More than a dozen ancient artifacts worth over $9,900 have been stolen from Upham Hall on the Miami University campus over the week-end. As of now, police officials haven't identified any suspects.
Some of the stolen items from the Anthropology Department include sacrifice tools belonging to the Aztec Empire; a Neolithic flint dagger from Denmark dating 2400 to 2000 BC; an Egyptian flint knife dating 4000 to 3000 BC and a 19th century ceramic pipe from Point Pleasant, Ohio. These Native American, Aztec and other artifacts were found to be missing from a locked glass cabinet.
"It's really unfortunate. Tragic, on a number of levels. It's sort of cliché to say that these are irreplaceable, but that is sort of true," Jeb Card, anthropology professor said.
The university estimated the value of the artifacts by comparing similar items on eBay.
According to Claire Wagner, the university spokeswoman, the officials believe that the artifacts might have gone missing sometime between Thursday night and early Friday morning.
"We really can't replace these, so we hope that they can be recovered," said Wagner.
Card said that John A. Coulter, who was an area philanthropist and former Palmolive executive, collected many of these relics in the 1930s and 1940s and donated them to the university in the 1950s.
The treasured possessions were used as teaching tools for students studying human history. Using these artifacts, they learn the methods and techniques of archaeology.
"We kind of reward them by putting this stuff on display," Card said.
Around 30 undergraduate students studied the items last fall.
"These are the kind of things I would study in books, but here we could hold them, something that was 4,000 years old," Card said. "We could put our hands on the past. "It was a very cool experience and somebody took that away."
