Archaeologists determined that an ancient toolkit found near Stonehenge was used to make a variety of gold objects.

According to new research, published in the journal Antiquity, microscopic residue on the surface of the tools is ancient gold, revealing these stone-and-copper-alloy items were used as hammers and anvils, and to smooth the objects being crafted.

“This is a really exciting finding for our project,” said Rachel Crellin, lead author and archaeologist at the University of Leicester, in a statement. “What our work has revealed is the humble stone toolkit that was used to make gold objects thousands of years ago.”

Originally excavated in 1801, the toolkit was found in the Upton Lovell G2a burial which is thought to date to the Bronze Age, around 1850–1700 BCE. Marked by an earthen mound near Stonehenge, initial investigations revealed two individuals and a wide assortment of grave goods.

One figure was placed sitting upright, with her head close to the top of the barrow, and buried with a fine shale arm ring and a necklace of polished shale beads. The other figure was wearing a ceremonial cloak, with pierced bone points as a necklace, thought to be a specialized costume.

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The Headlines

ARTIST, CURATOR, AND EDUCATOR Deborah Willis, whose influential career has focused on how Black people and gender are represented, has won the $200,000 Don Tyson Prize for the Advancement of American Art from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Given every two years, the award has previously gone to Project Row Houses, vanessa german, and the Archives of American Art . An exhibition organized by Willis, “The Black Civil War Soldier,” which features photographic portraits, is now on view at the New York University Kimmel Windows Gallery. In 2020, Willis’s work was profiled in ARTnews.

BLACK AND BLUE. What is going on at Superblue? When the experiential-art venture—from the Pace Gallery and Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective—launched in the summer of 2020, there was talk of having locations on three continents and finding ways to “reinvent how art is shown.” Today, it has a single branch, in Miami. In ARTnews, Daniel Cassady has a deep dive into “cost overruns, mismanagement, and a board structure that has plagued decision-making” at the firm. The Emerson Collective has stepped back, giving up its board seats, and Pace CEO Marc Glimcher has, too, shifting from chairman to adviser. For more, head to ARTnews. 

The Digest

The pandemic catalyzed the growing trend of listless wealthy people outbidding one another via online auctions, turning any possible luxury acquisition into a “so-called alternative asset class.” This inadvertently spurred the art auction market to new heights, with global auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s reporting sales totaling $7.1 billion and $7.3 billion, respectively, for 2021. Recent sales reports indicate that 2022 looks set to retain that level, even though Sotheby’s reported a decline in fine art sales from 2021.

Notably, Asian art buyers were a major factor for this growth, making up 31 percent of Christie’s global sales, 36 percent of Phillips’ global spend, and 46 percent of lots sold for more than US$5 million at Sotheby’s. While all three auction houses reported a drop in bidders and buyers from Asia in 2022 as compared to last year, they are still doubling down on their focus on the continent.

In July 2021, Christie’s revealed plans to move into a 50,000-square-foot, four-story Asia-Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong in 2024. The Russian-owned Phillips partnered with Poly Auction for its Hong Kong sales and announced plans to move into new, expanded premises next to the new M+ museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District in March 2023, coinciding with Art Basel Hong Kong and their inaugural 20th century and contemporary art sales in the city. Sotheby’s will also be moving to its brand-new headquarters at the upcoming Six Pacific Place in Hong Kong, a short distance away from the auction house’s newly announced year-round exhibition space, both set to open in 2024.

International auction houses have also been expanding their teams in the continent. Bonhams made a slew of new appointments recently, with its Asia team now the biggest it has ever been. This is in addition to opening a new office in Shanghai in June 2021. Back at Sotheby’s, Alex Branczik, former London-based head of contemporary art, and Max Moore, a New York–based specialist focusing on NFTs, joined the house’s Asia team last year.

Intriguingly, this year in particular, specific cities, beyond China and Hong Kong, have caught the attention of the global auction market. At the end of August, Sotheby’s held a successful auction sale in Singapore for the first time in 15 years while Christie’s hosted a highly popular public viewing of a controversial Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in the city. Moreover, Christie’s posted a job ad for an associate specialist in Singapore. And Phillips will hold a pop-up exhibition showcasing works by California-based artist Brett Crawford in Singapore during the week of the launch of ART SG, the city’s biggest art fair.

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