[MSN] Italian construction crew investigated after ancient artifacts looted. Some items now decorate a hotel complex nearby.

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

June 15, 2007

Italian construction crew investigated after ancient artifacts looted 

Some items now decorate a hotel complex nearby 

ROME 

Italian police have recovered an ancient Greek temple dug up in southern
Italy by a construction crew who had dumped or looted the prized artifacts
and begun to pour cement over the ruins, authorities said. 

After receiving information about the discovery during construction work on
a tourist resort on the coast of southern Calabria, police used helicopters
to locate the site near the town of Crotone, said art squad officials from
the Carabinieri paramilitary police. 

More than 50 artifacts, including columns and mosaics, had been excavated
from the site and used to decorate another hotel complex nearby, while other
pieces had been placed in a dump to be reused as construction material. 

When police located the site last week, workers were preparing to lay the
foundations of the resort hotel on the remaining ruins, said Gen. Giovanni
Nistri, the head of the art squad. 

"It would have been the final tombstone for this temple," Nistri told a news
conference in Rome. 

Police identified two suspects for possible prosecution for failing to alert
authorities about the find, damaging the site and for illegal possession of
archaeological artifacts, Nistri said. The two were not arrested. 

Italy is full of archaeological treasures, many undiscovered, and developers
are required to report any finds. Countless public and private works have
been scrapped or delayed over the years as state archaeologists descended on
building sites, and it is not uncommon for developers to fail to report a
discovery and plow through ancient treasures. 

In Rome, plans to build a third subway line have been delayed for decades,
and in 1999, the construction of a parking garage caused outrage after
workers sliced through a Roman villa during hurried preparations for the
Holy Year celebrations and mosaics and ceramics from the ruins turned up in
a garbage dump on Rome's outskirts. 

The discovery of the Greek temple is of "extraordinary historic and artistic
value" and experts believe it may be part of a larger ancient settlement,
the Carabinieri said in a statement. 

The ruins are "one big puzzle" for scholars, as the area was previously
thought to be devoid of such important public buildings, said archaeological
superintendent Giovanni Guzzo. 

The temple mixes two styles of Greek architecture, combining the austere
Doric with the more graceful decorations of Ionic. It was probably built
between the fourth and third centuries BC by the Bruzii, an Italic
population that lived under Hellenistic influence, which at the time
extended across southern Italy, Guzzo said. 

He said that over the next months archaeologists will work to enlarge the
50-by-20-metre dig. They will also try to reconstruct how the original
temple must have looked by piecing together the remains scattered and
damaged by the developers. 

ASSOCIATED PRESS 

http://dcnonl.com/article/id23007