Hal Foster , David Harvey , Frederic Jameson , Joyce Kozloff , Rachel Kushner , Fred
Lonidier , and Barry Schwabsky are among the four hundred academics, writers, and
artists that have signed an open letter condemning the San Francisco Board of Education’s unanimous vote to destroy a series of Great Depression–era murals at George Washington High School.
The thirteen-panel mural cycle at the center of the controversy depicts George
Washington as a slave owner and includes images of a deceased Native American and the president’s slaves working on his Mount Vernon estate. The Life of George Washington was commissioned by the Federal Art Project (later the Works Progress Administration’s Art Program, created under Franklin D. Roosevelt ’s New Deal) and designed and painted by Victor Arnautoff , a Russian-born artist, communist, and Stanford University instructor, in 1936. 
When Arnautoff created the murals, Washington’s history as a slave owner was a truth
that was not commonly acknowledged, and the work was praised for shedding light on
the United States violent colonialism. By the late 1960s, some were angered by the
murals, including Amy Anderson , a member of the Ahkhaamaymowin band of Métis,
who has been a leader in the campaign to remove them. She argued that they only
represent “American history from the colonizers’ perspective,” reports the New York
Times .
Stevon Cook , president of the San Francisco Board of Education, also advocated for
covering or removing the artwork. He told the New York Times that while he supports
teaching in the classroom, he opposes “violent images that are offensive to certain
communities” and are on view for all to see.
According to the open letter, those protesting the murals are more concerned about
whether viewers are uncomfortable than the work’s representation of history. The letter
states that The Life of George Washington “exposes and denounces in pictorial form the
US history of racism and colonialism.”
It continues: “The only viewers who should feel unsafe before this mural are racists. The
reasons [activists seeking the destruction of the work] give are various, but they all
depend on rejecting the objective analysis of historical exploitation and colonial violence
the mural offers and replacing it with activists’ valorization of their experiences of
discomfort with the imagery and the authorship of the murals. . . . To repeat: they voted
to destroy a significant monument of anti-racism. This is a gross violation of logic and
sense.”The George Washington High School Alumni Association has also opposed the
destruction of the murals and released a statement reading: “The Arnautoff murals should be preserved for their artistic, historical, and educational value. Whitewashing them will simply result in another ‘whitewash’ of the full truth about American history.”
Filmmaker Lope Yap Jr., the association’s vice president, had previously told the New
York Times that they would file a lawsuit if the school board voted to remove the work.
“Every day—in contrast to opponents—teachers, librarians use it as a teaching point,” he said. “No matter where I go, no matter who I meet, 85 percent of people are in favor of retaining the murals.”

The Texas Department of Transportation ( TxDOT) has discovered more than 150,000
artifacts near downtown Houston. Excavations at Frost Town near Minute Maid Park were initiated in 2016 in association with the planned replacement of aging 1950’s bridge structure, the Elysian Street Viaduct, TxDOT’s Jason W. Barrett, PhD. told Chron.com.
Although the excavations were delayed through 2017, waiting for the bridge to be
demolished, it was resumed and completed in 2018, Barrett said. As well, a smaller project at Frost Town was completed in early 2019, in association with the North Houston Highway Improvement Project (NHHIP) , which involves evaluation
of the I-45 North corridor, according to the NHHIP website.
Among the artifacts discovered in the area were several intact features including house
foundations, cisterns, brick sidewalks, animal burials, and yard decorations, Barrett said. These findings will assist archaeologists in learning more about Frost Town.
The area dates back to 1836 when Jonathan Benson Frost, a veteran of the Republic of
Texas Army, built a house and a blacksmith shop on a small parcel of land adjacent to
Buffalo Bayou, Barrett said.
In 1838, Jonathan’s brother Samuel Frost laid out an 8-block area that became the Frost Town subdivision, with some of its earliest residents being immigrants, mainly from Germany, according to Barrett.

Some 9,000 years ago, residents of one of the world’s first large farming communities were also among the first humans to experience some of the perils of modern urban living.
Scientists studying the ancient ruins of Çatalhöyük, in modern Turkey, found that its inhabitants — 3,500 to 8,000 people at its peak — experienced overcrowding, infectious
diseases, violence and environmental problems. In a paper published June 17, 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of bioarchaeologists report new findings built on 25 years of study of human remains unearthed at Çatalhöyük.
The results paint a picture of what it was like for humans to move from a nomadic
hunting and gathering lifestyle to a more sedentary life built around agriculture, said
Clark Spencer Larsen, lead author of the study, and professor of anthropology at The
Ohio State University.
“Çatalhöyük was one of the first proto-urban communities in the world and the residents experienced what happens when you put many people together in a small area for an extended time, ‘ Larsen said.
 “It set the stage for where we are today and the challenges we face in urban living.”
Çatalhöyük, in what is now south-central Turkey, was inhabited from about 7100 to 5950 B.C. First excavated in 1958, the site measures 13 hectares (about 32 acres) with nearly 21 meters of deposits spanning 1,150 years of continuous occupation.
Larsen, who began fieldwork at the site in 2004, was one of the leaders of the team that studied human remains as part of the larger Çatalhöyük Research Project, directed by Ian Hodder of Stanford University. A co-author of the PNAS paper, Christopher Knüsel of Université de Bordeaux in France, was co-leader of the bioarchaeology team with Larsen.
Fieldwork at Çatalhöyük ended in 2017 and the PNAS paper represents the culmination of the bioarchaeology work at the site, Larsen said.
Çatalhöyük began as a small settlement about 7100 B.C., likely consisting of a few mud-
brick houses in what researchers call the Early period. It grew to its peak in the Middle
period of 6700 to 6500 B.C., before the population declined rapidly in the Late period.
Çatalhöyük was abandoned about 5950 BC.

Farming was always a major part of life in the community. The researchers analyzed a
chemical signature in the bones — called stable carbon isotope ratios — to determine that residents ate a diet heavy on wheat, barley and rye, along with a range of non-
domesticated plants.
Stable nitrogen isotope ratios were used to document protein in their diets, which came from sheep, goats and non-domesticated animals. Domesticated cattle were introduced in the Late period, but sheep were always the most important domesticated animal in their diets.
“They were farming and keeping animals as soon as they set up the community, but they were intensifying their efforts as the population expanded,” Larsen said.
The grain-heavy diet meant that some residents soon developed tooth decay — one of the so-called “diseases of civilization,” Larsen said. Results showed that about 10 to 13
percent of teeth of adults found at the site showed evidence of dental cavities.
Changes over time in the shape of leg bone cross-sections showed that community
members in the Late period of Çatalhöyük walked significantly more than early residents.
That suggests residents had to move farming and grazing further from the community as time went on, Larsen said. “We believe that environmental degradation and climate change forced community members to move further away from the settlement to farm and to find supplies like firewood,” he said. “That contributed to the ultimate demise of Çatalhöyük.”
Other research suggests that the climate in the Middle East became drier during the
course of Çatalhöyük’s history, which made farming more difficult.
Findings from the new study suggest that residents suffered from a high infection rate,
most likely due to crowding and poor hygiene. Up to one-third of remains from the Early period show evidence of infections on their bones.
During its peak in population, houses were built like apartments with no space between them — residents came and left through ladders to the roofs of the houses.
Excavations showed that interior walls and floors were re-plastered many times with
clay. And while the residents kept their floors mostly debris-free, analysis of house walls and floors showed traces of animal and human fecal matter.
“They are living in very crowded conditions, with trash pits and animal pens right next to some of their homes. So there is a whole host of sanitation issues that could contribute to the spread of infectious diseases,” Larsen said. The crowded conditions in Çatalhöyük may have also contributed to high levels of violence between residents, according to the researchers.

In a sample of 93 skulls from Çatalhöyük, more than one-fourth — 25 individuals —
showed evidence of healed fractures. And 12 of them had been victimized more than
once, with two to five injuries over a period of time. The shape of the lesions suggested
that blows to the head from hard, round objects caused them — and clay balls of the right size and shape were also found at the site.
More than half of the victims were women (13 women, 10 men). And most of the injuries were on the top or back of their heads, suggesting the victims were not facing their assailants when struck.
“We found an increase in cranial injuries during the Middle period, when the population was largest and most dense,” Larsen said. “An argument could be made that overcrowding led to elevated stress and conflict within the community.”
Most people were buried in pits that had been dug into the floors of houses, and
researchers believe they were interred under the homes in which they lived. That led to an unexpected finding: Most members of a household were not biologically related.
Researchers discovered this when they found that the teeth of individuals buried under the same house weren’t as similar as would be expected if they were kin.
“The morphology of teeth are highly genetically controlled,” Larsen said. “People who
are related show similar variations in the crowns of their teeth and we didn’t find that in people buried in the same houses.”
More research is needed to determine the relations of people who lived together in
Çatalhöyük, he said. “It is still kind of a mystery.”
Overall, Larsen said the significance of Çatalhöyük is that it was one of the first Neolithic ” mega-sites” in the world built around agriculture.
“We can learn about the immediate origins of our lives today, how we are organized into communities. Many of the challenges we have today are the same ones they had in Çatalhöyük — only magnified.”
Other co-authors on the PNAS paper came from Université de Bordeaux, Koç University in Turkey, University of Nevada Reno, University of Zürich-Irchel, University of Liverpool, Johns Hopkins University, University of Arizona, University of Kent and Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.
Among the funders supporting the project were the John Templeton Foundation, National Geographic Society and the National Science Foundation.
Story Source:

Materials provided by Ohio State University . Original written by Jeff Grabmeier. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:
1. Clark Spencer Larsen, Christopher J. Knüsel, Scott D. Haddow, Marin A. Pilloud,
Marco Milella, Joshua W. Sadvari, Jessica Pearson, Christopher B. Ruff, Evan M.
Garofalo, Emmy Bocaege, Barbara J. Betz, Irene Dori, Bonnie Glencross.
Bioarchaeology of Neolithic Çatalhöyük reveals fundamental transitions in
health, mobility, and lifestyle in early farmers. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, June 17, 2019; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1904345116

For the past forty years, the Muslim revolutionaries ruling Iran have been imposing and enforcing rulings that resemble medieval laws. In addition, they have written and issued thousands of bizarre and astonishing decrees and declarations that cannot be found anywhere except in surreal stories.
One of the most recent examples is the letter that Mohammad Reza Alirezaee, chairman of the Islamic Council of Abyaneh, wrote last Wednesday (May 2019), to the head of the Natanz Cultural Heritage Bureau. In the letter, Alirezaee expresses serious dissatisfaction with the “unholy and abnormal behavior outside the (Islamic) social norm and the disrespectful acts” as he observed during visits by tourists to the country. The Islamic Council as a result has ordered the cultural heritage authorities to “not allow any tourist, especially those who are in groups, to visit cities without a reliable and knowledgeable guide.” It is clear that the “well-informed and trusted guide” will most likely be a government officer rather than a tourist guide.
While this order from the chairman of the Islamic Council might seem inconceivable to tourists from different countries visiting Iran, these types of letters and orders are quite normal to officials in Iran who receive other similar letters every day. The letter, without any additional explanation, also says that “a damaging singing act has taken place in Abyaneh.” Of course, anybody who is familiar with Iran knows that singing in Iran is not illegal as male members of the Islamic state frequently sing on different occasions. In addition, the state run TV and radio programs also at times broadcast singing of men. In fact, male singers are allowed to travel abroad and perform. But this “damaging act of singing in Abyaneh” has been called a destructive and damaging act when women take part in the singing. According to these Islamic authorities, the activity is fine if the purpose of singing is to generate sadness or tears, but if it causes dancing and happiness in people then it becomes a destructive and damaging act.
These days, not only has Abyaneh been experiencing these so called “damaging acts,” but the other cities as well have seen similar responses from the Islamic Council. Fereidoun Allahyari, General Director of the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization of the Isfahan province, stated after this reported incident that their tour had no connection with the licensed tourist destinations and that he and his organization are completely innocent. In addition, the governor of the city of Natanz has released a series of statements saying that “these tourists have undermined the social customs and historical identity of Abyaneh” and as a result they have been identified and dealt with by Natanz’s prosecutor’s office. Based on these statements and reports, the law enforcement authorities also ordered the arrest of the “Singing Woman” along with her companions and other tourists riding two tourist buses.
It seems that this story is not yet over and may reach the capital, Tehran. Perhaps soon enough Zarif and Rouhani may react to this incident, as well as to the impact of the sanctions on the destruction of the identity of the Muslim people of Iran, in particular that of women.