Archaeology Odyssey, Summer 1998
Features
The Etruscans
Mastering the delicate art of living
Do you wonder what happened to the ancient Etruscans, those civilized, seemingly mysterious people who revealed so many secrets of life and death to the Romans? Simply journey to the heart of Tuscany, to the bustling train station at Florence. Wait for one of...Read more ›
Grape Pips, Dog Bones and Acorn Missiles
Who destroyed the Etruscan Site of La Piana?
The Etruscan settlement at La Piana came to a violent end. Every year excavations at the site, near the Italian city of Siena, turn up new evidence that La Piana was attacked and destroyed toward the end of the third century B.C. The invaders...Read more ›
Welcome to the World of Magic!
In 1992 and 1993, at Sepphoris (in Hebrew, Tzippori) in the lower Galilee, we uncovered two inscribed amulets designed to invoke magical powers.1 It’s not abracadabra; it’s WHYHAW and AWAAA. See if that will cure your fever! These two amulets, small silver and bronze scrolls, open a fascinating window on...Read more ›
Plundering the Sacred
German police recover thousands of artworks looted from Cyprus’s churches
One of last year’s most important archaeological discoveries occurred not in the field but in some apartments in Germany. And it was not made by archaeologists but by police after an eight-month sting operation. Last fall, Munich police raided three apartments during a crackdown on an antiquities...Read more ›