In Medieval burial ground, a rare embroidered Deisis depicting Jesus Christ was discovered
Russian archaeologists have uncovered a rare embroidered Deisis depicting Jesus Christ in a medieval burial ground.
46 graves have been dug up during excavations; one of them contained a woman who was buried with an embroidered Deisis depicting Jesus Christ and John the Baptist and was between the ages of 16 and 25.
The discovery was made during the construction of the Moscow-Kazan highway, where archaeologists found an 8.6-acre medieval settlement and an associated Christian cemetery.
The iconography of Jesus Christ known as Deesis, which can be translated from Greek as “prayer” or “intercession,” is one of the most potent and prevalent images in Orthodox religious art.
The composition of the Deisis unites the three most important figures of Christianity. A tripartite icon of the Eastern Orthodox Church showing Christ usually enthroned between the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist.
Photo: Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
The fabric is 12.1 cm long by 5.5 cm wide and is composed of two parts joined by a vertical seam made of a woven gold ribbon with a braided pattern.
The fabric’s lining did not survive, but a microscopic examination revealed birch bark remnants and needle punctures along the lower and upper edges.
In the center of the fabric is a frontal image of Jesus Christ making a blessing gesture, and to the right of him is John the Baptist praying. A second figure, probably Mary, was once on the left, but it has since disappeared, according to the inspection.
The archaeologists believe the embroidered fabric was once a dark silk samite headdress.
Similar examples include the embroidered crosses and faces of saints discovered in the Karoshsky burial ground in the Yaroslavl region, as well as the Ivorovsky necropolis near Staritsa that features an image of Michael the Archangel wielding a spear.
The first Roman fort with wooden defenses was discovered in Germany
The ancient Romans erected a fence topped with these wooden spikes in a effort to defend a silver mining operation that ultimately ran dry.
For the first time, archaeologists have discovered wooden defenses surrounding an ancient Roman military base. The fence topped with sharpened wooden stakes, akin to today’s barbed wire, is the kind of fortification known to have existed from ancient writings—including by Caesar—but no surviving examples had previously been found.
The intimidating defense measures are located in what is now the town of Bad Ems in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Excavations on the site began after a local hunter, Jürgen Eigenbrod, noticed faint markings on the ground in a field in 2016.
The differences in color in sections of the grain, it turned out, were caused by the remnants of ditches dug by the Romans.
Using geomagnetic prospecting, archaeologists have since discovered evidence of no fewer than 40 towers at the site, as well as a smaller camp, on opposite sides of the valley.
The area appears to have only served as a camp for a couple of years before burning down, reports Frankfurt’s Goethe University.
It appears that the ancient Romans were tunneling into the earth, searching for deposits of silver. At first, archaeologists believed that fire remains and melted slag were evidence that the Romans had set up a smelting works to process silver ore.
Hunter Jürgen Eigenbrod spotted these markings in a field in Germany, which turned out to be traces of an ancient Roman ditch.
But the writings of the ancient historian Tacitus reveal that the Roman governor Curtius Rufus’s efforts to mine silver in the area failed in the year 47 A.D. Expecting untold riches, the Romans had set up a heavily fortified base manned by military troops—which explains the barbed wire-like defenses, meant to deter sudden raids.
Unfortunately for them, a rich vein of the precious metal would not be unearthed in the area until millennia later, during archaeological excavations in 1897.
There was enough silver there that Romans could have continued mining operations for two centuries—if they had only kept digging.
The remains of the ancient fire, it would seem, came from a watch tower, not a profitable smelting works.
The ancient Romans erected a fence topped with these wooden spikes in a effort to defend a silver mining operation that ultimately ran dry.
These futile ancient efforts make for a fascinating story—Frederic Auth, the leader of the excavations since 2019, won first prize for his account of the history of the site at the 2022 Wiesbaden Science Slam.
Research and excavations are slated to continue, ledby Markus Scholz, a professor of archaeology and ancient Roman history of Roman at Goethe University; archaeologist Daniel Burger-Völlmecke, and Peter Henrich of the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Rhineland-Palatinate. Meanwhile, the ancient wooden spikes are now at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz.
Evidence of Europe’s first Homo sapiens was found in a French cave
Stone artefacts and tooth pre-date the earliest known evidence of the species in Europe by more than 10,000 years.
Excavations at the Grotte Mandrin rock shelter uncovered stone tools, animal bones and hominin teeth.
Archaeologists have found evidence that Europe’s first Homo sapiens lived briefly in a rock shelter in southern France — before mysteriously vanishing.
A study published on 9 February in Science Advances1 argues that distinctive stone tools and a lone child’s tooth were left by Homo sapiens during a short stay, some 54,000 years ago — and not by Neanderthals, who lived in the rock shelter for thousands of years before and after that time.
The Homo sapiens occupation, which researchers estimate lasted for just a few decades, pre-dates the previous earliest known evidence of the species in Europe by around 10,000 years.
But some researchers are not so sure that the stone tools or teeth were left by Homo sapiens. “I find the evidence less than convincing,” says William Banks, a paleolithic archaeologist at the French national research agency CNRS and the University of Bordeaux.
Tools, bones, and teeth
A team co-led by Ludovic Slimak, a cultural anthropologist at CNRS and the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, has spent the past three decades excavating the Grotte Mandrin rock shelter in the Rhône Valley.
The researchers have uncovered tens of thousands of stone tools and animal bones, as well as 9 hominin teeth, all dating from around 70,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Most of the stone tools resemble artifacts categorized as ‘Mousterian technology’ that are found at Neanderthal sites across Eurasia, says Slimak. But one of the shelter’s archaeological levels — known as layer E and dated to between 56,800 and 51,700 years ago — contains tools such as sharpened points and small blades that are more typical of early Homo sapiens technology. Slimak says the layer E stone tools resemble those found at much younger sites in southern France, left by makers unknown, as well as those from similarly aged sites in the Middle East that are linked to Homo sapiens.
These sharpened stones — which might have been the tips of spears or other tools — have been linked to Homo sapiens
An analysis led by Clément Zanolli, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Bordeaux who, found that the only hominin tooth in layer E, a molar probably from a child, is similar in shape to those of Homo sapiens who lived in Eurasia during the last Ice Age. Other teeth found in Grotte Mandrin resemble those of Neanderthals.
The researchers have not attempted to extract DNA from the layer E tooth to confirm whether it belongs to Homo sapiens or a Neanderthal.
Slimak says that in an unpublished analysis, other researchers have found Neanderthal DNA in sediments older than layer E, as well as in a tooth from Grotte Mandrin’s younger layers.
But the team was unable to extract much well-preserved DNA from horse teeth found in the rock shelter, including layer E. So they have decided to hold off on the destructive process of taking samples from the layer E hominin tooth until they have access to technology that will give them a good chance of getting genetic material out intact. “This tooth is very precious. There’s some chance there’s preserved DNA in it,” Slimak says.
If Homo sapiens left the tools and tooth in layer E, they weren’t in Grotte Mandrin for long. Slimak estimates that the residency lasted for around 40 years, on the basis of an analysis of fragments of the shelter’s ceiling that had broken off and been deposited alongside other archaeological material.
New layers of the white mineral calcite accrued on the ceiling twice each year, during wet periods, and soot from fires in the shelter left black marks, creating a sort of ‘barcode’ that can pinpoint hominin occupations to within a year. The researchers concluded that the last Homo sapiens fire went out no more than a year before the next Neanderthal one. “The populations must have in some way met each other,” Slimak adds. Yet the researchers found no obvious signs of cultural exchanges, such as similarities in stone tools, between the two groups.
Early settlers
If layer E was occupied by Homo sapiens, however fleetingly, it would put the species in Europe thousands of years earlier than other records suggest. The region’s oldest definitive Homo sapiens remains — confirmed with DNA — come from Bacho Kiro cave in Bulgaria, and are around 44,000 years old2.
“It is exciting to see that Homo sapiens was in western Europe several thousand years earlier than previously thought,” says Marie Soressi, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “It shows that the peopling of Europe by Homo sapiens was likely a long and hazardous process.”
But Banks is not yet convinced that Grotte Mandrin was once home to Europe’s earliest known Homo sapiens. He says that the layer E tools are more likely to be local inventions than imports from people in the Middle East.
There can also be substantial overlap in the shapes of the teeth of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. “It is not a stretch to think that a single Neanderthal tooth could have dental characteristics that resemble moderns,” he says.
The researchers made replicas of the stone points using local flint, and incorporated them into spears and arrows.
A 54,000-year-old cave site in southern France holds hundreds of tiny stone points, which researchers say closely resemble other known arrowheads — including replicas that they tested on dead goats.
The discovery, reported on 22 February in Science Advances1, suggests that the first Homo sapiens to reach Europe hunted with bows and arrows. But it also raises the question of why Neanderthals — which occupied the Grotte Mandrin rock shelter in the Rhône Valley before and after Homo sapiens — never adopted these superior weapons.
Last year, researchers excavating Grotte Mandrin claimed that the site held the earliest known evidence of Homo sapiens in Europe2. In one of the cave’s archaeological levels, known as layer E, researchers co-led by cultural anthropologist Ludovic Slimak at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès in France identified a child’s tooth and thousands of stone tools. They concluded that the child had been a Homo sapiens.
Among the tools were hundreds of tiny points, many of which were as small as 1 centimetre wide, weighed only a few grams and were nearly identical in shape and size.
The smallest points were similar to other arrowheads made by ancient and modern humans, and some contained similar fractures and other damage at their tips, which could have been created by high-velocity impact.
Spears and arrows
The researchers made dozens of replica points from flint found near the rock shelter, and fashioned them into bows and arrows using wood and other materials. They also made thrusting spears and spear-thrower darts. They used the weapons to stab or shoot at dead goats.
Some of the larger points could have been used effectively with spears or darts. But only a bow and arrow could have generated the force needed to wound or kill an animal with the smallest points, says Laure Metz, an archaeologist at Aix-Marseille University in France who co-led the latest study with Slimak. “It’s not possible to use these tiny points with something other than a bow and arrow.”
Some archaeologists think the Grotte Mandrin shelter contains the earliest known evidence for Homo sapiens in Europe.
Grotte Mandrin contains many horse bones, and Metz suspects that humans sheltering in the cave hunted these animals as well as bison migrating through the Rhône Valley.
The team has found a horse femur with damage consistent with a stone point, and Metz dreams of finding an arrow point embedded in an animal bone.
“This is as solid as it gets,” says John Shea, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York. “They’ve made a more convincing case that these things are arrows, than cases have been made for arrows in data from the last 12,000 years.”
Neanderthal puzzle
Above and below Grotte Mandrin’s layer E, researchers have found Neanderthal teeth and DNA, along with stone tools characteristic of the extinct group.
Slimak’s team contends that layer E represents an early but short-lived incursion of Homo sapiens into Neanderthal territory, more than 10,000 years before the species permanently settled in Europe. Not all archaeologists agree.
If Homo sapiens did make the stone points in layer E, it’s not clear why Neanderthals in the region and elsewhere did not pick up bow-and-arrow technology, as far as anyone can tell. Some researchers have speculated that Neanderthals lacked the cognitive capacity to use projectiles, a difference that might have helped humans to out-compete Neanderthals for scarce game.
But Metz doubts that that is the reason. She wonders whether cultural traditions explain why Neanderthals seem never to have used bows and arrows.
Marie Soressi, an archaeologist at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, agrees that the Neanderthals living at Grotte Mandrin didn’t leave arrow points behind. But she wonders whether evidence for bow and arrow use might be found elsewhere. “I would find it very strange if Neanderthals were so conservative that they would not copy mechanically propelled weapons used by other humans.”
Archaeologists have dated the unusual face-down burial of the young woman at the Monte Luna necropolis in Sardinia to late in the third century B.C. or early in the second century B.C.
The strange facedown burial of a young woman, who likely had a nail driven into her skull around the time she died in Sardinia more than 2,000 years ago, could be the result of ancient beliefs about epilepsy, according to new research.
The facedown burial may indicate that the individual suffered from a disease, while an unusual nail-shaped hole in the woman’s skull may be the result of a remedy that sought to prevent epilepsy from spreading to others — a medical belief at the time, according to a study coming out in the April issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
Epilepsy is now known to be a brain condition that can’t be transmitted to other people, but at the time the woman died, “The idea was that the disease that killed the person in the grave could be a problem for the entire community,” said study co-author Dario D’Orlando, an archaeologist and historian at the University of Cagliari in Sardinia.
The tomb is one of more than 120 Punic tombs at the Monte Luna necropolis in southern Sardinia, which was established after the sixth century B.C. and was used until the second century B.C.
The unusual burial was found in a tomb in the Necropolis of Monte Luna, a hill located about 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of Cagliari in the southern part of Sardinia. The burial ground was first used by Punic people after the sixth century B.C. and continued in use until the second century B.C.
Punic necropolis
The latest study found evidence of blunt-force trauma to the woman’s head, possibly from falling, and a square hole that appears to have been made by an ancient nail.
The Monte Luna necropolis was excavated in the 1970s, and the latest study is based on photographs of the tomb and a new examination of the woman’s skeleton.
Pottery in the tomb suggests she was buried in the last decade of the third century B.C. or the first decades of the second century B.C. — a time when Sardinia, a center of Punic or Phoenician culture for hundreds of years, had come under Roman rule since the end of the First Punic War against Carthage, which took place from 264 B.C. to 241 B.C.
And a new analysis of the young woman’s skeleton — based on her pelvis, teeth and other bones — confirmed an earlier estimate that she was between 18 and 22 years old when she died.
It also showed she had suffered trauma to her skull shortly before or around the time she died. The archaeologists found evidence of two types of trauma: blunt-force trauma, which could have occurred during an accidental fall — possibly during an epileptic seizure — and a sharp-force injury in the form of a square hole in her skull consistent with an impact by an ancient Roman nail; such nails have been found at several archaeological sites in Sardinia.
D’Orlando said the sharp-force injury by a nail may have been inflicted after the woman’s death to prevent the perceived “contagion” of her epilepsy.
The authors suggest the woman’s skull may have been pierced by an ancient nail with a square cross-section, like this one, to prevent the spread of the perceived “contagion” of epilepsy.
Medical beliefs in ancient Sardinia
Such treatment may have been based on a Greek belief that certain diseases were caused by “miasma” — bad air — that would have been known throughout the Mediterranean at that time, D’Orlando said.
The same remedy is described in the first century A.D. by the Roman general and natural historian Gaius Plinius Secundus — known as Pliny the Elder — who recommended nailing body parts after a death from epileptic seizures to prevent the spread of the condition, the authors reported.
D’Orlando suggested that this practice of nailing the skull, and perhaps the woman’s unusual facedown burial, could be explained by the introduction of new Roman ideas, which were heavily influenced by ancient Greek ideas, into rural Sardinia.
The tomb was excavated in the 1970s and the latest study is based on photographs and a new analysis of the bones it contained, in particular the young woman’s skull.
But Peter van Dommelen, an archaeologist at Brown University who wasn’t involved in the study, said the culture in Sardinia stayed resolutely Punic in spite of Roman rule.
“Culturally speaking, and particularly in rural places like here, the island remains Punic,” he said. “There’s no reason to look at the Roman world for affinities — what people were doing was entirely guided by Punic traditions.”
Van Dommelen has not heard of similar burials in Sardinia, but “it’s interesting,” he said. “It fits with a broader pattern that you can see across the world and across cultures.”
Archaeologists Discover Homes Of The Builders Of Europe’s First Monuments Made 6,400 Years Ago
Archaeologists in France have found one of the first residential sites belonging to the prehistoric builders of some of Europe’s first monumental stone structures.
During the Neolithic, people in west-central France built many impressive megalithic monuments such as barrows and dolmens.
While these peoples’ tombs stood the test of time, archaeologists have been searching for their homes for more than a century.
“It has been known for a long time that the oldest European megaliths appeared on the Atlantic coast, but the habitats of their builders remained unknown,” said Dr. Vincent Ard from the French National Center for Scientific Research.
Now, Dr. Ard and a team of researchers working in the Charente department have identified the first known residential site belonging to some of Europe’s first megalithic builders.
The Le Peu enclosure was discovered during an aerial survey in 2011 and has since been the subject of intense research.
The results of this work, published in the journal Antiquity, revealed a palisade encircling several timber buildings built during the fifth millennium BC.
This makes them the oldest wooden structures in the region and the first residential site contemporary with the Neolithic monument makers. At least three homes were found, each around 13 meters long, clustered together near the top of a small hill enclosed by the palisade.
From his hill, the nearby Tusson megalithic cemetery would be visible. This raised the possibility that the inhabitants of Le Peu built the site’s five long mounds. To test this, the archaeologists carried out radiocarbon dating that revealed these monuments are contemporary with Le Peu, suggesting the two sites are linked.
While the people of Le Peu may have built monuments to the dead, they also invested a lot of time and effort in protecting the living. Analysis of the paleosol recovered from the site revealed it was located on a promontory bordered by a marsh. These natural defenses were enhanced by a ditch palisade wall which extended around the site.
The entrance had particularly heavy defenses, guarded by two monumental structures.
These appear to have been later additions, requiring part of the defensive ditch to be filled in.
“The site reveals the existence of unique monumental architectures, probably defensive. This demonstrates a rise in Neolithic social tensions,” said Dr. Ard.
However, these impressive defenses may have proved insufficient as all the buildings at Le Peu appear to have been burnt down around 4400 BC. However, such destruction helped preserve the site.
As such, Dr. Ard and the team hope further research at Le Peu will continue to shed light on the lives of people only known from their monuments to the dead. Already it shows how their residential sites had a monumental scale, never before seen in prehistoric Atlantic society.
Swiss Museum Returns Sacred Objects to Canada’s First Nations
The two representatives of Haudenosaunee Confederation Clayton Logan (Seneca Nation), left, and Brennen Ferguson (Tuscarora Nation), right, hold boxes containing sacred objects during the ceremony of restitution of sacred object to the Haudenosaunee Confederation, at the Museum of Ethnography of Geneva (MEG), in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. The MEG has returned the traditional sacred objects, a mask and a rattle, to the Haudenosaunee after 200 years in Switzerland.
Two artifacts sacred to some of Canada’s Indigenous peoples are now back on home territory after a Swiss museum returned them to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederacy this month.
The objects, a medicine mask and turtle rattle, had been in the possession of the Geneva Museum of Ethnography (MEG) for nearly 200 years.
The museum acknowledged last month that the artifacts were originally acquired without consent, noting in a press release it was taking the unprecedented step of returning them as part of its commitment to ensuring both human remains and sacred objects are restored to their rightful owners.
Mohawk elder and activist Kenneth Deer — one of the three men sent to retrieve the objects — said he was “surprised and thankful” for the museum’s co-operation and called the MEG “progressive” for returning the objects without conditions or complications.
“It was a very quick turnaround because sometimes it takes years to get objects back from a museum, especially from a foreign country. It was a really good experience, and I think it’s a model for other museums to follow,” Deer said in an interview on Friday.
Deer said the mask was first spotted back in July by Tuscarora Brennen Ferguson, who, along with Deer, is a member of the Haudenosaunee external relations committee.
In November, the committee wrote a letter requesting the return of artifacts to Canada. The museum and the city of Geneva, which founded the MEG in 1901, approved the request.
“The museum was very cooperative, and more than that, they were just respectful,” Ferguson said. “(After I first saw the mask), we met with the director, and we asked her for the mask to be taken off public display, and they did it that very same day. We expressed our wishes, and they worked with us completely.”
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is made up of six nations on both sides of the American and Canadian border: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Tuscarora, and Seneca.
Deer said the MEG offered to ship the artifacts to Canada at the beginning of the year after obtaining a Swiss export permit, but Haudenosaunee elders objected because of the significance of the mask.
“It is a medicine mask used in ceremonies for healing, and we regard these masks as living entities that have great healing powers,” Deer said.
So, a delegation was formed consisting of Deer, Ferguson, and 87-year-old Seneca elder Clayton Logan. Together the three flew to Switzerland to retrieve the sacred objects.
“There was a ceremony, and it was all very terrific. There was a lot of media attention, and a lot of people came out. The Canadian ambassador to the United Nations was present. And there were representatives from the United States government, Mexico and Guatemala, and the Swiss, of course,” Deer said.
Deer said Logan was allowed to burn traditional tobacco during the Feb. 7 ceremony. Deer also gave the museum two Mohawk corn husk dolls, one male and one female, made in Akwesasne.
Meg Director Carine Ayélé Durand issued a press release saying she was very pleased to see the city of Geneva playing an active role in favor of the rights of Indigenous peoples.
“This return of sacred objects was made possible thanks to the relationship we have had with the Haudenosaunee,” Ayélé Durand said in the statement.
She went on to thank the administrative council of the city of Geneva, who she said “made this process extremely smooth and quick.,”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Feb. 18, 2023.
Collection of Crown Jewelry Repatriated to Cambodia
Experts are trying to work out what some of the items were used for
A vast trove of Cambodia’s Angkorian crown jewellery, some dating back to the 7th Century, resurfaced in London last summer, it has been revealed.
The stolen items belonged to British antiquities smuggler Douglas Latchford. Experts say they have never seen most of the jewellery before and are stunned by its existence.
The collection has been secretly returned to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, and is due to go on display there in the country’s national museum.
Latchford died in 2020 while awaiting trial in the US. His family promised to return his stolen collection to Cambodia after he died, but the authorities did not know what exactly would be handed over or how it would happen.
Brad Gordon, the head of Cambodia’s investigative team, became the first representative of the nation to see the jewellery when he visited London last summer. He told the BBC: “I was driven by a representative of the Latchford family to an undisclosed location. In the parking lot was a vehicle with four boxes inside.
“I felt like crying. I just thought – wow – the crown jewels of ancient Cambodian civilization packed into four boxes in the back of a car.”
When it was all unwrapped, the resurfaced collection was found to contain 77 pieces of gold and jewel-encrusted jewellery, including crowns, belts and earrings. A large bowl is thought to date to the 11th Century and although it has yet to be tested, appears to be made of solid gold. Experts believe it could have been used as a rice bowl for Angkorian royalty.
It’s possible some of the jewellery was looted from temples such as Angkor Wat
One of the crowns appears to be from the pre-Angkorian period, experts believe, and could have been made by artisans in the 7th Century. Other items, including a small sculpted flower, pose a mystery. Experts simply don’t know why it was made or how it was used.
It’s still unclear exactly how and when the jewellery was stolen and how it made its way to London. Many of the items can be matched to stone carvings in the walls of Angkor Wat, a Unesco World Heritage Site. The largest religious monument in the world, its construction began in 1122 as a dedication to the Hindu god Vishnu, though it transitioned into a Buddhist temple decades later.
Angkor Wat was heavily looted during the French colonial period. However, many of Cambodia’s other temples were looted during the Khmer Rouge era in the 1970s, and the turmoil that continued for decades.
Archaeologist Sonetra Seng studied Angkorian jewellery for years by examining temple carvings. Finally, she can hold the real thing.
“The jewellery proves what was on the carvings and what was rumoured is really true. Cambodia was really, really rich in the past,” she says. “Still, I can’t believe it, especially that it’s from one single collection found abroad.”
Archaeologist Sonetra Seng recognised some of the jewellery from temple carvings
Some of the jewellery had surfaced before; Douglas Latchford included five items from the collection in a book titled Khmer Gold that he co-wrote with his collaborator, Emma Bunker, in 2008. Khmer antiquities expert Ashley Thompson describes this book and two others as elaborate sales brochures, giving private collectors a taste of what was being sold illegally behind the scenes.
“Publishing these materials, inviting other scholars to contribute and comparing the items to museum pieces was a way of validating them and associating them with known materials already in museums and effectively enhancing their value,” she explained.
Ms Thompson, a professor in South East Asian art at SOAS University of London, says it will take a long time for experts to piece together where the newly discovered jewellery really came from because the book contains so many half-truths.
“You certainly can’t take for granted anything that is said about the provenance or the current ownership,” she explained, as she flipped through the book and pointed to the way in which Latchford and Bunker described the ownership of the different pieces of jewellery. “Private Thai collection, private London collection, private New York collection, private Japanese collection etc. You have to be very wary.”
There were 77 items recovered, some made of solid gold and some encrusted with jewels
The Cambodian authorities believe that more Angkorian jewellery is yet to be found. The Cambodians have evidence from Latchford’s email correspondence that he was attempting to secretly sell the collection from a north London warehouse as late as 2019.
We asked London’s Metropolitan Police if Latchford’s UK associates are also being investigated. They declined to comment – noting they do not identify anyone under investigation prior to being charged with a criminal offence.
Last year, the BBC travelled to Cambodia to meet looters turned government witnesses who identified items they say they stole from temples and sold to Latchford. Some of those items have been matched by investigators to museum pieces that are now in respected UK institutions like the British Museum and the V&A.
One of the women the BBC interviewed then – nicknamed Iron Princess – will also work to help identify some of the jewellery.
For now, the collection’s return will be welcomed by the country’s autocratic leader, Hun Sen. An election is coming up in July, and since his ruling party has effectively dismantled the opposition, this development will be painted as something Hun Sen has done to benefit his people.
Politics aside, ordinary Cambodians want all the looted items back. After decades hidden inside dusty boxes, they will soon go on public display in Phnom Penh, allowing this jewellery to shine once again.
