Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Cardinals stadium construction upsets some history scholars

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- It's sure to host innumerable arguments about balls and strikes, but well before it's completed, the St. Louis Cardinals new stadium is the site of a disagreement over the city's archaeological history.

Some contend the stadium is being built on top of centuries of St. Louis history, including the former site of pens that once held slaves.

Other historians argue 1960s construction on the current Cardinals ball park makes it a poor site for study, and the Cardinals say if workers find something significant, it will be preserved.


A monumental tragedy unfolds

In the low winter sunlight, a Wiltshire hillside fills with the long shadows of an ancient settlement. Twenty years ago these banks and hollows were prominent landmarks; next year or the year after and the last faint echo of this numinous place will have gone.

England is an old country, built on bones, a vast archaeological site with more than a million recorded features that could be anything from an interesting smudge in a cornfield to a Saxon shore fort. Resonant with local attachment and deep continuities, it is the historic landscape that gives the English countryside its power, the sense of belonging and identity. In the past 50 years, intensive farming has brought these irreplaceable landscapes to the edge of extinction, so that much of our archaeology survives only on paper. In Dorset and Wiltshire, the Wessex heartland, nearly 75 per cent of sites has been heavily damaged or destroyed; in the Midlands more than 90 per cent of the medieval ridge and furrow is lost; in Essex only a handful of the 1,200 recorded prehistoric burial mounds remain; in Hampshire more than two-thirds of the Neolithic long barrows have gone under the plough and on the Lincolnshire Wolds almost 80 per cent have disappeared. On the Cornish moorland, in the Thames flood plain, in the Cotswolds and on the North Yorkshire moors, the effects of deep ploughing are described as "absolutely devastating".



Rome-born architect dreams of completing Colosseum

ROME (Reuters) - The Colosseum will come full circle if one septuagenarian Roman gets his way.

Architect Carlo Aymonino wants to rebuild the outer wall of the world's most famous amphitheatre, once rocked by earthquakes and quarried to build other glories in the Eternal City.

"It wouldn't be an Italian Disneyland. In fact it would be the exact opposite -- a careful scientifically correct reconstruction," the 78-year-old told Reuters in an interview.


Won't ever happen. It's kind of a contentious issue in archaeology, reconstruction. In Mexico for a time they rebuilt some structures, notably in and around Teotihuacan. To differentiate original from reconstructed architecture, small black stones were embedded in the mortar between stones.

There's also the issue of historical accuracy in any reconstruction. Most ancient buildings went through several phases of construction, often tearing down parts of a building to redesign it. The choice then becomes which configuration will you choose? Imagine if, say, the U.S. White House is altered in the next decade to include another wing made of glass to create a conservatory. A thousand years from now, will a "scientifically correct" reconstruction include that wing or not?

Personally, I think that if a reconstruction can be done that both preserves and protects the remaining structure, go for it. The public will not lose anything by being shown only one possible configuration (they can't see them all now anyway) and anything that preserves and protects what's there is for the good, IMO.

Burial chamber moves back to moor

Remains of an ancient burial tomb, which have been in a museum for more than 120 years, are being moved back to the Devon moor where they were found.

The five stones, which form the Bronze-Age chamber, were discovered near Thornworthy Tor on Dartmoor in 1879.

The 4,000-year-old stones were then taken to Torquay Museum by geologist and anthropologist William Pengelly.


Another contentious issue: display stuff in a museum or leave it. Frankly, I'm for leaving stuff where it is if at all possible. Remember: The ground is generally a very safe place for artifacts.

Multiplication table from 1,800 years ago found in Hunan

Archeologists claimed that they had found a multiplication table at the Gurendi cultural relics ofthe Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) in Zhangjiajie, central China's Hunan Province.

The table was discovered on a 22cm-long wooden strip which was broken when it was discovered and the handwriting on it is quite illegible.

"We can see that the multiplication table begins at nine times nine equals 81, in a sequence that is the inverted opposite of modern tables, which start at one times one is one," said Zhang Chunlong, a research member with Hunan Archaeological Research Institute.


Maybe it's a typo but how can they tell it's a multiplication table if the writing is "quite illegible">

1204: What really happened?

When Saladin retook the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem for Islam in 1187,Pope Innocent III declared a new crusade to recapture it. But the crusadersran into financial difficulties and took advantage of Greek imperialinfighting to raise money. The scheme was a disaster, laying Constantinople towaste, gutting its churches and sending many of its citizens into slavery inEurope. The crusaders never went on to Jerusalem, but calcified the mistrustbetween eastern and western Christendom.


Luxor receives Ahmose, Ramses mummies Tuesday

The south Egyptian city of Luxor will Tuesday receive the mummies of King Ahmose, who defeated the Hyksos, and King Ramses I.

The mummies will arrive from Cairo with Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Dr. Zahi Hawas to put them on display inside the Luxor Museum annex, which is being prepared to be the first museum to tell the military history and glory of Thebes, the ancient name of Luxor.


Travelers to Egypt: THe Luxor Museum is a good one. It's not as big as the one in Cairo, but it's nicely laid out. Go there.

So, it should have been Chris Farley instead of Russel Crowe Veni, vidi, veggie...

Roman gladiators were overweight vegetarians who lived on barley and beans, according to a scientific study of the largest gladiator graveyard discovered.

Analysis of the bones of more than 70 gladiators recently found near Ephesus, the Roman capital of Asia Minor, puts paid to traditional Hollywood images of macho carnivores with the physique of boxers.

The dietary findings of the scientists from the University of Vienna are detailed in a forthcoming documentary on Channel Five. They may give vegetarians a new, harder image.


That one also wins the best headline award.

Jefferson Woman Finds Bodies Buried Under House

At the time Helen Weisensel bought her house, she didn't know it was built on top of an old cemetery -- and the bodies were still there.

All the bodies were supposed to have been relocated, but now home renovations have turned into a nightmare for the Jefferson woman. The story has given new meaning to the phrase "skeletons in the closet," reported News 3's Joel DeSpain.

Weisensel bought the property 20 years ago. When she started her remodeling project, she knew it could bring headaches, but never imagined problems like this. What she found buried beneath a crawl space in her basement would shock just about any homeowner. Fifteen months ago, she struck out to fix a crumbling foundation, hiring a man with a Bobcat.

"He only got a scoop-and-a-half of dirt out, and when he dumped the second scoop, a human skull actually rolled out of the dirt," she said.