Mass Grave Found by Construction Workers in Russia

One skull from the site, with a bullet wound [Source]

Crews working on a road outside the Far Eastern Russian town of Vladivostok in the fall of 2009 were forced to halt construction when they discovered a mass grave in the path of the proposed road, totalling 495 skeletons (3.5 tons of bones). Most of the skulls have gunshot wounds, and bits of clothing and coins found in the grave have led volunteer archaeologists to believe that this is the result of Stalinist purges.

The site itself is no stranger to Stalin’s paranoia and executions due to largely false charges. There used to be a barracks for political prisoners several kilometres from the site, and a short distance away a memorial to Stalin’s victims already stands.

The company immediately halted construction on discovering the grave, a sort of find which has become less frequent since a surge of finds like these after the fall of the Soviet Union. A spokesperson said they would leave investigation of the site to the experts [source], and the battle to excavate and study the remains has been a long one, having to wait for the ground to thaw properly before a large number of the skeletons could be excavated.

Finds like this often serve as reminders of the near past, and bring the techniques archaeologists use into more recent memory—not to mention reminding us that there are likely still more of these mass burials out there, and that perhaps it is our duty as archaeologists to locate these graves, maybe finding out who these people were and reburying them elsewhere.

Read More:

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100412/158537934.html

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6034777-mass-grave-found-in-vladivostock-russia

Mayan Figurines Uncovered in King's Tomb

King and Queen figurines [Source]

In “Representing the Maize King,” published in Archaeology Magazine’s September/October 2010 issue, the discovery of an unnamed seventh century A.D. kind and the unearthing of 23 ceramic figurines depicting the costumes of Maya royalty are described with a sort of reverence. The find of these figurines is said to be particularly spectacular due to the fact that most of the examples archaeologists have of these figurines were looted, and we’ve lost the original context in which they were found. This is the first opportunity archaeologists have really had to understand the context in which these figurines were originally deposited, and postulate as to their original function. Due to their association with the dead king and his tomb, David Freidel, Michelle Rich and F. Kent Reilly III believe that this scene depicts the king’s funeral, and a deer shaman presides over the King, who is posed as a penitent person or a shaman’s patient in Modern Maya cultures. There are two royal figures presiding over the ceremony, a king and a queen, who archaeologists believe to be the successors to the dead king’s throne.

Finding artefacts like this in relation to burials is fortunate, and maybe the assumption that they depict a ceremony related to death is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps they had multiple purposes, and their final resting place was with the king in his death. It’s hard to say for sure, but their association with a lavish burial chamber certainly influences the interpretation of these figurines.

Modern Monuments - The World Trade Center

Talking about monuments that people have hated has made me think of what happened with one monument of the World Trade Center attacks, originally a sculpture called “Tumbling Woman” by artist Eric Fischl. It was accompanied by a plaque with a poem by Fischl:

[source]

We watched, 

disbelieving and helpless, 

on that savage day.

People we love

began falling,

helpless and in disbelief. 

[source]

The sculpture is of a naked woman tumbling, presumably through the air, a depiction of those who chose to jump rather than wait for the World Trade Center to collapse around them on September 11^th 2001. After about a week of being on display in the Rockefeller Center, it was suddenly covered with cloth and a curtain wall was erected around it due to a wave of complaints about the content of the statue.

“I don’t think it dignifies their deaths,” said Paul Labb… “It’s not art. … It is very disturbing when you see it.” [source]

Fischl issued a public apology soon after the statue was covered and eventually removed, saying that the sculpture was a depiction of deep sympathy for the “vulnerability of the human condition” [source].

Tumbling Woman might not have been at Ground Zero, but its effects on the state of memorials that would later be presented there are keenly felt. The first large-scale monument to be erected on the site was one to the firefighters—and it has all the hallmarks of a classical Roman relief, openly deriving its inspiration from Trajan’s Column. Assistant Chief Harold Meyers provides a description of the bronze relief on an interactive New York Times feature:

“The… relief is appropriate in the tactics used… It’s the way people are being presented. It does not show specific people. I think that it was an opportunity to as thoroughly as possible present fairly what took place, and I would say as such that it was not meant to be an artistic presentation, by that I mean an abstraction, it was meant to be modelled beautifully, but truthfully.” [source, transcription mine]

I would suggest taking a listen to that sound clip, because to fully understand the quote you need to hear the way he says abstraction, the absent way he says artistic presentation. This is not supposed to be a work of art, it is strictly speaking a memorial. Meyers not only shies away from the concept of art as a representative force, and in part in drawing such specific information from Trajan’s Column, a monument of victory, not of something as tragic and emotional as 9/11.

Trajan's Column [Source]

Firefighter's Memorial [Source]

“It was decided after the first sketches were presented that it was the appropriate thing to do to show the buildings at the point of impact and not collapse. Speaking to many of the people, it was not the impact that in fact brings back the greatest emotion, it was the collapse and what that collapse then brought about. They felt that the building should still be strong and present, identifiable but not at a point of failure or weakness.” [emphasis mine]

The whole message of the Firefighter’s Memorial is not emotional—the faces of the firefighters are passive, just like their counterparts in Roman sculpture. The moment of the second impact was deliberately chosen over the image of the collapsed towers, which is specifically cited as an image of failure or weakness. The inscription reads, “Dedicated to those who fell and those who carry on. May we never forget.” Yet there is no depiction of falling anywhere in the image. Firefighters are depicted doing their work, strong backed figures who show no hesitation. The monument avoids altogether the event that killed these people who are being represented, the towers collapsing, and this is evidently the way that the people of New York choose to remember this day—not the moment of collapse, but the point when the firefighters and police gathered to save as many people as they could. There is none of the confusion of the day present—everyone in the sculpture is directed, knows what they are doing. I don’t think this monument would be covered by a cloth and whisked away—but neither is it really doing service to the memories of those whose names are listed directly below.