Re: Archaeologists see treasure looting taking all of the shipwrecks

In article <1181425442.416710.309140@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jacklinthicum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
On Jun 9, 5:08 pm, Mark Borgerson <mborger...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <1181410125.836497.301...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx says...

On Jun 9, 1:25 pm, "Mark Test" <MARK...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Jack Linthicum" <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1181409549.123802.200700@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Odyssey treasure
hunting starting to stir the archaeology community,
worried that the scooping up of treasure from below diver depths will
rob the future of the ability to salvage and study those wrecks.

Then the archaeologists need to pony up the cash and get onboard
with Odyssey types......and stop their bitching.

--
Posted via a free Usenet account fromhttp://www.teranews.com

Or sue the living *** out of them every time they try to sell a gold
coin.

According to the article, the sales are perfectly legal. Before they
start giving lots of money to lawyers, they need to give some money
to congress to get some new laws. Even worse, they will probably
need to plead their case at the UN, since many of the wrecks are outside
the territorial waters of any country that might be willing to regulate
the trade in artifacts.

Gold coin sales aren't really the problem in any case. People don't
melt down these coins. The coin is still available for study---but
you don't learn much from a single coin. If archeologists want to
study the wrecks in-situ, they are going to need MUCH larger budgets---
budgets that only seem to appear when there is a profit motive.

Mark Borgerson

The problem is the situ gets spread around. I have just finished a
long discussion on sci.archaeology over the statement of a local
diver, etc Robert Marx about recovering Roman amphoras from a wreck in
Guanabara Bay at Rio de Janeiro. This brought on a statement from an
amphorae expert that she had been told by the Portuguese
Archaeological Society that there were "hundreds" of Roman wrecks in
Brazlian waters.

What would be shipped to Brazil in Roman amphoras? Were they going
over full of olive oil and coming back full of something else?

This sounds like a good thing but Brazil has some sort of immigration
thing that says that because Cabral, a Portuguese, is credited with
discovering Brazil then all Portuguese are welcome to immigrate to
Brazil. But not Italians.

To the end that the Brazilians are accused of covering up Marx' Roman
ship with silt and prohibited him from diving in Brazilian waters. Now
if Marx had found golden denarii in his dive the Odyssey people would
have paid off the Brazilian government and scooped and scraped that
ship into frags.

The treasure people will employ archaeologists, Fischer did, but when
the oro hits the road they want the money and will break open the
ship to get it.

They don't just want the money. They need it. They are, after all,
for-profit businesses. They can't rely on our tax dollars to keep
them going.

Mark Borgerson



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