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A compilation of media articles on heritage topics. Obviously, these all reflect the viewpoints of the authors.
30 January
- Harvard Uses 3-D Printing to Replicate Ancient Statue
Time, United States
3-D printing may be the wave of the future, but the technique—which is shaking up how architects, scientists, arms manufacturers and countless others go about their trade—will also now redeem the past.
- English Heritage launches study into effect of bridges on floods
The Guardian, United Kingdom
Ancient stone bridges with water pouring over the parapets, their narrow arches choked by fallen trees and debris washed down swollen rivers, have been recurring images in reporting the myriad floods of the past sodden years – and the bridges have often been blamed for damming the rivers' flow and causing misery to nearby communities.
29 January
- Fossil remains in museum found to be 165 million year old marine super-predator
Phys.org
Researchers examining a fossil specimen discovered in a museum storage bin have found it to be the remains of a super-predator that lived during the Jurassic Period, around 165 million years ago. They describe the specimen, named Tyrannoneustes lythrodectikos, in their paper published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, as looking like a cross between a modern dolphin and a shark or crocodile.
28 January
27 January
- Mali rebels fleeing Timbuktu burn library full of ancient manuscripts
The Guardian, United Kingdom
slamist insurgents retreating from the ancient Saharan city of Timbuktu have set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the 13th century, in what the town's mayor described as a "devastating blow" to world heritage.
26 January
25 January
- Ancient Egyptian Mummy's Elaborate Hairstyle Recreated In 3D
The Huffington Post, United States
Nearly 2,000 years ago, at a time when Egypt was under the control of the Roman Empire, a young woman with an elaborate hairstyle was laid to rest only yards away from a king's pyramid, researchers report.
- Digitizing the Portland Art Museum
KOIN Local 6, United States
Inside a studio tucked into the depths of the Portland Art Museum is a photo shoot fit for a fashion model. The stars of these sessions do more than just turn heads. With each flicker of the flash, history is being documented in high resolution. The museum is embarking on a year’s long project to digitize its entire collection: All 44,000 pieces.
- Mexican archaeologists find complex panel of 1,000 year-old petroglyphs in Nayarit
Art Daily
Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH-Conaculta) recently found a complex panel of petroglyphs that must have been carved between 850 and 1350 AD (some of which are over 1,000 years old), in a site called “Cantil de las animas” [Soul Ledge] near the town of Jesus Maria Cortes in Tepic, Nayarit
- The political economy of cultural heritage
The Jakarta Post, Indonesia
Last year we noticed greater attention being paid, both by the government and the public, to issues related to cultural heritage.Having been nominated for several years, subak in Bali was finally accepted by UNESCO onto the World Cultural Heritage list. Reports in the media said Borobudur, on the World Heritage list since 1991, was not being sufficiently maintained and not of much benefit to the surrounding population.
24 January
- National Portrait Gallery reunites Henry VIII with Catherine of Aragon
The Guardian, United Kingdom
Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon famously parted on tricky terms, but the National Portrait Gallery announced on Thursday it was reuniting the royal couple after it discovered an image of the devoutly Catholic queen hanging in, of all places, Lambeth Palace.
23 January
- Earliest Evidence Of Chocolate In North America Seen In Bowls That Date Back 1,200 Years
The Huffington Post, United States
They were humble farmers who grew corn and dwelt in subterranean pit houses. But the people who lived 1200 years ago in a Utah village known as Site 13, near Canyonlands National Park in Utah, seem to have had at least one indulgence: chocolate. Researchers report that half a dozen bowls excavated from the area contain traces of chocolate, the earliest known in North America. The finding implies that by the end of the 8th century C.E., cacao beans, which grow only in the tropics, were being imported to Utah from orchards thousands of kilometers away.
22 January
- US plea to protect Syria's rich heritage
France 24, France
Syrians on both sides of the conflict must take steps to protect the country's rich historical and archeological heritage stretching back thousands of years, a top US official warned Tuesday.
21 January
20 January
19 January
18 January
- Getty Museum review targets its antiquities collection
Los Angeles Times, United States
In the wake of a scandal over its acquisition of looted antiquities, the J. Paul Getty Museum is trying to verify the ownership histories of 45,000 antiquities and publish the results in the museum's online collections database.
- History vs. history as China plans to rebuild past
Art Daily
In a corner of old Beijing, the government may soon be both destroying history and remaking it. District officials want to re-create a piece of China's glorious dynastic past by rebuilding a square near the Drum and Bell towers in 18th-century Qing Dynasty fashion. To do it, they will demolish dozens of scuffed courtyard homes that preservationists say have themselves become a part of a cultural history that is fast disappearing as construction transforms the capital.
17 January
- Archaeologists find 1000-year-old skeletons twenty kilometers away from Chichen Itza
Art Daily
Twenty kilometers (12.43 miles) from the Archaeological zone of Chichen Itza in Yucatan, in the Mayan site of Xtojil, archaeologists from the National Institute of History and Anthropology (INAH – Conaculta) recovered ten burials, the majority of which were placed inside a cista [casket] more than a thousand years ago, possibly between 600 and 800 AD, when the pre Hispanic city had not yet been turned into the governing center of the peninsula’s north.
- Stratonikeia eyes UNESCO list
Hürriyet Daily News, Turkey
The world’s largest marble city, the ancient city of Stratonikeia in the Aegean province of Muğla’s Yatağan district, is expected to be included on the temporary list of UNESCO world heritage sites.
16 January
- Sifting the Dust for Treasures While Trouble Swirls
The New York Times, United States
The Syrian civil war is not the first conflict to complicate Professor Nicolò Marchetti’s efforts to turn Karkemish, an ancient city site on the banks of the Euphrates, on Turkey’s southern border and inside a restricted military zone, into a public archaeology park.
- Mysterious Shaman Stones Uncovered in Panama
Discovery News, United States
Archaeologists have unearthed nearly 5,000-year-old shaman's stones in a rock shelter in Panama. The stone collection may be the earliest evidence of shamanic rituals in that region of Central America, researchers say.
- Global Heritage Fund Sets Tech Goals for History Conservation
The Epoch Times, United States
Uncovering lost cities in India, preserving “earthen buildings” in China, and turning a historical site built in A.D. 400 in Peru into a viable tourist destination, were all projects made possible by the growth of an idea born in Palo Alto, Calif.
15 January
- In new study, Mexican researchers extract intact DNA from Palenque's Red Queen
Art Daily
The osseous remains of the Red Queen, the enigmatic character from Lakamha, “Place of the big waters”, today known as Palenque, in Chiapas, are being scientifically analyzed in order to date the burial in a more precise manner. It is still unknown as to whether the Red Queen was the wife of the celebrated dignitary Pakal II or if she was a ruler of that ancient Mayan metropolis.
- New cemetery endangers Egypt's more than 4,500-year-old pharaonic necropolis
Art Daily
In this more than 4,500-year-old pharaonic necropolis, Egypt's modern rituals of the dead are starting to encroach on its ancient ones. Steamrollers flatten the desert sand, and trucks haul in bricks as villagers build rows of tombs in a new cemetery nearly up to the feet of Egypt's first pyramids and one of its oldest temples.
14 January
- Picasso murals under threat
The Art Newspaper, United Kingdom
The Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage fears that Picasso’s first monumental concrete murals, which were made between the late 1950s and the early 1970s for two government buildings in Oslo, may be destroyed. The buildings were severely damaged during the deadly terrorist attack in the Norwegian capital in July 2011. The government is now considering whether to demolish the Modernist buildings that form the regjeringskvartal or government quarter.
11 January
10 January
- Funding for digital heritage archive
Flanders Today, Belgium
The government of Flanders has announced funding in the amount of €11.8 million for a Flemish Institute for Archiving and Retrieval of Audio-visual Heritage (VIAA).
- World Monuments Fund celebrates completion of conservation project at Angkor Wat
Art Daily
Bonnie Burnham, president of World Monuments Fund (WMF), today announced that WMF has completed a major conservation project at the Churning of the Sea of Milk Gallery at Angkor Wat, one of four ongoing WMF projects in the Angkor Archaeological Park being undertaken in partnership with the APSARA National Authority (Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap).
- Taiwanese linguist races to save dying language
Art Daily
Her eyes lit bright with concentration, Taiwanese linguist Sung Li-may leans in expectantly as one of the planet's last 10 speakers of the Kanakanavu language shares his hopes for the future.
- Archaeology: Italian mission discovers Luxor necropolis
ANSA, Italy
Life-long archaeologist Angelo Sesana, now head of the mission carrying out excavations on the western bank of the Nile in Luxor, says with unabashed excitement that ''it moves you like little else to bring back to life someone who sought immortality 4,000 years ago.'' The mission is being conducted by the Centre of Egyptology Francesco Ballerini (CEFB) in the Egyptian city best known for the Valley of the Kings and in the area corresponding to the temple of the Pharaoh Amenhotep II, who reigned during the 18th dynasty (1427-1401 B.C.)
9 January
- Reward Offered for Jewel Box Taken From Museum
ABC, United States
The Oakland Museum of California offered a $12,000 reward Wednesday for the safe recovery of a stolen gold-encrusted jewel box — the latest in a series of thefts involving Gold Rush-era artifacts across the region.
- Découverte d'une photo originale du bombardement d'Hiroshima
Le Monde, France
La photo était connue, elle se trouvait dans les manuels d'histoire. Mais c'est la première fois qu'un original de ce cliché en noir et blanc pris environ trente minutes après l'explosion atomique sur Hiroshima, le 6 août 1945, et à dix kilomètres à l'est de l'hypocentre est découvert. On y voit le champignon atomique s'élever en deux parties distinctes.
8 January
7 January
- Roman theatre discovered in Kent
The Guardian, United Kingdom
Conservator Francesco Rosellini, originally from Florence in Italy, works on restoring the West Wall baroque painting by Sir James Thornhill entitled "The Golden Age Returned" in the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London.
4 January
- Archaeologists Unearth Agricultural Suburb at Ancient City of Petra
Sci-News, United States
An agricultural suburb and other finds unearthed at Petra by archaeologists from the Brown University Petra Archaeological Project suggest that extensive terrace farming and dam construction in the ancient desert city began some 2,000 years ago, not during the Iron Age as had been previously hypothesized.
3 January
1 January
- Warning over commercialising heritage sites
South China Morning Post, China
China is the only country to have had at least one site inscribed into Unesco's World Heritage List each year over the past decade, but analysts warn that an official obsession with such listings for economic gain could compromise the nation's heritage conservation efforts.
updated on:
4 March, 2013
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