My brother in law send me this link. The submerged city of Pavlopetri will be excavated this summer and Nic Flemming will be part of the team. The city was recorded by Flemming in the 60’s but only this year did the government agreed on excavating the site. The permit was given to the University of Nottingham. I was surprised to see that Nic Flemming will be among the team members, I am very happy to read that he’ll be on site. Finally!!! It only took them 40 years to get that permit!!!

You can read the article here.

Call for Papers from the 13th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists (EurASEAA)

We are pleased to announce that the 13th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists (EurASEAA) will be held in Berlin in 2010, organized jointly by the Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology at the Free University of Berlin, the Ethnological Museum, and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI).

The conference brings together archaeologists, art historians, and philologists who share a common interest in Southeast Asia’s past from prehistory to the historical period. Its aim is to facilitate communication between different disciplines, to provide a survey of present work in the field and to stimulate future research.
Papers are now invited for all topics on Southeast Asian archaeology, in particular to the main conference theme “Crossing Borders in Southeast Asian Archaeology”. This subject has been chosen to reflect the conference’s interdisciplinary approach but more to encourage participants to broaden their thematic context.
Southeast Asia exhibits incredible diversity. Different geographic and climatic environments bounded by mountains and upland valleys, river systems and deltas, coast lines and islands have led to the development of myriad cultural, political, and ethnic groups. However, contacts between all these different life zones were always possible and highly effective. Their study provides a fascinating glimpse of the dynamics of communication from prehistory to pre-colonial times. Participants of the EurASEAA13 conference are encouraged to reflect on the transfer of knowledge, language, material culture, or whatever else they find as evidence for trans- and interregional interaction in their current research. Papers on South Asia and Southern China which are important for long-distance exchanges will be considered if they are closely related to Southeast Asian themes.

Colleagues who wish to participate in the conference should submit the title of their paper and an abstract of about 150 words by 1 August 2009. Participants and visitors can register online.
Presentations are limited to 20 minutes. We encourage the presentation of posters as well as the proposals of panels.
We are applying for funding from various organizations to provide travel grants to participants. To qualify for a grant we expect you to submit an abstract of your intended paper and your CV.

You can submitt your papers at:

http://euraseaa.userpage.fu-berlin.de/

I have decided to take a more active role in FAcebook and create a discussion group about Treasure Hunters, UCPUCH, Antiquities Trade and so on. I decided to call the group “That should be in a museum!” after Indiana Jones’ famous quote. I know most of the time the groups in Facebook are not very active, but I’ll have a chance to publish a few thoughts on the matter. THe first topic I decided to publish is about the Antiquities Trade. I have been reading Sotheby’s: Inside Story and thought that it would make a great topic. One of the typical issues raised by TH is profiting from artifacts. It seems that the market has been (is?) artificially inflated to create a market that is not quite there yet. It’s funny to see how a few people can manipulate markets to their own profit like a ponzi scheme…I think this is a crucial point for the erradication of smuggling and looting in the world and I have to say I was quite upset to find out that some agents in Sotheby’s had indeed participated in the looting of Cambodia’s heritage…Such a shame that they should use the turmoil and suffering of the people to make profit.

This is very discouraging…A Thai soldier stepped on a land mine (or that’s what the Thai authorities say) and Thai soldiers were sent to clear the land of mines. Cambodian soldiers told them to retreat because they were on Cambodian soil and some how they all got into heavy gun fight that ended with four soldiers dead, two Cambodian and two Thai. It is quite sad to see how a temple can be used in the political agenda. The revenue of tourists in Khmer temples can be very tempting for both parties. The temple belongs to Cambodia according to the UN but Thailand has always refused UN’s rule on this matter, claiming the temple is in their border. It used to be a stronghold for the Khmer Rouge but since Pol Pot’s death in 1998 Thailand and Cambodia have both laid claim on the temple. Cambodia’s maneuvre to include the temple in the UNESCO Heritage list was supported initially by the Thai government but oposition in the country has seen this action as a way of treason and have fought since for the control of the temple. So unfortunate that an archaeological site is being used to fight…

News were provided by SEAArch, you can see the links to the articles here:

Bangkok Post

The Independent

Channel News Asia

KI Media

If there is a process that has changed the relation between power and people in History, that has been without a doubt the French Revolution. For Paul Connerton the execution of Louis XVI was a turning point that will change politics and transform power to a new system imposed from the people. According to Connerton:

For those who came after, the present was seen as a time of fall into the ennui of a port- heroic age, or as a permanent state of crisis, the anticipation, whether hoped for or feared, of a recurrent eruption. Revolutionary imagining reached beyond the European heartland; since the late 19^th century we have lived the myth of the Revolution much as the first Christian generations lived the myth of the End of the World (Connerton, 1989, pp. 6-7).

Following Connerton’s thought, it can be said that the 19th century will suffer serious changes in the way institutional powers interacted with the people. The change can be seenm for example, in the newly established republican government of United States of America. In the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution the founding fathers grant the people the right to bear arms, a controversial matter that is based on the idea that the people have the right to take up arms against the state if the people’s rights are violated. It is unsurprising then that the relations between power and people should change during the 19th century. The fear of  an infectious revolution that could anihilate the most traditional way of government (monarchy) will influence the communication between the state and the people, and new tools to control people will develop. One such tool will be Museum and Universal Exhibitions.

London’s 1858 exhibition is considered the forerunner of the exhibitionist fever that will infect Western countries from that year onwards. The fairs were used to compete pacifically against other nations, to show technological advances and use them as symbols of power and development against rival states.

But universal exhibitions were not limited to scientific development, they also offered a public space for culture. According to Bennett (Routledge, 1996, pp. 82-83), it is now that we see a change in the exhibition of history, art and anthropology that will be introduced in public spaces such as museums and universal exhibitions. In the sumit of the colonial race, the culture of exotic starts to catch the eye of the public in the form of anthropological studies of the dominated peoples. The information was transmitted through museums, live exhibitions, photographies and dioramas and created the stereotypes that the Western world has to this day of the colonised nations. This new path of communication serve the state to involve its people in the state’s accomplishments, it made them witnesses and participants of the state’s acts through voyeurism. The ultimate goal of the exhibitions was to teach its subjects, create them a nationalist identity based on the difference with the Other to generate loyalty towards the nation, whose maximum representative is the state. Bennett sees beyond the creation of a new cultural memory, for him, the exhibitions serve the purpose to self-regulate the population. The voyeaur has a superior position to that of the exhibited people, giving them a sense of righteousness that encourages the viewer to be what the state tells them to be (i.e. not the Other). For the first time we see the government including the people in their policies as a result of the state’s fear of an armed social revolution.

Unsurprisingly, archaeologists have found evidence of an early domestication of horses in Kazahastan. If they were looking for horse domestication could not have looked in a better place than Central Asia. Their relation to horse domestication is absolutely fascinating. I really enjoyed my class on the Silk Road when we talked about nomadic art. If I hadn’t chosen Cambodia as my research interest, I would have fallen for Central Asia, possibly the Tarim mummies…I like mummies…Mummie make archaeology interesting!

I just bought “Wangka: Austronesian Canoe Origins” by E. Doran Jr. It is exactly what I was hoping for, a detailed description on canoe evolution in Southeast Asia. It has a lot of maps with in-depth analysis of types of canoes and where to find them, from Madagascar and the Swahili coast all the way to the Marquesas islands. It also has a lot of graphics and sketches on canoe and sails construction. It is going to be very useful for my research, although it is quite old, since it was published in 1981.

This is weird and at the same time fascinating. The auction of the Chinese bronze heads in Christie’s was won by a Chinese national that is now refusing to pay. He said he bid out of patriotism and that he does not have the money to face the legal contract. I wish there were more people like him out there that would force auction houses to be cleaner in their transactions. I wonder what’s going to happen now, but it would be sad to see that China steps up for this guy and gives the money to Yves Saint Laurent’s heirs. No one should have to pay 30 millions to recover their heritage.

A friend of mine send me this article. The link is in Spanish, for the english version see this one. It seems that in Banteay Meanchey Japanese archaeologists have found a 2,500 year old funerary complex. Of course the Soanish version of the article claims that it belongs to an unknown civilization, but it’s most likely that the site belongs to the Mon-Khmer group. This area is where Banteay Chhmar is located, in the North-west of the country.

I just found this article on the BBC about China’s statement against the sale of Yves Saint Laurent’s Chinese antiquities for 31m euro. It seems that countries are tightening the rope around auction houses, or at least they are speaking forward against the trade in antiquities. I remembered I wrote an essay on this issue for my MA, and thought it would be nice to reproduce it here. I re-read it and noticed that I should have included more citations, it was my first essay and in Spain they don’t really teach you to reference. I will leave the way it is anyway, since the outcome is good. If you have any doubts, you can always contact me.

Addressing the Problem: Public Opinion and the Law, an Analysis of the Prevalence of Treasure Hunting

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