A collection of prehistoric artifacts have been found 90 feet below the surface of the Little Salt Spring, south of Tampa, Florida.

Artifacts are delicately uncovered from a ledge 90 feet below the surface, archaeologists say, offering up glimpses of what life was like for who is believed to have been Florida’s first residents.

John Gifford, an underwater archaeologist with UM’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science along with aquarium divers are working together to gather the artifacts.

“In the last ice age, between about 10,000 and 13,000 years ago, the water level was 90 feet lower then than it is today,” Gifford said. “It’s generally thought that along that early beach area, those early humans left their tools or whatever artifacts they found at that site.”

The site has been under excavation by scientists sporadically over the past three years, and only about 6 percent of the submerged ledge has been scoured.

“Little Salt Spring,” Gifford said, “is where we have at least a fighting chance at finding some traces of human activity say 9,000 or 10,000 years ago.”

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Two tobacco tins and some other artifacts have been found at a campsite used by Lawrence of Arabia’s army during the 1916-1918 Great Arab Revolt.

The tins were discovered by archaeologists who have been surveying the Arab army site in Wuheida, southern Jordan, since it was discovered in November.

They were used to supply Wills cigarettes from Bristol to British and Arab troops fighting the Ottoman Turks during the First World War.

Archaeologists from Bristol University also recovered numerous bullets, spent cartridges, cartridge clips, and British military buttons from the encampment.

In 1916 Arabs keen on freeing themselves from Ottoman rule launched the Great Arab Revolt.

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Hundreds of looted ancient artifacts recovered by Italian police were displayed in the Colosseum on Friday.

The 337 pieces displayed in the ancient Roman arena include vases, bronze tools and marble statues of Venus, some dating as far back as the 8th century B.C.

Police said the pieces are worth some euro15 million (about $20 million) overall. They said the pieces were returned from Switzerland in June after a two-year investigation.

Italy has aggressively pursued the return of art it says was illegally looted from its soil and sold to museums or private collections worldwide.

This probe grew out of an investigation into an Italian art dealer later convicted of art trafficking.

The objects were seized in Geneva, part of a massive haul of some 20,000 artworks from all around the world, the art squad of the Carabinieri police said.

The pieces returned to Italy also include “kraters” — huge vases used to mix wine and water — statuettes and drinking cups. Police say the objects were looted mostly from southern Italian regions and, after their spectacular display Friday at the Colosseum, they will return there.

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USA Today has posted an interesting article about the state of tomb raiding in China. I found it especially interesting that a lot of the best quality artifacts are being traded for the purposes of bribery.

In May, a court in Hunan province dealt death penalties to four men dressed as soldiers who used explosives and earth movers to raid a dozen tombs, finding treasures that included a 2,000-year-old royal seal, the Legal Weekend newspaper reported.

Robbers combine techniques old and new, analyst Wu Shu says. To find tomb sites, they are guided by traditional divination and feng shui beliefs about how tombs and other things should be situated for spiritual balance. They use modern prospecting equipment, classic archaeological spades and a knowledge of explosives to gain access, usually in a single night’s work.

While China’s antiques market is booming, Wu says “90% of it is illegal,” either fakes or state-level relics that should not be in private hands.

The antiques that robbers unearth “have become a new currency of bribery in China,” collector Hu Wengao told the state news agency Xinhua.

“Almost all the best antiques have gone either to foreign countries or corrupt high-ranking officials in China,” Hu alleged.

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A collection of artifacts dating back to the 1700s, including a sacred whistle, a wooden stick, a button, a shell and a rounded cork are to be returned to the Nez Perce tribe after lying forgotten in a crate in a warehouse.

University of Idaho anthropologist Leah Evans-Janke says it was one of those fortuitous discoveries that happen sometimes in archaeological collections: Somebody opens a dusty old box, not knowing what’s inside.

While Evans-Janke, collections manager at UI’s Alfred W. Bowers Laboratory of Anthropology in Moscow, Idaho, says the discovery isn’t earthshaking, it’s “the greatest feeling in the world is meeting with the tribe, and handing the items back over to them, and knowing things are coming back to where they should be – kind of tipping the balance in the universe to where things should be.”

The 20-year-old federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires that human remains, funerary and sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony are to be returned to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated American Indian tribes. Sometimes, it takes years; collections are so vast, even their curators don’t know what they have.

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