
Centuries of Italian History Are Unearthed in a Quest to Fix a Toilet - timr
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/world/europe/centuries-of-italian-history-are-unearthed-in-quest-to-fix-toilet.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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toyg
Hopefully he's not just selling artifacts on the black market, which is the
most common outcome for private findings.

But yeah, southern Italy is all like that. Loads of houses in major cities
like Naples or Rome will have a hatch in the basement, leading to what are
basically unprotected archeological sites. Local authorities often have to
turn the other way, because the cost of properly handling all this stuff would
be prohibitive. These are living and bustling cities, you can't just turn them
into museums.

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PhantomGremlin
_Hopefully he 's not just selling artifacts on the black market_

I understand your point, but why not?

Isn't the British Museum basically loot from all over the world? Wikipedia
claims it has "8 million works". So maybe less than 1% is on display? And
Britain isn't about to give any of that stuff back.

So when an empire steals it's OK, but when "the little people" try to make a
few bucks to cover costs, that's bad?

Anyway, I'm just saying that it might be "better" in some sense to allow these
artifacts out to collectors than to have them stored away in boxes in the
locked storage areas of a museum.

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toyg
Apart from what was already discussed, regarding the role of museums in
preservation etc, we also have to be realistic: historical context is
important.

It's not like the UK government is still tasking diplomats with buying random
artifacts for the glory of the British Empire. There was a time when
acceptable practices were different. We're not going to punish people for
"crimes" committed 200 years ago, are we? We might as well disband the
Catholic Church outright and pillage the Vatican, built on "ill-gotten gains"
throughout the centuries (well, isn't that an appealing prospect, now that I
think of it...).

Once you go down that route, could all museums in the world please send back
their Italian Renaissance paintings, we better throw them in a dark closet at
the Uffizi so nobody can see them, it's not like Italy has so many of them
that they can afford to exhibit and preserve less than 10% of them at any
given time, right?

In most cases, these "ownership disputes" are just instruments of foreign
policy. I'd argue that preservation and availability should trump "ownership"
pretty much all the time.

Going back to the preservation aspect: think of what's happening in Iraq and
Syria at the moment. Historical artifacts of immense value are being lost to
contemporary squabbles. Would it have been so bad to store those in a basement
of the British Museum, away from the madness of humanity?

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lsaferite
Well, the US is still being held responsible for slavery even though that was
outlawed 150 years ago, right?

Just because it happened long ago doesn't mean that the current government can
abdicate any responsibility for reparation. The UK government should at least
attempt to return the relics it has warehoused to their origins if they are
under stable rule.

~~~
toyg
_> US is still being held responsible for slavery_

Should an African-American individual petition the US government to be
resettled to Africa and compensated for the trouble, would the US government
agree to pay? I don't think so. The US government is responsible for the
enduring consequences of _segregation_ , which ended less than 50 years ago in
most of the country and is a separate issue from slavery, albeit strongly
related. In the same way, the current UK government is responsible for
preserving the artifacts it inherited so long ago and (theoretically) work
towards a world where the Greek people will never be forced to sell their
belongings because of economic hardship.

 _> The UK government should at least attempt to return the relics_

Why this obsession with the British Museum, when the Louvre and other
institutions are as full of less-documented loot as the BM? Are we holding the
British responsible for keeping better records than others? There are tons of
US and European museums with similarly-acquired catalog that are never really
criticized for it. The Nike of Samothrace is so much more beautiful and
powerful than anything the BM holds, but its location has never been much
criticized. Could that be because modern Greek governments have had better
relationships with France than with the UK? It's all just foreign policy by
other means, usually by people who won't care about these relics the minute
they've had their way.

I personally think the best location for artifacts is among people who will
cherish them and help the world see them and understand them. As an Italian, I
think half of the relics we currently mis-preserve should probably be sold to
people who would do a better job. The recently-located Imperial Port of Rome
will likely never be fully excavated because we wouldn't have any money to
preserve it as it would deserve, and the same happens every day for
magnificent stuff all over Rome. I think that's a much more pressing issue
than bickering about stuff we've already studied to death.

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mgr86
To your second point there has always been a contingent in the museum
community who opposed the reparation of artifacts. This is not to say they may
lament the means of acquisition but feel that the artifacts would be better
protected in a more stable or better funded place.

This group has been given more attention as of late. Especially with the rate
of destruction currently occurring in parts of the middle east (re: ISIS). But
even in other areas of the world this a concern. I've herd it said by some
that artifacts returned to Peru cannot be fully accounted for. Admittedly,
this was second hand, but it seems quite logical knowing a thing or two about
the backlog of even the most funded museums.

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yuchi
This is way more common that you could think.

In Rome, for example, road works are normally delayed an awful lot for this.

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gws
Yes, that's why Rome does not have a proper subway system. Could you imagine
London or Paris without a proper subway? That's Rome.

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idiocratic
Rome is much smaller than the cities you mentioned.

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riffraff
the conurbation is smaller, the city of rome itself is in fact larger than
paris and london, I believe.

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delecti
Conversely, both Rome itself and its urban area have far fewer people than
either Paris or London, which combined with the larger area, makes the density
even less of a problem.

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nights192
I don't know, man- Rome proper's population is larger than Paris', with
approximately 2.9 million residents.

London, however, is indeed much larger.

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awjr
Welcome to Europe. Dig up a car park, find a king ;)

~~~
arethuza
Or go to a beautiful wee island and find 48 Scottish, 8 Norwegian and 4 Irish
kings...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona)

~~~
TylerH
There's nothing in that article about any kings.

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ceejayoz
"The abbey graveyard contains the graves of many early Scottish Kings, as well
as kings from Ireland, Norway and France... In 1549 an inventory of 48
Scottish, 8 Norwegian and 4 Irish kings was recorded."

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Terr_
> City officials, sensing a major find, brought in an archaeologist, even as
> the Faggianos were left to do the excavation work and bear the costs.

Whelp, I think I found yer problem right here...

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joeminichino
Being Italian and accustomed to such stories (and very much an ancient and
medieval history enthusiast, so not dismissing the importance of this
discovery) my curiosity goes to the hypothetical menu of Trattoria Faggiano.

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NKCSS
Best headline of today :)

~~~
zachrose
Another day of software development

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kagamine
> So Mr. Faggiano enlisted his two older sons

How did he manage that? Surely it was his two eldest sons and do I get a job
at the NYT now please?

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lsaferite
I'm assuming you are trying to confuse older in the context of the father,
saying the sons are older than the father?

Wouldn't the 'older' be limited in context to his group of sons?

