Dentisti Antichi

Potrebbe trattarsi del più antico impianto dentario dell'Europa Occidentale. 
Risale al Ferro, circa 2.300 anni fa. E' stato rinvenuto nel Nord della Francia, apparteneva ad una donna, morta tra i 20 ed i 30 anni e il materiale rinvenuto nella tomba denuncia l'appartenenza ad un'elite celtica con ovvie preoccupazioni estetiche. Il materiale è ferro, ma poteva essere incamiciato in un altro materiale più deperibile (legno? osso?).
In realtà, non si può essere certi che l'inserzione sia stata fatta in vivo: il ferro non è un materiale adatto per impianti (tende a corrodersi e nel farlo rilascia un terribile sapore: oggi si preferisce il titanio).
Né che - se fatta in vivo - non sia stata essa stessa la causa della morte, per via di un'imponente infezione.

In Egitto (e nel vicino Oriente) erano senz'altro più avanti: le protesi dentarie risalgono al 5.500 a.C. ma il Consenso scientifico ritiene che si trattasse di innesti 'cosmetici' effettuati post-mortem.

Curioso è il fatto che questo 'impianto' risalga alla cultura celtica di La Tene, un periodo in cui i Galli erano in contatto con gli Etruschi. Questi ultimi sì che facevano impianti nei viventi ed erano anche piuttosto bravi: essi usavano bande di oro per legare gli impianti ai(denti sani e talvolta usavano denti di animale (bue) scolpiti in modo da sembrare denti umani. e' inquietante il pensiero che gli Etruschi considerassero impossibile per motivi religiosi usare denti di cadaveri: per tale motivo, il dente da impiantare doveva essere prelevato da un vivente, probabilmente uno schiavo. 

Dental implant discovered in Iron Age skeleton 

Archaeologists have identified what could be remains of the earliest false tooth found in Western Europe. An iron tooth implant fitted 2,300 years ago could be earliest false tooth ever  found in Western Europe. 

The dental implant (shown here second from the right)  was discovered in the timber burial chamber of an Iron Age woman  who died in her twenties in Le Chene, northern France  [Credit: Antiquity] 

The dental implant comes from the richly-furnished timber burial chamber of an Iron Age woman that was excavated in Le Chene, northern France. 

The woman, who was between 20 and 30 years old when she died, had an iron pin in place of an upper incisor tooth. It is possible the pin once held a false tooth made from either wood or bone, which could have rotted away. 
The findings have been published in the scholarly journal Antiquity. 
The grave was one of four adult female burials in an enclosure dating to the third century BC that were discovered during the construction of a housing development in the Champagne-Ardenne region. 
The burials, which contained a rich array of grave goods, show all the hallmarks of the Celtic La Tene culture, which flourished across Central and Western Europe at the time. 
"The skeleton was very badly preserved," Guillaume Seguin, who excavated the young woman's skeleton in 2009, told BBC News. "But the teeth were in an anatomical position, with the molars, pre-molars, canines and incisors. 
Then there was this piece of metal. My first reaction was: what is this?" The teeth were bagged and taken away for analysis. Mr Seguin later realised that the woman had 31 rather than 32 teeth, and photos taken at the excavation site show the iron pin in the place where the missing tooth would have been.

 This photo shows the teeth in position during excavation.  The iron pin is visible on the left [Credit: Antiquity] 

"The fact that it has the same dimensions and shape as the teeth means that the best hypothesis is that it was a dental prosthesis - or at least, an attempt at one," said Mr 
Seguin, from the Bordeaux-based archaeology firm Archeosphere.

There are reasons to doubt whether it was successful, says Mr Seguin. 

Firstly, the propensity for iron to corrode inside the body makes it unsuitable for use as a dental implant; titanium is the material of choice today for modern versions. 

Secondly, the absence of sterile conditions during this period mean the pin could have caused an abscess, followed by an infection that could potentially have ended the individual's life. 

However, the poor preservation of the remains means it is impossible to say whether the implant played any role in the woman's death. 

While the find may be the earliest dental implant known from Western Europe, prosthetic teeth dating back 5,500 years have been found in Egypt and the Near East. However, most are believed to have been inserted after death to restore the appearance of the deceased. 
The researchers cannot completely rule out a post-mortem insertion of the pin in this case either. 
But they argue that several converging lines of evidence point to its use during life as an implant. But it remains impossible to say for certain whether the pin once held a replacement tooth made of bone or wood, both of which could have perished in the acidic soil.
 In Antiquity, Mr Seguin, along with co-authors from the University of Bordeaux, wrote that the burials "convey the image of a social elite concerned about their appearance". They also note that the date of the burials coincides with a period when the Celtic Gauls were in contact with the Etruscan civilisation of northern Italy. 
The Etruscans were known for their relative mastery of dentistry, although the partial dentures inserted into gold bands and fitted onto existing teeth represent a different approach to dental restoration than that seen in third century Gaul. 

Source: BBC News Website [May 28, 2014]

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13 0tt0bre 2005, Cds.

Le storie, Corriere della Sera Fiorello, Versace, Calissano: l'Italia e la coca La stilista confessò: «Questa droga ti racconta una bugia al secondo». Il dramma di Pantani, la rinascita di Maradona

S

ROMA — Ora che ne è fuori. «Ero sprofondato nell'abisso. Poi mia figlia Gianina mi ha detto: papà, non andare via, ho ancora bisogno di te, ho capito che ero arrivato al fondo. Sono risalito per lei. Ma è stato molto faticoso. Ragazzi, non vi drogate». Questo è Diego Armando Maradona, pochi giorni fa, dallo studio di Porta a Porta. Oggi el pibe balla con le stelle. E ballando calpesta quella cocaina tirata su per il naso, l'arresto, la morte sfiorata più volte, quei 40 chili di troppo scrollati di dosso. Altri «tiri», altre storie di vip coca. Paolo Calissano adesso è agli arresti domiciliari in una comunità di recupero.A liberarsi di droga, depressione e rimorsi. Donatella Versace ha raccontato a Vogue la sua vita d'inferno con la cocaina: «All'inizio mi sono divertita, avevo 32 anni. Ma lei ti racconta una bugia al secondo, tu credi di poterla controllare, invece è lei che controlla te». Dieci mesi in una clinica dell'Arizona, disintossicata.  Marco Pantani non ha raccontato niente perché la coca l'ha ammazzato il 14 febbraio del 2004 in un residence di Rimini.  Fiorello i suoi anni di polvere li rivede così: «Era la metà degli anni Novanta, giravo con guardie del corpo, addetto stampa, segretarie. Avevo fidanzate da rotocalco e storie da una botta e via. Non parlavo più con nessuno, tiravo cocaina. Mi sentivo un duro e invece ero un pupazzo» ( Vanity Fair, maggio 2004). Naomi Campbell si è disintossicata più volte: «Sniffo coca da 10 anni». Nel 2003 Serena Grandi fu arrestata per detenzione e spaccio di cocaina. Coinvolto e intercettato nella stessa operazione Cleopatra, il senatore a vita Emilio Colombo a 83 anni ammise che ne consumava da un anno e mezzo, per motivi di salute. Mattina di luglio del 2001. Irruzione di polizia a palazzo Borghese, dimora di Vittorio Cecchi Gori e Valeria Marini: in cassaforte c'era della polvere bianca. Zafferano, disse lui. Cocaina, dissero gli inquirenti. Droga e vip, corsi e ricorsi. Nel 1992 Patti Pravo si ritrovò in cella di isolamento a Rebibbia per 15 grammi di hashish che le trovarono in casa. A metterla nei guai fu il suo ex parrucchiere.  Vasco Rossi, nel 1984 fece da solo: 26 grammi di coca e 22 giorni di carcere, un anno e dieci mesi patteggiati e condonati. Per detenzione di droga, nel 1985, fu arrestato Giorgio Strehler.  L'ex centravanti della Lazio Bruno Giordano e l'attore Claudio Amendola furono dichiarati consumatori di cocaina ma assolti dall'accusa di spaccio.  Il motociclista Marco Lucchinelli, campione classe 500 di fine anni Ottanta, ebbe la sua dose di polvere e guai.  Come quelli passati e poi raccontati in un libro dal giornalista Giancesare Flesca.  Manette anno 1985 per Dario Argento: 23 grammi di coca.  Nel 1991 fu arrestata Laura Antonelli per un vaso con 50 grammi di «neve» nella villa di Cerveteri. Fu assolta dopo 9 anni, non era spaccio ma consumo personale, nel frattempo era ingrassata, sola e depressa. Mia Martini fu stroncata da overdose di cocaina.  Sniffate pericolose pure per Walter Chiari e Franco Califano, 3 anni e mezzo di galera, poi l'assoluzione: «Ho usato la coca e non me ne vergogno».  Vizio familiare per Nadia Rinaldi, 100 chili lei più uno di pura cocaina tenuto in casa. Cinque anni dopo arrestarono suo marito Ernesto.  Estate 2001, perquisizione in una villa dell'Elba, i carabinieri trovano hashish, la casa era affittata da Paola Barale e Raz Degan più amici. «Ma io con la droga non ho niente a che fare», ribadì lei. Articolo di Giovanna Cavalli 13 ottobre 2005

Come diceva ERODOTO

Erodoto si esprime, apparentemente malvolentieri, sulla devozione degli Egizi verso gli animali, in quanto si tratta di questioni religiose che intende appena sfiorare. Malgrado ciò, c'informa che per gli Egizi tutti gli animali sono sacri: sia quelli che vivono con l'uomo, sia gli altri (Storie, II 65- 67) tanto che chi causa la morte di un ibis - volontariamente oppure no - dovrà morire. Parla dell'imbalsamazione degli animali. Ed eccone le prove archeologiche recenti.



MESSAGGERI PER GLI DEI

During a turbulent period in ancient Egypt, common people turned to animal mummies to petition the gods, inspiring the rise of a massive religious industry

By ERIC  A. POWELL

 2014

(Courtesy Brooklyn Museum)

A shrew mummy (top), found at an animal cemetery in Abydos, was made sometime between 30 B.C. and A.D. 100, during Egypt’s Roman Period. An elaborately wrapped mummy bundle (bottom) takes the form of a human topped with a carved wooden ibis head. CT scans reveal that the bundle is stuffed with feathers, but no ibis skeleton.

For decades, 30 boxes lay forgotten in the storage vaults of the Brooklyn Museum’s Egyptology department. The contents had not been catalogued, or even seen, since the 1930s and 40s, when they were purchased from the New-York Historical Society. But in 2009, curatorial assistant Kathy Zurek-Doule finally opened the boxes. Lying nestled inside each one was an elaborately wrapped mummy in the shape of an animal. Ibises, hawks, cats, dogs, snakes, and even a shrew were all represented in the collection, which had been amassed by a wealthy New York businessman in the mid-nineteenth century. Faced with an unexpected trove of objects unlike any other the museum has, Egyptology curator Edward Bleiberg and his team embarked on a comprehensive study of the mummies. The rediscovered objects gave Bleiberg the chance to investigate a question that has puzzled archaeologists ever since they first realized that vast animal cemeteries along the Nile hold millions of mummies: Why did the ancient Egyptians invest so much in the afterlife of creatures?

Unlike Greeks and Romans, ancient Egyptians believed animals possess a soul, or ba, just as humans do. “We forget how significant it is to ascribe a soul to an animal,” says Bleiberg. “For ancient Egyptians, animals were both physical and spiritual beings.” In fact, the ancient Egyptian language had no word for “animal” as a separate category until the spread of Christianity. Animal cults flourished outside the established state temples for much of Egyptian history and animals played a critical role in Egypt’s spiritual life. The gods themselves sometimes took animal form. Horus, the patron god of Egypt, was often portrayed with the head of a hawk; Thoth, the scribe god, was represented as an ibis or a baboon; and the fertility goddess Hathor was depicted as a cow. Even the pharaohs revered animals, and at least a few royal pets were mummified. In 1400 B.C., the pharaoh Amenhotep II went to the afterlife accompanied by his hunting dog, and a decade later his heir Thutmose IV was buried with a royal cat.

However, large numbers of mummies in dedicated animal necropolises did not appear until after the fall of the New Kingdom, around 1075 B.C. During the subsequent chaotic 400-year span known as the Third Intermediate Period, the central Egyptian state collapsed and a series of local dynasties and foreign kings rose and fell in rapid succession. This time is often depicted as calamitous in official accounts, but Bleiberg notes that during the First Intermediate Period, a similarly chaotic era without central authority that lasted from 2181 to 2055 B.C., life for the average Egyptian went on as normal. In fact, University of Cambridge Egyptologist Barry Kemp has shown that villagers were relatively prosperous during this time, perhaps because they paid taxes only to local authorities, and not to the central state. If life in the Third Intermediate Period was similar, then the average Egyptian may have had more disposable income. With no pharaoh to mediate Egypt’s relationship to the gods, and with foreigners undermining religious traditions, there was also a turn to personal piety among the general public. “Without the pharaoh, people needed to approach the gods on their own,” says Bleiberg.

(Courtesy The Brooklyn Museum) CT scans revealed that these mummies hold complete cat skeletons. The feline on the right had its forelegs and paws laid over its belly in a position similar to the placement of arms in human mummies. Against this backdrop, pilgrims visiting temples began to purchase animal mummies from priests to bury as votive offerings. Some wealthier pilgrims bought bronze statuettes of divinities that were also wrapped as mummies and placed in animal cemeteries. But real animal mummies would have been a much cheaper option, and they were soon a pervasive presence in Egyptian life. Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo estimates that the known 31 animal necropolises once held at least 20 million mummies. According to an ancient text, the Temple of Thoth in the necropolis of Saqqara at one time had 60,000 living ibises being readied for mummification, and archaeologists estimate that some four million ibis mummies were eventually buried there. A few mummies have been found with papyri petitioning the gods for help to resolve a family matter or cure an illness. Bleiberg notes, however, that the majority of animal mummies were not accompanied by written petitions and that it’s possible most were intended to carry oral messages. Perhaps pilgrims whispered their requests in the ears of the mummies, which then delivered their messages to the gods. (Courtesy The Brooklyn Museum) An X-ray of this elegantly wrapped hawk mummy dating to between 30 B.C. and A.D. 395 shows it contains only a single bird’s wing. X-rays and CT scans of the mummies in the rediscovered Brooklyn Museum collection reveal just how diverse animal mummies could be. While many show entire skeletons inside the mummy bundles, others reveal only partial remains. Some even show multiple animals mummified together in one bundle. A particularly poignant CT scan of a cat bundle shows that the feline was mummified with its forepaws crossed in the same position as human mummies’ arms were crossed, a reminder that the ancient Egyptians drew little distinction between people and animals. To determine if different wrapping styles could be dated to particular periods, Bleiberg took radiocarbon samples of some of the mummies’ linens, but the dates turned out to be inconsistent. It’s possible that the linen used in the wrappings was often recycled, which makes dating unreliable. A piece of linen could begin life as an article of clothing that lasted for decades, then be used as a rag, and then be repurposed as mummy wrapping, perhaps decades, or even centuries, after it was first made. Given the scale of the animal mummy-making business, some temples may have made their own linen, just as they raised their own animals in numbers approaching modern-day industrial farming. “This was an extremely important economic phenomenon,” says Bleiberg. “ There was a lot of money being directed toward animal mummies in first millennium.” (Courtesy The Brooklyn Museum) An X-ray of this dog mummy (left) shows how the animal’s skeleton was compressed and its tail tucked behind its hind legs, while an X-ray of a small, bull-shaped linen bundle (right), shows the object contains a bone fragment that could be bovine. As with any large-scale business, the production of animal mummies could be rife with corruption. At the necropolis of Saqqara, Egyptologists discovered a draft document written on ostraca, or potsherds, that details a case of corruption against the Temple of Thoth. Though the exact charges are not translatable, they evidently had to do with payments worshippers made for animal mummies—and what they actually got in return. The document outlines reforms that call for “one god in one jar,” meaning one whole animal per purchase. That implies the priests of Thoth were selling fraudulent mummies that either had no animal inside at all, or held multiple animals that each represented a separate purchase. Whatever their crime, six priests were imprisoned. The document also describes a program of oversight by outside priests and states that, in the future, mummies would be stored in a holding area until they could be buried all at once during an annual festival overseen by reliable officials. (Courtesy The Brooklyn Museum) These two ibis-shaped mummies are not what they appear. One (left) contains no skeleton, and an X-ray of the other (right) reveals it actually contains snake skeletons. Both could be the result of corrupt temple practices. Some of the mummies in the Brooklyn Museum collection may have been the result of such corrupt practices. X-rays reveal multiple snakes in an “ibis” mummy, as well as mummy bundles without any remains, perhaps intended to fool unsuspecting worshippers. One mummy contained nothing but feathers, but was unusually well wrapped. Why would a corrupt priest bent on swindling a pilgrim devote so much time to elegantly wrapping a fraudulent mummy? “It’s possible the feathers came from an unusually important bird,” says Bleiberg, “We’ll never know for sure.” Although animal mummies were one of the most common classes of object left behind by the ancient Egyptians, they carry messages that may never be fully understood. Eric A. Powell is online editor at Archaeology. For information on the traveling exhibit Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt, go to brooklynmuseum.org. The exhibit’s catalogue is available in bookstores and at gilesltd.com

LOST in TRANSLATION

A glimpse into nature's looking glass—to find the genetic code is reassigned 

In the Lewis Carroll classic, Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty states, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." 
In turn, Alice (of Wonderland fame) says, "The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things." 

All organisms on Earth use a genetic code, which is the language in which the building plans for proteins are specified in their DNA. 
It has long been assumed that there is only one such "canonical" code, so each word means the same thing to every organism.

 “What we saw in the study was that in certain organisms, the stop sign was not interpreted  as stop.” – Eddy Rubin [Credit: Wayne Keefe, Berkeley Lab Creative Services]

 While a few examples of organisms deviating from this canonical code had been serendipitously discovered before, these were widely thought of as very rare evolutionary oddities, absent from most places on Earth and representing a tiny fraction of species. 

Now, this paradigm has been challenged by the discovery of large numbers of exceptions from the canonical genetic code, published by a team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) in the May 23, 2014 edition of the journal Science. 
"All along, we presumed that the code or vocabulary used by organisms was universal, applying to all branches of the tree of life, with vanishingly few exceptions," said DOE JGI Director Eddy Rubin, and senior author on the Science paper. "We have now confirmed that this just isn't so. There is a significant portion of life that uses different vocabularies where the same word means different things in different organisms."
 This research was conducted under the DOE JGI's continuing effort to explore the biological frontier known as "microbial dark matter." These are the vast number of microbes that are difficult-to-impossible to grow and study in the laboratory but populate nearly all environments from the human gut to the hot vents at the bottom of the ocean. 

Approximately 99% of all microbial species on Earth fall in this category, defying culture in the laboratory but profoundly influencing the most significant environmental processes from plant growth and health, to the carbon and other nutrient cycles on land and sea, and even climate processes. 
"The tools of metagenomics and single-cell genomics, with which we determine the genetic blueprints of microbes without the need to grow them in the laboratory, provide us a window into the unexplored, uncultured microbial world," Rubin said. "The metaphor we use is that up until very recently we have just been looking under the lamppost for new life, studying organisms that we can grow in the laboratory while we know most microbial life is very resistant to being grown in the lab. 
In this project, using metagenomics and single-cell genomics to explore uncultured microbes, we really had the opportunity to see how the genetic code operates in the wild. It is helping us get an unbiased view of how nature operates and how microbes manage our planet." 

Captured in this map are the recoded DNA sequences identified worldwide showing the  locations of 82 environmental samples around the globe together with nine sample sites  (derived from 212 samples) of the human body for which recoded sequences  have been identified

[Credit: Patrick Schwientek]

 It has been 60 years since the discovery of the structure of DNA and the emergence of the central dogma of molecular biology, wherein DNA serves as a template for RNA and these nucleotides form triplets of letters called codons. 
There are 64 codons, and all but three of these triplets encode actual amino acids -- the building blocks of protein. 
The remaining three are "stop codons," that bring the molecular machinery to a halt, 
terminating the translation of RNA into protein. 

Each has a given name: Amber, Opal and Ochre. 
When an organism's machinery reads the instructions in the DNA, builds a protein composed of amino acids, and reaches Amber, Opal or Ochre, this triplet would signal that they have arrived at the end of a protein.

 "This is sort of a 'stop sign,'" Rubin said. "But what we saw in the study was that in certain organisms, the stop sign was not interpreted as stop, rather it signaled to continue adding amino acids and expand the protein." 
The particular observation that caught the team's interest in looking for breakdowns in the canonical genetic code was when the study's lead investigator, DOE JGI's Natalia Ivanova, came across an anomaly: bacteria with extraordinarily short genes of only 200 base pairs in length. 
Typically, genes from microbes are about 800-900 base pairs long. "When trying to interpret the sequence of these bacteria using the canonical codon table, Opal, normally interpreted as a stop sign, resulted in the bacteria having unbelievably short genes. When Natalia applied a different vocabulary where Opal, instead of be interpreted as a stop, was assumed to encode the amino acid glycine, the genes in the bacteria suddenly appeared to be of normal length," Rubin said. 
Their interpretation of the finding was that "Opal-recoded" organisms, instead of stopping, incorporated an amino acid into the polypeptide, which kept growing and eventually produced normal-sized proteins. 

Workflow (depicted in the amount of DNA sequence data generated in trillion of nucleotide  bases [Tb] and billion bases [Gb]) to identify the set of overlapping DNA segments that  contain stop codon (Amber, Ochre, Opal) reassignments 

[Credit: Patrick Schwientek] 

Following this finding they wanted to see how frequently this occurs in nature and looked for similar occurrences in enormous amounts of sequence data from uncultured microbes. Computationally they sifted through a massive "haystack" of sequence data, 5.6 trillion letters of genetic code (the equivalent of nearly 2,000 human genomes). 
These came from over 1,700 samples sourced from far-flung and esoteric locations that span the globe -- marine, fresh water, and terrestrial environments -- to those much closer to home and more prosaic -- from the human mouth and gut. "We were surprised to find that an unprecedented number of bacteria in the wild possess these codon reassignments, from "stop" to amino-acid encoding "sense," up to 10 percent of the time in some environments," said Rubin. 
Another observation the researchers made was that beyond bacteria, these reassignments were also happening in phage, viruses that attack bacterial cells.
 Phage infect bacteria, injecting their DNA into the cell and exploiting the translational machinery of the cell to create more of themselves, to the point when the bacterial cell explodes, releasing more progeny phage particles to spread to neighboring bacteria and run amok. 
"To make this all happen, the established dogma was that phage needed to employ the exact genetic code that the host cell uses, otherwise, whatever DNA they inject wouldn't be properly translated," Rubin said. "But we observed phage with codon vocabularies that did not match any we found in their bacterial hosts. We scratched our heads at this result, because we wondered about what was up with the host. The dogma tells us that the phage to need to share the same code as the host, but we saw no Amber in bacteria. So what were these phage doing?" 
The punch line, Rubin said, is that the dogma is wrong. 
"Phage apparently don't really 'care' about the codon usage of the host. They have ways to get around that, and in fact they use differences to attack the host." The phage use certain molecular tricks, just those slight changes in the codon table, to suppress the host cell's protective mechanisms to conduct a 'hostile takeover' of the cell. 
"We call this strategy 'codon warfare'," Rubin said. "We need to keep this in mind when characterizing environments and how their resident microbes contribute to biochemical and biogeochemical processes. 
Now that our assumptions about the canonical nature of the codon table are shaken up, we will be able to devise new analysis methods that take this phenomenon of unexpected complexity into consideration so we can obtain a better understanding of how these environments function." 
Additional food for thought, Rubin noted, is whether adequate controls can effectively be established for those emergent organisms developed through synthetic biology. Some of these organisms have been engineered with an intentionally altered genetic code, designed as a "firewall" to prevent the exchange of genetic information between laboratory-engineered microbes and their cousins in the wild. 

Alice in Wonderland certainly captured the vexations of nature's complexity: "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense." 


Source: DOE/Joint Genome Institute
 [May 22, 2014]

FOTO NEI MUSEI

Decreto legge cultura: ma l’archeologia pubblica è un’altra cosa

24/05/2014 Articolo di Cinzia Dal Maso

reblogged from FILELLENI

Dunque, secondo il nuovo decreto legge su cultura e turismo, di cui per ora abbiamo soloun riassunto, possiamo finalmente fare click nei musei dello stivale senza incorrere nelle ire di un custode inferocito, e possiamo pure pubblicare i nostri click dove piaccia a noi, purché senza fini di lucro e a bassa risoluzione. Insomma leInvasioni digitali hanno funzionato, anche se sopra tutto è il clima a essere cambiato. E comunque, che sono poveri click nei musei d’Italia, di fronte alle immagini ad alta risoluzione messe liberamente in rete da grandi musei del mondo, da ultimo il Met, e a fronte del Google Art Project?

E poi arriveranno nuovi commissari, a Caserta e a Pompei (cioè l’attuale direttore generale di Pompei avrà poteri commissariali), e nuovimanager! Wow che bello! Ma non ci sono bastati i fallimenti, pompeiani e non, di commissari e manager? E soprattutto, il cosiddetto manager che competenze avrà? Basta che si chiami, o si faccia chiamare manager? Basta che abbia venduto hamburger e Coca Cola?

Giorni fa ho conosciuto un gentile signore di Philadelphia che si chiama Peter Gould. Un economista che, dopo una vita passata ad amministrare banche e società, ha deciso di dedicarsi a tempo pieno alla cultura. Anzi, all’archeologia. Usando le proprie competenze passate per occuparsi di gestione di siti e musei archeologici, e di come questi possono influire positivamente sulla vita sociale ed economica di chi ci vive. E cos’ha fatto a tale scopo il signor Gould? Si è preso un bel PhD in archeologia, ovvio! E’ tornato a studiare perché un buon manager culturale deve sapere dell’uno e dell’altro. 

Questa è la vera archeologia pubblica, nei paesi dove si sa fare. Dove si formano persone che sanno gestire, come del resto comunicare, ma conoscono anche a fondo il museo o il monumento che gestiscono.

Neppure in Italia mancano invero persone così. Solo che le istituzioni non lo sanno, o non vogliono saperlo. Mettila come ti pare, sono comunque indietro anni luce rispetto a chi nei beni culturali è “in”. E non basta un decreto raffazzonato (l’ennesimo…) a mostrare che ci si è messi al passo coi tempi. Non basta usare le parole magiche: foto libere e manager. 

Servono esperti, ma esperti veri, che sappiano gestire e comunicare al meglio, con serietà e professionalità, le nostre immense bellezze.

SIDONE: scoperte antichità Fenicie e Romane

Si è scoperto un sito archeologico prolifico a sud di Sidone: è stato annunciato lunedì scorso dal British Museum di Londra. Rinvenuta la statua incompleta di un sacerdote fenicio, alta 1,15 mt e datata VI sec. a.C. : è stata scoperta in un sito già sede di scavi per circa 16 anni, presso il Freres College: è considerata il ritrovamento più sensazionale degli ultimi anni.
Poco altro di paragonalbile è mai stato scoperto in Libano dal 1960, nelle zone di Sidone, Tiro e Umm al Ahmed e quel poco si trova già al museo di Beirut.

La statua rappresenta un uomo che indossa una specie di kilt pieghettato (noto come 'Shenti'), recante un drappeggio pendente dalla vita fino al bordo inferiore dell'abito. La mano destra è chiusa a pugno e probabilmente regge un oggetto ignoto, forse un rotolo scritto, oppure stoffa.

La statua è stata rinvenuta riversa sulla faccia, dato che era stata riusata dai romani nel materiale basale di sostegno di un pavimento marmoreo.
Sono anche state ritrovate tre nuove stanze in un edificio pubblico del III millennio a.C. insieme ad un deposito di 200 chilogrammi di grano 'einkorn' combusto, 160 kg di fagioli e 20 sepolture  di adulti e di bambini del II millennio.




Phoenician and Roman antiquities found in Sidon 


 A statue of a Phoenician priest has been uncovered at an excavation site in the southern city of Sidon, along with other antiquities, the most unique find for Lebanon in decades, the British Museum team announced Monday. 

An archaeologist shows a Roman-era statuette of Apollo Helios found at the  Freres College excavation site in the southern city of Sidon  [Credit: Mahmoud Zayat/AFP/Getty Images]

 The priest, 115 centimeters high and dating back to the sixth century B.C., was found at the Freres College site, which has been under excavation for the last 16 years, the head of the excavation, Claude Doumit Serhal, announced at a press conference at the Lebanese Directorate General of Antiquities. Archaeologists hold up the incomplete statue of a Phoenician priest dating back to  the sixth century B.C. 

The statue was displayed at the Freres College site  in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon on Monday  

[Credit: Mahmoud Zayat/AFP/Getty Images] 

“Nothing comparable has been found in Lebanon since the early 1960s, and only three other examples originating from Sidon, Umm al-Ahmed and Tyre are housed in the Beirut National Museum,” the statement said. 
The figurine is that of a male wearing a pleated kilt, known as “shenti,” with a pendant flap from the waist to the kilt’s hem. The left hand is in a closed fist and holding an unknown object, “probably a scroll or a handkerchief,” according to the statement. 

An archaeologist holds up a bronze symbol representing the Phoenician  goddess Tanit during Monday's news conference in Sidon 

 [Credit: Mahmoud Zayat/AFP/Getty Images] 

Archaeologists found the statue lying on its front, as it was re-used by the Romans and placed under a marble pavement in that position. 

An archaeologist holds Roman-era figurines of the goddess Isis, found during the  excavations at the site of the Old French School, Les Freres, in Sidon 

[Credit: Mahmoud Zayat/AFP/Getty Images] 

Three new rooms were also found in a third millennium B.C. public building, along with a 200-kilogram deposit of charred wheat called einkorn, 160 kilograms of broad bean and 20 burials belonging to both adults and infants from the second millennium B.C. This year’s excavation has been extended over six months, having started in January, in order to prepare for the building of an on-site museum, the statement added. 


Source: The Daily Star [May 20, 2014]

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Scritte sui nuraghi

 Ricevo - e volentieri pubblico - questo gustosissimo ed interessante intervento del
  Professor Pittau sull'argomento "Scrittura protosarda". (il grassetto ed il colore
 sono    mie aggiunte). Per quanto si possa essere più o meno completamente d'accordo
 con   quanto egli scrive, non si può negare che l'atteggiamento e l'approccio siano
 razionali e logici e come tali vadano apprezzati. Grazie, professore.

SCRITTE NUMERALI SUI NURAGHI

articolo di M.Pittau

Per quanto mi risulta, è stato Ettore Pais - però su indicazione di Filippo Nissardi - il primo studioso a segnalare, nel suo saggio Sulla civiltà dei Nuraghi e lo sviluppo sociologico della Sardegna  (1909- 1911), l'esistenza di segni grafici nel nuraghe Losa di Abbasanta e precisamente in un masso orizzontale, sistemato all'inizio e a sinistra della scala circolare. Ed egli scrisse di ritenere che quei segni grafici fossero contemporanei alla costruzione proprio del grandioso nuraghe e che inoltre appartenessero a una scrittura primitiva degli antichi Sardi o Protosardi.

Di recente si sono fatti avanti alcuni dilettanti, i quali hanno ritenuto anch'essi che si tratti di segni grafici di una supposta “scrittura nuragica”. Essi hanno riempito numerosi siti internet con una serie enorme di considerazioni pseudolinguistiche e pseudoarcheologiche, le quali in realtà sono del tutto prive di valore scientifico. Si sono anche contraddetti vistosamente, dato che all'inizio avevano parlato di “scrittura nuragica” totalmente ed esclusivamente tale, dopo hanno finito col compararla e connetterla con quasi tutte le scritture degli antichi popoli del Vicino Oriente.

Io mi sono interessato a lungo del problema della conoscenza e dell'uso da parte dei Nuragici della scrittura, dato che ho sempre considerato una autentica sciocchezza la tesi messa in giro e spesso ripetuta della “civiltà illetterata” dei Nuragici. E in vista di questo mio interesse al problema ho fatto anche una ricca raccolta di segni che nei nuraghi, nelle tombe di gigante e nel vasellame nuragico potessero risalire proprio ai Nuragici. Alla fine però ho concluso la mia ricerca, quando mi sono sentito in grado di affermare che: 

I) Non è mai esistita una scrittura propriamente ed esclusivamente nuragica; 

II) I Nuragici hanno effettivamente conosciuto e adoperato la scrittura, ma facendo uso prima dell'alfabeto fenicio, poi di quello greco e infine quello latino (cfr. M. Pittau, Storia dei Sardi Nuragici, Selargius,  2007, § 24; M.Pittau, Il Sardus Pater e i Guerrieri di Monte Prama I appendice, I ediz. 2008, II ediz. 2009, Sassari, EDES).

Venendo ai segni incisi nel masso della scala interna del nuraghe Losa di Abbasanta, io escludo che si tratti di segni grafici, cioè di lettere di una scrittura,  e dico invece, oggi per  la prima volta, che si tratta di “segni numerali” incisi dai costruttori del nuraghe, a mano a mano che lo costruivano.

La costruzione del più semplice dei nuraghi richiedeva molto tempo, mesi, anni e perfino decenni. Sono pertanto dell'avviso che ciascuna delle aste verticali della scritta del nuraghe Losa indichi un anno intero, mentre i più corti segni diagonali, che si congiungono ai primi, indichino i mesi. La costruzione del nuraghe Losa dunque ha richiesto probabilmente 23 o 24 anni (tale sembra il numero delle aste, più alcune frazioni di mesi), che è una somma di anni che ben si adatta alla costruzione del grandioso edificio. È appena il caso di ricordare che anche numerose chiese cristiane, soprattutto in epoca medioevale, hanno richiesto anni, decenni e perfino secoli per essere portate a termine.

Ecco la foto del masso coi segni numerali e i loro verosimili disegni:

 Si comprende abbastanza facilmente il motivo della incisione della “scritta numerale” nel
  masso di inizio della scala interna del nuraghe: la scritta fu iniziata all'atto della prima 
costruzione del nuraghe e fu di anno in anno accresciuta e aggiornata a mano a mano che 
la costrizione andava avanti.  Si comprende pure la ragione per la quale i costruttori 
scelsero quel posto nascosto dell'edificio: si trattava di evitare che la scritta fosse guastata
 dai numerosi visitatori del grande edificio di culto.

Sempre nel nuraghe Losa, in un masso esterno del muraglione di settentrione, a livello di fondazione, il Pais ha segnalato anche l'esistenza di segni simili a quelli visti. In più egli ha visto il disegno di un fallo, che però io non ho mai riscontrato. Non mi sento di dire nulla su questa serie di segni: dico solamente che la prima scritta molto verosimilmente risale all'epoca della fondazione del grande nuraghe, mentre questa seconda potrebbe essere successiva anche di parecchio tempo.

Sempre su indicazione di Filippo Nissardi il Pais ha segnalato pure l'esistenza di una scritta similare in un masso di destra dell'ingresso del nuraghe Bara o Succoronis, fra Macomer e Sindia. Eccone la fotografia, non chiara sia per il muschio della roccia, sia per la sua posizione quasi orizzontale.  Ed accanto il probabile disegno:

A mio avviso anche questa è un “scritta numerale”, che segna gli anni occorsi per costruire il nuraghe.

Per concludere ricordo che fino a un cinquantennio fa, quando molti pastori non sapevano leggere né scrivere, erano soliti segnare la quantità di latte che versavano al caseificio facendo particolari tacche su un piccolo ramo d'albero fatto a bastone.

Massimo Pittau

www.pittau.it