"Not Only Had Architects Stopped Making Them, but the Public Had Stopped Demanding Them"

"Once clean and attractive public spaces were no longer seen as essential, they soon became less clean and attractive. After 1961, San Francisco no longer enforced vagrancy laws, and with predictable results; in 1972, in Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned vagrancy laws at the national level. At the same time, the process of deinstitutionalization—the discharge of unwell patients from mental asylums—had begun in earnest. In 1955, some 559,000 people were institutionalized; by 1994 it was 72,000. Meanwhile, in 1975, the Supreme Court declared in O'Connor v. Donaldson that a person could be confined against his will only if it could be proven that he was a danger to himself or others. In practice, as the law was interpreted, that danger had to be immediate; even a schizophrenic who was unable to feed or shelter himself was not regarded as a danger to himself. These two Supreme Court decisions, working in tandem, had a dire effect on the uses of our town squares and civic plazas. It is unimaginable that we would have so casually permitted them to become inhospitable had we still felt them to be essential."

Michael J. Lewis at National Review discusses "The Death of Public Beauty."

The Great Settlement

"For years, people in and around Arkansas City have found artifacts—arrowheads, weapons and cooking utensils. But a translation done in 2013 by the University of California, Berkeley of the Onate expedition provided more details that Blakeslee was able to use to match geographical details with archaeological evidence.
"He began searching the area.
"What he found in Arkansas City, he believes, may rewrite American history."

Beccy Tanner at The Wichita Eagle discusses the newly discovered lost city of Etzanoa in southern Kansas.

"Archaeologists Discover Fully Intact 17th-Century Belief System In Ohio Congressman"

"'All the 400-year-old viewpoints remain almost completely untouched, from religion's place in society to the rights of women to the attitude toward science. I can only imagine the insights this single sample will provide as to how people who lived centuries ago saw the world around them.'"

From The Onion.

"Everyone Has Encouraged Us That What We're Finding Is Really Exciting and Terribly Significant"

"'We need to know more,' said Eric Klingelhofer, a vice president for research at the foundation and a history professor at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. 'This whole story is a blank—a blank page, a blank chapter of history, and I think archaeology is the only way to come up with answers.'"


Theo Emery in The New York Times reports on the discovery of possible artifacts from the lost colonists of Roanoke.

"We're Losing Pages from It Every Day"

"Half a dozen scientists armed with trowels, clipboards and global positioning devices fanned out across the island's headlands and rocky fingers earlier this month to take the first full accounting of archaeological sites heavily threatened by shoreline retreat and storm erosion.
"The inventory will create baseline information to help guide conservation decisions at imperiled sites where human culture and island ecosystems have a shared history. It will also enable scientists to monitor the destructive forces of marine erosion, which are predicted to get worse."


Louis Sahagun in the Los Angeles Times reports on efforts by archaeologists on Santa Cruz Island.

Dig Your Own Hole

"Using this technique, the team has made a remarkable discovery: they have found the remains of a military fortress, which was thought to have been destroyed.
"Standing in the middle of the yard, which is still enclosed by 6m-high (20ft) walls, Prof Everett points to a spot where he has found evidence of a subterranean tunnel system.
"'(The tunnels) would have been used for the fortifications. There would have been movement of man and ammunition; it would have been bomb proof and covered with earth so it would have been protected,' he explains.
"'We get signatures that indicate there is not only a tunnel, but magazine buildings too.'"


Rebecca Morelle at BBC.com explores "a hidden history lying beneath the prison of Alcatraz."

Chelsea Mourning

"Yet it is the outrageous stories of the Chelsea that make it so appealing. The drunken mishaps, the acid-laden philosophies, the unusual couplings. The Chelsea's misfit artists, charming decay and low-rent opportunities are out of step with contemporary New York, and in 2007 the longtime manager was pushed out by directors who wanted to sell. The buyer, after years of stalled renovations that seemed designed to drive out longtime residents (who won a suit against his company), transferred the property into new hands in fall 2013. New owner King & Grove promises kinder, gentler renovations and a commitment to keeping the property 'artsy'--but the utopian 'thought-forms' of architect Hubert may have run out."

Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times reviews Sherill Tippins's Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel.    

The Winter of His Disinterment

"The injury appears to confirm contemporary accounts that he died in close combat in the thick of the battle and unhorsed – as in the great despairing cry Shakespeare gives him: 'A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!'"

Maev Kennedy in The Guardian reports the confirmation of the discovery of Richard III's remains in Leicester, England.

"The First Direct Evidence of Black Drink"

"Crown explains that because the bushes weren’t native to Cahokia but to the coastal region between eastern Texas and Florida, the leaves must have been brought to the inland city through trade routes connecting the two areas, which suggests the drink had huge cultural importance. Whether the Cahokians used black drink ritually isn’t known, but its appearance in fine-quality beakers suggests it was highly prized, if not sacred."

Elizabeth Norton in Science magazine reports on new evidence of an old beverage in pre-colonial America.

"It Now Has Two Faces"

"Leone said the stone was placed amid the bricks by the slave who built the furnace: 'We infer ... that the man ... was using and believed in the North American version of the hybrid religion whose origins come from West Africa.'
"'You would pick up the stone, and you would put it some place because it has the power of the deity,' he said."

Michael E. Ruane in The Washington Post reports on the recent discovery of slave artifacts at Maryland's Wye House plantation, where a young Frederick Douglass once lived.

"One of the Most Exciting and Intriguing Civil War Discoveries of the Modern Era"

"In January, working from documents of the era, Moore and graduate student Kevin Chapman began using ground radar to locate the stockade walls at the site, south of Augusta, that had become a U.S. Fish and Wildlife hatchery in 1948, and had ceased operations in 1996.
"Chapman expected to find some post holes. But during his first day of sifting dirt, he found a Union button, then a musket ball, then a large U.S. cent, the size of a half-dollar. 'The results have been stunning,' he said."

Bo Emerson in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on the discovery of the remains of Camp Lawton, a Confederate-run prison in southern Georgia.

Back to Old Virginny

"David Muraca, director of archaeology for the George Washington Foundation, said the size, characteristics and location of the structure, as well as many artifacts from the time of Washington’s youth, had led experts to conclude that this was indeed the house they were looking for. 'This is it,' Mr. Muraca said firmly."

John Noble Wilford in The New York Times reports that archaeologists have found the remnants of George Washington's childhood home near Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Never to Return

"Scientists once thought the answer lay in impersonal factors like the onset of a great drought or a little ice age. But as evidence accumulates, those explanations have come to seem too pat—and slavishly deterministic. Like people today, the Anasazi (or Ancient Puebloans, as they are increasingly called) were presumably complex beings with the ability to make decisions, good and bad, about how to react to a changing environment. They were not pawns but players in the game."

George Johnson in The New York Times reports on how investigators are searching to find out what happened to the Anasazi of southern Colorado during the 1200s.

If Adventure Has a Name

"Carbon dating by a German and Peruvian excavation team indicates that the circular plaza is at least 5,500 years old, dating to about 3,500 BC, said Cesar Perez, an archaeologist at Peru's National Institute of Culture who supervised the dig.
"That would make it older than the Great Pyramid of Giza."

Patrick J. McDonnell in the Los Angeles Times reports the discovery of the ruins of Peru's Sechin Bajo, "the oldest known urban settlement in the Americas."

Back in Metropolis

"But in the end, maintenance became too labor-intensive, Evans said. As trees were removed from the landscape, sediment began accumulating in the canals at a rate more rapid than it could be removed. Many dike walls collapsed, although it is not yet known when that occurred."

In the Los Angeles Times, Thomas H. Maugh II reports the latest information about medieval Angkor, described by archaeologists as the largest preindustrial city in history.

Back in the USSR

"Six years ago, 22-year-old UCLA history student Justinian Jampol was in Berlin doing research when he came across some communist-era artifacts he wanted to save and ship home. It struck him that something should be done to prevent more of these relics from disappearing into, well, history."

Gregory Rodriguez in the Los Angeles Times explores Culver City's Wende Museum, dedicated to preserving the material culture of the Soviet Bloc.