The 18th century Spanish-built San Antonio Missions in Texas in the United States, including Alamo, were awarded world heritage status by the UN's cultural body on Sunday.The Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, has been awarded World Heritage status [Credit: Mark Harris/Getty Images]
UNESCO's World Heritage Committee approved the listing of the five Spanish Roman Catholic sites built in and around what is now the city of San Antonio, including the Alamo fort, where in 1836 some 180 Texans fighting for independence from Mexico fought to the death against Mexican General Santa Anna's army of several thousand soldiers.
The site comprises architectural and archaeological structures, farmland, residencies, churches and granaries, as well as water distribution systems, UNESCO said.
The complexes "illustrate the Spanish Crown's efforts to colonize, evangelize and defend the northern frontier of New Spain," UNESCO said.
It said the San Antonio Missions were also an example of the interweaving of Spanish and Coahuiltecan cultures, including the decorative elements of churches, which combined Catholic symbols with indigenous designs inspired by nature.
Tucked away among northwestern New Mexico's sandstone cliffs and buttes are the remnants of an ancient civilization whose monumental architecture and cultural influences have been a source of mystery for years.Pueblo Bonito ruins, Chaco Canyon [Credit: Scott Haefner]
Scholars and curious visitors have spent more than a century trying to unravel those mysteries and more work needs to be done.
That's why nearly 30 top archaeologists from universities and organizations around the nation called on the U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday to protect the area surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park from oil and gas development.
In a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, they talked about the countless hours they've spent in the field, the dozens of books they've published about the Chaco society and their decades of collective experience studying its connection to modern Native American tribes in the Southwest. They call Chaco a distinct resource.
"Many of the features associated with this landscape — the communications and road systems that once linked the canyon to great house sites located as far away as southeast Utah and which are still being identified to this day — have been damaged by the construction of oil and gas roads, pipelines and well pads," the archaeologists said.
They're pushing for the agency to consider a master leasing plan that would take into account cultural resources beyond the boundaries of the national park. They're also looking for more coordination between federal land managers, tribes and archaeologists.
The Bureau of Land Management is revamping its resource management plan for the San Juan Basin and all new leasing within a 10-mile radius of Chaco park has been deferred until the plan is updated, likely in 2016.
Tourists cast their shadows on the ancient Anasazi ruins of Chaco Canyon [Credit: AP/Eric Draper]
Wally Drangmeister, a spokesman for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, said the BLM's existing plan already takes into account cultural resources. He said there has been a push by environmentalists to tie Chaco to development in the Mancos shale more than 10 miles from the park.
Environmentalists have been calling for protections for the greater Chaco area, and Drangmeister said that expansive definition could put the whole San Juan Basin off limits.
The basin is one of the largest natural gas fields in the U.S. and has been in production for more than 60 years. More development is expected in some areas since technology is making it easier for energy companies to tap the region's oil resources.
Some archaeologists have theorized that Chaco's influence spread far and wide from its remote desert location. A World Heritage site, Chaco includes a series of great houses, or massive multistory stone buildings, some of which were oriented to solar and lunar directions and offered lines of sight between buildings to allow for communication.
Steve Lekson, a professor and curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, has spent years studying Chaco and its influence over the Southwest. He likened the process to learning how to play baseball after discovering home base and the pitcher's mound.
"You keep poking around and find more bases and the warning tracks and all that stuff. You need the whole picture to understand how the game is played," he said. "Of course, Chaco being a political system or major regional system is much more complicated than baseball. You need enough of the package intact so you can actually understand the structure of the thing."
Chris Farthing of England takes a picture of the Chaco Canyon ruins [Credit: Jeff Geissler/Associated Press]
Lekson and others said the hope that there's more to be discovered doesn't mean energy development should come to a halt.
"I don't think anybody is saying that, but we need to pay a lot of attention to how that's done and be cognizant of the larger issue," he said. "It shouldn't be a site-by-site thing."
The archaeologists' letter comes on the heels of a tour of the Chaco area by U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, and Interior Deputy Secretary Mike Connor. The two met with land managers and others after the tour.
Connor said there are Navajo allottees who want to develop their resources and other Native Americans who want to protect those resources.
"It's a balancing act throughout all of BLM's lands and I think Chaco is particularly unique," he said. "The more I learn about it, the more I was struck by the more we all have to learn."
Author: Susan Montoya Bryan | Source: The Associated Press [July 01, 2015]
Archaeologists say climate change is destroying the historical record of the Arctic people. The artefacts being received by the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Museum of the North are more deteriorated than those unearthed decades ago, curator and professor Josh Reuther told KUAC, and he attributes that to the changing climate.A wooden mask recovered from the Nunalleq archaeological site in western Alaska [Credit: University of Aberdeen]
The problem isn’t just being noticed by academics in museums — archaeologists have seen changes in the field.
“It’s kind of a whole series of problems coming together at the same time to sort of create a perfect storm,” said Max Friesen, a University of Toronto archaeologist working on a dig in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
From left, UA Museum of the North Archaeology Curator Josh Reuther and Kaktovik resident Marie Rexford examine ivory and bone artifacts in the Barter Island collection [Credit: Kelsey Gobroski/UA Museum of the North]
“You have the potential melting of the permafrost, you have sea level rise, you have in some cases changing weather patterns.”
Friesen said he’s alarmed by the rapid deterioration. Until recently, he said, organic artefacts made of materials like wood or animal hides, were abundant around the region because they were preserved by permafrost or silty soils.
“It’s a very rich data base that’s being lost all across the Arctic,” he said.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Tuesday made public the largest antiquities seizure in American history and asked a judge to grant it custody of a startling 2,622 artifacts recovered from storage rooms affiliated with an imprisoned Madison Avenue art dealer.The recovered artifacts are from India and other places in southern Asia. Prosecutors said the dealer had cached the items in an assortment of hideaways in Manhattan and Queens [Credit: Michael Kirby Smith/The New York Times]
The artifacts, valued by the authorities at $107.6 million, were described in papers filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan as having been looted from India and other places in southern Asia and smuggled into the United States by the dealer, Subhash Kapoor.
In their complaint, prosecutors said Mr. Kapoor, 65, had cached the items in an assortment of hideaways in Manhattan and Queens. They were confiscated during raids that began in 2012 and continued through last year.
The seized items included bronze and stone statues of Hindu deities, many of them ancient masterworks worth several million dollars each.
The authorities said their goal in gaining custody of the items was to set in motion the return of the stolen objects to India and their other countries of origin. Officials also hope to prosecute Mr. Kapoor, an American citizen, in the United States. Currently he is awaiting trial in India on charges of plundering archaeological sites and conspiring with black market traders to send illicit artifacts overseas. American officials are planning to extradite him after his case is settled.
Mr. Kapoor, whose defunct gallery, Art of the Past, sold hundreds of objects to prominent American museums and collectors, has denied any wrongdoing.
Federal agents recovered looted artifacts from public storage rooms in Queens in March. The rooms were affiliated with an imprisoned Madison Avenue art dealer [Credit: Michael Kirby Smith/The New York Times]
“At the present time we are at a distinct disadvantage because Mr. Kapoor is in an Indian jail and all the facts in this matter are known by him,” said Kenneth J. Kaplan, a lawyer for Mr. Kapoor. Manhattan prosecutors declined to comment on the case.
Since an initial raid on Mr. Kapoor’s gallery by Homeland Security Investigations agents in 2012, three of his associates have agreed to criminal penalties in exchange for cooperating with investigators, according to officials and lawyers. The case, which now extends to four continents and is being pursued in conjunction with Indian officials, has been named Operation Hidden Idol.
Mr. Kapoor’s office manager, Aaron M. Freedman, 43, of Princeton, N.J., pleaded guilty in 2013 to six counts of criminal possession of stolen property valued at $35 million and, according to his lawyer, helped officials track down some of Mr. Kapoor’s hidden storage locations.
In addition, Mr. Kapoor’s sister, Sushma Sareen, a 61-year-old Queens resident, pleaded guilty in November to a misdemeanor charge of obstructing justice and was sentenced to conditional release. In 2013, she had been charged with receiving and possessing several million dollars’ worth of ancient bronze statues, which remain missing. She is also cooperating, according to investigators.
Federal authorities have identified 18 American museums as owning a total of 500 items sold or donated by Mr. Kapoor. Several museums have recently turned in objects judged to be illicit, while others have said they are satisfied that their Kapoor items were legally acquired.
Author: Tom Mashberg | Source: The New York Times [April 14, 2015]
Climate change is threatening archaeological sites in N.W.T.'s Mackenzie Delta, says University of Toronto professor Max Friesen.Pingos in N.W.T.'s Mackenzie Delta are unmistakeable evidence of permafrost activity in the soil. University of Toronto professor Max Friesen says thawing permafrost due to climate change is endangering archaeological sites in the area [Credit: Karen McColl]
He says thawing permafrost is endangering sites and artifacts dating back thousands of years.
"Instead of having the archaeological remains and the houses and whatnot being stable, they're actually eroding out of the cliff face," he said.
"As you walk along the beach, you can actually see all the artifacts, animal bones, and even pieces of houses that are slumping down the slope and will eventually wash out into the ocean."
Friesen says researchers need to act quickly and prioritize which sites should be excavated before their contents are destroyed.
