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- Julian Baker, 52, filmed himself digging up and defacing a Bronze Age artwork tagged for monument status.
- The sandstone, located in South Wales, featured 4,500 year-old “cup marks” and was being studied.
- He received a $5,500 fine and 4-month prison sentence, according to the BBC.
A Welsh man was fined $5,500 and sentenced to four months in prison in what the BBC is calling a ‘first prosecution of its kind’, according to a new report.
52-year-old Julian Baker filmed himself excavating and destroying a 4,500 year-old stone relic and uploaded the video to Facebook.
Officials from Cadw, the cultural preservation wing of the Welsh government, were outraged by Baker’s stunt, saying his actions caused irreparable damage to the artifact that dated back to the Bronze Age in 2500 BC.
“Significant archaeological information has been lost forever,” a Cadw spokesperson told the BBC.
The stone was lodged into the Eglwysilan hill in South Wales, located about 30 minutes north of Cardiff, Wales and 2 hours west of the historic Stonehenge site in England.
Made up of two large sandstones, the rock had flourishes of “cup marks” that were puzzling to researchers, who theorized the stone “may have acted as route markers or demarcated territorial boundaries,” according to the BBC report.
Baker was found guilty on two counts by a Welsh court: first, for disturbing the monument and second, for its destruction.
“We welcome the court’s decision in this case, the first we have submitted under section 28 of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979,” the CADW spokesperson told the BBC.
The report does not state Baker’s motivations for his actions.
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