“We have an issue that deals with the property rights of individuals” declares the New York coin dealer in defence of his earlier statement about his lack of concern about laws being broken, and “we have a black market which has been created because of these socialist inspired laws”.
He’s talking about those laws protecting the archaeological heritage from those that would like to dig it over for the sake of saleable collectables. He compares dugup ancient coins with Cuban chicken eggs. Well, I do not know if Cuba had such laws before Castro (and am disinclined to look it up), but certainly Poland had in 1928 when Communist rule was not even a spectre. Northern Ireland has had such laws since the 1920s despite not being a socialist country. Conservation legislation has nothing to do with "socialism", still less communism.
But then what the dealers in the ACCG dealers' coterie constantly avoid admitting is that their own country, the USA, has laws which nationalize archaeological artifacts found on public lands (the Archaeological Resources protection Act of 1979 for example). There is also a black market in such artifacts in the USA, despite the fact that there does not need to be (because artifacts found on private property are exempt). So what do the artefact hunters in the US do? The Blanding "Action Cerberus" case is showing that its not unknown for them to dig up the stuff on public land regardless ("it’s public after all, belongs to everybody then") and pretend it came from private land. This black market’s existence has nothing to do with any allegedly “socialist inspired” laws. It is created by the greed of those who cannot be content to collect that which is legal, licit, acceptable (if you are a non-Native American), but just have to have something else and just don’t want to know where it’s really from.
Archaeological sites in most countries of the world are protected. The site at Archar from which so many artefacts and coins now being sold in the US are from is protected by law. If somebody takes a bulldozer and a metal detector and digs up bucketloads of Roman coins however, Alfredo De La Fe apparently says we should consider those coins as their “private property”, because the laws which say they are not are allegedly "unreasonable laws". But then if somebody goes to Black Mesa near Kayenta (Arizona) with a spade and digs up some native American pots, then surely by dint of the fact that they were recovered by their hard work, would the US coin dealer say that by the same argument they are the digger's "private property" too? For the collector, surely these are "unreasonable laws" that say they are not, is that not so? Or in the eyes of the US antiquities dealers like Mr De La Fe are the other laws only unreasonable (a) because they are foreign laws and (b) because he does not happen to sell Anasazi pots? So what does he and the ACCG think of people that do? (That is not a rhetorical question, but it's one the ACCG are strenuously fighting shy of answering).
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4 comments:
ARPA is the main law that currently regulates antiquities in the US, but the restrictions on excavation on public land go back to the Antiquities Act of 1906. Also, Black Mesa and Kayenta are actually in Arizona (but very close to the border with Utah).
Antiquities 1906, yes, but for two good reasons I would like to see some public discussion in the US (coin) collectors' lobby of the relationship of specifically ARPA to what they say about the laws of other countries.
I think their failure to do so (and the noisiest all read this blog) is rather telling.
My apologies for misplacing Black Mesa, I'll correct it, so they can't accuse me of spreading misinformation. Thanks.
Fair enough. As the current law regulating antiquities in the US, ARPA is certainly the equivalent of the current laws in other countries with the same function.
It certainly is, which is why those noisily posturing US "Collectors "rights"" chappies will not touch any discussion of it with a bargepole.
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