Friday, June 16, 2006

Archaeology Magazine July/August

http://www.archaeology.org/0607/index.html
The new edition of Archaeology is now available, and the website has been updated with some online content too, of which the following may be of interest. See the following URLs for the full accounts.

Review: Napoleon on Madison
http://www.archaeology.org/online/reviews/napoleon/index.html
"On July 1, 1798, Bonaparte, just 29 years old, arrived off the coast of Egypt. With the young general were some 55,000 troops and another, much smaller group of scholars, engineers, and scientists, collectively known as the savants. As a military expedition, it was a disaster, and Napoleon himself secretly sailed back to France little more than a year later, abandoning his army, which was stranded when Nelson annihilated the French fleet. The expedition's saving grace and enduring legacy was the contribution of the 160 or so savants, whose research and investigations were published in the monumental Description de l'Égypte. This 23-volume compendium is the focus of Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt, a new exhibition at the Dahesh Museum of Art in New York.

Summary: Bosnian pyramid
http://www.archaeology.org/0607/abstracts/bosnia.html
An article summarizing in brief the main claims and counter claims about the so-called Bosnian pyramids, together with a short analysis of the background of the researcher heading the excavations: "So, who is Semir Osmanagic? According to the press--the BBC and AP among others--he's a Bosnian archaeologist who's spent 15 years researching pyramids in the Western Hemisphere. But Osmanagic is no archaeologist. He's a Houston-based metalwork contractor who holds Sarajevo University degrees in economics and political science. His 15 years of "independent research" have resulted in publications like The World of the Maya, which claims the Maya were descendants of aliens from the Pleiades by way of Atlantis."

Interview: Exposing the Culture Thieves
http://www.archaeology.org/online/interviews/watson.html
An interview with Peter Watson, co-author with Cecilia Todeschini of The Medici Conspiracy, and an investigator into the illicit antiquities and art trade, mainly in Italy. The most interesting feature of the interview is the final paragraph, in which Watson provides a short 5-point list of measures that he advises should be adopted immediately in the interests of safeguarding antiquities from further dispersal.

No comments: