Godin Tepe

[M. Demetrius]

http://www.livescience.com/16772-ancient...S_10282011

Godin Tepe. I don't know how they arrived at the conclusion about the "take out" window, but I wasn't there to look at the data. It's still an interesting discovery, nevertheless. And for the slingers out there, notice that their bullets seem to have been hand made, not molded.

[Eleatic Guest]

From your link:

It was excavated by T. Cuyler Young Jr. in the 1960s and 1970s. Cuyler Young passed away in 2006 and was unable to fully publish his work before he died.

He could not publish his findings in 40 years?!? Archaeologists who are not able to publish their work should be revoked the right to dig - everywhere. They uncover the site, disturbing and destroying evidence on the way. And with their death it is irrevocably lost. How crazy is that, thought we were living in the age of science...!

[M. Demetrius]

I guess it's all about the "finder's rights" and the money for publication. I don't get it either. How many finds are lost in some unmarked box in a warehouse somewhere, and nobody has seen them in years? More than any of US on THIS forum would like, I reckon.

[Jona Lendering]

We're talking about Iran. There was a revolution in 1979. The Islamic authorities have done more than is commonly believed to protect antiquities, and have never violently attacked archaeologists, but many American scholars have felt seriously threatened - which, I think, was very understandable. (To some extent, the hostage crisis proved them right.) I once met a man from Texas, who used to work on the Shiraz American University in the 1970s, was advised to leave the country, and cycled all the way to Basra in Iraq.

Of course, the American archaeologists working at Godin Tepe might have done more to publish rapidly, especially because it was unlikely that they would ever return. And in the 1990s, a period of detente started, in which they might have started again.

Yet, I think it is too easy to condemn them for not publishing their finds in forty years (even though I agree with Stefan that this would, under normal circumstances, be a reason to revoke their rights to dig anywhere). And though Dave is right that money is usually the root of all problems, I think that in this particular case, the real cause was political.