A cure for looting in Turkey?

Mehmet Özdogan’s 1998 essay. Ideology and archaeology in Turkey, (from in L. Meskell (ed.). Archaeology under fire. Nationalism, politics and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East: 111-24. London: Routledge.) has just appeared online. It should interest all those post-Cuno clones in the antiquity collecting world who perceive calls for the better conservation of the archaeological resource and heritage in general as an expression of “nationalism”. The author is clear where he sees the main problem: he concludes his paper with quote that ‘Third World nations resent those in the West who would deny them their past while claiming history as their own’.

The last section of this text is on ‘Treasure hunting and the antiquities market’ and is equally thought-provoking. Let us see how the author treats this.

A final area where archaeology matters concerns the illicit looting of ancient sites to supply the demands of the art market. Cultural heritage in Turkey, like all “archaeologically rich” countries, suffers considerably from the exploits of
treasure hunters. This phenomenon is provoked by the antiquity markets of the Western World and is not the result of any ideological reasoning. Turkey’s government, like that of Northern Cyprus, has been desperately struggling to stop illicit digging but it seems that, as long as there is a market in the
West, the destruction will continue. Given these attempts, the West should not accuse these authorities of being unconcerned with illicit digging. To stop the illicit export of antiquities, buying them in Turkey (for Turkey) by paying sums comparable to the Western collectors has been suggested as a solution. For some years Turkish Museums bought from illicit diggers and, at the same time, private museums and collections were encouraged. This, of course, only encouraged further destruction of the sites. Museums [ob]tained important objects at the expense of losing scientific knowledge of their contexts. The most significant destruction took place in the East and, in a few years, thousands of Urartian cemeteries were looted.

The view of this writer is unequivocally that it is the western collector, unconcerned about where the things they accumulate come from, that is the motor of the looting of archaeological sites in countries like Turkey. He also points out that merely applying a “reward” system in the “source” countries [as foreign collectors almost universally propose as the “cure” for looting], can have the opposite effect. Local archaeologists like Özdogan observing on the ground what is happening blame foreign collectors and dealers for the damage being done to their country's archaeological heritage. Those foreign collectors and dealers as we see daily blame "the archaeologists" (and so therefore Mr Özdogan too) or those foreign oriental (= "corrupt") governments for the shortcomings of the systems of protection. And so the futile blame-alloting goes on, while the looters dig away and the no-questions-asked antiquities market flourishes, and day by day archaeological sites all over the world are irreversibly damaged to provide collectables for a minority foreign market. Instead of criticising the governments of the poorer countries affected by this problem (which nevertheless affects us all if we ascribe - as most collectors do - to a 'universal' view of the cultural past), perhaps 2009 is the year for considering what steps caring people in our part of the world can take to try to curb this?

* Page 74 of McIntosh, R.J., McIntosh, S.K. and Togola, T. (1989) “People Without History,” Archaeology 41: 74–82. [Is there not the word "their" missing here? I have not the original to hand at the moment].