A Beacon

It has just been announced that on Saturday, January 10, 2009, Professor Colin Renfrew will receive the SAFE Beacon Award at a Lecture and Reception co-sponsored by SAFE/(Saving Antiquities for Everyone) and the Penn Cultural Heritage Center.
I expect that in coming weeks we will hear some grumbling about this from the dealers and collectors among the pro-collecting lobbyists. They are apparently unable to grasp such a complex issue as “conservation” without it being reduced to a simple mantra-like formula naming a single individual as the source of all their problems. One of these formulae is calling Renfrew-L discussion list.

Colin Renfrew is one of Britain’s leading archaeologists, and if he can take time from all his many other activities to speak out and act against the market in illicit antiquities, one may pose the question why it is the majority of his British fellows stay quiet and do very little. Let us hope that in the near future more archaeologists will take a closer look into the shadows of portable antiquity collecting and then follow the light of the SAFE beacon.