Swiss researches asks hikers to watch ancient artifacts

As the glacier ice is melting more and more artifacts are found. Swiss researchers has asked hikers to search, while hiking, for artifacts, they believe that within decade or so there will be great findings which will bring more information about human history like the ice mummy Oetzi which revealed intresting finds of DNA.
Also Norwegians have started to seek artifacts from glacier ice, they have found possible thousands years old spear and leather "shoes" .

Who knows what will be found in Antartica in few years.... 1922 started a huge intrests in arhaeology when they found the tomb of Tut ( also a lot of fake stuff ) is this coming decade a new "gold rush".. its surely will be intresting.

Melting glaciers in Swiss arhaeology

Maybe they are better over there, but over here, if you find artifacts many organizations try to get them from you and you never get to see them again. Well, maybe you can see them if you travel eight hundred miles.

I'll just keep what I find and just show them to local people. What is Found around here should stay around here.....sounds a little like Vegas talk.

a reply to: rickymouse

Its kinda lame isnt it.. in here also if someone finds something it belongs to the Finland's National Board of Antiquities and the finder MIGHT get a reward of couple hundreds of Euros ( they dont have to give reward ) so this is a main reason why archaelogy in my country is not really active as no one who finds something is willing to give it away for free.. There is so much to explore allready but the system as it is, is a big fail.

a reply to: rickymouse

Well...To be fair it's called looting, just look at Egypt, how many artifacts are not lost to the public viewing because it's sold on the black market to private collectors, or people who keeps it for showing to their nearest friends and such as you say, actually every country have that problem.

If it has historical value it should be kept and studied by some who knows how to handle it and save it for further investigation, it might not be displayed for public viewing but it is still kept save for historical tellings.

Now, the reward for finding artifacts is a different thing, and yes, they could loosen up a bit on that matter.

a reply to: Mianeye

Would you not say that the term "looting" implies a malicious intent, you know, such as spending days digging into a tomb in order to profit from what is found? Isn't a typical "scientific dig" merely a "looting" under a pretense of some authority?

A general rule of museums worldwide is to profit from what they get, either directly or indirectly. --If they don't need the artifact, they can and will sell it. Worse, it gets filed away, unseen, for years if not generations. But all in all, it comes down to some official or semi-official authority telling you what you must do to an interesting rock that you may find anywhere. That is a mandatory "tax."

I'm not claiming that the recovery of any and all artifacts should be without restrictions or that artifacts should all be covered by many of the restrictive laws and regulations we find imposed on them and us, the finders, these days , merely that there should be a strong element of common sense involved.

a reply to: Aliensun

In a sense i agree, but having and maintaining a museum and making sure to have new exhibitions to show more history with as much details as possible comes at a cost.
That cost isn't covered by audience alone, so therefore there is a market that equalizes that cost. Museums don't get rich on their showing and the money made from selling both to private and other museums goes into supporting and financing new excavations of historical importance, and to show exhibitions all over the world instead of just locally.

In Denmark where i live, most of the national museums a free, you just walk in and watch and walk out again without paying anything.

originally posted by: Mianeye
a reply to: rickymouse

Well...To be fair it's called looting, just look at Egypt, how many artifacts are not lost to the public viewing because it's sold on the black market to private collectors, or people who keeps it for showing to their nearest friends and such as you say, actually every country have that problem.

If it has historical value it should be kept and studied by some who knows how to handle it and save it for further investigation, it might not be displayed for public viewing but it is still kept save for historical tellings.

Now, the reward for finding artifacts is a different thing, and yes, they could loosen up a bit on that matter.

So what is wrong with starting a local museum where local people can go look at them for little or no cost. This way when tourists come by, they can see them and spend their money here instead of having them drive to DC or some city far away from where the artifacts were found. I would never sell what I have found, but I might put them in a museum retaining ownership. If I were to give them outright to the museum, they might get tossed out if a better artifact came around and they needed the room. This is what happens a lot of the time in small museums, or they decide to expand their building and sell the artifacts to help pay for the costs. They can't legally sell what is not there. It doesn't matter if they are selling them to a big museum, they are still taking them out of the area where they were found. To me these artifacts are priceless...meaning they should not have a value other than the value to the area where they are found.

I do not agree with looting either but understand that if you are starving and can get ten bucks to buy food from something you found it is alright. It is the person who buys it for ten bucks and sells it for a thousand that is the crook and looter, they instigate the situation.

a reply to: rickymouse

An artifact is an artifact no doubt about that and sometimes the artifact has no importance to a history , but what is the history about the artifact, is it connected to other artifacts, is there a need to do an excavation to tell the whole story, is the artifact the key to the whole story, you know, things like that.

Can you provide all of those data, well...go ahead and make a museum, a lot of local museums has started like that, and are allowed to keep the artifacts because they have no significant importance to an overall picture of national value, but tells a story of local importance.

But today most areas actually already have that small museum, so why split it up in several even smaller museums when you can have the full story under one roof, and have actual experts judging what is value or not.

I did a google search for images of artifacts found in melting glaciers, since there no photos with the article.

There are a lot of photos of nice stuff that has been coming out of glaciers.

Let's wait til Antarctica starts thawing out......