Southwest Archaeology Today for April 7, 2006

Archaeology making the news – a service of the Center for Desert Archaeology.

– National monument’s oldest artifact goes on display: An intricately fashioned stone hunting point, created at a time when camels and mammoths roamed southern Utah, has been put on display in Boulder. David Holladay found the Clovis point which is believed to have been created by a prehistoric American Indian 11,000 years ago.
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_3673651?source=rss

– Huge 1,500-year-old pyramid discovered in Mexico: Archaeologists have discovered a huge 1,500-year-old pre-Hispanic pyramid in a working class district of Mexico City after digging into a hill used every year to depict the crucifixion of Christ.
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060405/3/2ilba.html

– A century behind the camera: In the early days of photography – the middle to late 19th Century – photographers were an adventurous lot.
http://tinyurl.com/he3xa (Durango Telegraph)

– Donor at center of artifacts storm: Archaeology experts from three colleges this weekend criticized Harvard and other universities for taking money from a philanthropist whose personal antiquities collection contains some artifacts, they say, were of dubious origin.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512517

– Tomb raiders loot U.S. sites, sell goods on eBay: In Italy, they are called tombaroli — tomb raiders — and punished with decade-long jail sentences and million-dollar fines. In the United States, they often plunder unnoticed, stripping parks and historical sites of their cultural bounty without fear of reprisal.
http://www.startribune.com/484/story/355442.html

– Digging deep: On Mesa Verde’s 100th birthday, there’s still a lot of dirt behind the region’s greatest archaeological mystery. The invaders arrive in the cool, early morning. The imposing sandstone edifices and towers, dotted with darkened windows, had been quiet and peaceful, a silent city hidden deep within a rocky tableland rising hundreds of feet above the Colorado desert.
http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2006-04-06/cover.html