Artifacts

A Pacific Palisades man who illegally picked up an ancient seashell on Santa Rosa Island was sentenced Monday in federal court to one year of probation and ordered to pay $5,600 in fines. Robert R. Bredin, a 57-year-old pilot for United Airlines, also is banished from Channel Islands National Park during his probation. Bredin pleaded guilty May 11 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to removing an artifact from an ancient Indian site.

In the rubble of a modern-day Beirut smashed by 16 years of internecine warfare that ended in 1990, archeologists from around the world are scrambling to unearth the rubble of civilizations past. With bulldozers nipping at their heels and developers rebuilding a modern, cosmopolitan city, these seekers of the ancient are discovering that Beirut was also a cosmopolitan city throughout most of its past.

Two Native American artifacts will go to auction at Sotheby's in New York City despite objections from Alaska's Aleut tribe, which says the objects are important cultural items. A wooden hat dating from the 16th or 17th century that was worn by hunters to attract sea mammals and a wooden burial mask from the 18th or 19th century are to be auctioned Wednesday, Sotheby's spokeswoman Emma Cunningham said.

More than 22,000 ancient manuscripts from the archives of a Greek Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos in Thessaloniki, Greece, will be digitally copied by the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center at Claremont Graduate University. The center, which said it pioneered the use of digital imaging technologies on the deteriorated Dead Sea Scrolls, reached agreement with the Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies in Greece to undertake the project.

When the Philippines celebrates the centennial of its independence from Spain on June 12, two of its most symbolic artifacts--much to the nation's chagrin--will be on display at a military base in Wyoming. The bells of Balangiga are, in effect, war booty. They were taken to what is now Francis E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne after a U.S. garrison in the Philippines was decimated in 1901 by insurgents. In retaliation, U.S.

Like a quiet river, the pilgrims flow through the cathedral by the tens of thousands each day. They stop for exactly two minutes to contemplate the faint traces of a bearded man's face, limbs and folded hands on a yellowing sheet hung in the nave. They stand in silence, some in tears, then exit on cue. No wailing, no pushing. This is not Lourdes or Fatima, where the sick pray for miracle cures.

Two grande dames of the sea are receiving callers this summer in Long Beach. Together, they have a wondrous tale to tell. The first: the Titanic, the opulent, presumably unsinkable British steamer that struck an iceberg on an ink-black night during its maiden voyage in 1912 and sank, causing the death of more than 1,500 passengers and crew members.

The merits of a proposed archeological project above the Bolsa Chica wetlands will be debated at a public hearing today. Landowner Koll Real Estate Group plans to excavate part of the area to prepare for a 2,400-home project on a mesa adjoining the wetlands near Huntington Beach. The developer has applied for a county permit to search for artifacts that may not have been removed in earlier digging.

Back when the Los Angeles River still meandered and its banks were lined with vineyards and ranchlands, someone committed a timeless act--he left a Budweiser bottle. Archeologists recently unearthed a century-old pile of high-class rubbish just southeast of downtown, including a glass quart container that once held the King of Beers. The excavation is in conjunction with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's construction of a maintenance yard for its Red Line trains.

German scientists reported Wednesday that they had found perfectly preserved 400,000-year-old wooden spears, strong evidence that early humans were more sophisticated hunters than anyone thought. The spears, the oldest wooden hunting weapons ever found, add to data indicating that our now-extinct ancestors were not primitive cavemen but rather had an advanced culture. Reporting in the Feb.