Archive for Mines

El Vagón Violated (Peru).

This short paper reports the unexpected destruction and violation of an important rock art site – El Vagón – in the Moche Drainage of northern Peru. In 2019 I published a full account of this site, based on several surveys by my wife and me. In 2017 there was no destruction visible, but in August 2024 I found (via Google Earth) out that the site had been destroyed by heavy machinery. This short paper discusses the damage, often referring to my earlier publication. It is sad that the site survived from the Formative Period (2000-500 B.C.) up to at least 2022, and was then recklessly and shamefully violated and destroyed in a few days, apparently without any warning or any official archaeological survey. Permission should never have been granted!

By  Maarten van Hoek

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Save Mount Latmos rock art! (petition)

Einzigartige Natur- und Kulturlandschaft vor

Karadere Cave

On line petition (please sign it!) to the Turkey Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs. Discovered in 1994 by the Berlin archaeologist Dr. Anneliese Peschlow-Bindokat, these rock paintings date back to the 6th and 5th millennia B.C.  They are now greatly endangered by increased stone quarrying in the area: the exploitation of feldspar is causing the drastic metamorphosis of the Latmos from a sacred mountain into a source for bathroom installations!

by APB (online petition)

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Latmos Mountains (Turkey), endangered rock paintings

Latmos paintings

Baliktas paintings

The living environment of the Latmos Mountains and of its communities are threatened by the deforestation caused by feldspar quarrying. The cultural heritage looks back upon a long history, from the Neolithic period up to the Ottoman Empire. More than 170 sites of rock drawings (6th/5th millennia BC) are known, representing one of the most important discoveries in prehistoric archaeology during the past decades in Anatolia. Television documentaries, newspaper reports, symposia and demonstrations, have not succeeded in preventing the devastation of the landscape… please sign the online petition!

by Anneliese Peschlow-Bindokat

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Megalitismo e nuove ipotesi di ricerca

Viene descritto l’antico sito estrattivo, la sua ubicazione, l’orientamento, il rapporto con attigue strutture di interesse archeologico ed archeoastronomico che potrebbero essere correlate ad una frequentazione del luogo in età pre- e/o protostorica e le conseguenti nuove prospettive di studio.

by Alfredo Pirondini, Gian Paolo Bocca

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