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Archaeologists in Louisiana Save Artifacts from Natural Disasters, Looters

Gray Tarry, bottom left, an archeological field technician for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, digs, while Josiah Hamilton, left, and Jamie Butts, right, high school students from Youth Conservation Corps, watch at an archeological site in Kisatchie National Forest, La., Wednesday, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Gray Tarry, bottom left, an archeological field technician for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, digs, while Josiah Hamilton, left, and Jamie Butts, right, high school students from Youth Conservation Corps, watch at an archeological site in Kisatchie National Forest, La., Wednesday, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
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Archaeologists in Louisiana Save Artifacts from Natural Disasters, Looters

Gray Tarry, bottom left, an archeological field technician for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, digs, while Josiah Hamilton, left, and Jamie Butts, right, high school students from Youth Conservation Corps, watch at an archeological site in Kisatchie National Forest, La., Wednesday, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Gray Tarry, bottom left, an archeological field technician for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, digs, while Josiah Hamilton, left, and Jamie Butts, right, high school students from Youth Conservation Corps, watch at an archeological site in Kisatchie National Forest, La., Wednesday, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Long buried under the woods of west central Louisiana, stone tools, spearpoints and other evidence of people living in the area as long as 12,000 years ago have become more exposed and vulnerable, due to hurricanes, flooding and looters.

This summer, archaeologists have been gingerly digging up the ground at the Vernon Parish site in the Kisatchie National Forest. They have been sifting through dirt to unearth and preserve the evidence of prehistoric occupation of the area.

“The site appears to have been continuously occupied throughout prehistory, as evidenced by a wide range of stone tools and pottery dating to each Native American cultural era up to European contact,” the US Forest Service said in a news release.

The site was found by surveyors in 2003, according to the Forest Service. After hurricanes Laura and Delta uprooted trees, disturbing and exposing some of the artifacts, Kisatchie National Forest officials used hurricane relief money to begin salvage excavations to learn more about the site, and to preserve it.

“Between the looting and the hurricane damage we were really in danger of losing this site over time,” Forest Service archaeologist Matthew Helmer said during a media tour of the site in June.

Helmer, walked amid areas already excavated, pointing to changes in soil color and texture that, like the crude artifacts being excavated, can give clues as researchers work to determine facts about the people who occupied the area at different times over the millennia, The Associated Press reported.

“We're really writing the history of these peoples that lived prior to 1492, all the way back 10,000-plus years,” said Helmer.

It's a welcome opportunity for Mark Rees, a professor of archaeology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and director of the Louisiana Public Archaeology Lab.

Still, Rees laments that the work is hampered by people who have made unauthorized digs and made off with material from the site.

“It's like walking into the archive and finding a book that's so rare it's one of a kind and it predates writing itself, it's like tearing a page out of that book and walking off with it,” said Rees.

The salvaged artifacts will be sorted, catalogued and examined as researchers at the archaeology lab seek to make determinations about past cultures at the site.

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Culture

Iran's Vast Collection of Western Art, Much Long Hidden, Re-Emerges Despite High Tensions With US

A woman walks past a portrait of the leader of the American Indian Movement Russell Means, right, by American artist Andy Warhol, as she visits an exhibition titled Eye to Eye which showcases over 120 works by modern world artists as well as Iranian painters at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tehran, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A woman walks past a portrait of the leader of the American Indian Movement Russell Means, right, by American artist Andy Warhol, as she visits an exhibition titled Eye to Eye which showcases over 120 works by modern world artists as well as Iranian painters at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tehran, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
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Iran's Vast Collection of Western Art, Much Long Hidden, Re-Emerges Despite High Tensions With US

A woman walks past a portrait of the leader of the American Indian Movement Russell Means, right, by American artist Andy Warhol, as she visits an exhibition titled Eye to Eye which showcases over 120 works by modern world artists as well as Iranian painters at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tehran, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A woman walks past a portrait of the leader of the American Indian Movement Russell Means, right, by American artist Andy Warhol, as she visits an exhibition titled Eye to Eye which showcases over 120 works by modern world artists as well as Iranian painters at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tehran, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

As Iran faces increasing tensions with the West and turmoil at home, a new exhibition at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is displaying Western artwork including pieces not seen by the public in at least a decade.
The unveiling of the exhibition “Eye to Eye” has drawn numerous women, their hair uncovered, to the underground galleries of the museum in Tehran's Laleh Park. Their presence, while unacknowledged by authorities, shows the way life has changed inside Iran just in the last few years even as the country's theocracy presses forward with enriching uranium to near-weapons grade levels and launching attacks on Israel during the ongoing Mideast wars, The Associated Press said.
“The first feeling that came to me, and I told my parents, was that I can’t believe I’m seeing these works, which have always been kept far from our eyes,” said Aida Zarrin, a young woman at the museum.
“If such events are held here and we can see artworks like the rest of the world, it’s enough. They are really precious.”
The government of Iran’s Western-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, the former Empress Farah Pahlavi, built the museum and acquired the vast collection in the late 1970s, when oil boomed and Western economies stagnated. Upon opening, it showed sensational works by Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock and other heavyweights, enhancing Iran’s cultural standing on the world stage.
But just two years later, in 1979, Shiite clerics ousted the shah and packed away the art in the museum’s vault. Some paintings — cubist, surrealist, impressionist and even pop art — sat untouched for decades to avoid offending Islamic values and the appearance of catering to Western sensibilities. Nearly everything is believed still to be there, though an Andy Warhol print of the empress was slashed during the revolution.
Today, the collection is likely worth billions of dollars. Even with Iran now cash-strapped under Western sanctions, officials with the museum have been able to advocate for keeping the collection, though there have been occasional trades in the past for items from Persian history. Those sanctions may increase under the next administration of US President-elect Donald Trump.
As Iranian politics have thawed, re-frozen and thawed again, the collection resurfaces along with those changes.
Among the over 120 works being shown are ones from Picasso, Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon, along with celebrated Iranian artists. One of the Warhols, “Jacqueline Kennedy II,” is a silkscreen double image of the former US first lady in mourning after the 1963 assassination of her husband, President John Kennedy. Another Warhol portrait of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger also garnered attention from the cellphone photo snappers.
“A lot of these works are important works in the history of art, and that’s why this show distinguishes itself from others,” said Jamal Arabzadeh, the exhibition's curator. ”A lot of people with less exposure to art have discovered the museum for the first time. ... We are seeing a part of the community that are discovering art and the museum and see the potential of this place, and this is something to be proud of.”
The presence of Western art comes as Iran's government has long fought against items like Barbie dolls and depictions of cartoon characters from “The Simpsons.” Such Western influences have been deemed un-Islamic in the past and have been seen as part of a “soft” cultural war against Iran.
With a ticket costing the equivalent of 14 US cents, the exhibition offers a rare government-sanctioned event not involving the country's politics or Shiite religion.
Among the visitors were many women defying the country's mandatory headscarf, or hijab, law. Crackdowns over the hijab have slowed down after Iran's presidential election in July that elected reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, though individual cases of arrest continue to draw anger.
And for many, the cost of tickets to travel abroad given Iran's collapsing rial currency keep foreign museums out of reach.
“This is very attractive for art enthusiasts because not everyone can go and see museums abroad. It’s extremely exciting to see the works here,” said a woman who only gave her last name, Dolatshahi. “I had no idea I could see works by van Gogh and Picasso here.”