Dear Ton,
the moment has arrived to take benefit of my retirement. I have dedicated more than 20 years of my life of French police officer to fight against the illicit trafficking in cultural property. The last ten years which I have spent in the works of art unit at the General Secretariat of the I.P.C.O.-Interpol have allowed me to acquire a sound knowledge of this criminal phenomenon at an international level. I would like to thank you personally for all the assistance you have provided me during a long period.
Very often, we have got information about the thefts via the Museum Security Network. This gave us the opportunity to ask the Interpol offices of the concerned countries for confirmation and for additional details on these cases. I have very much appreciated your frank statements at international conferences although they did not always please everybody.
I would also like to thank all those who helped me carrying out my daily work regardless whether they came from international organizations, from law enforcement agencies, from museums, or from cultural institutions. I have lived ten years years with a lot of valuable experience and I hope having well responded to the trust you gave me. Encourage your readers to contact me in case they think I would be in a position to help them. They can write in English, French, or Spanish and it will be a pleasure for me to reply.
Thank you for adding my name on the mailing list.
I would be glad to have the pleasure to meet you soon.
Best regards
Jean-Pierre Jouanny
Jean-pierre.jouanny@wanadoo.fr
From: rescam_communication@netcourrier.com
Subject: IMPORTANT PRESS RELEASE-Major U.S., Canadian, British, Dutch and Russian Museums, U.S. Department of State, Auction Houses have received large Holocaust-related art claim in Decorative Arts.
Major U.S., Canadian, British, Dutch and Russian Museums, U.S. Department of State, Auction Houses have received large Holocaust- related art claim in Decorative Arts.
For immediate release
New York, N.Y. – March 17, 2003 – 5 Major U.S. Museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Frick Collection in New York and the State Collection of the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., along with 5 European Museums, including the RijksMuseum in the Netherlands and the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia have received an Art Claim letter involving a large amount of assets in Decorative Arts. The Jewish family which recently filed a claim against an entire collection with the Carnavalet Museum, located in Paris, and who had also notified the 24 largest U.S. Museums last year, has now notified a number of Museums worldwide to check provenance on decorative art items sold after 1939 on the Paris market. The Director of the Reception Rooms Collections at the U.S. Department of State, along with the Doyle and Sloans U.S. Auction Houses have also received a claim notification. This Jewish family initially filed a claim against the Bouvier collection at the Carnavalet Museum, one of the most prestigious XVIIIth Century French Furniture collections in the world. This collection was donated by Henriette BOUVIER, an antique dealer, to the Carnavalet Museum, in 1966. The art claim was filed by a Jewish family stating that this collection actually belongs to an estate which was looted during World War II. Items from this estate which may have been sold by Henriette Bouvier after 1939 and now in possession of these institutions, collectors or art dealers in the US will be considered of suspicious provenance. The initial claim against the Carnavalet Museum was filed on May 21, 2002 with the Drai Commission, a Government-appointed commission in charge of resolving all Holocaust-related claims covering assets in France. This claim already attracted considerable attention in the French press due to the importance of the antique dealer Henriette Bouvier in the French Decorative Arts market during the 1940s and 1950s.
Press Contact: E-Mail: Rescam_communication@yahoo.com, Rescam_communication2001@yahoo.fr Rescam_communication@netcourrier.com Fax: RESCAM, LLC, (425) 969-4452 or (419) 791-1075 or (512) 853- 4978 To the Attention of: Director of Communication, RESCAM, LLC
Apology from Artknows Editor
The Editor of the London-based satirical art website Artknows.com wishes to extend sincere apologies to all those subscribers to the Museum Security Network mailing list who received an unsolicited email newsletter on March 17th. This was a result of an accidental integration of the Artknows mailing list with that of the Museum Security Network. Artknows adheres to a strict privacy policy and assures all unintended recipients that it will not occur again.Your email addresses have been removed from our system.
Kind regards Editor Artknows/Artnose
Museum Security Network Mailinglist moderator's comment:
Since I am travelling at the moment I do not always have the opportunity to take care of the mailinglist in it's usual digest format, so I forwarded yesterday's ArtNose message unedited. Normally it would have been a small section of a longer MSN mail, and all those CC e-mail addresses would have been erased.
As for the contents of ArtNose mailings: I realize these are somewhat off the very serious contents of the MSN mailinglist. I do hope our subscribers share Art Nose's sense of humor.
Ton Cremers
Date sent: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 09:00:04 -0800 To: securma@xs4all.nl From: Cheryl Maslin
In the last week, a number of US newspapers reported the Air Force detonated a 21,000 pound double-explosion bomb in Florida but with no confirmation another would be used against Iraq. In the ensuing debate of the purpose of this weapon of mass destruction, was the degree to which the shock waves would penetrate the earth. Given the Middle East, including Iraq, are oil rich and are laden with unmapped techtonic faults, I am wondering if any discussion from geologists, vulcanologists, etc., have debated the possibility of massive chain reactions in the form of high magnitude earthquakes, volcanic activity, tsunami that would otherwise destroy whole cities and indigenous communities around the world?
-Cheryl Maslin
Returned artifact marks first step in recovery process
Salameh calls incident a ‘precedent’ for future ‘After our objection to the sale, the Lebanese Embassy received a letter from the sellers
Sabine Darrous Daily Star staff
Lebanon will succeed in recovering a valuable archaeological piece that dates back to the third millennium BC and was smuggled out of the country during the civil war. Culture Minister Ghassan Salameh made the announcement during a news conference at the National Museum on Saturday. He said he hoped the incident would serve as a “precedent” for Lebanon to recover its many other such lost items. “The 18-centimeter cuneiform piece will return to the Museum once Lebanon recovers it from Paris, where it was recently put up for sale in a public auction,” the minister said. Salameh, who said the recovery would take place within a week, described the chain of events that led to the recovery. The ministry had learned that a valuable archaeological piece that bore cuneiform writing was put up for sale in one of the most prestigious French auction houses. “According to the internet, the piece was referred to as being of the ‘Kameidi’ type, the historical name for the village of Kamed al-Lawz in the Western Bekaa,” he said in the presence of Frederick Husseini, the head of the Directorate-General for Antiquities. Salameh said that the ministry immediately intervened and asked the auction house to stop the sale and to inquire into the source of the piece. The Lebanese Embassy in France also played an important role in recovering the piece, the minister added. “Ten days after our objection to the sale, the Lebanese Embassy received a letter from the sellers informing us that they would return the piece to its source,” he said, adding that the ministry was expecting to receive the piece in a week’s time. The piece of pottery is hexagonal in shape and is 18 centimeters in height, and bears cuneiform writing. It reveals the name of a previously-unknown king, Shar-Bil-Sham, and has information on restoration projects carried out by him for his dwelling. It also has information on agriculture and sacrifices offered to the temple, and it reveals that the king hid this piece in a secret place in the temple. Salameh hoped that this incident would “open the way” for restoring other valuable artifacts that were smuggled from Lebanon during the war. “We want this to be a precedent; we would like owners, whether out of good or bad intentions, to return archaeological pieces that were taken out of Lebanon either legally or illegally,” he said.informing us that they would return the piece’
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/
Babylonian Booty
By Melinda Liu and Anne Underwood, Newsweek
It had been conquered and re-conquered a dozen or more times, by (among others) the Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, Parthians, Arabs, Ottomans and British, and in February 1991, yet another foreign power raised its flag over the ancient city of Ur, near the mouth of the Euphrates: the Americans.
DARING THE ALLIES to bomb the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham, Iraqis had parked their jets near Ur's 4,000-year-old ziggurat, but the planes were shot up all the same. American soldiers toured the ancient tower, then got out their entrenching tools and began digging for souvenirs. A forlorn Iraqi gatekeeper ran among them, wailing protests in Arabic, until U.S. officers put a stop to the looting. Last week, when NEWSWEEK visited the site, it was virtually deserted, except for a lone guide, the son of the old gatekeeper, keeping a wary eye on the American and British warplanes streaking overhead. "Ninety-nine percent of Americans don't know the country they'll be bombing is Mesopotamia," says Dr. Huda Ammash, a high-ranking Baath Party official. "Our country has served humanity for so long, now it's up to the international community to help protect Iraq." To the oilfields, the ecology of the Gulf and the lives of countless civilians and soldiers, add another potential casualty of the impending war: the cultural patrimony of Western civilization. In January scholars gave Defense Department officials the names of archeological sites they hoped to spare. "[The military] had a list of 150," says McGuire Gibson, professor of Mesopotamian archeology at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute. "We gave them over 4,000 more--but that only covers the 10 to 15 percent of the country we've studied." Gibson is cautiously encouraged by the record of the earlier war, in which allied bombing spared most important monuments, even those adjoining military targets that were destroyed. But he's also aware that in the featureless plains of southern Iraq, the only high ground consists of the ruins of ancient cities. If the Iraqis make a stand, these mounds, which can be as much as four miles around and 80 feet high, are the natural places to do it.
EBAY'S THREAT TO IRAQ
The larger danger, scholars believe, is from looting. This has been a feature of war in this part of the world since long before the seventh century B.C., when a frieze in one of the palaces at Nineveh depicted an event described thusly in Michael Roaf's "Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia": "An Assyrian soldier brings in a severed head to be counted with the rest of the booty after a battle in Babylonia." In 1991, with Baghdad's iron control over the country shattered, "nine of 13 regional museums were completely looted," says Richard Zettler, associate curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Iraqi civilians began tearing into unexcavated sites with front-end loaders, carrying away anything of value. The plunder has been turning up ever since in dealers' catalogs and at auctions around the world. Last week on eBay, sellers were offering 4,000-year-old cuneiform-tablet fragments ("Be sure to bid on this fantastic piece of history!") and a Sumerian silver necklace from 2500 B.C. "There are Iraqi antiquities everywhere you look," says John Malcolm Russell, an authority on the region at Massachusetts College of Art. "And they didn't all come from someone's basement. There are very few legitimate objects on the antiquities market."
This time the Iraqis seem better prepared for postwar chaos. The Iraq Museum in Baghdad was heavily sandbagged last week and closed to the public while workers frantically packed its immense treasure into metal trunks. Rare documents and books, including gold-leaf copies of the Qur'an printed on silk paper, were being packed away at Baghdad's Abdul Qader Al-Kailini mosque. "Four thousand museum pieces were stolen in 1991," says Jaber al-Tikriti, the Iraq Museum's director of antiquities. "This time we have a plan."
But, except out of professional solidarity, Western scholars care less about museum thefts than about the plundering of unexcavated sites. Objects in museums have already been photographed and studied, and if they were properly excavated, their archeological context is known. "Archeologists don't want the objects themselves," explains Russell, "but the stories they represent. When you yank a clay tablet or a cylinder seal out of the ground, you lose everything but the pretty object itself."
It's a minor irony that Saddam's brutal police state has been exceptionally conscientious about protecting Iraq's cultural heritage, partly for his own megalomaniacal reasons. A reconstruction of a Babylonian palace in the 1980s was accomplished with bricks inscribed with a tribute to Saddam Hussein, "protector of civilization, [who] rebuilt this palace which belonged to Nebuchadnezzar II." In that, of course, Saddam is no different than a hundred others who have ruled this ancient land and left their marks on it. Now, perhaps, more than ever, the world ought to be studying their fates.
http://www.msnbc.com/
Artworks Stolen From Home of Princess Haifa
Agence France Presse
PARIS, 18 March 2003 — Thieves stole works of art worth an estimated 250,000 euros ($265,400) from the home of Princess Haifa Al-Faisal in a fashionable Paris suburb at the weekend, police said yesterday. Security guards keeping watch at the princess’s home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the French capital, noticed on Saturday that several works of art made of glass, usually displayed in the windows of the home, were missing. Police said that the thieves likely entered the building without breaking and entering, through French windows that were left ajar.
The princess, who was not in France at the time of the theft, is the wife of the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan.
http://www.arabnews.com/
Israeli Police Break Ancient Tablet
Monday March 17, 2003 8:40 PM
JERUSALEM (AP) - An ancient stone tablet some experts believe may date to the 9th century B.C., providing rare confirmation of biblical narrative, broke in half while being moved to an Israeli police station, officials said Monday. An antiquities collector turned in the shoebox-sized tablet in Tel Aviv on Monday morning. Police bringing it to Israel's Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem broke it even though it was wrapped in two layers of bubble wrap and inside a box, said Amir Ganor, the head of the authorities' anti-theft division. Officials didn't say how the break occurred, but a spokeswoman for the Antiquities Authority, Osnat Guez, said it could actually help scientists studying the tablet, since they will be able to check the inner layers to determine how old the stone is. The authority will form a commission to study the tablet, which has fifteen lines of ancient Hebrew inscription that resemble passages from the Book of Kings. Experts at Israel's Geological Institute, which studied the stone at the request of the collector, believe it is authentic and dates back to the 9th century B.C. Microscopic flecks of gold burned into the stone could mean it was located together with gold objects in a building that burned - possibly the First Temple, which was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C., officials at the institute said. But experts on ancient script at the Israel Museum, who also studied the tablet, believe the Hebrew inscription, which resembles passages of Kings II, 12:1-6, 11- 17, could be fake. The tablet was shown to the public for the first time at a news conference at the Ministry of Education and Culture on Monday. Its existence was first reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz six months ago. The collector, Oded Golan, has refused to say where he got the tablet. He has denied he owns it, but is suspected of trying to circumvent Israeli antiquities laws for waiting so long to report its existence. Ganor said the tablet was probably found by Muslims digging under the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City last year. Jews believe the mosques sit on the ruins of the first and second Jewish Temples, and revere as their holiest site a nearby wall believed to have surrounded the sanctuaries. Muslims say nothing existed on the hill before the mosques. If the tablet is found to be authentic, it ``would prove the existence of the temple,'' said Education and Culture Minister Limor Livnat. Hershel Shanks, editor of the Washington-based Biblical Archaeology Review, said the tablet, if authentic, would be ``visual, tactical evidence that reaches across 2,800 years.'' The inscription on the tablet details renovations of the Jewish Temple called for by King Joash in the Old Testament. The king tells priests to take ``holy money ... to buy quarry stones and timber and copper and labor to carry out the duty with faith.'' If the work is completed well, ``the Lord will protect his people with blessing,'' the last line of the inscription reads.
The tablet would have been placed in the temple as proof that work was carried out as instructed in the Old Testament, Guez said. Muslim authorities have denied the tablet was found during the construction of an underground mosque there. Israeli archaeologists contend the work there destroyed artifacts when truckloads of earth were dumped nearby. The case mirrors that of a stone box, or ossuary, believed to have contained the bones of the biblical figure James, who some Christians believe was Jesus' brother. The box, whose existence was made known in November, was owned by Golan, and cracked when it was shipped to a museum in Toronto, Canada. The Antiquities Authority is studying it to determine if it is authentic.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Officials investigate theft
PORTSMOUTH - The police and officials at the Strawbery Banke historic museum were trying to figure out how someone stole dozens of artifacts in the middle of the day Thursday. "I find it extraordinary that he was able to pass through so easily," said Strawbery Banke President and Chief Executive Officer Kathleen Mullins. Around 1:30 p.m., a caretaker called the police to report he had seen a man loading furniture into a white van. The van and all the stolen items were recovered a short while later. Authorities traced the vehicle to Scott Ford, 33, of Sanford, Maine. He was arrested Thursday evening. Capt. Bill Irving would not comment when asked how Ford got into the locked building. He did acknowledge Ford may have been among a handful of people on a guided tour not long before the burglary occurred. Mullins described the burglary as "one of the worst nightmares a museum can go through." She said 66 historical artifacts were stolen.
Some of the recovered artifacts as well as some inside the house had been damaged, Mullins said, but she would not say to what extent. "Right now I'm just feeling very relieved and thankful that no one was hurt," she said.
http://www.cmonitor.com/
Major theft from Australian Museum to be investigated
The alleged large-scale theft of major exhibits from the Australian Museum in Sydney is being investigated by the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The Museum says a "significant number" of items disappeared in the early to mid-nineties and allegations they had been stolen were referred to the Commission last year. The Australian Museum Trust President Brian Sherman has described the extent of the alleged theft as "unbelievable" but says some of the items have now been found. "I can't obviously comment on the number of items and their condition but I can say that it has been a significant number that have been recovered in a good state and it has been a very successful operation in all respects," he said.
Sting nets return of N.C.'s copy of Bill of Rights
March 19, 2003
An original copy of the Bill of Rights stolen from the North Carolina statehouse by a Union soldier during the Civil War was recovered in an undercover sting, the FBI said Wednesday. An FBI agent, in a two- hour meeting in Philadelphia on Tuesday, posed as a philanthropist trying to buy the document for the National Constitution Center, a new museum being built in Philadelphia's historic district. The agent met with a broker representing the seller, who wanted $4 million, authorities said. After some discussion, the broker called a courier. "A courier appeared with this document in a cardboard box, if you can believe that," said Jeffrey A. Lampinski, special agent in charge of the FBI's Philadelphia office. The handwritten document _ one of at least 14 copies made in 1791 for the first 13 states and the federal government _ is faded but in "reasonable condition," said Joseph Torsella, the museum's president. Curators put its value at $20 million to $30 million, he said. "It's telling that in America our treasures aren't gold or jewels, but ideas," Torsella said. No arrests were made, but no one has been promised immunity, the FBI said. Investigators declined to release any information about the seller or broker, and officials said a civil seizure warrant was sealed. The broker recently contacted the museum, which is scheduled to open July 4, about buying the document, and Torsella set out trying to raise money for the purchase. Torsella thought it might be the copy belonging to Pennsylvania, one of five states that have lost their copies over the years through fire, theft or loss. But during the talks, his staff came to believe it was the stolen copy from North Carolina based on handwritten information on the back. Torsella, working with Gov. Ed Rendell, a museum board member, then contacted authorities. Officials believe the Union soldier brought the document back to his native Ohio and sold it a year later, in 1866. They don't know if or when it changed hands after that. "From there it remained out of circulation until this very day," Lampinski said. At least two other attempts were made to sell the document to North Carolina authorities over the years _ one around 1925 and another in 1995 _ but they were rejected, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley said.
In 1995, the offer included veiled threats to harm the document if the seller's name surfaced, the FBI said. A federal judge in North Carolina signed the seizure warrant, based on probable cause that stolen property had been transported across state lines. That court will soon have custody of the document, and will ultimately rule on whether the state is indeed the legal owner. "North Carolina's stolen Bill of Rights has been out-of-state for nearly 140 years but never out-of-mind," Easley said in a statement. "It is a historic document and its return is a historic occasion." The document lists 12 proposed amendments, only 10 of which were initially ratified on Dec. 15, 1791, becoming known as the Bill of Rights. The amendments guarantee individual rights such as freedom of religion and speech.
___
On the Net: National Constitution Center: http://www.constitutioncenter.org/
Face of Ancient Statue Recovered
ROME, March 19, 2003
Police have recovered fragments of an ancient Roman ivory statue of Apollo that were illegally excavated several years ago near the Italian capital, authorities said Wednesday. The most significant find was the face of the statue, estimated to be from around the 1st century A.D., police said. The fragments were recovered in London after a six-year investigation that led authorities through Germany, Switzerland and Cyprus. ``Given the fragility of the material, there are very few ivory statues left from the age of antiquity,'' said Col. Ugo Zottin of the police art theft squad. ``No comparable works exist'' in Italy. Officials said a group illegally excavated the face of the sculpture and about 100 fragments of it and another statue seven years ago near Lake Bracciano, 10 miles northwest of Rome. Police said the excavation site is in an area containing Roman baths and villas, but gave no further details.
Two people have been arrested in the case.
The Culture Ministry said the market value of the statue fragments had not been established. The original ivory statue stood about six feet high. Police said the latest seizure was part of a larger international investigation that had already turned over thousands of ancient art fragments.
http://www.cbsnews.com/
From: Secrétariat ICOM Reply-To: International Council of Museums Discussion List To: ICOM-L@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM
Subject: ANNOUNCE: ENG: Cultural Heritage in Afghanistan - Blue Shield
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:14:18 +0100
Statement by the International Committee of the Blue Shield on the international support pledged for the reconstruction of the Cultural Heritage in Afghanistan.
The situation in Afghanistan has been dramatic in many respects. Many people have suffered severely. It has also been a difficult time for Afghanistan's cultural heritage. All of us were stunned into speechlessness when we received the news of the destruction of the famous Bamiyan Buddhas. But this was not the only harm done to the Afghan heritage. Many monuments were damaged, documents disappeared and the illicit traffic of cultural artifacts rampant. The National Museum was already destroyed a long time ago and much of its collection stolen or looted. The situation has certainly changed for the better now, but it is still dramatic. Shocked by the events many people, organisations and countries pledged assistance.
Active people from Afghanistan itself and from other countries, full of hope to rebuild the country have decided to roll up their sleeves and start the Herculean task of the reconstruction of the national heritage. The National Museum appeared among the priorities. The building needs to be rehabilitated, the staff trained, the inventory reconstituted and eventually lost collections brought home.
Not only the National Museum, but various other monuments, sites libraries and archives need to be reconstructed. Notwithstanding the fact that several organisations and individuals are already actively supporting the Afghan people, the International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) notes with distress that essential pledges made by governments have not yet been honored. The National Museum for instance can still not function at a basic level. Hence the ICBS urges all governments that have made those pledges to honor them as soon as possible so that the reconstruction of Afghanistan also includes its valuable cultural heritage.
More information about the Blue Shield available at: http://icom.museum/emergency.html or http://www.ifla.org/blueshield.htm
_
March 18, 2003
'Lost City' Yielding Its Secrets
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
NEW HAVEN — Working with new evidence and a trove of re-examined relics, many of them recovered from the basement of a Yale museum here, archaeologists have revised their thinking about the significance of Machu Picchu, the most famous "lost city" of the Incas. The new interpretation comes more than 90 years after the explorer Hiram Bingham III bushwhacked his way to a high ridge in the Andes of Peru and beheld a dreamscape out of the pre-Columbian past. There, set against looming peaks cloaked in snow and wreathed in cloud, was Machu Picchu. Before his eyes, rising from the green undergrowth of neglect, were the imperial stones that have entranced and mystified visitors and scholars alike. The expression "lost city," popularized by Bingham, was the magical elixir for rundown imaginations. The words evoked the romanticism of exploration and archaeology at the time, in the summer of 1911. And the lanky and vigorous Bingham seemed to personify the spirit that was driving discoveries of a forgotten past, the curiosity and courage to go seeking in remote places, as well as the hardihood to succeed. But finding Machu Picchu proved to be easier than solving the mystery of its place in the Inca empire, arguably the richest and most powerful in the New World when Europeans arrived. The imposing architecture attested to the skill and audacity of the Incas. But who had lived at this isolated site and for what purpose? Bingham, a historian at Yale, advanced three hypotheses — all of them dead wrong. A revival in research in recent years, experts say, has solved the mystery and, to a large degree, demystified Machu Picchu. The spectacular site was not, as Bingham supposed, the traditional birthplace of the Inca people or the final stronghold of the Incas in their losing struggle against Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Nor was it a sacred spiritual center occupied by chosen women, the "virgins of the sun," and presided over by priests who worshiped the sun god. Instead, Machu Picchu was one of many private estates of the emperor and, in particular, the favored country retreat for the royal family and Inca nobility. It was, archaeologists say, the Inca equivalent of Camp David, albeit on a much grander scale. This interpretation and other new research inform a major exhibition at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale. The show, "Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas," will be here until May 3. Then it is to travel to Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Denver, Houston and Chicago. Dr. Richard L. Burger, the director of the Peabody and a specialist in Inca archaeology, said the show, the largest on the Incas ever assembled in the United States, would "change the way people see Machu Picchu." Dr. Burger and Dr. Lucy C. Salazar, also an archaeologist, are co-curators of the exhibit. "Bingham's work was very important in putting Inca archaeology on the map," said Dr. Burger, who is married to Dr. Salazar. "But we can now set aside all his ideas about the meaning of the Machu Picchu site." The new interpretation, generally supported by other experts, is based largely on a study of 16th-century Spanish legal documents and a more detailed analysis of pottery, copper and bronze jewelry, tools, dwellings, skeletal remains and other material found in the ruins. Many of the artifacts were themselves a forgotten treasure. Shipped back by Bingham, they were stashed in the museum basement, where they remained, still in their original boxes and wrapped in pages of The New York Times from the 1920's, until renewed interest in the Incas led scientists to poke into the stash. Until recently, there had not been much scholarly interest in Machu Picchu. Although the site has long been Peru's most popular tourist draw and a mecca for seekers of mystical and spiritual experiences, the haunting shells of temples, palaces and other structures had ceased to attract many archaeologists. "A lot of people felt it had become so much an icon for the Inca and Peru," said Dr. Craig Morris, a specialist in Peruvian archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. "They became more interested in working in places not so well known." Bingham's long shadow may also have discouraged research. In his three expeditions to Machu Picchu from 1911 to 1915, he established himself as the "discoverer" and foremost interpreter of the lost city. His 1930 book, "Machu Picchu: A Citadel of the Incas," endured as the definitive treatise on the site. His maps and photographs of the ruins were authoritative and evocative. But he was untrained in archaeology and he did not conduct systematic excavations and rigorous analysis. "His excavation notes," Dr. Burger said, "included more on what they were eating than what they were finding."
Bingham eventually resigned his professorship at Yale to enter politics, becoming lieutenant governor and governor of Connecticut and a senator. But his influence on Inca research remained strong, in part because of his fervid writing style. In "Lost City of the Incas," a best seller, he wrote: "Here, concealed in a canyon of remarkable grandeur, protected by nature and by the hand of man, the `Virgins of the Sun' one by one passed away on this beautiful mountain top and left no descendants willing to reveal the importance or explain the significance of the ruins which crown the beetling precipices of Machu Picchu." Archaeologists today forgive some of Bingham's lapses in excavation, but they have destroyed his theories. For example, Dr. Salazar's exhaustive examination of pottery contradicted Bingham's speculation that Machu Picchu was somehow associated with the earliest Incas. All the pottery styles were 15th century. That and other evidence suggest that construction on the site began around 1450. That was in the reign of Pachacuti, considered the Alexander the Great of the Incas. His creation, like the empire, had a relatively brief history. From the recovered pottery and Spanish documents, scholars estimate that the site was largely abandoned after only 80 years. Plague, brought to the New World by Spaniards, had by then left the land in turmoil, and in 1532 the Spanish conquered Peru with little resistance. The few Incan holdouts, including the last emperor, capitulated in 1572 at a tropical valley refuge that bore no resemblance in Spanish descriptions to Machu Picchu. So much for another of Bingham's suppositions. His theory about a sanctuary for virgins and priests began to unravel in 1990 with the publication of research by Dr. John Howland Rowe, an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley. In archives at Cuzco, the former Inca capital, Dr. Rowe found a 16th-century suit filed by descendants of Pachacuti. They sought the return of family lands, including a retreat called Picchu. The finding sent Dr. Burger, a onetime student of Dr. Rowe, and Dr. Salazar back to Machu Picchu. "We then felt this was a royal estate, a country palace," Dr. Burger recalled. "All Machu Picchu is a big palace, the emperor's residence across from the temple, the dwellings and workshops, everything spread out around a great plaza."
As early as the 1960's, María Rostworowski, an ethnohistorian in Lima, pointed out that Inca rulers had established a chain of royal estates through the region. They served as occasional royal residences, but mainly as administrative centers. Many of the estates were razed by Spanish soldiers searching for gold, and some were built over and modified beyond recognition. But remote Machu Picchu, at an elevation of 6,750 feet, survived unscathed. Dr. Susan A. Niles, an archaeologist at Lafayette College who is the author of "The Shape of Inca History," published in 1999, explained that it has long been known that the estates were peculiar to Inca royalty. Each ruler established his own and built a palace there as a monument to himself. Each estate was the ruler's own private property, which was left to his family after death. The succeeding son could use the estates, but not own them. So he immediately began building his own monuments. The estates, Dr. Niles said, were important centers for the economic management of agricultural lands, forests and mines in the surrounding region. That was presumably true, as well, of Machu Picchu. Dr. Burger and Dr. Salazar agreed, but said little evidence had been found that ordinary administrative affairs were regularly conducted there. They emphasized the role of the site, 50 miles from Cuzco, as a country retreat for entertaining visiting dignitaries and for royal relaxation. Though called a "lost city," it was not a true city. Probably no more than 750 people ever lived there at any given time, and in the rainy season the population dropped to just a few hundred. They were presumably the servants and artisans who attended to the royal family and their elite guests. Bingham was not entirely wrong about the religious aspects of Machu Picchu. The buildings, ritual chambers, fountains and gardens, Dr. Salazar said, seemed to be arranged with Incan cosmology in mind. Rulers were believed to be descended from the sun, and wherever they went was sacred. Pachacuti, in particular, was looked upon as a creator god. New investigations turned up bones of animals probably sacrificed in religious ceremonies. And there were dozens of obsidian pebbles, which scientific analysis showed had come from a revered volcano more than 200 miles away. The obsidian had never been modified for use as cutting tools. It is likely, Dr. Burger said, the obsidian had symbolic meaning. The Incas worshiped high mountains as the source of supernatural forces.
But Bingham had gone too far with his "virgins of the sun" hypothesis, experts say. He was misled by the findings of the party's osteologist, who reported that most of the skeletons buried at the site were those of women. In new studies, Dr. John W. Verano, a physical anthropologist at Tulane University, determined that the ratio of female to male skeletons was comparatively even. His research also showed that many families and newborn infants lived there, not what one would expect in a community of virgins. All the burials at the site were simple, with only modest grave goods. These were the remains of the retainers rather than royalty. "This mortuary pattern," Dr. Burger said, "is not surprising, because if members of the Inca elite had died while residing at the country palace, they would have been transported to their principal residence in Cuzco rather than being buried at Machu Picchu." Life at the country retreat must have been reasonably healthy. An analysis of bones showed that the workers apparently ate well. There were cases of tuberculosis and parasites, as well as considerable tooth decay from the corn diets. But nearly all the burials were of adults, including quite a few who were older than 50, an advanced age in that day. The workers were brought from all over the empire, Dr. Verano concluded. The ethnic diversity was seen in the shapes of skulls, which had been deformed through binding in infancy. Different cultures over a wide geographic range had distinctive cranial deformations. Some came from the coast, and others from the highlands and as far away as Lake Titicaca. Investigations by Dr. Alfredo Valencia Zegarra, a Peruvian archaeologist, and Kenneth Wright, a hydrological engineer from Boulder, Colo., have uncovered the magnitude of Machu Picchu as an engineering achievement. The Incas had not only terraced the slopes for agriculture, hauling up fine sand and topsoil from the valley and erecting stone retaining walls that have survived more than 500 years. But they had also taken an uneven ridge surface and transformed it to the flat mesalike surface seen today.
Before any of the buildings rose, the Incas leveled the site with loose rock and other fill, stabilizing it with immense walls deep beneath the surface. Mr. Wright estimates that the invisible subsurface construction constitutes some 60 percent of the effort invested in building Machu Picchu. Whatever Pachacuti, the empire builder, had in mind, Dr. Salazar said, Machu Picchu "shows what the New World had achieved before the Spanish arrived." Some of the engineering and architecture was better than in Seville, she noted, and the Spanish "could not believe how people, people without writing, could have built something like this." Archaeologists today may have demystified the lofty ruins, but their awe remains undiminished. Dr. Niles of Lafayette College said the "overpowering landscape alone may be why Pachacuti chose the place for what his legacy to the world should be." Conceding that he was biased, Dr. Morris of the Natural History Museum said that Machu Picchu "is to me the most spectacular archaeological site in the world."
http://www.nytimes.com/
Marbles are back in play
March 19 2003
This week, in a speech in Athens, the former ABC boss, David Hill, confidently predicted an end to the long-running and acrimonious dispute between Greece and Britain over the Parthenon marbles. (It is a point of honour in some circles to refer to them as the Parthenon, rather than Elgin, marbles, thereby honouring their origin rather than the British ambassador who somewhat dubiously "acquired" them in 1801.) Hill's prediction - made at an international symposium - seems at odds with the recent decision by Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, to break off negotiations with the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles. The marbles would stay in Britain, where they could "do most good", MacGregor said. They would never be returned to Greece - although he did suggest that the Greek Government should accept a computer-generated version of what the 2500-year-old marbles would look like on the Parthenon. Yet Hill, who is executive director of the British committee ("They were a bit of a sleepy hollow and when I met some of them in London they were keen for me to help them," he explained), and his local counterpart, Jenny Bott (otherwise chairwoman of the Australia Council), are increasingly confident. Why?
For a start, they are winning the public relations war. A Mori public opinion poll, commissioned by the British committee last October, showed 56 per cent of those polled favoured the marbles returning to Greece under certain conditions already agreed to by the Greeks. Only 7 per cent opposed their return on any terms. Interestingly, the highest level of support for their return came from people who had visited them in the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum. (The conditions were that Britain could continue to hold legal title to them - although the legality of that title is hotly contested by a number of lawyers expert in the area; that a new museum be built in Athens to house them; that Greece would lend other exhibits to the British Museum in their stead, and that Greece waive claim to other items of Greek antiquity in British collections.) A number of British Olympic medallists have called for their return, as have prominent Brits such as Ken Livingstone, the Lord Mayor of London; former Labour leaders Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot; Rumpole's creator, John Mortimer; actors Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Emma Thompson, Ian McKellen, Sean Connery and Joanna Lumley, and world leaders such as Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin and - most surprisingly - representatives of the Turkish Government, whose Foreign Minister, Ismail Cem, said in 2000 that it was now "an obligation" for Turkey to assist since their "seizure by Elgin" took place during the Ottoman empire's occupation of Greece. Further, the Blair Government has recently told the British committee that the return of the marbles is a matter for the museum, not the Government. But, having jointly announced with the Prime Minister, John Howard, "in principle" support for the return of Aboriginal human remains held by British institutions, Blair commissioned Professor Norman Palmer to investigate how that might occur and what constraints there were on repatriation. Palmer's report is due by the end of this month and, according to Hill, is likely to recommend the formation of an independent panel to determine individual requests. For Hill, "This will be a significant precedent. I don't see how you can maintain a distinction between 'bones' and 'stones'."
In Australia, Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser are among the prominent names enlisted to the cause, while museum professionals such as Des Griffin, the former director of the Australian Museum (itself a leader in repatriation of culturally significant items), Terence Measham (a former director of the Powerhouse) and leading consultant Kylie Winkworth are active members of the Australian Committee for the Return of the Parthenon Marbles. In a recent edition of the journal Museum National, Winkworth suggested that arguments for the marbles' return have shifted from legalistic questions of title to the question of "what is the right course of action for this collection [which has been] sundered from its related parts and place of context". "The Parthenon and its sculptures are a single, integrated work of art," she wrote, "which belong together as part of the world heritage of the Acropolis. The return of the marbles is an opportunity ... to piece together a work designed as a coherent narrative and a unified artistic scheme. It is a travesty of museum practice to dismember this ..." This is not just one person's opinion. The code of ethics for ICOM, the International Council of Museums, commits members to engage in real dialogue with groups claiming the return of significant items, and the Museums Association of Britain and Museums Australia have condemned the recent statement signed by 18 leading international museums defending the retention of looted or illegally acquired artefacts on the grounds of the "importance and value of universal museums". But that argument is undercut by its own logic. If, indeed, the Parthenon marbles are not a specifically Greek national treasure, how much more tenuous is their claim to be a British national treasure? As truly "international" treasures, they could as well be housed in the splendid museum designed by the Swiss-American architect Bernard Tschumi, which is now under construction within view of the Acropolis, as they could in London. Indeed, on grounds of equity of access, they would be better housed in Athens since more people visit the Acropolis than visit the British Museum. And in case logic does not prevail, the Greeks will tighten the screws on MacGregor and his supporters just a fraction more. For when the new Acropolis museum is finished next year, its entire upper floor - aligned with the Parthenon so that the marbles it is designed to house can be viewed in direct relation to the building they were designed for - will be left empty until such time as the marbles are returned. It would, says Winkworth, become "an eloquent and shaming advertisement of the British Museum's position".
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/18/1047749772862.html
Collector's attorney blasts Antiquities Authority
By Nadav Shragai
Lior Bringer, an attorney for the antiquities collector who gave the state the "King Jehoash inscription" on Monday, launched a blistering attack on the Antiquities Authority and the police yesterday for their treatment of his client. The inscription - 15 lines in ancient Hebrew script inscribed on a black sandstone tablet and said to date from the 9th century BCE - would, if authenticated, constitute the first external confirmation of some of the events of the First Temple period as described in the Bible. The police and the Antiquities Authority suspect the collector, Oded Golan, obtained the stone in violation of the Antiquities Law but promised him that, when he handed it over to them, he would not be prosecuted. "The question of the stone's ownership is irrelevant," Bringer said yesterday. "They took a man who, thanks to his connections, is capable of getting his hands on cultural treasures and rare and valuable archaeological findings and turned him into a criminal. The state doesn't conduct digs in the Temple Mount area, nor will it in the future. The state also doesn't bother to try and obtain the artifacts that leave the area. And here a man brings a unique artifact, which he believes is an authentic artifact from the First Temple period, hands it over to the state and says `check it out for yourselves.' "The state then expresses its gratitude by publicly vilifying Golan, raising the suspicion that (the stone) is a forgery even before the inscription has been examined, throwing around unfounded accusations as if he had been found with stolen property in his possession - an accusation that was never made to Golan's face - and waging a media campaign orchestrated by the police and the Antiquities Authority whose purpose is to plant doubts with regard to the source of the inscription and the collector who took the trouble to hand it over to the state. "If the suspicions of forgery are so deep and so well founded, and if the collector is someone whose statements ought to be treated skeptically, as Antiquities Authority personnel have been implying, why are they hyping the inscription? Why did they bring it to the education minister? Why did MKs have to intervene to get the police to investigate the matter?" Bringer concluded.
In response, the Antiquities Authority said that Golan is not as innocent as his attorney is trying to make him sound, and that documents seized from his house appear to show that Golan, contrary to what he has claimed, is the stone's owner. The state, it added, takes very seriously the possibility that the stone might be authentic, just as it takes seriously the possibility that it might be a forgery; in either case, the state is obligated to conduct a thorough scientific investigation. Given the stone's enormous importance if authenticated, the authority concluded, the state would be obliged to conduct such an investigation even if there were only a 1-percent chance it was genuine.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/
Archeologists: Don't attack cultural treasures in Iraq
By LANCE GAY March 19, 2003
Archeologists and art curators are urging the Pentagon to go easy on Iraq's historic sites, noting that a war could wipe away priceless treasures that are producing fresh clues on how Western civilization began more than 6,000 years ago. U.S. military planners say the Pentagon will follow the 1954 Hague Convention, which prohibits the targeting of cultural or religious sites in war, and has sought information from historians and archeologists about important sites to save them from random destruction. It's not just war that worries historians and archeologists, but a chaotic aftermath that could leave Iraqi museums unguarded and vulnerable to looters hungry to strip the country of artifacts worth millions of dollars on the international black markets in London, Tel Aviv and New York. John Russell of the Massachusetts College of Art said that Iraq's archeological treasures that were manufactured in villages along the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers are a key to understanding the foundation of Western civilizations. "It's the cradle of civilization - the first place where people lived the way we do today, and can be tracked and studied from the way they lived in villages to the towns," Russell said. "It's part of who we are - that's true whether we are Iraqis, or citizens of the world." Russell said there are more than 10,000 archeological sites in Iraq, the vast majority of which have not been explored. The country, once known as Mesopotamia, was home to rich Assyrian, Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations in ancient times, and a center of Islamic culture in medieval centuries. Many of the great cities of these eras like Nineveh and Babylon are buried ruins, but there are still some fragile above-ground artifacts, like the great 2,000-year-old brick audience hall at Cteisphon near Baghdad, and the 13th-century Mustansiriya University in the capital's downtown. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, archeologists were outraged at the damage American planes caused strafing the colossal 5,000-year-old temple at Ur, said in the Bible to be the birthplace of Abraham, and around Basra, reputedly the location of the Garden of Eden. The Pentagon defended the strafing, displaying satellite photos showing that Iraq's air force parked two MiG fighters next to the Ur temple, making it difficult for pilots to avoid damaging the building. Paul Zimansky, a professor of archeology at Boston University, said the damage to the temple at Ur and other sites would have been avoidable had the Pentagon alerted pilots to the significance of Iraq's historical heritage. He said the Pentagon appears to be determined to avoid this problem during this campaign. Zimansky said archeology will play an important role in rebuilding Iraq, and Iraq's middle class is knowledgeable of the country's role in history. Thanks to technological advances using ground-penetrating sonar systems, computers and nuclear carbon dating, archeology is undergoing a revolution that is providing deeper insights into how people once lived. Some projects no longer involve digging up sites or restoring villages, but using sonar to determine the layout of villages, and computers to re-create daily life. This is a more practical approach to archeology in Iraq, where ancient cities were built of mud brick that doesn't last, rather than relying on stone mined in Mediterranean quarries that was used to build ancient Greece and Rome.
Zimansky said Iraq used to have a strong interest in antiquities, and several museums scattered around the country to display artifacts that were uncovered. But after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the system broke down, and several museums were looted and archeological sites pillaged by Iraqi gangs looking to make money. Looters also destroyed an ancient palace at Nineveh that archeologists were uncovering, hammering out wall reliefs from the palace throne room, and breaking them apart into easy-to-carry pieces. In one notorious case, a huge stone statue of a winged bull, in the process of being uncovered from the palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad, was decapitated and sawed into pieces. The looters were caught and executed, but Zimansky said his greatest fear is that other gangs will return to sites to take other relics after America forces Saddam Hussein and his retinue from office. "I'm very pessimistic. I think it will be a very long time before there is stability in the country once again," he said.
On the Net: www.archaeological.org/
(Contact Lance Gay at gayl(at)shns.com or visit SHNS on the Web at http://www.shns.com.)
Open Declaration on Cultural Heritage at Risk in Iraq
To All Concerned Institutions and Individuals:
The Archaeological Institute of America is profoundly concerned about the possible disastrous effects of military conflict on the sites, monuments, and museums of Iraq. We intend to publicize as widely as possible the attached Declaration, which is aimed both at protecting cultural heritage from damage and supporting existing legal and administrative structures in Iraq. It will be sent to heads of governments as well as leading journals and newspapers.
We invite all scholarly and scientific institutions with an interest in Iraq, as well as individual scholars, to become signatories of the declaration. To do so, please respond to this email address, providing the names of institutions in full; and for individuals, titles and affiliations. We welcome dissemination of the document to scholars in the field and institutions.
The situation is clearly very urgent; please respond as soon as possible, to malcolmbell@archaeological.org.
Malcolm Bell Professor of Classical Archaeology University of Virginia Vice President for Professional Responsibilities Archaeological Institute of America
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Open Declaration on Cultural Heritage at Risk in Iraq
The extraordinary global significance of the monuments, museums, and archaeological sites of Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia) imposes an obligation on all peoples and governments to protect them. In any military conflict that heritage is put at risk, and it appears now to be in grave danger.
Should war take place, we call upon all governments to respect the terms of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and its First Protocol. We urge all governments, institutions, and individuals in a position to act to recognize and uphold the validity of Iraqs existing, strong Antiquities Law. To secure the long-term safety of the archaeological and cultural heritage of Iraq of all historical periods, and to stop the illicit digging and smuggling of antiquities that have occurred during the period of the Embargo and that may follow a period of conflict, the staff of the Department of Antiquities must be returned to pre-Embargo numbers in academic and technical fields. Most important, the number of guards for individual sites, monuments, and museums must be returned to pre-Embargo strength.
As represented by the signatories of this letter, the international scholarly community is prepared, at the conclusion of the present crisis, to support the Iraqi Department of Antiquities in strengthening and retraining its staff, in assessing the conservation needs of artifacts and buildings, and in refitting laboratories. If asked, international archaeologists are also willing to play a role in any needed assessment of damage done by illicit digging or warfare, in salvage operations directed by the Department of Antiquities, and in repatriating stolen antiquities.
The signatories of this letter urge all governments to recognize that fragile cultural heritage is inevitably damaged by warfare, that irreparable losses both to local communities and to all humanity are caused by the destruction of cultural sites, monuments, and works of art, and that it is our common duty to take all possible steps to protect them.
Signatories
American Association for Research in Baghdad
Archaeological Institute of America
Archaeological Institute of America - Canada
Belgian Archaeological Expedition to Iraq
British School of Archaeology in Iraq
Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies, Copenhagen
College Art Association
German Archaeological Institute/Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Oriental Department/Orient Abteilung
Institute for Cultural Studies of Ancient Iraq, Kokushikan University, Tokyo
McDonald Institute, Illicit Antiquities Research Centre, University of Cambridge
State Archives of Assyria Project, University of Helsinki
Béatrice André-Salvini, Conservateur en chef au Département des Antiquités Orientales, Musée du Louvre
Michael Aurbach, President, College Art Association
Zainab Bahrani, Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
John Baines, University of Oxford
Heather D. Baker, START-Projekt, Institut für Orientalistik, University of Vienna
Gary Beckman, Professor of Hittite and Mesopotamian Studies, University of Michigan
Leigh-Ann Bedel, Pennsylvania State University
Lis Brack-Bernsen, Institut für Philosophie, University of Regensburg
Walter Bodine, Near Eastern Languages, Yale University
Marco Bonechi, Istituto di Studi sulle Civiltà dell'Egeo e del Vicino Oriente, Rome
Klara Brenova, Oriental Institute, Prague
Geoffrey Cantor, Professor of the History of Science, University of Leeds
Elizabeth Carter, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles
Jorge Silva Castillo, Profesor Investigador, Centro de Estudios de Asia y Africa, El Colegio de México
Antoine Cavigneaux, Professeur de langues et civilisation mesopotamienne, University of Geneva
Soraya de Chadarevian, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Unviersity of Cambridge
John T. Chalcraft, Lecturer, Modern Middle Eastern History, University of Edinburgh
Petr Charvat, Oriental Institute and Charles University, Prague
Nandini Chatterjee, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Meredith Chesson, Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame
Cristina Chimisso, Department of Philosophy, Open University
Sophie Cluzan, Conservateur, Département des antiquités orientales, Musée du Louvre
Gudrun Colbow, University of Ghent
Elizabeth J. Cole, Department of History, University of Cambridge
Jean-Paul Descoeudres, Professor of Classical Archaeology, Vice Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Geneva
Lynn Swartz Dodd, University of Southern California
Lucy Donkin, Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Fred M. Donner, Professor, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
Jennifer Downes, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
Renée Dreyfus, Curator of Ancient Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Christopher Edens, Resident Director, American Institute for Yemeni Studies
Christine Ehlers, Department of Archaeology, Boston University
Richard S. Ellis, Professor Near Eastern Archaeology, Bryn Mawr College
Geoff Emberling, University of Michigan
Margarete van Ess, Director of the Baghdad Branch, German Archaeological Institute
Patricia Fara, Clare College, University of Cambridge
Gertrude Farber, Research Associate, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
Walter Farber, Professor of Assyriology, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
Marian Feldman, Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Robert Fernea, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin
J. V. Field, Birkbeck College, University of London
Marina Frasca-Spada, Lecturer, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
Steven Garfinkle, History Department, Western Washington University
McGuire Gibson, Professor, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago; President, American Association for Research in Baghdad
David Nelson Gimbel, Archaeos, New York
Gene Gragg, Professor, Oriental Institute, Departments of Linguistics and Near Eastern Languages, University of Chicago
Donald P. Hansen, Craig Hugh Smyth Professor of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Arnulf Hausleiter, Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies, Copenhagen
Jill Heberden, Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Georgina Hermann, Honorary Professor, Institute of Archaeology, University College London
Jens Høyrup, Roskilde University, Denmark
Blahoslav Hruska, Oriental Institute and Charles University, Prague
Hermann Hunger, Institut für Orientalistik, University of Vienna
Askold Ivantchik, Ausonius: Institut de Recherche sur l'Antiquité et le Moyen-Age, Unversité de Bordeaux
Anja Skaar Jacobsen, History of Science Department, Aarhus University
Arthur Jeffes, graduate in Archaeology, Trinity College, Cambridge
Richard Jennings, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
Charles Ellwood Jones, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
Martha Sharp Joukowsky, Director of the Petra Great Temple Excavations, Brown University
Harmke Kamminga, Department of History and Philsophy of Science, University of Cambridge
Ole Knudsen, Professor of the History of Science, University of Aarhus
Peter Kornicki, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge
Stephan E. Kroll, Vorderasiatische Archaeologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich
Curtis E. Larsen, U.S. Geological Survey
Mogens Trolle Larsen, Professor Assyriology, Copenhagen University
Paul Larsen, independent scholar
Peter Machinist, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages, Harvard University
Joy McCorriston, Department of Anthropology, Ohio State University
David W. McCreery, Department of Religious Studies, Willamette University
Augusta McMahon, Faculty of Oriental Studies and Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge
Ken Matsumoto, Professor, Institute for Cultural Studies of Ancient Iraq, Kokushikan University; Director, Kokushikan ArchaeologicalExpedition to Kish
Léon de Meyer, Director, Belgian Archaeological Expedition to Iraq, Honorary Rector University of Ghent
Peter A. Miglus, Institut für Ur-und Frühgeschichte, University of Heidelberg
Wolfram Nagel, formerly Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology, University of Köln
Karen Nicely, Professor of Medieval Art History, University of British Columbia
Hans J. Nissen, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Near Eastern Archaeology, Free University of Berlin
Zoe Opacic, Courtauld Institute of Art, London; University of Cambridge
Asli Osyar, Department of History, Bogazici University, Istanbul
Geri Parlby, Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Simo Parpola, Director, State Archives of Assyria Project, University of Helsinki
Lukas Pecha, Oriental Institute, Prague, and West Bohemian University, Pilsen
Jana Pecirkova, Oriental Institute, Prague and West Bohemian University, Pilsen
Constance Piesinger, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Richard Plant, Queen Mary, University of London
Jiri Prosecky, Oriental Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
Wendy Pullan, Head of the Graduate School, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge