have good (North American) evidence. There's all these, hints, suggestions, but none of them have been really nailed down."
The Big Eddy site is no different at this point, Meltzer said.
"You have to worry about stuff sitting in the bottom of a river, which could be moved around by any number of factors," he said. "Anytime you find one of these things, you have to start with the assumption that it's not archaeological, and then try to prove that it is."
Nevertheless, Meltzer said, the Big Eddy site is "sufficiently intriguing that it's worth looking into."
"The sediments are the right age," he said. "They've got suggestive artifacts. It certainly warrants investigation."
Such a discovery would be important beyond archaeological bragging rights, Meltzer said.
"It helps us to understand the evolutionary trajectory on this continent," he said. "For example, the timing of when people went from hunters and gatherers to settling into villages. Knowing the answers helps us understand how humans move and how rapidly they do so."
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The way to get the evidence, of course, is to keep digging.
On a recent sweltering weekday, that's exactly what a crew of about 10, mostly graduate students, was doing: Standing in several dug-out squares, carefully pushing up thin ribbons of dirt, a quarter-inch at a time, stopping and stooping to examine, photograph and bag any potential artifacts. "It's meticulous, it's slow going, and it's labor-intensive," Ray said. And it might not last long enough to find conclusive pre-Clovis evidence. So far, the work has been funded mainly by the Corps of Engineers and the National Geographic Society. The corps has spent about $700,000 on the project since 1997, said Bob Ruf, chief of the environmental division of the corps' Kansas City district. Ruf said the corps had been lucky in its ability to fund the project as much as it has. "We've been trying to come up with the funds because of the importance of the site," Ruf said. "Each year, it's a matter of coming up with ways to do that. … How long we can do that, I don't know." SMSU has one year left on its contract with the corps, and that calls for lab work and analysis, not more digging. "We're behind schedule," Lopinot said. "I don't know how much we'll be able to get into pre-Clovis. … We need a whole other summer to really do it right. I'm going to have to pursue some alternative funding." Ray, who is so passionate about the site that he camps all summer in a tent near the river, hopes his colleague is successful in the hunt for new money. "We're trying to say, `Look, there's something worthwhile here, and if we don't get it this summer, we need to come back'," Ray said.
"It's part of our past. It's part of our history. If we don't investigate this site before it's destroyed … it'd be like burning a photo album. Who would do that? We've got to find out how our ancestors lived, and how the continent was first settled." http://www.kcstar.com
Gables pair lay claim to old tapestry
Art belongs to us -- not to man who says he owns stolen item
BY CHARLES RABIN crabin@herald.com
The case of the stolen tapestry is more frayed than police originally thought. A day after Paul Magnum said he found the 800-year-old, $800,000 artifact that was stolen from his home two years ago, a Coral Gables couple came forward saying Magnum stole the tapestry -- worth $25,000 -- from them in 1999. Miami-Dade police confirmed that they are looking into the connection between Magnum -- who claimed he bought the tapestry six years ago from a Russian general -- and Marta and Fernando Alvarez of Cocoplum, who say they bought the Rape of Europa from a Gables art dealer in 1991. On Thursday the Alvarezes said they were stunned to watch Magnum show off his artwork after it had been recovered from two men by Miami-Dade police. ''I couldn't believe it,'' Marta Alvarez said. ``We saw him on the news with my antique.'' Magnum said two men -- one a friend of Magnum's former housemate -- called him a couple of weeks ago and offered to sell him back the tapestry for $6,500. They arranged a meeting in Hialeah Wednesday. Police were there and picked up the men for questioning. They were later released. Magnum, 46, said the tapestry was made 800 years ago for the king of Spain. It depicts a woman riding into the sea on a half-man, half-sea creature -- representing the Moor who took the king's daughter, Magnum said. He had insured the Rape of Europa but hadn't collected any money because the theft from his home was considered an open case, police said.
Police have the tapestry.
Magnum, who also goes by the name Raul Carballo, could not be reached for comment Thursday. His bar, the Dolphin Bar and Lounge in Hialeah, wasn't open at 10 p.m. Earlier, three women waiting outside who said they worked there said the bar was supposed to open at 8 p.m. According to the Alvarezes and Gables art dealer Armando Cartaya, the long, strange, modern-day voyage of the Rape of Europa began in 1986 when Cartaya purchased the tapestry for $16,000.
`I BOUGHT IT'
''I bought it at an auction in Belgium. To the best of my knowledge, it was made in Brussells in the 16th century,'' he said. Cartaya said the Alvarezes bought the art from him in 1991 for about $25,000. It suffered water damage during Hurricane Andrew, so the couple had Cartaya restore it for another $16,000. It hung on the family's living room wall until 1999, when, the Alvarezes say, they accepted Magnum's offer to buy the couple's 16,800-square-foot canal-front home and all its furnishings for $3.1 million. On Nov. 8, 1999, Magnum wrote them a check for $500,000 as down payment. Before the check was cashed, Marta Alvarez said, someone claiming to be Magnum's wife showed up with two trucks to move some of the furnishings. The woman said she wanted to paint. ''I called Fernando and said what should I do,'' Marta Alvarez said. ``He said he had the check; it was OK.'' The check bounced twice. ''A week passed by and nothing happened. We finally realized this was a hoax. I never saw him again,'' Fernando Alvarez said.
ITEMS MISSING
Gone were 43 pieces of art and furnishings the couple estimate were worth $600,000, including the Rape of Europa. So they went to Coral Gables police and filled out a report. Police said they told the couple to contact the state attorney's office. Fernando Alvarez said he called the state attorney's office twice and got no response.
Magnum has not been charged with any crime.
The Alvarezes took the house back and sold it to Marta Alvarez's father for just over $2 million. They are now suing their insurance company in federal court, trying to collect on the missing furnishings.
CLAIM CONTESTED
Lexington Insurance says it shouldn't have to pay because of what it calls ''concealment or fraud'' by the Alvarezes and because the couple hasn't turned over necessary documents, according to Lexington's court filings. Magnum was subpoenaed for the case but failed to appear, according to court records. The Alvarezes' lawyer has asked the judge to declare him in contempt of court. Herald staff writer Carolyn Salazar contributed to this report. http://www.miami.com/
'Meteorite man' arrested again
WERNER MENGES
A WINDHOEK resident who was arrested last year after a stolen meteorite was allegedly found in his possession is back in Police custody, again on charges related to the rare and sought after space objects. Members of the Police's Protected Resources Unit arrested Walter Horst (58) on Friday, after a crate he was trying to send to Johannesburg was opened at a courier company's premises and found to contain four meteorites. Namibian meteorites are protected by law, and may not be removed from where they are found or taken out of the country without a permit. A lucrative trade appears to be flourishing in these rare objects which rained out of space - there are numerous web sites which offer Namibian meteorites for sale. Dr Gabi Schneider, Director of the Geological Survey and Vice Chairperson of the Monuments Council of Namibia, said yesterday that while the illegal export and trade in Namibia's meteorites had become a major problem in the past 10 years, the extent of the damage to Namibia's natural heritage remained difficult to assess. However, a survey of the numerous web sites on the internet where Namibian meteorites are offered for sale indicates that a large number have already been taken out of the country, she said. Namibia is home to the world's largest meteorite - at Hoba near Grootfontein, and is also the site of the largest meteorite shower, which came down in the Gibeon area thousands of years ago.
Schneider said it appears from the thefts of meteorites in recent years that meteorite smugglers have been adapting their tactics, possibly because the objects are no longer so easily found in the areas where they landed. Two meteorites were stolen from the Geological Survey's museum in Windhoek at the end of last year, another vanished from there a year earlier, one was stolen from the Post Street Mall meteorite display in Windhoek last year, and before that one was stolen from the Monuments Council. The communities in whose home areas the meteorites are found are the major losers in the illegal trade, said Schneider. While foreign meteorite dealers ask - and readily receive - astronomical prices for Namibian meteorites, most of which come from the Gibeon area, communities for the most part earn a pittance from selling the meteorites to dealers and their middlemen, she said. On the sites offering Gibeon meteorites, the prices vary from US$1 per gram for small objects, to some US$1 400 (N$14 500) for a seven-and-a-half kilogram object.
Another web site advertises a Gibeon meteorite of some 2,5 kg for sale for US$975 (about N$10 000), while yet another states that Gibeon meteorites, weighing some 103 kg and 105 kg, had been sold for US$50 000 and US$75 000 respectively. The meteorites which Horst allegedly tried to send out of the country weighed 181 kg. Horst had been free on N$10 000 bail on two other charges - one of illegally possessing a rhino horn, and one of receiving stolen goods in the form of another meteorite weighing some 296 kg - when he was arrested last week. He was held on those charges in September last year, after the meteorite stolen from a display in Post Street Mall in the capital allegedly found its way into his hands. Horst appeared before Magistrate Sarel Jacobs in the Windhoek Magistrate's Court yesterday on a charge of the illegal removal and export of meteorites. He was told that he is to remain in custody. His defence lawyer, Kobus Potgieter, told the court that a formal bail application will be brought on Thursday. http://www.namibian.com.na/