Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues

The fuss continues over the comments made on the sale by two coin dealers in the US of some ancient artefacts taken from archaeological sites in England (Nathan Elkins, here and here, this blog here etc.). As I have pointed out on this blog, all the comment US coin collectors can muster refers to the fact that Nathan Elkins illustrated his post with two photographs showing the reader the material under discussion without the need to leave his blog in the process. Two days ago however he replaced these photos with links to the dealers' sales offers which showed these items. This has not ended the comments. Sadly all that US coin collectors can STILL muster... are more comments about Nathan showing the what the coins looked like. Cameron Day of Cerberus coins writes on Moneta-L that he assumes Nathan Elkins believes:

that all UK found roman coins are misappropriated and therefor thinks that his action in "stealing" at least two other peoples images is justifiable. I expect to see a formal apology by Elkins and his supporters on this list and the other lists where they have offended the members. A PhD candidate knows that
he/she cannot use another persons images or text without first seeking written permission or paying for the previledge (sic) via his University and then this does not unilaterally cover other intellectual property rights. Elkins, it's time to apologise.

Oh dear. Somebody showed a photo of some freshly dug up coins on a blog about protecting archaeological evidence and discussed the significance of this phenomenon. It now turns out that some of these coins at least had been exported from the UK without an export licence. Neither of the dealers was able to say where the coins had come from, which raises the question of whether there were nighthawked items in this bulk lot. Of course not a single US collector has commented on that (and somebody has bought some of these coins from one of the dealers despite their origins being so unclear and controversial).

Far from it being the case that Mr Elkins "and his supporters" (of which I am one) who owe some coin collectors an apology, there is no doubt in my mind that it is the no-questions- asked sellers of illegally exported items of unknown origins from England that owe the British people an apology here.

Since the coin dealers are persisting in keeping this matter alive, it seems to me that the time has come to urge them to repatriate to Britain any of these coins that were illegally exported (they can go to the FLOs as handling material - and let the FLOs explain to the public why they came back to the UK from the US, there is an important lesson there). Any illegally exported coins from these lots that have already been sold should obviously immediately be recalled from the purchaser in order to do so.

By the way, with reference to what Mr Day said, Nathan Elkins made his position quite clear what he regarded as the problem with these coins, it is my surmise that in actual fact his "assumption" indicates that Mr Day has not even read Nathan's blog post before commenting on it. Nothing new in that.

Mr Day's Cerberus coins website is an interesting venue also, no obvious Balkan material, but "We have just added Uncleaned Ancient Roman coins from Syria and Turkey ( 20 May 2009)We have just added another 1000 Holyland found ancient uncleaned coins. We also added some premium uncleaned Byzantine coins and some holyland found uncleaned Islamic coins!" There's stuff from Spain and "somewhere in the classical world where dirty coins can be found". Well, what a lot of coins from far off lands some of which the ACCG would say have "retentive" antiquities policies.... But Mr Day reckons it is Nathan Elkins who needs to apologise to coin collectors for showing two photos [which Mr Day classifies as "stolen" - his inverted commas] of what another dealer was offering quite openly for sale. So presumably those masses of uncleaned coins which Mr Day is selling came from the coin elves and none of them came from any archaeological sites in Spain, Turkey, Syria and "the Holy Land" (where's that? Holy to whom? Would that be Israel Mr Day, or would that be coins looted in neighbouring areas and sold by Israeli dealers?).

All those desirous of purchasing a bit of unrecorded history should get themselves along to a website mentioned here before, an online market stall whose proprietor has got literally kilograms of it, imported from all over Old Europe. Our attention is drawn by the ....

...great lot of uncleaned coins found in England, the coins vary from AE-4 (and smaller) up to As sized coins. We have seen Victorinus, Tetricus I, Tetricus II, Carausius, Allectus, Postumus and the of course the more common emperors. Lots of interesting mint marks. Not to mention some very interesting "non-official" issues or Barbarous issues [duh..]. These coins are not like your typical dug coins[,] they are British and one of the most interesting uncleaned coins varieties we offer. […] British Uncleaned Coins are hard to come by and expensive, not because there are not any available, there are just not as many as other varieties, and there is a market for them in there (sic) own home country.

The rest of this sorry tale can be read here. Take a moment to have a good look at this seller's pictures of the coins on offer, hundreds upon hundreds of piled up unrecorded archaeological artefacts in differing states of preservation suggesting they come from a great many sites in Britain which one may legitimately assume from what we see to have all been irreperably damaged by the removal of a non-randomly selected group of archaeological evidence by local artefact hunters. All to serve a foreign collectors' market which apparently does not bother itself overly where those coins come from.

How is it possible for the collectors of these things to say that their hobby does not provide the motor for the looting which produces such objects?

How can the collectors of such things close their eyes to the information that is lost when site after site has material like this removed from them without record and without concern?

How is it that the only thing that US coin collectors can concern themselves over in recent responses to a discussion of these issues is whether someone has used one of their scans in the discussion and criticism of this sorry sad state of affairs?

Well, it seems to me that if US no-questions-asked coin collectors want to hide such pictures, we should look upon them and reflect why actually showing them to people provokes such a reaction. Let's see what all the fuss is about.

Here's some scans of heaps of uncleaned coins like the "dugups" ones offered by some US dealers recently under discussion; each one comes from an unrecorded hole in the archaeological record, somewhere. It would seem by their recent reactions that no-questions-asked coin collectors in the US apparently do not care too much what is trashed in the process of supplying the market with such items, after all pleasure and profits are at stake here, but heaven help anyone who discusses it on a blog like this. What in fact have coin lovers got to worry about when people like me, or Nathan Elkins show what the coins they trade in actually look like? Here are some.

Here are some more.

Here are some in bags

For others on sale fresh from the fields of artefact-hunter friendly Britain, visit this seller's thought-provoking website where you can also see piles of similar uncleaned material from Spain, the Black Sea coast and other regions which have somewhat different regulations regarding the exploitation of archaeological sites as a source of collectables for the commercial market as well and having more stringent export licencing procedures. Are the UK coins at least on this site accompanied by a valid export licence? I think we'd all like to hear the answer to that one.

There are several hundred sellers of such material in Europe, the Near East and North America and even in Australia, each of whom has offerings similar to those discussed here. A thoughtful perusal of their trade offering invites a number of questions. Where do all these coins come from? Where do they ultimately go? How much irreplacable archaeological information has been utterly destroyed to support this trade? What would Britain's Portable Antiquities Scheme say about this loss of information? What would responsible artefact hunters who collect ethically and report finds fully say about those who buy and sell such material no-questions-asked without regard to what is lost in the process? Is it not precisely these people that gets the hobby of collecting such a bad name? What would the ACCG (who say they support ethical collecting and abhore the destruction of archaeological information in the pursuit of the hobby of coin collecting) have to say about this? Maybe the "collectors' Guild" could issue a comprehensive statement about "British dugups".

I'd also like to ask whence the aggression (here, more here) in some quarters of the artefact collecting community inspired by showing such photos.

Photos: heaps of uncleaned coins like the ones US antiquity dealers desperately want to prevent bloggers like myself showing our readers. I say, the public has the right to know. I say we all have the right (even obligation) to discuss this sorry trade, its effects and implications.

ADDENDUM

Nathan Elkins has updated his post on these "British dugup" artefacts and added the information that the PAS has determined that at least one of these sellers was "not aware" he needed an export licence.

This call for papers for the Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference 2009 in Durham caught my eye. I am sure the cosmoglobalpolitan portable antiquity collectors critics of "nationalism' embodied in archaeological resource protection measures will enjoy this one. Maybe they'd like to give a paper?

CFP: "ARCHAEOLOGY AND ENGLISHNESS"
Field archaeology is an essentially English form of sport"
O.G.S Crawford
As Gordon Brown wrestles with how to promote a sense of 'Britishness', there are increased signs of revival of a sense of English identity, whether expressed through the resurgence in popularity of the English flag or increased call to celebrate St George's Day as a national holiday. There is also an increasing popular literature exploring the notion of the 'English' and 'Englishness' often creating essentialised models of the concept. However, whilst other discipline, such as art history, literary studies and geography have long treated the notion of 'Englishness' as conceptworthy of analysis and deconstruction, this has not been true for archaeology. Whether exploring the development of national traditions of scholarship or considering the way in which material culture is used to develop and maintain a sense of national identity, there has been a tendency for England to be subsumed within a wider British or imperial discourse (though there are some exceptions e.g. Johnson 2007). This session aims to restore this balance and consider the extent to which it is possible to recognise the notion of 'England' and 'Englishness'within archaeology. It is hoped to explore a number of facets of the problematic relationship between archaeology and English identity including:
1/ Materiality and Englishness: the way in which material
culture, structures and landscapes were used to create and maintain a distinct sense of English identity in past societies;
2/ The development of English traditions of archaeological scholarship and a consideration of the consequences of the development of 'England' as a distinct unit of analysis. Is there a distinct English tradition of archaeology or heritage management?;
3/ The use of archaeology to create discourses of 'Englishness' in popular culture..

Part of the answer to question two is obvious, yes, the Brits are the only nation under the sun to pat artefact hunters on the heads and call them "unsung heroes of the heritage". The archaeology of OGSC was also archtypically English, he's one of my heroes.

I admit I did not know Dave Petts had a blog, that'll certainly be worth a look.

Following a comment on this blog on 19th April 19th April Canadian coin dealer Robert Kokotailo suggested on the Moneta-L discussion list which he moderates setting up a fund to help out British museums purchase treasure finds. It has now been announced that the coin trade lobby group the ACCG has established such a fund. It is to help provide funding up to 500 GBP to small museums in England and Wales that wish to purchase local finds of ancient (ie, pre- Anglo-Saxon) coins which have been declared Treasure in terms of the 1996 Treasure Act. As we all know, the ACCG wishes to propagate the “British system” of portable antiquity laissez-faire worldwide and this is apparently their way of saying "thank you" to the Brits for showing the way... The ACCG says their motive is that in Britain:

Many small museums have inadequate find purchasing budgets and although there are schemes such the Headley Trust which might award a portion of the price for purchases of ₤500 or more, amounts lower than this must be entirely raised by the local museum. If the museum fails to raise the money, the coins might be purchased by a larger museum and leave the area where they were found. Local museums will place such finds on display to be enjoyed by the local population. Many ancient coin collectors support both the Treasure Act and voluntary reporting systems in England and Wales and would like to express their appreciation by donating money to help keep some of these ancient coin finds in the area in which they were found.

What a shame the ACCG does not apply the same high-sounding ideals to the coins their members collect no-questions-asked from the Balkans, Near East and other regions and sold by ACCG-affiliated dealers. As for US collectors “supporting” the British system, we saw an example of this the other day… The true aim of the exercise is revealed by the statement that:

The Committee will post details of any awards and a link to the museum home page on the ACCG web site along with photographs of the museum and the finds.

This is clearly a propaganda exercise. The ACCG adds: "This fund will enable small museums to be able to display local finds without overtaxing their limited financial resources. It will serve the established goals of the ACCG to broaden its visibility among non-coin collecting groups and will provide a vehicle for collectors to "give something back in appreciation". Well, I suppose it depends whether small British museums want to be involved in “broadening the visibility” of the ACCG among non-coin-collecting groups in Britain and whether that would serve the museum's mission – particularly bearing in mind the ACCG's recent coin import stunt and its general and stated opposition to any heritage protection measures which may disturb the free access of US dealers to as many ancient coins as they want. (That's basically most of them.) Support of the US dealers’ lobby by British museums would therefore rather go against the 2006 ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums which sets out some principles regarding the market in natural and cultural property. Members of the museum profession (principle 8.5) are not allowed to support certain parts of it directly or indirectly. Basically while the ACCG has the stated attitude it does to coin imports and exports, British museum professionals cannot ethically participate in broadening its visibility. In any case principle 8.15 (Interaction with Dealers) of the same code states: “Museum professionals should not accept any gift, hospitality, or any form of reward from a dealer, auctioneer, or other person as an inducement to purchase or dispose of museum items...".

It's also a bit of a shame that in setting up this fund, the ACCG did not first find out more about the sequence of the Treasure process in England and Wales (if they find reading the material too much of a strain, probably one phone call to the British Museum would have been enough to sort it out). They ask for a document which is not produced at the stage when museums are being approached about their desire and ability to purchase a find, and they fail to realise that the small museums they want to "assist" are offered the finds after the larger national museums have decided not to acquire - so the stated aim of helping the smaller museum to prevent the big museums snatching them is a misunderstanding of the process. If neither big nor small museums express a need for the find, it is returned to the finder and landowner and may then legitimately appear on the market.

It is also interesting that ACCG members are asked to send their donations to the Executive Director, while the ACCG does in fact have a separate office of Treasurer, and it is to the Executive Director that applications for the fund are to be made. Odd. We are told that “Approval will be based on the availability of funds, the number of current requests and the importance of the find as described in the application”. The executive Director has recently announced that Robert Kokotailo, John Hooker and Zach Beasley have volunteered to manage the ACCG Museum Fund. So that's a dealer and collector from Canada, and a dealer from the US. Perhaps they could have co-opted somebody from the British Isles (perhaps from the museum world) to give more informed advice? But then of course they are not really doing this to further the needs of British society, culture or museums.

Nice though the gesture is, there is something vaguely neo-colonial about rich US private collectors providing funding for foreign institutions to help them realise their cultural mission. The sum offered is laughable, there are many individual coins (without provenance) listed on eBay and V-Coins (owned by the ACCG President) which are being sold for much more than 500 GBP. Many of the Treasure finds which museums are having to buy from treasure hunters cost much more than that. Britain is a comparatively rich country compared with many of those that current ACCG doctrine would force "the British system" on. Who is going to pay for the treasure rewards that introduction of a British Treasure act clone would engender in those countries? US collectors too? When all they can manage for Britain is "payments up to 500 pounds"?

Mr Sayles has no sense of occasion. Immediately under his announcement of the way the coin dealers and collectors of the US want to help Britain preserve its culture, he adds:

I'd also like to remind collectors and dealers that now is the time to send donations to the ACCG Benefit Auction. If you have a single coin or a group of coins, that no longer fit into your collectingscheme, this is the perfect place for them. All proceeds of the auction go to the legal expenses of challenging import restrictions that threaten our hobby.

That sort of talk will certainly not encourage British heritage professionals to feel comfortable beating a path to their door for some cash handouts, because those same restrictions protect the culture which museums are set up to curate and help protect, and it is the collecting hobby which wants these restrictions relaxed or removed that is the threat to that cultural heritage.

Martin Bailey of the Art Newspaper reports that on the 27th April, Eton College returned a group of more than 450 antiquities to Egypt, because it suspects that many had probably been illegally exported. The objects in question had been donated to Eton in 2006, by the family of the late Ron Davey, a London-based Egyptologist. He in turn had received most of them as a bequest from his friend, Peter Webb, who died in 1992. The Webb-Davey donation comprised 454 items, including ushabti figurines, beads and amulets, textile fragments, potsherds, coins and other small objects. When the antiquities arrived at Eton, they were examined by Dr Nicholas Reeves, and he was concerned to find that much of the material had been acquired in Egypt during the period 1972-88, and there was no surviving documentary evidence that proper export procedures had been followed. The remaining Webb-Davey antiquities seem to have been purchased in good faith on the London market during the same period, but again, no information was available on how they had left Egypt. Eton College considered the matter, and decided against keeping the donation. After discussions with Mr Davey’s family, it was decided to relinquish the objects to Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, for the Cairo Museum. That Eton should be upholding the principles of fair play and decency need surprise nobody, I'd expect nothing less, but wouldn't it be a nice surprise though to find other collectors of no-questions-asked material following such an exemplary lead and taking the same attitude?

Over on the Moneta-L forum - as its name sugests a forum for coin collectors, John Hooker is still giving advice to Joe Blazic about his "English dugups" being queried on an archaeological resource protection advocacy blog or two. He advises against suing for libel:

If you believe that there was an actual intent to harm you, then skip that response and instead, approach the owner of the site if it is blogging site (such as was used here). [...] They will order that the images be removed and may even ban the client from their site. The next level of attack is to advise the violator's employer, publisher or affiliated organizations of the infringement. If the violator holds an academic post, this is especially effective as plagiarism of any form is ruthlessly dealt with by academia.

"attack"? The reader can draw their own conclusions why portable antiquity collectors woiuld like to get certain persons banned from blogging and even get their "employers, publishers or affiliated organizations" to silence them. I suppose trying to shut up the critics is easier than actually addressing the issues they raise. Mr Blazick has still not provided an enquirer the URL of the blog that he is so flustered about - could it be that he has himself discovered that he called Nathan Elkins "BUMford"?

The dealer known as "Roman Peddler" writes on Moneta-L forum (spelling etc. as in the original):

Our favorite Hypocritical Archeologist is at it again.He cr5ies about Culturallooting and then on a blog he accuses (without evidence two dealers od sellingBristish Dugups and makes it sound illegal without proof.He then takes ThePhotos of two dealers and also private pictures from an ace gathering and
putsthem up on his Blog.Shame! Shame !! Sahme on the archeologist. FRrom Ole HonestJoe as he called me.

I assume since he refers to my street market-patois allusion and references to the photos used on this blog, he means me ("hypocritical"?). Do I make it sound illegal? Is it legal to sell coins in the United States which have been exported legally from the United Kingdom? Yes, so 'Roman Peddlar' can show us the export licence which all such finds require to leave the country legally, and everything is fine. I am sure he has one.

The photo of "two dealers" to which he refers is in fact a scene from a stage production of Oliver Twist. I am sure Mr Peddler will recognise the two characters (anyone who reads the blog will realise it is an allusion to the supply process of no-questions-asked dealing). As for the "private pictures from an ACE gathering", they are not private, they are used as promotional material on the ACE website, and I gave a link to where the original photo comes from - I think this falls under 'fair use'. The photo however was not used in reference to Mr Peddler (although the post refers to another dealer's "Suffolk dugups"). It illustrates a post on ACE's Scott Uhrick's request to coin sellers - it shows Mr Uhrick so the reader can put a face and person to the words.

Anyhow Mr Peddler was advised by John Hooker how to proceed in the case of "intellectual property theft", but instead writes:

Thanks for the link on the intellectual theft but after a lawter friend viewed the article he says that it became a matter of libel which I may chose to persue.

Another one wants to "have the law" on those who discuss the antiquities trade. I expect the ACCG can point Mr Blazick to a good lawter.

ADDENDUM
But wait a minute... Over on "Uncleaned Coins" we read the following:

http://coinarchaeology.blogspot.com/2009/05/having-cake-and-eating-it-too.html Seems that we have a hyprocrite on blogs.Likes to cry that people who get coins from England are looters because he dont know the route and how coins get topeople.They are guilty first.Well Mr.BUMford,seems it is not on the up and up topublish other peoples photos without their permission and a group is lookinginto what legal actions they can take.Last I will say about your characterassaination. SIGNED HONEST JOE!

The name is BARford, and Mr Peddler (who turns out to be Joe Blazick) seems to be confusing this blog with somebody else's. Looking at his written style, I wonder if he actually knows what the word "hypocrite" means? Well, it's not the "last" word, as the next day (as we saw above), he wrote about the same thing to Moneta-L.

I note in addition to the "English" lot, he has recently been selling "Austrian dugups from Vien[n]a" too and patronising some of the Bulgarian bulk sellers.

Since US coin dealers and collectors are currently kicking up such a fuss that to give this blog a bit of visual interest, I showed a photo of what ACE's Scott Ulrick looks like doing numismatic outreach among American youth, I decided to remove the photo from the blog. No big loss, I hope that makes them all deleriously happy. Now I think that a good starting point before Mr Peddler/Blazick or anyone else threatens any more legal action, we'd like to see the UK export licences for those two lots of "English dugup" coins. Now, the PAS would too I believe.

The Final Report of the Strategic Study produced by Oxford Archaeology for the governmental advisory body English heritage on illegal artefact hunting was published online as a pdf document on Monday Feb. 16th. Just a few days later as reported here, it vanished (see here for a still broken link to the February release). It then reappeared on the English Heritage site without any announcement or explanation.

Closer examination reveals that the current document is not the same as originally published in February and which some of us printed out in hard copy. Just as in the memory holes in Winston Smith’s Ministry of Truth the old version has been deleted from the public record and a new politically correct one substituted.

The changes are not – as far as I can see – identified in the new document which is now identified on the title page as “issue no. 3, April 2009”). [We all missed the first, what was in it?]

The two changes I spotted are interesting. The most striking is the total and unexplained absence of one of the case studies in Wiltshire. This has disrupted the pagination in the section of the report from pages 58-64 [where there is now a blank half page to compensate]. What is striking about this – apart from the fact that this has happened at all in an official report after publication – is that the conclusions drawn from this particular case remain unaltered in the later sections of the report, but are now unsupported by any evidence gathered ‘on the ground’.

The second set of changes seem to have been made under pressure from a private metal detecting finds “recording scheme”. From 24th February, its owners were conducting a spamming campaign drawing attention to some statements made by the original Nighthawking report which it alleged were untrue. Lo and behold when the ‘Issue three Nighthawking report’ appeared, some changes had been made to its page 14 which has again led to a difference between the pagination of the two versions of this “Final report”. Significantly, they do not actually address all of the three main points made in the detectorists' spamming campaign - and the overall assessment of the database concerned is not changed (though it is interesting to see this being claimed as some kind of a 'victory' by those concerned).

I do not know what other changes have been made in this document, but certainly the text needs to be treated with caution. The same goes for the conclusion it draws. The way which the absence of a paper publication allows manipulation of the official record of what the Study found out as a result of over 100 000 (I believe it was) pounds and several months' work is profoundly disturbing.

Personally, I think this hasty alteration of an already-published document is symptomatic of the rather haphazard way in which Britain goes about assessing the effects of current policies on artefact hunting on the archaeological record. Obviously if a few days after publication of the Final Report it is silently withdrawn for emendation (i.e., deletion of a whole section of the findings and a rephrasing of others) then there clearly is something very wrong with the process by which it was compiled.

On the British Archaeology Jobs Resource forum metal detectorist Gary Brun and owner of a private UK metal detector finds database a month ago alleged:

All the (sic) years PAS and CBA have been stating UKDFD was irresponsible because it didn’t PAS its data to the HER’s. After much research and digging around... I find that PAS has hardly passed anything over to them either... because they do not have a transfer system that works and the data is to be honest unreliable. Also the HERs don’t have the resources to accept and implement it. The whole area of data transfer is a complete mess and I personally feel cheated and lied to by these two organisations. The whole thing of “data transfer” has been a red herring.... but now its all in the light.

I would like to know where this information is “in the light”. Can Mr Brun show us where it is please? If true, this is most disturbing news, the addition of the data recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme to the HERs was the whole point of throwing ten million pounds at the will o'the wisp idea of becoming "partners" (sic) with artefact hunters. If that is not happening after ten years, then that is something the recent independent review of the Scheme should have identified, addressed and questioned. What is the basis for this allegation?

Artifact hunters searching grass road verges at the junction of South Beverly Drive and West Pico Boulevard in Beverly Hills, CA 90212 made a lucky discovery a few weeks ago; a very large coin bigger than even a Morgan dollar, apparently Roman in very nice condition. The object is now being offered for sale by Ira & Larry Goldberg in their pre-Long Beach sale which starts tomorrow and is described in their online catalogue thusly:

Lot 1931 Valentinian I, AD 364-375. Silver Multiple of 24 Miliaresia (48 Siliquae) 104.3 g. 66 mm., minted at Antioch, AD 369. Diademed, cuirassed and draped bust right of Valentinian. Reverse: Legend in four lines within laurel wreath; below, "AN" (mintmark for Antioch). Unpublished, and apparently unique […] Some light porosity and displaying stray marks. Minimal wear results in the net grade of Extremely Fine. This, the largest silver coin known of the Roman Empire, is a silver multiple weighing one-third of a Roman pound of silver. Remarkably thick in comparison to contemporary silver coins, it was struck at a time when silver, as a metal, was scarce. […] This gargantuan gift was no doubt presented to a high-ranking Roman officer or dignitary. One theory that has been advanced is the possibility that Count Theodosius himself, peacemaker of Britain at the time, was the recipient of the medallion. A likely occasion for this honor was Valentinian's quinquennial celebration, held on 25 February AD 369. Estimated Value $300,000 - 400,000. Provenance: With supporting certificates of authenticity from David R. Sear and Frank L. Kovacs.

The finder Mr Ivor Tecta is reported as saying “me and my man Bazza was jus’ ‘tecting this piece of grass by the side of the road, like, we had all the proper permission and all that. But we was like finding nothing but ring pulls, spent PD bullet cases and a few wheaties and a Barber dime; and i was like saying that we should give up and go back to the trailer park when I jus' got this really loud signal, like, and I bent down and picked it up. You should’a seen the look on Bazza’s face !” Mr Tecta who lives in a Santa Monica mobile home park went on. “It’s kinda nice researching the history of this part of Beverly Hills, all the things the Old Timers left behind, it makes history come to life, like, an' gives you a funny feeling to hold in yer hand what somebody held in their hands all that time ago".

David Classic, local antiquities dealer was the first to see the find. He too was amazed by the size and condition of this coin: “I immediately recognized the importance of this coin when Ivor brought it to me. Its not surprising to find it here, after all Parthian coins are found in Spain, so why not Roman coins in California? Roman soldiers used to bury their savings by the sides of old roads on their way to battle, and sadly, not all made it back to retrieve them. This is what it must have been, there must have been a big battle near here two thousand years ago”.

The decision to sell the coin has roused the anger of local residents and educators in the Beverly Hills area. They argue that an object of this importance and appeal should not find its way to some private collection, but should be displayed in a local or national collection (such as that of the American Numismatic Society) so that it can be appreciated by all members of the public and contribute to their knowledge of the rich cultural heritage of the classical world and its contribution to the rich cultural mosaic of the land they live in.

Mr Phil E. Stein, a spokesman for the US Ministry of Culture says that he understands the critical voices of those citizens, but says however: “We believe this object should be sold to the highest bidder and if it ends up in the private collection of a foreign businessman or dictator, well that is just too bad. We cannot be seen to be putting the cultural needs of people of this country before those of other people”. Mr Stein added that although some have argued that this piece is clearly of exceptional artistic, archaeological, historical and numismatic importance and is of great importance to the local culture of Beverly Hills, the Ministry of Culture will not be withholding the issue of an export licence for it. “my government feels that such retentive policies are nationalistic in their origin, and the American people are not nationalistic, that would not be constitutional”. In any case, he added, even if a licence was refused, the new owners could easily take it out of the country at any time they wanted without one; “we all know our borders are as leaky as a sieve” he candidly remarked. There was always somebody who would turn a blind eye outside the country who would be willing to trade with artefact smugglers and buy it. "In fact, if someone just concealed it about (or within) their person and took it through airport checkin, it would save us a lot of boring old red tape".

Juanez Juno (author of the best-selling book "You Can Own Their Past") the newly appointed government advisor on cultural policy agrees: "Displaying this object in a foreign universal museum alongside other similarly shaped objects from different cultures such as those quaint native sculptures and lip-plugs and the artistic products of cargo-cults will allow the place of the ancient cultures of our land to be seen in its global context and be another way of expressing American cultural supremacy through the ages".

Sayne Wales of the Ancient Coin Dependency Group (ACDG) based in Tompa Florida however has expressed outrage at such ideas and the short-sighted cultural policies by the current administration. “This nation does not deserve a Ministry of Culture", he fumed. "If this item is exported from the US as a result of the short sighted cultural policies of this Administration, my organization will immediately be making a Freedom of Information request to find out what back door dealings lie behind such a decision”. Wales suggested that there was a huge government conspiracy to deprive the American people of their cultural heritage. “This is unconstitutional and we will defend the right of our members to have access to such material for study in this country. It is unacceptable that our members would have to go to collections and museums in other parts of the world to see objects that have been taken from our soil”.

There are other controversies connected with this sale. Washington lawyer Pietro de Hamlyn represents the American Committee for the Ethical Trade in Antiquities (ACETIA) and is an avid observer of cultural property issues. He is very sceptical of the account concerning the findspot.

“Although the trade is keeping very quiet about the whole business, in reality it is highly unlikely to have been found in the State of California or the United States at all. I seriously doubt the story of the finding of this coin by Mr Ivor Teca in California, indeed, I think it entirely possible that the man himself does not even exist. Rumours however are circulating that this was part of a hoard which also contained coins of Priscus Attalus (Emperor of the West in 409-10) found abroad. As such, it was almost certainly illegally exported from the source country (I cannot seriously imagine any other
country – apart form the US which would issue an export licence for such a unique item found on their soil). As such its import into the US cannot have been ethical or in accord with international legislation. We have signed international treaties you know, and the UNESCO one obliges our law enforcement
agencies to stop any process likely to lead to illegal transfer of ownership. Not that this makes much of a difference, action is all to rarely taken in this country against those that flaunt these laws. More disturbingly, all too often the foreigners smuggling items like this to our shores are mixed up in all sorts
of other illegal business such as drugs and human trafficking, and our border personnel and homeland security officials should be doing more to investigate these connections and break the smuggling rings. That in a civilised country like ours they do not is unacceptable. Our Committee is committed to drawing
attention to this problem and goading the administration into taking action".

de Hamlyn noted that if US border personnel were unable to stop the import of 100 grammes of illegally exported ancient silver coin into the country, what confidence can US citizens have that they are stopping 100 grammes or more of illegally exported Strontium 90 powder for dirty bombs or 100 grammes of military-grade anthrax spores?

North Carolina coin dealer and trade watchdog Olin Von Arksdahl is of a different opinion on the lack of firm information on provenance. "It's a fake isn't it?" he asks rhetorically. "That is why they cannot say where it really comes from ! Just look at it, coins of Valentinian I have broad flat areas like this one, but are generally chunkier. This coin is too flat, the lettering too spindly and all over the place, the style is wrong. Look at that portrait, it has the appearance of a laboriously studious copy. Generally the relief is too flat, has no 'body' to it. The wreath looks like something on nineteenth century European coins and not like the wreaths on Roman coins and medallions. In any case, whoever heard of a hand-struck silver coin with a diameter of 66 mm? To strike this would need a coin press like those used by Chinese and Lebanese forgers - and isn't it interesting that the mintmark is "Antioch" - is somebody trying to tell us something? Where did it REALLY come from?". Our interview was cut short by Mr von Arksdahl complaining of a severe headache. The no-questions asked US trade in portable antiquities seems full of them.

Photo: The 'Goldberg' medallion, work out for yourselves what in the above is true and what is allegory.

The so-called Ancient Coins for Education guys in the US are at it again. They now want some "dugups" to "prime the pump" and get more US kids hooked on collecting ancient coins. Any old numismatic "dugups", as long as they are Roman or "Classical", export licence optional, it would seem. In a message to the Moneta-L discussion list Connecticut coin collector Scott Uhrick writes:

Ancient Coins for Education is ramping up for our upcoming school year and needs to find a supplier or suppliers of the coins we use in the program. As you might know the kids attribute the coins as part of the program, so a decent obverse legend is far more important than coin type or rarity. If they are all "FEL TEMP", "GLORIA EXERCITAS", etc... that is fine. This first purchase will be of about a thousand coins with more orders to follow over the course of the year.If anyone [can] supply these please contact me at ....

I wonder why they would be searching for a source when the United States is awash with uncleaned bulk lots of Roman coins from Balkan potato fields and Suffolk dugups are not unknown? Has there been a hiccup in their usual source of supply - donations from bulk dealers?

Mr Uhrick and all you "educators" raising the standards of classical education in the US, "Gloria what"? [it is a fourth declension noun].

Peter Tompa comments on Nathan Elkins’ post on the bulk lots of “English dugups” coins being sold on the US market. He says "I suspect it is quite possible that there was no legal obligation to report the coins " which is quite missing the point of what Nathan Elkins was saying.

What however is astounding (yes, I mean that) is a comment underneath Tompa's post made by US coin collector Voz Earl two days ago.

I think the constant emphasis of some on UK export licenses is misguided. Aren't we really talking about mere red tape here? The idea that someone will go through the trouble to get an export license every time he sends a low-value coin overseas is rather unrealistic. As far as legal infractions go it's about
as heinous as jaywalking or breaking the speed limit. If a coin and its context have been recorded in the PAS database, an export license does not add any further knowledge of use to archaeologists or numismatists.

Yes, that is right, that is what he said. Somewhat missing the point and displaying complete ignorance of the purpose of the export licence process. But then quite typical if the ACCG is busily telling its members that such laws are "bad laws" imposed by "nationalist governments".

So what was the reply of the Washington lawyer? We are still waiting. Stuck for words, Mr Tompa? Let me help you, lex dura sed lex.

If one is going to collect antiquities from other countries, at least have the decency to abide by their laws in doing so. That goes for items originating from excavations in the UK as well as items coming from Cyprus and China. Or to put it another way, why advocate obeying the export laws with regard items from Britain (as I hope Mr Tompa would) but ignoring those concerning objects from Cyprus and China (which the ACCG is currently advocating and indeed actually deliberately did at Baltimore airport in April).

Mr Earl’s comment does not violate the Code of Ethics of the ACCG which only talks of the laws in the BUYER’s own country, so this collector who sees no point in export licences even from the UK runs no risk of being drummed out of the Ancient Coin Collectors’ Guild for expressing such sentiments. Nevertheless that then raises the question of whether this is the kind of collector that the ACCG is representing.

A statement by the former President of the ACCG would, I think, be appreciated - not least by all those "Friends of US numismatists" in the UK. Would Mr Tompa advise collectors to respect the UK export licence procedure with regard archaeological finds or ignore it I wonder?

Readers may recall that the DCMS press release referring to the Cambridge (read: Stow cum Quy) Rider said that the find was from a temple site. I have just received information from Sarah Poppy of Cambridgeshire Archaeology, who tells me that "we do not have records on the HER of a temple site in the vicinity of the find, so I am not sure where this association has come from. There have been other Roman finds from the same locality, also recorded by the PAS". There are also undated cropmark enclosures/field systems in the region of the findspot. What is interesting is that Sarah says that despite what the ARCHI database asserts, "no substantive evidence of a villa or temple has been recorded to our knowledge". Interestingly, the site of the figurine findspot was not known to us before its reporting to the PAS.

Sarah Poppy says that the PAS has recorded other items "from this site". The search engine on the PAS site however stubbornly and steadfastly refuses to recognise that there might be any data in the database for Stow cum Quy or "Stow" or "Quy" in Cambridgeshire (I did not try "cum") - so where are they? Ridiculous.

So what is going on here? Does the DCMS have information that the PAS and the Cambridgeshire HER have not received? Or is this some huge misunderstanding which has somehow invented a temple from thin air? The information from the HER was freely given. Why actually can we not have a simple answer to a simple question about the circumstances of this PAS-"recorded" object now on its way out of the country, where was this object found, and what was found with it under what circumstances? This seems a quite small request in return for 22000 quid somebody's getting for flogging it off abroad.
The PAS is keeping quiet isn't it?

Guy Rothwell is a portable antiquities collector who according to the website is the moderator of the antiquities section of the Specialist Auctions.com - Moderated Specialist and Collectors Online Auctions". The antiquities section of this auction website seems to be composed mainly of freshly-dug up pieces, including some from the Balkans and "eastern Europe". Despite this, in his self-presentation as moderator, Rothwll writes comfortingly that "hundreds of thousands of individual artefacts have reached private collections over the last three hundred years and the break up of these collections forms the bulk of the material circulating on the market today" (my emphasis).

On the Yahoo Ancient Artefacts forum over the past few days there has been a discussion of these claims that the BULK of the unprovenanced artefacts on the market are from old collections. If this were true, there would be no need for the looting of archaeological sites and the shipment of many kilogrammes of metal artefacts out of the Balkans for example. In this discussion I pointed out that the number of people collecting antiquities 99 years ago (for example) was nowhere near like the number now doing it today (in the post-metal detector and post-internet auction site period of the development of "public involvement in the past"). Many of these former collectors donated their objects to museums when they died and only a proportion of their objects finds came onto the market, and some of those that are still on the market have retained their provenance to these old collections which gives them added cachet as collectables. In other words, it is very unlikely that the bulk of the artefacts on the market today could have originated in these old collections as there were simply not enough of them to produce this quantity of material. In my opinion, the "old collections" argument has been severely abused to explain away the vast numbers of unprovenanced artefacts on the market. Mr Rothwell of course does not agree. He now writes:

I, for one, get rather tired of archaeologists (most of whose salaries are probably paid in some way through our tax dollars) exaggerating something that really is of very very minor importance in the affairs of mankind. I really wish they would devote their energies to something worthwhile, such as campaigning against world poverty or something similiar. They have rather comfortable lives compared to most - but all we hear from them is misrepresentation and exaggeration and they seem to be bent on destroying a respectable and legitimate hobby that has existed for centuries.

I find it ironic that collectors always play the "there are more important issues" card. Obviously though, those involving those who produce and transport the artefacts they crave are not among them.

One side of the collecting lobby sees archaeologists as "agents for foreign governments" involved in some nefarious conspiracy to undermine their constitutional right to trample all over somebody else's. Another bunch sees archaeologists as living "comfortably" off other people's tax dollars. Why actually can portable antiquity collectors not see archaeologists as archaeologists?

If collectors regard preserving the archaeological record of millennia of human history (which can be read no other way) is "of very minor importance in the affairs of mankind", then it is interesting to note how much energy they expend trying to argue that it is "important" that they (and they alone) should be able to have bits of it regardless of what is destroyed and damaged in the process. Important or not?

Mr Rothwell, nobody is trying to destroy a respectable and legitimate hobby, what the archaeological resource protection lobby want is for portable antiquity collecting to leave the nineteenth century and become a respectable (respectworthy) and legitimate hobby by cutting out the opacity of the no-questions-asked approach which facilitates the penetration of so many looted and illegally exported items onto the market. It is not just archaeologists who want this.

I think though that before collectors start criticising archaeology about its sources of funding and what it actually does, it might be useful if they found out a little more about both.

The recent display in Italy of items seized from the raid on the island villa of Greek shipping heiress Despoina Papadimitriou was mainly reported from the point of view of the recovery of some Byzantine frescoes ripped from the wall of a south Italian site which the owner of the villa had somehow acquired. Equally interesting was a piece of information which appeared as a footnote to the article in some news sources.

Police also showed off some of the 251 artifacts, worth a total of some euro2 million, discovered as part of another investigation, dubbed Operation Phoenix, into looted antiquities found in Switzerland. The goods were handed over to Italian authorities by two Lebanese brothers who operated a Geneva antiquities gallery. Police said they hoped that such a gesture would be repeated by anyone who had illicit antiquities in their possession.

Two Lebanese brothers had two million euros worth of artefacts which as a result of "Operation Pheonix" now turn out to have been illicitly obtained... Where did they come from? How many artefacts disturbed by the diggings on those sites were merely cast away or separated froim the rest as not worthy of a Geneva gallery of "ancient art"? How much destruction of the archaeological resource was done so Lebanese brothers can attempt to make a cool two million from selected bits of it?

While we may "hope" that anyone who had illicitly obtained artefacts might hand them over to the authorities, the more important thing is that they will hand over the information that will allow the identification and arrest of all those involved down the line in the illegal exploitation of archaeological sites and monuments as a source of collectables for the no-questions-asked market, and all those involved in their distribution. Derek Fincham reporting this asks rhetorically "will there be an end to the cycle of looting, seizures and arrests?". I ask, when will we make a proper beginning commensurate with the scale of the problem and the number (and nature) of the people who seem to be involved?

Specially for those who want to dig up their own bits of the past (or those who bought a provenanced bit on eBay and want to find out what the site looks like now):

Metal Detectors Searcher New CD, has links to over 7,500 Google Earth Placemarkers. Metal Detecting Sites & Finds CD is ideal for beginners and experts, a perfect starting point for all research, with satellite view of all sites. We continuously update your link and regularly and add new Metal Detecting Sites & Finds. It is also protected by user name and password. Your CD will have 1 year access, to over 7,500 Google Earth Placemarkers.

Most of which come from published sources - you know those things we call "books". Though some of them (look at the video with the naff music) come from an English Heritage "List of Scheduled sites" and at least one hoard "work in progress" (aka "PAS database" maybe?). Let us remember that one of the original "justifications" of encouraging "metal detecting" as a means of interacting with the UK's past is that it encourages metal detector using collectors to do "research into the history of their locality". Not any more it does not - no literacy skills needed, its "orl pikchures innit"?

I'd like to hear the PAS reaction to such databases - compiled from existing archaeological literature (the ARCHI database I mentioned here a few days ago is of the same nature). If UK artefact hunters use such "research methods" to any extent, a lot of PAS recorded information is going to be coming from sites already known and going to be duplicating existing knowledge about them - at the expense of further erosion of those same known sites. That seems to be rather pointless destruction from an archaeological point of view.

.

On his Numismatics and Archaeology blog, Nathan Elkins discusses two recently-offered lots of Roman coins cutely labelled by their sellers „English dugups”. He notes the relationship between these offers and the coin dealer-rhetoric urging other nations to adopt the “British system”.

Elkins notes lots of coins offered by sellers Joe Blazick (caesars12 on eBay) and Tony Jaworski of Common Bronze, selling unwashed, unrecorded coins from Suffolk. Neither offer seems to mention the existence of an export licence (which of course, being the declared products of direct excavation, by law their export without one is totally illegal). The coins shown by Elkins are anything but "unsorted" and "unwashed". Given the existence of the PAS in Britain and the general support it has among the numismatic community, why would any ethical dealer be dealing in unrecorded ancient coins from England? Why would any ethical collector buy them? This stinks.

Elkins rightly emphasizes that “schemes like the PAS are not effective solutions against systematic looting as long as dealers and collectors refuse to conduct any degree of due diligence”. He points out that “the PAS […] is not a license to loot systematically in order to provide masses of material for market consumption” (though some of us would say that whatever the original intent, in effect, through its current “partnership” with artefact hunters, that is precisely what it turns out to be).

It seems to me whether "friend of numismatics" or not, the PAS should be in touch with Messers Blazick and Jaworski tomorrow to find out where those coins came from and what documentation they have that they were obtained legally from their finder and the landowner(s). I doubt though that they will.

Photo: and where do no-questions asked dealers get the coins from? who knows where they come from and how?

More advocacy to annoy the collectors on their sinking ship. This weekend viewers of France 5 will see a 52 minute documentary film "Chasseurs et pilleurs de trésors" made by Laurent Dy and produced by Maximal Productions, with the participation of France 5.

En France, il y un a un site archéologique tous les cinq cents mètres ; un patrimoine immense mais aussi une mine d'or pour les pillards. Le cadre juridique est flou et le gain financier énorme en cas de découverte de " trésor ", les vocations sont donc nombreuses. D'un coté, les pilleurs, plus ou moins conscients du mal qu'ils font. Ce sont les " détectoristes ", des particuliers qui, armés d'engins en forme de poêle à frire sensibles aux métaux, partent à la recherche de monnaies gallo-romaines. Individuellement, ils font très peu de dégâts. Mais ils sont plus de 40 000 en France. En face, les archéologues qui protègent leur zone de recherche avec les moyens du bord. C'est le cas de Frédéric Devevey. Il travaille à l'INRAP (Institut national d'archéologie préventive) et vient de commencer un chantier de fouilles en Bourgogne. Ses solutions de fortune pour écarter les visiteurs : des panneaux "chantier interdit au public", des clôtures, et même des brouilleurs de détecteur de métal. Pour lui, les indélicats font des ravages. Ces archéologues professionnels sont donc sans cesse confrontés à ces pillages. La guerre est déclarée.

Now if there really are 40 000 of these artefact hunters in France (population 62 400 000) the majority necessarily working illegally, to what do we ascribe the fact that in England there are estimated to be a quarter that number in a similar-sized population? Is it because the legal restrictions have in some way led to the hobby being more popular in France? Is it because either the French or the UK estimates are way out ? (I argued the point with HAPPAH and they do seem to have quite convincing reasons for their figures.) Whatever the reason, it is clear that rather than a purely legal solution, in order to reduce the scale of this problem we need to concentrate more on public opinion of the activity of collecting and create some form of regulation of the collection of and market in antiquities.

As my readers will know, "Looting Matters" is a blog of Dr David Gill, of the Department of Classics, Ancient History and Egyptology at Swansea University, Wales. They will also know that David has for a number of years been interested in (and published on) issues connected with the exploitation of archaeological sites, especially of the Classical world, as a source of collectables for the antiquities market. The “Looting Matters” blog (one of several he contributes to) reflects this. It is one of the more respected sources of balanced opinion and information on this issue and well worth reading (read it please, Looting DOES matter).

Recently Dr Gill announced that "Looting Matters" will be releasing a weekly story via PR Newswire. The first post was on “Why does the Return of the Euphronios Krater to its Original Home Awaken Debate?" This leads to a succinct piece on the "Looting matters" blog summarizing the issue of The Stewardship of Classical Antiquities in a post-Euphronios World. This looks like a useful feature and will probably bring many more interested members of the public into contact with David’s thoughts on the looting issue. More power to him.

Despite the fact that David is one of the more polite and discrete participants in the “debate on looting”, he has often been the butt of the attacks of the shameless advocates of the no-questions-asked antiquities market (but mainly as far as I know from the United States of America). It would seem that making the debate more widely known among the public is not to the liking of this crowd. Just one and a half hours after he made the announcement – Gill received what looks like a demand from Washington lawyer (Bailey & Ehrenberg) to reveal the source of his funds. Peter Tompa ("Cultural Property Observer") sent a comment to the story on "Looting Matters" [My emphasis]:

As I'm sure you know, PR Newswire is not a free service. To give your effort credibility I would urge you to provide your readers with some information in this regard. Otherwise, we might just suspect that you are merely acting as an undisclosed agent of influence for some nationalistic, repatriation seeking foreign government, like that of Greece.

On his own blog Tompa goes on about this, he claims “I don't begrudge Gill publicizing his views on unprovenanced artifacts and repatriation to source countries”, (really? I think he does) and candidly admits: "The ACCG has also used PR Newswire in the past, but only on an occasional basis due to cost concerns". He then surmises: "Presumably, Gill is paying these or similar rates weekly unless he is eligible for some particular discount". This then leads conspiracy-theory fan Tompa to the suspicion that the costs are being met for him as "as an undisclosed agent of influence for some nationalistic, repatriation seeking foreign government".

Frankly what David Gill writes or does not write on his own blog is his own personal business, as is how much it costs him in time, energy or money. It certainly is not the business of Mr Tompa or the readers of his blog.

This is not the first time Tompa has done this. A few months ago he was pestering Dr Gill for information about what finances he had been getting from a foreign government. Now that is simply bad manners.

To return to the original matter, in his blog Tompa goes further.

He says In any event, by placing stories on PR Newswire, Gill ultimately simply underscores the fact that his work (like that of fellow SAFE associated bloggers Elkins and Barford) has precious little to do with dispassionate academic research and, instead, has everything to do with advocacy for an "archaeology over all perspective." However impressive Gill's credentials, readers of "PR Newsire" (sic) should judge that work accordingly.

Hmm. The Washington lawyer I suspect actually knows little of Dr David Gill's work at the university of Swansea, its academic merits are for his university and peers to judge. I think also we may place the Tompa's suggestion that David Gill is a "secret agent of influence working for some foreign government" among his other conspiracy theories along with who Secretary of State Burns shook hands with and the Black Helicopters over Foggy Bottom. As for me (since Tompa brings me into it), my blog has no pretence whatsoever to in itself be "dispassionate academic research". It expresses my personal opinions based on what I have found out over the years about artefact hunting and collecting (whether that classes as academic research is up to the reviewers of my forthcoming book to discern) and discusses matters about which I am anything BUT "dispassionate", especially when it comes to the deceits of the collectors and dealers. While I have indeed worked in the past for foreign governments and UNESCO, I am not as far as I know currently an agent for any regime. Though it is possible of course that unbeknownst to me, in accord with conspiracy staple, "they" have implanted a chip in my brain which makes me do things and say things which I do not know about... After all US coin dealer and forgery watchdog Alan van Arsdale claims to have one (here too).

By the way, there are nine "SAFE associated bloggers", it is odd that Mr Tompa keeps harping on about the same three.

The Ancient Coin Collecting blog of Wayne Sayles the Executive Director of the Ancient Coin Collectors’ Guild” (ACCG) has long since stopped having any titbits about ancient coins per se. It now contains a response to my posts here and here and on Nathan Elkins’ blog (here) concerning the recent stunt the ACCG performed with the attempted illegal import into the USA of some unprovenanced ancient coins.

Readers of the blog posts referred to will know that among the points made were (a) whether deliberately engaging in illegal action is really the best way to convince public opinion that US ancient coin collectors are responsible law-abiding folk, (b) that this action is clearly against the “code of ethics” of the ACCG which is thereby shown to be worthless, and (c) this attempted illegal act should rightfully lead to investigations of the stockrooms of dealers associated with this ACCG action and maybe some of their client-supporters.

Anyhow, Mr Sayles is having none of that. He “replies” to our observations only by discussing whether the ACCG really represents all 50 000 US collectors of ancient coins (his estimate) and not just those of no-questions-asked dealers. Sayles claims the provocative act of attempted illegal import represents the will of 5000 coin collectors affiliated to the Guild (really? Is it too much to ask to have a referendum whether they really do support openly illegal acts by the dealers representing them? How many of them were actually informed beforehand of the nature of "stage two" of the Grand Scheme?).

It seems Mr Sayles feels it is beneath him to actually address these points, not even for the benefit of those of his Guild's members who might be wondering how he would answer them. His blog post instead totally avoids the issue and does not even have the courage of his convictions to supply the reader of his blog with the links to the posts to which he refers. After all, he can hardly have them actually referring back to the original posts and discovering that the ACCG Director is totally failing to answer the points made, can he?

It seems to me that just this sort of "response" is the best possible confirmation there could be that the ACCG is just losing it. The ACCG is not representing the interests of collectors at all, the ACCG are simply trying to protect the interests of dealers and the middlemen of the no-questions-asked antiquities market and their connections. The ACCG is unable to answer the points made about this stunt so its executive director simply tries to ignore them.

Let us note, in order that those 23 coins pass legally and legitimately through US customs, all that is needed is a piece of paper. That's all.

The ACCG still have the option of getting the piece of paper before their ninety days are up and save the spectacle of the portable antiquity collectors of the USA potentially getting soundly trounced. Otherwise they are going to have to raise another few thousand dollars by selling more unprovenanced coins supplied by US dealers eager to confront society with their demands to retain the damaging status quo of the no-questions-asked antiquities market.

Photo: The ACCG in action.

"

A couple of British metal detectorists are boasting over on one of their forums that they have been invited by the University of Michigan to take part in a metal detecting jaunt in Italy, as part of the excavation project at Gabii. They say:

The Italians do not use detectorists on their sites and this will be a first.....a very important chance to show them how useful they can be and a chance to interact with archaeologists that know little or nothing about metal detecting.

How odd that while geophysical survey (magnetometer, resistivity, radar etc.) are routinely used in the study of whole landscapes and individual sites by the British School at Rome, nobody thought of importing Britains's "heritage heroes" to do a spot of "tekking" across the sites to hoik out the goodies. Not even on the sites being investigated by the PAS-touting British Museum. But never mind, the PAS has stepped in and organised a trip to Gabii for a couple of their artefact collecting partners. All good propaganda for the cause eh?

I've seen metal detecting in Michigan with my own eyes. Apparently however archaeologists from the University of Michigan know "little or nothing" of metal detecting. I expect in June and July they will have a chance to find out at least half the truth. I suppose having the metal detector using artefact hunters on their site saves their students having to dig carefully and cleanly in the limited time they will be over in Europe. After all they'll have these blokes to go over the spoil to make sure they've missed none of the "important" (metal) stuff. Somehow I think an important point of archaeological methodology is being overlooked here - perhaps more than one (I wrote about it ten years ago).

Reference: P.M. Barford 1999: ‘Wykrywacz metali jako narzędzia archeologa’ [metal detectors as an archaeological tool] in W. Brzezinski and Z. Kobyliński (eds.) "Wykrywacze metali a archeologia", Warsaw. pp. 131-143.

Vignette: 1997 geophysical survey at Forum Novum/Vescovio, Italy.

A few months ago the much-awaited PAS review was published [the one which will go down in the annals of archaeological infamy as the one that established that British archaeology was in some way "in partnership" with artefact collectors]. I pointed out on this blog the unfortunate choice for the cover of an object which was found by a metal detectorist on some Roman site and recorded in Suffolk by the Scheme under the number of “SF-99E3E4”. It was merely given the provenence “Cambridgeshire” and the information it was found by an anonymous finder “about 10.2006”. It seemed to me that using in the review as a symbol of the Scheme an archaeological object that could have been found anywhere within a general area of 3389 km² really was not giving out the right message on the nature of the record that was being compiled for the expenditure of 9.78 million pounds and which the review was supposed to be assessing.

But the story does not end there. By no means. The item is back in the news. When the PAS record breaks off, we are told it was “returned to finder” (anonymous/access restricted - but in fact a man called Duncan Pangborn). Pangborn is quoted in the newspapers when this item was being feted as a 2006 PAS "success" as saying “It’s about finding something that hasn’t been seen, in this case, for 1,700 or 1,800 years. It’s about being the first person to handle it since the Roman owner, the link with the past” and "" This is part of our history and it was fantastic to find and hold it," he said, adding that it now occupied pride of place on his mantlepiece at home." Not for long though.

Already by May 2008 (as David Gill spotted, thanks to him for the information, see also here), the metal detecting owner of this archaeological find so "passionately interested in the past" had tired of having the object on his mantelpiece. It was sold at an auction at Bonhams in London's New Bond Street (Sale 15940 - Antiquities 1 May 2008 -Lot 278. The online catalogue entry presents information not available in the PAS 'report' (but also spells archaeological "site" as "sight" - duh!). Interestingly from the auction catalogue we learn something that is absent from the PAS 'report'. The object now gets a slightly more precise provenance, the entry says it was "a metal detecting find made in Stow Cum Quy, Cambridgeshire, October 2006".

We are not told who bought this object, but just six months of so after it was dug up in a field it had managed to fetch the 'not-in-it-fer-th'-money' detector user £10,200. I presume he will be splitting it fifty-fifty with the landowner. The object was given added value by being “accompanied by a full report, technical drawings and a British Museum report of '2006 Finds Highlights'” supplied courtesy of the publicly funded PAS. This paperwork could have been treated as a Certificate of Authenticity were it not for the fact that the PAS says the object is 94.12 mm mm long, while Bonhams (and later the DCMS) both say it is 89mm long. The horse figurine on the PAS website photos measures 92mm according to the scale (and is said to be from “Suffolk”). The PAS dates the one they saw to between 43AD and 410 AD while Bonhams dates it to “c. 3rd-4th century AD” (a date accepted by the DCMS who thus ignore the earlier PAS dating). The Bonhams photo shows details not visible in the PAS one. The buyer may well wonder if we are really dealing with the same horse. I think we are, this is just careless description by the PAS. This is no way to do “preservation by record” of such an object - certainly not ten million quids' worth.

By the way, in case anyone wants to use the tired old "plough damage/ agrichemical erosion damage" argument to suggest that hoiking this archaeological evidence out of its context is "preserving" it, one look at the Bonhams photos shows that despite coming from an arable field in one of the most heavily exploited hedge-stripped chemically-doused agrarian regions of the United Kingdom, the object in question (like so many others) has not been suffering any damage of that nature, all the breaks are (explicitly recorded as) old breaks, the corrosion is a stable patina.

The new owner has now applied for an export licence for this "piece of our history". In April this year, the issuing of this licence was deferred (DCMS press release ‘Culture Minister reigns (sic) in export of statuette of horse’) on the grounds that:

It is one of a very small number of such statuettes known, and its elaborate composition and high quality of workmanship make it a key piece for the study of this group of objects. The juxtaposition of stylised horse and classical rider will throw light on the study of art in Roman Britain, and it will also contribute to our understanding of the relationship between native and Roman religion. Dr Catherine Johns, Reviewing Committee member, said: “This statuette is of outstanding significance for study because it expresses the complex fusion of native and classical elements in the art and religion of Roman Britain.

In the DCMS press release about the licence deferral we read yet another piece of information which is lacking from the PAS ‘report’ (and this has not been modified to include this new information, despite it being made public elsewhere). The object was “found by a metal detectorist in Cambridgeshire, and associated with a temple site” (and the DCMS repeats the information from the Bonhams catalogue rather than the PAS 'record': it “was a metal detecting find in Stow Cum Quy, Cambridgeshire, in October 2006”). The deferral of the issue of a licence until June is to allow a British institution to raise the estimated market price (now, mysteriously “£22066.81”). So far it seems that the money has not been found.

So, we may well ask what this case shows the British public - a stakeholder in the portable antiquity heritage is actually getting from the current laissez faire system in England and Wales. This object which is clearly an important part of the archaeological (and I suppose "artistic") heritage was up for grabs at Bonhams. It was not being cherished by the artefact hunter "passionately interested in the past" who took it from an archaeological site (temple?) in Stow cum Quy. Because it was not shiny gold or silver it slipped through England's leaky "Treasure" system. More to the point, if there is a temple site known at Stow cum Quy (a parish by the way noted on the ARCHI database for metal detectorists as containing a "Roman villa") why is it being denuded of who-knows-what artefacts, some of which are turning up at Bonhams, and the rest... well, who knows? What kind of "preservation" of the archaeological record is that?

Thanks to Nigel Swift for reminding me of the finder's name and supplying the quotes supposedly giving the finder's motives.
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The Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) is a new think tank/consultancy group on contemporary issues in art crime. This non-profit organization will study issues in art crime in general, and work as consultants on art protection and recovery cases brought to them by international police, governments, museums, places of worship, and other public institutions. On their webpage they have a section presenting a few facts (compiled from taken compiled from sources including Interpol, the FBI, Scotland Yard, Carabinieri, independent research and ARCA projects) on art crime:

Art crime represents the third highest grossing criminal enterprise worldwide, behind only drugs and arms trafficking.* It brings in $2-6 billion per year, most of which goes to fund international organized crime syndicates.

Most art crime since the 1960s is (sic) perpetrated either by, or on behalf of, international organized crime syndicates. They either use stolen art for resale, or to barter on a closed black market for an equivalent value of goods or services. Individually instigated art crimes are rare, and art crimes perpetrated for private collectors are rarest of all.

One of the greatest problems is that neither the general public, nor government officials, realize the severity of art crime. Art crime funds all organized crime enterprises, including terrorism. And yet it is often dismissed as a victimless crime, because it is not understood.

Italy has by far the most art crime, with approximately 20,000 art thefts reported each year. Russia has the second most, with approximately 2000 art thefts reported per year. Italy is the only country whose government takes art crime as seriously as it should. Italy’s Carabinieri are by far the most successful art squad worldwide, employing over 300 agents full time. Other countries have had great success with their art squads, despite lack of governmental support, while many countries do not have a single officer dedicated to art crime, the third largest criminal enterprise worldwide.

ARCA identifies the United States as “The World’s primary art consumer, for both legitimate and lllicit goods”.

Britain's art market is second only to the US and experts claim up to £200m worth of stolen art and antiques are sold in the UK each year. Despite this Britain has no national art crime squad. The Metropolitan Police's has a relativel small "arts squad", based in London. It was formed in 1969 and in the past has dealt with 120 cases a year and has been was involved in recovery of art works across the world. Over the last few years, its budget has been cut inevitably threatening a decline in its effectiveness (Sandra Laville, ‘Met's art theft squad has to go cap in hand’, The Guardian, Saturday 21 April 2007).

While the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art is not primarily concerned with the destruction of archaeological context by artefact hunters digging up places to supply the antiquities market (being more interested in the individual items as "art" works), it cannot hurt to have more attention being drawn to the practices and significance of the no-questions-asked art and antiquities market. Despite the denials of the dealers in portable antiquities, the connections between the ultimate suppliers of "fresh" material to the trade in "antiquities" and organized crime and other unsavoury social phenomena are becoming more firmly established through work by organizations like this. Given these facts, it seems also that it is a matter of time before governments will see the importance of combatting the loopholes for criminal involvement offered by the no-questions-asked antiquities market.

*Interpol estimates that art theft is the fourth largest organised crime after drugs, people trafficking and arms.

The Times has a story about the metal detecting fake coin seller I mentioned the other day (David Brown, 'Metal detector user David Hutchings jailed for selling fake coins ', The Times May 11, 2009). It mostly repeats the story as told in the Metropolitan police source I gave a link to last week, but there's a nicer photo. "Hutchings, 43, was the organiser of the Coventry Moles metal detecting club, which held archaeological searches across the Midlands. He used legitimate digs to “discover” fake items before passing them off as genuine antiquities. Some buyers were told that the items had been verified at the British Museum. Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Unit raided his home in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, after an Essex-based dealer raised concerns about a set of coins Hutchings was trying to sell".

Here's an odd statement: "Experts from the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, assessed the coins and concluded that all had either been manufactured by casting in a mould or struck using forged dies". Hmmm, what kind of "coin experts" cannot tell the difference? I suspect (hope) this is a misquote. Somehow Rod (not "Roy") Blunt of the UK Detector Finds Database is quoted, Hutchings "recorded" many of his finds with this privately owned detecting showcase.

Another metal detector user is quoted as having said: “Coldfeet was known as a bit of a rogue. We are pleased he has been jailed — we don’t need people like him damaging the reputation of detectoring.” Well, the "reputation" of artefact hunting with metal detectors really suffers just as much from other issues that are rarely addressed by its many supporters.

Photo: Hutchings in happier days and fake Dark Age coin (Times)

The US government has resolved to contribute to the global fight against the looting of archaeological sites in order to create collectables for foreign markets by stricter import controls on certain types of antiquities. Instead of supporting this resolve, the US ancient coin dealers’ advocacy group the ACCG is intent on challenging it and overturning the somewhat modest measures instituted in the US to prosecute this policy (modest compared with the scale of the US market for these collectables).

The ACCG has accordingly just announced that it has ”launched phase two of a coordinated plan to challenge import restrictions on ancient coins” which, we recall, they totally refuse to accept can be regarded as archaeological finds. It is interesting to note that they held this announcement over until the publication in the Washington Post of a ('written to order'?) article representing Britain's laissez faire approach as the way forward to "protect the heritage" (though it does not explain how metal detcting and stripping sites of collectable "portable antiquities can be regarded as any kind of archaeological resource protection).

Anyway, this "stage two" apparently involved the stunt of attempting to import a group of “unprovenanced coins of Cypriot and Chinese type” ostensibly as a “test case” (Yeah, right). Presumably they are counting on US Customs refusing to release the coins and then the ACCG will use its members' money to fight a showcase trial to attempt to show that it had no authority to do so - thus allowing the maintenance of the no-questions-asked status quo on the antiquities market which is proving so damaging to the world's archaeological heritage. Something in which no doubt US ancient coin collectors would take great pride in the affirmation by a US court of their philistine self-interested disregard of the interests of others.

Quite apart from this stunt being an infringement of their own code of ethics (showing just how much that is worth), the method adopted suggests the people behind this stunt are cowards. The real test of the case would be to import coins from China and Cyprus and then show that the restrictions on the import of those coins imposed by the CCPIA were unlawful. They however decided to take an easier road, and import the coins from London (flight BA 229/16 from Heathrow to Baltimore Washington International Airport - 44.5 km from Peter Tompa's office).

These coins were apparently bought on the laissez faire open market in Britain. "As mandated, U.S. Customs detained these coins being imported from the United Kingdom. The ACCG now plans to use this detention as a vehicle to strike down the unprecedented regulations banning importation of whole classes of ancient coins". A question which Peter Tompa does not ask or answer is how these coins came onto the London market, given the international concerns about the looting of the Chines and Cyproit cultural (including archaeological) heritage.

This seems an ideal occasion to put the British Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act (Article 2(3)a, 3(1) and 3(4) etc.) into action. If ever there was a case for the British doing something about the trade in such items going on under their noses, this is it. Let the ACCG reveal the name and address of the British dealer(s) who supplied these coins and who apparently are not able to supply the importer with the required documentation to allow these items to pass through US customs.

Let us remind ourselves of what they are. It seems pretty straightforward to me [for example Sect. 307 (c)(2)(B)]. Ninety days seems perfectly adequate for Mr Tompa acting oin behalf of the importer to get in touch with the sellers and obtain the documentation required for US customs to release these objects. Of course the point is that Mr Tompa or the ACCG probably have no intention of actually doing this. They do not want the coins released, they want a confrontation.

US Customs through this seizure seem to have discovered a collector or dealer in the US (Washinton region?) whose name was presumably on the package of coins which it was attempted to be imported into the United States contrary to the provisions of the existing legislation. It seems to me obvious therefore that at least one branch of the US law enforcement agencies (Homeland Security maybe even) should interest themselves in what else this person or group of people have been buying and examine any records concerning past purchases of material for their collections (or business). I think the ACCG should inform us as a matter of public interest whose name was on that parcel (it will presumably figure in any court case anyway). Then the US authorities can tell us as a matter of public interest why that person's previous dealings with antiquities was not exposed to scrutiny.

The ACCG has published a photo of just a few of the contents of this "small packet of 23 very common, inexpensive, Cypriot and Chinese coins". The five coins are shown here from the ACCG website. They are Ban Liang and Wu zhu coins of (according to the ACCG) the Han dynasty. Those of us with experience of the corrosion products found on objects from a variety of soil types might look a bit askance at some of those coins. These are the types of patina often found on coins offered by Chinese coin dealers it is true. The vast majority of them however are out-and-out fakes (see an old list of fake sellers here). It is a telling situation that even types relatively common a while ago are now being faked and exported globally as the supplies of the originals from the more readily accessible sites dries up. I wonder just what it is the ACCG dealers in ancient coins have bought in Britain? Wouldn't it be ironic if these self-proclaimed numismatic experts and advocates of the no-questions-asked antiquities market turned out to have fallen victim to the coin faker which this same market supports? Let's have those Chinese coins validated, not by US dealers whose stocks are already contaminated by mountains of fake Chines cash coins, let the US taxpayer pay first for a proper validation of those objects by Chinese archaeologists with experience of excavated material from the region where Han dynasty coins are actually found. It may well turn out they do not need any export licences at all.

As for those (unillustrated) Cypriot coins, are they stolen? What is their source? Where were they acquired and how did they get there? Why is a British dealer handling them and what documentation can they provide to show this is legitimate? If they can provide none, then what is the ACCG doing dealing with them?

More to the point, when US customs releases these coins - one way or another, what is their destination? What will the ACCG do with them and where does this fit in with their own byelaws as a "non-profit organization promoting the free and independent collecting of coins from antiquity"?

Provocative questions - yes. The ACCG has deberately committed a provocative and controversial act, so invites controversy. I'd like to know what the average ethical US coin collector (not just of ancient coins taken from foreign archaeological sites and assemblages) thinks seeing the dealers that claim to represent their hobby deliberately and publicly flaunting the law of the US. Are such dealers really speaking for the law-abiding collector? Are such dealers really worthy of their trust and custom? Indeed are all dealers in coins in the US behind this controversial act, or are there some who can see that such behaviour does nothing for the image of coin collecting (and collecting as a whole)? We note that just a few days ago, both the International Association of Professional Numismatists (IAPN) and the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG) were prosecuting this action together with the ACCG - I think we need to know if they are likewise involved in this second phase involving the attempted importation of these coins and how they explain any such involvement.

Let us note, in order that those 23 coins pass legally and legitimately through US customs, all that is needed is a piece of paper.

ADDENDUM:
I strongly recommend Nathan Elkin's comments on this same affair which I found after I posted this. We seem to be in agreement about the significance of this "test case": "At least now the ACCG's leadership is showing its true colors perhaps more than ever before and its true aims and interests are becoming increasingly apparent. (Image: The King of Spades) ".

Photo: Collector's Hero or Pied Piper? - Peter Tompa.

The careful wording of “Code of Ethics” of the US ancient coin dealers’ advocacy group the ACCG has been noted before. On April 15th 2009 however an officer, or officers of the ACCG with premeditation and deliberately broke its first principle. “Coin Collectors and Sellers […] will comply with all cultural property laws of their own country” by the attempted import into the United States of coins contrary to the requirements of the 1983 Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act According to its bylaws, “The guild does not in any way support, condone or defend the […] violation of any nation's laws concerning the import or export of antiquities”. Unless, it would seem, it is carried out by one of the members or the board of directors of the ACCG for its own purposes. Very much a case of saying one thing and doing another. I wonder if this is the first time members of the Guild have ignored their own regulations when it suits their interests to do so? In any case, we find nothing in ACCG regulations which allows them to engage in commercial activity and importing coins from other countries. Is this what they are using their members' subscription money and financial donations for? What is going on?

In Monday's Washington Post (just coincidentally of course on the same day as the ACCG announced the stunt they pulled with the coins) appeared a front page (!) article by Mary Jordan called " In Britain, Guys With Metal Detectors Find Respect Along With History", Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, May 11, 2009). So-called "metal detecting" certainly seems to be doomed to attract the quaintsy headlines. A fairly unexciting and totally derivative but equally misleading piece, trotting out the same cliches as we see in previous pro-collecting media claptrap.

One innovation caught my eye: "British authorities estimate there are about 10,000 metal-detecting enthusiasts". That's the first I've heard of it. This is my estimate - based on information from metal detector dealers concerning market research - and one which the Portable Antiquities Scheme has steadfastly refused to accept. Nice to know that the Washington Post accepts the estimate as "authoritative". What we really need however are not estimates but firm figures.

The Washington Post's journalist trots out the "the vast majority are responsible people who obey the law", topos. The Heritage Action erosion counter - which somehow seems to have escaped her notice says something else if we measure responsibility by reporting reportable finds. Since she persists in confusing "Britain/UK" with "England and Wales", let it be noted (as I have noted here before) that adding Scotland (also part of the UK) to the equation does not do much to improve the impression.

I also noted the description of a Welsh Finds Liaison Officer's office "His office is cluttered with labeled plastic bags full of items brought to him by collectors, most of whom are men, he said". Slapped wrist for that journalist for breaking the "pc code". You are not allowed to call them "collectors", they wish to be referred to by the more anorakish title "metal detectorists"... Calling a spade a spade bursts the bubble of illusion they build around the real nature and effects of the hobby.

Then there's the slippery statistics beloved of the pro-collecting lobby: "Before museum archaeologists began working with metal detector enthusiasts a decade ago, only about 25 reported discoveries annually met the official definition of "treasure" -- [...] Every year since, that number has soared, hitting 802 last year". This is partly because when the Treasure Act was passed in 1996, the DEFINITION of Treasure changed ! By the way, in Britain museum archaeologists were working with metal detectorists well before 1996, while the statistics are currently suppressed, extraopolation from the data which does exist in the public domain suggests that the scale of co-operation was at a relatively high level (see the forthcoming book I've co-authored).

It is a shame the journalist does not discuss the place of commercial "metal detecting rallies" in a text with its all-too-typical rose-tinted spectacled perspective on this manner of use of the archaeological resource in the UK.

People mentioned in the Washington Post article: Derek Eveleigh and grandson (artefact hunter and collector), Roger Bland (Head of Portable Antiquities and Treasure at the British Museum), Nessa O'Connor (archaeological curator at the National Museum of Ireland), Mark Lodwick (FLO, National Museum Wales, Cardiff), Trevor Austin (general secretary for the National Council for Metal Detecting - interestingly not the Chairman), Dick Stout, (US Federation of Metal Detector and Archaeological Clubs). Which group did the journalist NOT ask for an opinion to create her article? Whose idea was that - who put her in touch with the people in the UK?

This is hardly a brilliant piece of investigative journalism. It is clearly an article written to order to prove a thesis - "Saddam has weapomns of mass destruction aimed at YOU", "metal detecting is good for the heritage"....

I was interested to see that Peter Tompa referring to the article suggests: "Perhaps, this system can also be applied here in the US in some fashion". I am getting really disturbed by the number of times that Peter Tompa and I seem to be agreeeing these days. This is exaqctly what I have suggested, before the portable antiquity collectors of the United States of America try to impose the collector-friendly "British (sic) System" on the rest of the world, let them campaign for the scrapping of the the existing archaeological resource protection legislation of the USA in favour of the free-for-all of the British legislation. Let their arrowhead collectors gather their collectables freely from Indian and Federal lands, let their pot diggers and grave riflers have a free hand to supply collectors all over the USA with prehistoric goodies, it is after all the heritage of everybody in the land - inded all of us. If the collectors are so sure of their case, let's see those Native American ceraminc products on eBay. Why be "retentionist" about it? But instead of talk, let's see the collectors' rights movement in the US do something about this proposition. Only then can they try to lead the world to a collectors' paradise by their own example, not at the expense of teh british heritage.

"Arbitrary and capricious"?
With regard to the stunt the ancient coin dealers’ advocacy group the ACCG staged with the import of “unprovenanced coins of Cypriot and Chinese type” for purposes of a test case, Peter Tompa announces:

As I state in the ACCG press release, “Research and discovery to date in a separate ongoing Freedom of Information Act case strongly
suggests that State Department bureaucrats acted improperly by adding coins to import restrictions on Chinese cultural goods without any formal request from PRC officials. Even more troubling, is their July 2007 decision to impose import restrictions on coins of Cypriot type, which appears to have been adopted contrary to the recommendations of CPAC.” My firm [Bailey & Ehrenberg PLLC] will be pursuing this matter on behalf of the ACCG. [...] In addition, the ACCG is also receiving legal advice and counsel from the well-known customs law firm of Serko, Simon, Gluck & Kane LLP for purposes of this litigation. [...] The ACCG hopes that this Customs action will allow a Court to ultimately determine whether the Department of State's actions are arbitrary and capricious.

I suggest that what is arbitary and capricious is the USA’s interpretation of the provisions of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property embodied in their 1983 Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act which totally ignores its Article 13.

The Ma’an News Agency carries a report on the arrest of an artefact hunter near Tuba in Israel.

The Tubas antiquities authority arrested an amateur antiques hunter and smuggler Friday after receiving information on stolen antiquities. When investigators searched the homes of the alleged smuggler they found excavation tools and preservation materials used for hunting and extracting ancient artifacts from sites around Palestine. The Wadi Al-Far’a resident, just south of Tubas, was arrested and his tools seized. He will be charged with smuggling Palestinian antiquities and tried in court, said Tourism and Antiques officer Hassan Na’irat.

When one sees the large numbers of “Holy land” antiquities offered on various antiquity dealers’ sites, it makes you wonder about where they come from and how these finds relate to the scale of the looting in the region. Also in the news last week was the attempted sale of a manuscript found in a cave - but probably not an accidental find but clandestine artefact hunting.

John Hooker (Deconstructing Cultural Heritage as it applies to property p. [7]) Suggests that if somebody stops collecting portable antiquities, the “energy that was given to collecting” has to be redirected , otherwise “if this did not happen then a severe psychic disturbance could ensue and any suppression of this energy might result in any number of possible neuroses”. I bet kleptomaniacs and bus stop vandals say the same thing.

Perhaps we might ask just what it is that this “energy” and compulsion to collect consists of in the first place.

The Collectors’ rights lobby have obviously taken previous criticisms of the intellectual bankruptcy of their arguments to heart, so it would appear that now they are searching around for new ones. The latest installment in this entertaining spectacle is the publication on the ACCG website of what promises to be a new series of pieces called “Cultural Property: The Hooker papers”. Some of us have been following the unfolding spectacle of the conspiracy theories by former ACCG president Peter Tompa about the mechanisms of a Rogue Administration in the US conspiring with foreign governments against the interests of US citizens. These readers might therefore view the title with some misgivings, expecting that it might contain spicy revelations about State Department officials and Washington ladies of easy virtue.

Fortunately it turns out to be a bland bolstering of collectors' self-esteem written by Canadian coin collector John Hooker under the heading of: “A series of white papers by John Hooker dealing with the philosophical aspects of cultural heritage, cultural property and the concept of stewardship". John Hooker used to write some interesting stuff, so I read both with interest, though mounting disappointment.

The first of this series published by the ACCG is called Deconstructing Cultural Heritage as it applies to property and quickly turns out to be a rather superficial piece. Surely anything which claims to be “deconstructing” a somewhat complex concept like "cultural heritage" requires an examination and presentation of the literature regarding that concept which goes beyond a citation of a single convention, and one from 1970 (and about cultural property) to boot. It is like discussing Canada’s energy policy on the basis of a single treaty of 1970 concerning coal imports. Furthermore, I suspect the author has skipped the preamble of the Convention and (typically for this milieu) misinterpreted its title and remit. I wonder if the author really has grasped the meaning of the concept of "deconstruction". The text also contains a suspicious number of references to the heritage of Nazi Germany which is customary in this milieu.

On page [3] the author attempts to philosophise about the 'nature of history', but apparently does not know enough about this and its literature to penetrate the problem very deeply, but this does not seem bother him, the whole point of it is to lead to the statement "if the objects of the past belong to the people[,] then should any of them not belong to any person?". Predictably, Mr Hooker's answer to the question he poses himself is a foregone conclusion. He reckons there are two "aspects to culture" (just two? Hmm), and the second, an 'individual' one, is impossible to define exactly. Well, again it is a shame that Hooker betrays no inkling of the vast literature in a number of the human sciences (including historiography) connected with identity (and indeed the role of memory in that) which do precisely that. Instead of referring to any of that, however, he found a paper in the Internet about something called "cultural frames" by a Spanish author. This relates to concepts that have bneen around since at least the 1970s, but in the spin put on it by Hooker is nothing more or less than another name for an aspect of the identity of collectors I have previously discussed on this blog a number of times (such as here). The value of this online paper for Hooker is that "the wonderful thing about the cultural frames approach as discussed by Marti is that it frees us from having to agree, in principle, with nationalistic hype".

Wonderful. The problem is that the UNESCO convention which Hooker's paper critiques is about the means of prohibiting the illicit transfer of ownership of cultural property. Hooker in this paper is attacking the basis of the right of (any) groups to be able to define an activity involving cultural property (or is that "heritage"?) as in any way illicit. This is not "philosophy", it is anarchy in the strict sense of the word. Is Hooker saying that Marti's "cultural frames" gives the culture criminal a carte blanche? It seems so. So, what about the cultural frames of those in the source countries that do not want to see their heritage(dug out of their local archaeological sites and ripped off the monuments), their marbles, bronzes, artworks taken off by Canadian collectors to store in their dens as part of their own acquisitive "cultural frames"? Is Mr Hooker's own cultural frame ("student of the global past") superior to that of a Greek, Nigerian or Cambodian whom looters and smugglers are depriving of their ability to appreciate these items? Why? Presumably Mr Hooker would want to tell them that they are all in the "wrong cultural frame", but then are they not free to choose? To choose between their own archaeology (done by people of the same nationality and reported in their language) and public collections, and having their heritage illicitly carted off to foreign and inaccessible to them markets? It's a shame that Hooker does not expand his "frame" more fully to look at the culture of indigenous communities in Canada and the US in the context of collecting and looting of sites which they regard as their ancestral sites for collectables for outsiders to acquire. This seems to me a deliberate omission.

The "property" of the second part of the title of this paper does not figure much in the text, I presume it means the collector's "property" - which in the case of no-questions-asked collecting could well be stolen property, though of course the whole point of Hookers home-grown philosophising is to "prove" why we should not regard this type of stolen property stolen at all, because its all - he says - about "cultural frames" of individuals. Once again we see the discussion diverted away from conservation issues under the pretence that they are only about the rights of individuals to do their own thing no matter what.

The second “White Paper” promises to be about: Ancient Coin Collecting: Organization, Praxis and Epistemology. Despite the title, it actually contains nothing about the epistemology of “ancient coin collecting” (or how that differs from any other kind of coin collecting, or indeed collecting of anything else). It also contains little on the praxis, surely the basis of any decent collection is documentation? There is no mention of that in Hooker’s account so the praxis is just heaping them up loose on a table in Calgary or somewhere I guess. Surely a paper intended to inform readers of the "praxis and epitemology" of coin collecting would have been helped by a few references to textbooks on the methodology of collecting and numismatics. The text is instead a loose farrago of chatty and personal reflections consisting (despite its title) mainly of numerous references to what “archaeologists” write say and think (and “fail to realize") about something-or-other. The unspoken assumption is that coins (just the "ancient" ones maybe) are in some way different from other types of addressed and non-addressed sources used by the archaeologist (page [7-8], though nowhere is the reasoning behind this discussed. The text is lamentably short on references to where such statements attributed to "some" or "many" archaeologists are made in order to indicate that such statements come from a proper study of the archaeological literature from the English-speaking world (as well as the “source countries”) rather than the author plucking them from thin air. In a few places archaeologists (Hodder, Wylie) are however cited out of context when they support Hooker’s line of thinking. Throughout the "paper", archaeologists are for some reason routinely labelled “nationalist” without any coherent explanation why. Are the police who raided the “Crack House” down the road from Hooker (pp [13-4]) to reduce access to damaging drugs by Canadian citizens “nationalist policemen”? Is the Canadian Council on Animal Care a “nationalist” organization too? More to the point, is Britain's Portable Antiquities Scheme a "nationalist" organization? What nonsense. Am I supposed to be a "nationalist archaeologist"? More revealingly, conservation of the archaeological resource is apparently “a crackpot idea”. (page [6], no references here either). The “way forward” is apparently to leave “collectors who buy from [Canadian?] shops” alone. Hooker is illogical when he contrasts “collectors” with museums, without recognizing (page [3]) that the latter too are collections.

Page 4 contains the most telling flaw. Apparently, according to the Canadian coin-collecting "independent scholar": “archaeologists stress the importance of recording of provenance for three reasons…” but then among those he lists, Hooker totally ignores the most important of them, which is the context of deposition. This is of course the most fundamental of them all, and is behind the central issue that the digging up of archaeological sites and assemblages for collectables irreversibly destroys those sites and assemblages, for ever making impossible their use in gaining a fuller knowledge of the past than can be gained by the "study of objects themselves [...] within the context of similar objects regardless of their site context" (p. [10]). This is an issue which of course Hooker’s paper somehow completely avoids discussing…

In my opinion, most of this text is rather naive and superficial, though I am sure coin collectors will treat it very seriously. This is after all an official ACCG “White Paper”.

An unemployed metal detectorist of Cross Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, pleaded guilty on 16th March this year to five counts of fraud where thousands of pounds worth of forged coins were sold to dealers and private individuals across the UK . Last week David Hutchings, 43 was sentenced at Warwick Crown Court to six months imprisonment.

Hutchings had tried to offer seven coins to an Essex dealer: an Emperor thrymsa, a Merovingian Tremissus, a 'Biga' Stater, a Celtic Tasciovanus unit, a Celtic unit, a Tasciovanus quarter stater and a Cunobelinus quarter stater. He claimed that he had found the coins with his metal detector "at various times and locations". A sum of £2080 was agreed for their sale, however the dealer subsequently had concerns about their authenticity and asked the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge to check their authenticity. Experts at the Fitzwilliam and British museum confirmed they were all fake (for an earlier discussion of Mr Hutchings, see Cold Feet about some Finds).

Officers from the Met's Art & Antiques Unit then carried out a search under a warrant at Hutchings' home in Warwickshire. They seized several coins, his computer, various pieces of correspondence. Also found at Hutchings' home address during the search were a number of real coins, believed to have been used as patterns during the manufacture of some of the fake coins. Hutchings was arrested later the same day, on suspicion of fraud and money laundering.

The correspondence recovered from the search of Hutchings address indicated that he had sold other coins to unsuspecting individuals. Evidence was found of four fraudulent transactions involving fake coins:

- On the first of August 2007 Hutchings had sold a Two Emperors' Anglo-Saxon thrymsa coin to a Birmingham dealer for £400 cash. As provenance, he claimed that the coin was part of a hoard that had been declared to the British Museum.

- On 16th August 2007, Hutchings sold a 7th century gold thrymsa coin to a dealer in Aylesbury, claiming that it had been part of a hoard declared to the British Museum and sold it for £1500 cash, refusing to take a cheque as payment.

- On 21 August 2007, Hutchings sold the same Aylesbury dealer five coins for a value of £1800. Two were 7th or 8th century gold Merovingian Tremissis coins, two were ancient British silver units 1st century AD and two 7th century Anglo-Saxon thrymsa coins.

Experts from the British Museum and Fitzwilliam Museum assessed the coins recovered during these investigations and concluded that all had either been manufactured by casting in a mould or struck using forged dies.

Hutchings' defence throughout police interviews and at court, was that he bought the coins from two dealers 'Gary and Steve' believing they were all genuine. However, he was unable to identify either dealers whereabouts.

Detective Constable Ian Lawson from the Metropolitan Police Force's Art & Antiques Unit said: "Whilst the overall value of these coins is relatively low, the level of deception and harm Hutchings has caused the individuals and businesses embroiled in his lies is significant. The Art & Antiques Unit is dedicated to ensuring that our art and antiques heritage is not damaged by those who seek to steal, defraud or benefit from producing fraudulent copies."

There are several points here, firstly it is obviously very easy for the unscrupulous seller to pass any old coin off as one of a reported find while there is no detailed information available by which such checks can be verified. If the hoard or hoards had been reported to the BM, then there should have been records of this. Did the dealers try to check that the precise coins they were offered figured in such documentation? More to the point, one dealer was suspicious of the coins he had bought, two others were not and a series of fake coins had entered the pool of "pieces of the past" on the market to mislead future collectors and domestic "students of the past" (and these of course are just the transactions that the Met were able to trace through material found in that search in 2007). The fact that items offered for sale merely come from "a metal detectorist" is simply not enough to establish provenance and authenticity - after all, all those buying Bulgarian-made fakes on eBay also think they are coming direct from the diggings of Bulgarian "metal detectorists". The problem is that unrecognised as fakes they contribute to the building of society's picture of its past, and unverified and uncheckable records of the alleged 'findspot' (when available) contaminate the archaeological record.

Amazingly, the Metropolitan Police say "This is believed to be the first case of its kind". Take a look on eBay UK officers of the Met, plenty of work there for you! I know that several notorious dealers in fakes have been reported to the Met (with names addresses and details, at least once through the PAS) and the police have done nothing whatsoever about this. It is time to clean up the British antiquities market which harbours a lot of cheats and thieves - and its happening right under the noses of the archaeological (and museum) communities. Time to do something to stamp this out perhaps.

See here for Heritage Action's reaction to this news and comments on the way it was received by "heritage hero metal detectorists" in the UK.

Photo: Apparently one of the coins involved in the case (Metropolitan Police)

Over on the Moneta-L discussion list, Ross Glanfield asks: "Are you saying that it is legal to import coins into the U.S. that have been illegally exported from Bulgaria (or anywhere else)?" Now there's a leading question. Quick as a flash, Californian coin dealer and "collectors' rights" activist Dave Welsh of Classical Coins answered:

The law on this is complicated and in significant areas it rests upon rulings that have not been tested. Basically, it is unlawful to knowingly transport stolen property (or to conspire to do so) into the USA. The issue is what constitutes "stolen property." If there is no reason to suspect that a particular coin or group of coins has been smuggled out of a source state that controls exports, then bringing it into the USA in most cases would not be unlawful. My own personal standard is to avoid any situation involving importation of coins unless I know the source, and am confident that there is no reason to suspect that they have been smuggled.

The law is perfectly clear about "what constitutes stolen property". If the law says it belongs to somebody else and somebody takes it, it is stolen. A stolen car does not become an unstolen car just by driving it to another country. What Mr Welsh means is that he does not recognise the right of foreign countries (such as Poland by virtue of the 1928 and subsequent laws on the protection of the historical and cultural heritage) to declare certain resources the property of the state to be used for the benefit of all citizens. He wants to sell these very same types of items in California and questions whether any foreign government should have the right to want to see them put to another use. That is the whole rationale behind Mr Welsh's activism.

There is nothing wrong with Mr Welsh and his fellow antiquity dealers selling antiquities and antiques in the USA which can be documented as having left the source country legally. That is what we call the legitimate trade, and in reality nobody at all is concerned to put a stop to that (conflicting claims only derive from antiquity dealers' scare-mongering). The problem is however that dealers and collectors do not see any clear boundary between that legitimate market in items with secure legitimate provenances and the shady dealings of items without. It is here that all the self-justificatory arguments about "collectors' rights" and "irrational laws" and weasel-worded codes of practice come into play. They are the means by which collectors of portable antiquities are asked to engage in a game of self-justificatory self-deception to cover for the fact that part of this market is far from legitimate.

As for "If there is no reason to suspect that a particular coin or group of coins has been smuggled out of a source state that controls exports, then bringing it into the USA in most cases would not be unlawful". Well, that is nonsense. Each of those "source countries" that controls exports (which is what the 1970 UNESCO Convention [Article 6] requires of all states party anyway)issues export licences. Given the known extent of the illicit trade, any portable antiquity being offered on the market unaccompanied by an export licence or verifiable provenance placing its removal from the source country before introduction of export controls is indeed suspect. It is not buying "in good faith" to ignore that suspicion, it is simply self-deception.

The UNESCO 1970 treaty has an Article 13. It would be worth dealers and collectors in denial reading it (also they might note Art. 8) and considering what that actually means countries like the US and UK who are party to it should be doing . Should be, but are not (yet). Britain has its 'Dealing in Cultural Property (Offences) Act of 2003, the US has... well, what? The illicit trade in antiquities however does not exist in a vacuum, which suggests that the policy of the turning of a blind eye by unconcerned officialdom may well be due for revision.

Mr Welsh states that the policy of Classical Coins is; "to avoid any situation involving importation of coins unless I know the source, and am confident that there is no reason to suspect that they have been smuggled". I have on this blog (and before that on at least one forum) asked Mr Welsh about the bulk lots of coins of apparent Balkan origin he is currently offering for sale on his website. Now personally, I would think that anyone knowing what is going on in the Balkans would have very good reason to suspect that job lots of uncleaned coins recently (post 1990) offered on the market and apparently (mintmarks etc) coming from the region had been smuggled to wherever it was he bought them. In the current situation, that would seem to be an unavoidable suspicion. Only if the seller had a valid export licence for those particular coins could there be "confidence" that this was not the case. Mr Welsh however has several times declined to reveal the source of his "confidence" in this regard. Neither has he said anything which would suggest he knows their "source", indeed, he has several times explicitly stated that he believes that the great bulk of the coins on the market come from hoards "buried on the edges of battlefields" and are found by specialist hoard seekers searching with metal detectors well away from any known sites. These notions are pure fantasy and may be placed among such fairy stories as the coins coming from leprachauns and elves instead of site-trashing artefact hunters.

I have also asked about the Parthian coins being offered by the same "collectors' rights" activist-dealer on his website. No straight answer was forthcoming, merely an intimation that they had come "from Spain". Hmmm.

I would say that since Classical Coins is run by a vociferous "collectors' rights" activist intent on whitewashing the antiquities trade (at least that part of it that involves the coins he and fellow ACCG dealers sell), it is perfectly justifiable to ask for some explanation of the business practices behind the objects we see. So why is Mr Welsh so coy about stating the basis of his "confidence" that the removal of these items from the ground and the source country was in full accord with the law? For from a "collectors' rights" activist representing the hobby as a whole, we should surely be asked to expect nothing less.

But actually its not only the Law which should concern us. It is the broader ethical issues that we should not lose sight of here, and by bthis I mean an approach rather than weasel-worded dealers' "codes of ethics" which actually mean nothing.

This is an old story from the new York Times, but I found it when looking for something else, and it raised a few points, not to mention my blood pressure, so thought I'd write a few words in response.

THERE it was in a shop window, upside down and looking naked without its velvet mantle — the sacred emblem of the Jewish people treated like another heirloom, […] The students who spotted the forlorn Torah were quickly abuzz. They had just spent 10 days touring the infamies of the Holocaust in Poland — places like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Maidanek, the Cracow ghetto and several synagogues preserved in amber with no Jews left to worship in them. In a day, they would be leaving for Israel,[…] The students, 38 seniors at the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester [New York], noticed that by some force, which they took as divine playfulness, the scroll had been open to that week’s reading, the portion of Jethro about the giving of the Ten Commandments. “It was like the Torah was supposed to be found by us,” Rebecca Weintraub, 17, said from Israel by cellphone. The students informed their headmaster, Elliot Spiegel, and their Talmud teacher, Rabbi Harry Pell, and the next morning the two men visited the shop in Warsaw’s Old Town Square, American Express card in hand. […] Sure, Dr Spiegel had some qualms about the provenance, but it was certainly an old Torah. The price came to $14,500. The school has many affluent and generous families who will pay not only for the Torah but also for a restoration that could cost more than the purchase price. After all, the lessons to be learned, from the school’s point of view, are priceless.

Not however about the principles of hospitality. When you are a guest in somebody’s house surely you ask your hosts before carrying off any of their antiques. If what we read in the New York Times is true, this was not a lesson the 38 students of the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester took home with them it seems.

Leaving the antiques shop, Dr. Spiegel nestled the Torah in his winter coat and carried it on the plane to Israel, where the seniors are spending two more months. On their first Sabbath in a youth hostel, he took it out for an afternoon service…..

Photo: Janet Durrans for The New York Times

And the export licence? When was that obtained? The Polish legislation states quite clearly the procedure for issuing this document after ascertaining that the objects’s loss will not be to the “detriment of the national heritage”. This scroll certainly falls into the categories of items that are specifically noted as needing a licence [For Polish readers: USTAWA z dnia 23 lipca 2003 r. o ochronie zabytków i opiece nad zabytkami, (Dz. U. z dnia 17 września 2003 r.) Chapter 5, articles 51-61, there is an English version somewhere]. The New York Times article makes no mention of the export licence being granted in double-quick time by a helpful ministry (actually just 800 metres along the same road on the other side of the Old Town from the shop where they bought the scroll) so that they could take it away on the plane the next day.

I know this antiques shop well, and I also know the visitors with their American Express card intent on taking away an antique as a souvenir from Poland were severely ripped off (in addition, not everything sold in this shop is indeed what it is stated to be...). I know also that the shop also has a notice prominently by the door telling foreign visitors in English and German that they cannot export old items even within the EU without an export licence and where they need to go to get one. If these US tourists decided not to bother, they would have walked right past it with their new purchase hidden beneath a coat without a thought that their own personal needs and rights are not the only thing which matters.

Do Americans with their American Express cards think they can waltz in, buy up what they want and just cart it off, totally ignoring local laws? Why? Because these ones are Jewish? How long will it be before every single object of Jewish origin not nailed down is going to find its way by legal and illegal export out of the country that for seven centuries was homeland to generations of hundreds of thousands of Jews? Should there be no reminders left of the integral (even crucial) part this people played in the cultural mosaic of these lands? Are they to be wiped off the cultural map by the acquisitive needs of other communities seeking some ersatz roots of its own in imported relics of a foreign past? This is all the more important in that it is in the surviving small items associated with their everyday life that the memory is kept alive since the Nazi occupants of Poland destroyed so much of the built heritage of Jewishness.

I have nothing whatsoever against Jews in general (on the contrary in fact), I have nothing whatsoever against these old Torahs being used in modern worship, what I do however object to is the way that in this case and others like it, we seem to be seeing another manifestation of the “I want it and I’m going to have it, whatever your stupid laws say” attitudes we see among collectors. The people taking these things without even a by-your-leave from the state they are removing it from are inventing their own justifications for this. I bet this one goes like "You are not Jews, we are Jews, these things were made by Jews, so they are our heritage not yours". I think this raises some interesting questions about how complex a question cultural heritage is, and how easy it is for special interest groups to twist it and reduces the notion to some simplistic genetic formula ignoring the wider context. The Jewish heritage of Poland is part of the heritage of Poland which cannot be ignored just because there are so few practicing Jews here. Furthermore, it is the duty (and privilege) of Poland to take care of it by whatever means it can and is able to. It is also the right of the people who live in (and visit) Poland to be able to explore the Jewish heritage of Poland and its lands alongside that of every other group that has lived here (Germans, Tatars, Mennonites, the Bronze Age Lusatian Culture, Late Palaeolithic hunter groups and all the rest). They cannot do that if some other people guided only by self-interest have previously bought up all the spectacular and otherwise collectable bits and carted them all off to a variety of scattered places where it is inacessible from Poland.

Cultural heritage protection laws are established for a purpose, in fact for several. It is only the collectors' fantasy that their purpose is primarily "nationalist" (as James Cuno prompts them to say). The mere fact that Jewish manuscripts as well as German ones and much else besides totally unconnected with "Polishness" come under the Polish one is sufficient demonstration that these simplistic labels are totally misplaced. Their ONLY function is to serve the collectors as a means by which to convince themselves that these are "bad laws" which is their justification for ignoring them. Thus we have statements such as the following which has just now appeared on a collecting forum.

The laws in most of these source countries are irrational and deleterious across the board, hurting source countries themselves, the archeology community, and the collecting community, and throughout history irrational laws have routinely been broken.

There actually is nothing at all "irrational" in a state which values its heritage vetting what others want to take away from it, to selectively remove from the pool of items that can be available for public collections (and not forgetting private collectors) in that state. If the US tourists in Warsaw really did see the notice in the shop and nevertheless carry off their purchase without applying for a licence, they too presumably explained it away as being an "irrational law". Maybe they tried to convince themselves it was some nasty old reminder of Poland's "communist past" (which would be ahistorical, because the current law is from 2003). We notice also that in this case the exporters were trying to convince themselves that God Himself was ("playfully") telling them He wanted them to do this (how many times have we heard this "voices in ma' head made me do it" one?).

One function of these laws here is to prevent the removal from the country of almost every single example of the more commercially desirable types of item. The commission which meets to decide whether or not a licence is granted have in mind the need to retain in the country items which give a balanced picture of its overall heritage and not just the bits that nobody is interested in buying and carting off because they are damaged, excessively ugly and badly-made or whatever. Or fake; there is a lot of silver 'judaica' on sale in Polish antique markets and shops, despite some of it looking convincingly old, almost all of it is of very recent manufacture, the pre-War items have all been snapped up by foreign collectors. What actually is at all "irrational" in that?

From what I know of the workings of the process in Poland, an export licence would probably have been granted in this case and the students and staff of the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester would have had a legally exported Torah scroll to do whatever they want with. They only had to ask before "adopting" (their name for what they seem to have done) this item. As it is - to judge from the New York Times report - it seems they merely have one of the many thousands of illegally exported items of cultural property that is flowing out of some countries to those with greater purchasing power to the detriment of the material cultural resources for study, enrichment and education in the denuded "source countries". If so, I wonder how those “many affluent and generous families” feel about their kids’ school being involved in the illegal movement of cultural property. Is that what they sent them to Europe and Israel with the headmaster and Rabbi Pell to learn?

I'd be interested to hear from anyone involved in this and any of the parents of kids in that group or who paid for this scroll.

"Say "NO" to State Of Oregon - Senate Bill 64" urge the petition organizers. Certainly one for the ACCG to get involved in, surely it will not stand idly by while moves are underfoot to compel US finders by retentionist and "nationalist" laws to hand over relics to the state to be made available for study and archiving in public collections so everybody can enjoy them?

To: Oregon State House of Representatives
State Of Oregon - Senate Bill 64
In summary, it would stop all artifact collecting, metal detecting and relic hunting in the state, not just on public land but on private land. It makes it illegal for even a landowner to pick up artifacts on his own property. Anything of cultural patrimony cannot be removed without a permit. To get the permit requires a Masters Degree in Archaeology or a related field. Even with the permit everything has to go either to the appropriate Indian tribe or to the State Anthropological Museum. There’s much more…. But suffice to say it would be the death knell for collecting in Oregon and a bitter blow to private museums that rely on these folks to give them artifacts. It would also put an extremely heavy load on the State Historic Preservation Office which is already shorthanded. Sincerely, The Undersigned

Click on the signatures... Some of the comments are very revealing and rather comic in their own way. Also the prevalence of spelling mistakes suggests that in the US too (or at least Oregon) it could be largely people who in the immortal words of British Culture Minister David Lammy who "felt excluded by formal education" who take up portable antiquity collecting through the use of metal detectors.

Let's now see all those so concerned about "the past" start up another petition to augment the resources of the State Historic Preservation Office so they are not "shorthanded already". That too seems a matter of public concern does it not?

So basically what these people are all saying is that they do not want anything like the UK's treasure act or portable antiquities scheme, they just want the ability to claim the right to pick up, or dig up and carry away whatever they want without sharing it with anyone else.

Coin commemorating the Oregon Trail.

The shocking reports of a wedding massacre on Monday at Sultankoy in soon-to-be-EU member Turkey were very disturbing. Preliminary reports suggest it was the consequence of an ongoing feud between two families which seems in turn (at least according to the Guardian) to have had its roots in a conflict between the Turkish militia groups. This led me to wonder about the connection between these militia groups and the smuggling of antiquities (etc.).

I was reminded of Samarkeolog’s post made a year ago “Illicit antiquities trade: source, transit, market, mafia” on the on the “Human rights archaeology: cultural heritage and community” blog. This makes a few interesting connections and really should give pause for thought to all who handle ancient objects (such as coins) coming from this part of the world too. Into whose pockets is the no-questions-asked antiquities market putting money? Even if our various law-enforcement authorities are relatively unconcerned about the heritage issues, perhaps the apparent connections between this type of activity and other illegal (and more socially damaging) activities should, unless dealers and collectors do not 'clean their act up', lead to official concern and action.

Visualisation: The heroin transportation route running through several of the "source countries" for the ancient artefacts currently entering the no-questions-asked market. Its European leg, nicknamed "the Balkan route", passes through Turkey and the Balkans.

PS: You remember the insistence of US antiquities dealers that "Iraqi artefacts are not reaching the US markets"? Well take a look at the map and deduce one of the conclusions one might draw from that statement if true (though for reasons I have stated here, I do not believe it is). To be fair though, the map shows the situation before the US-led invasion which opened up Iraq to all sorts of illegal activity which was not going on before that to the same degree, so perhaps a newer map would show the drug trade routes going through that country now rather than around it.

[The map ultimately comes from here: Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 1998). "Europe and Central Asia: continuation, part 3". International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1997. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State. http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1997_narc_report/europ97_part4.html].

"The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum" a new book by Lawrence Rothfield presents the background to the events of April 2003 and the looting of the Baghdad Museum. An extract appeared today on the Iraq Crisis discussion list.

The failure to take steps to prevent the looting of the National
Museum ofIraq in Baghdad—and the less publicized, though far more devastating, ongoing looting of Iraq’sarchaeological sites—must be understood within this larger short-term context of failure to protect any number of arguably more important assets.

Rothfield shows that during the crucial early period of May–October 2002, however, no one involved in planning for the future of Iraq had a stake in cultural heritage. It simply did not register as an object of governmental concern, as something about which a policy needed to be designed. The writer places the blame on the lack of existence of a proper cultural heritage policy in the US itself:

This might not have been the case in many other antiquities-rich countries where cultural heritage enjoys a sustained high-level governmental presence in the form of ministries of culture, antiquities boards, and so on. Those cultural bureaucracies have the visibility, clout, and permanency to enable them to develop standing relationships, educational programs, and even integrated operations with military forces, all designed to promote heritage protection. [...] just as our military posture is different from those of other countries, so is our attitude to our heritage—and more generally, to our culture. American suspicion of governmental involvement in cultural matters is deeply engrained, enshrined in the First Amendment. Indeed, the quasi-official line has long been that America has no cultural policy; when in 1999 the Pew Charitable Trusts announced an initiative to shape one, the foundation was savaged as advocating a Soviet-style ministry of culture. This deep-rooted antipathy is reflected in the absence of any cabinet-level post representing the public interest in culture, and in the relatively minor roles in cultural life played by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the President’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee, and other minor federal or quasi-federal offices.Not only are America’s cultural bureaucracies weak, scattered, and uncoordinated, but they operate under very restricted mandates dealing with trade, conservation, domestic funding of the arts, and other peacetime issues affecting cultural goods. They are neither responsible for nor designed to address wartime or postwar situations. Consequently, governmental offices administering cultural heritage did not bring themselves to the attention of those planning for the upcoming conflict—even when working within the same agency.

Rothfield's analysis of the US situation may go some way to explaining why there seem to be the attitudes we find among collectors from the States about the archaeological resource protection legislation of other countries where such systems aree in place and better organized than in the USA. Does this failure to create a system make the USA more "enlightened" than those other countries, or the converse?

Qais Hussein Rashid, the acting director of the board of antiquities suggested that “Jews stationed with the Polish troops” might have been behind the recent damage caused to the ancient site of Babylon when a military base was built over it, and that they might have “deliberately singled out the site because of their captivity in Babylon” (Steven Lee Myers, Babylon Ruins Reopen in Iraq, to Controversy, New York Times May 2, 2009).

Well a minister of a government put in place precisely as a result of the 2003 invasion might try to think before he speaks to journalists in such an ignorant manner about the motivations of those soldiers.

Rashid should know that at the height of the 2003 campaign, Poland had 2500 troops in Iraq. According to the 2002 census there are just 1133 Jews in Poland today, that’s 29 in every million inhabitants – which makes them fifteenth down the list in ethnic minorities in Poland – below Germans (and 'Silesians'), Belorussians, Ukranians, Roma (Gypsies), Russians, Ruthenian groups, Lithuanians, Slovaks, Vietnamese, French, Americans, Greeks and Italians. So it’s pretty easy to work out that statistically there may have been a Jew or two in Poland’s army in 2003-8, hardly enough to influence the placement of military installations (which as regards Babylon, in any case the Poles took over from the US army) and be the brunt of Mr Rashid’s reported ignorant anti-semitic conspiracy theory.

It was just such a ridiculous thing to say. People in charge of heritage cannot afford to make such statements. It calls into question their competence to make any kind of informed judgement on heritage issues.

Robert Fulford agrees with James Cuno in the National Post. " The best place for 'looted' artifacts? Right where they are". According to Fulford, to question the accession policies of "major museums" can be dismissed as a comfortable amalgamation of "ideology, politics and bone-headed provincialism". I do not understand why Fulford puts the word "looted" in inverted commas. Does this mean that the Canadian journalist denies that there are objects on the market which are looted? If so, I wonder how much 'investigative journalism' lies behind that claim?

[Here he is playing down the scale of the Baghdad Museum looting: These days, no news can ever be good news, The National Post, 27 September 2003 - where he says the losses from the museum were "3000" and then "33" items: later stocktaking by Matthew Bogdanos and his men revealed that the actual number was something like 13140 objects taken, of which most of the smaller items have still not been recovered].

According to Evgenia Gencheva, an archaeologist of the Institute of Archaeology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, in an interview with Focus News Agency, the site of the Roman town of Ratiaria (Colonia Ulpia Ratiaria) close to the northern Bulgarian city of Vidin in north-western Bulgaria has now been absolutely destroyed (Alexander Shabov: ‘Ratiaria is the site most severely hit by treasure hunters in Bulgaria: archeologist’, Focus News Agency May 3rd 2009 ). It once was a capital of a Roman province an enormous, very rich town, a center of metalworking industry and other activities. It is also one of the areas most heavily hit by artefact hunters, including many of the 1,500 inhabitants of the village of Archar just by this site who made money by digging up and selling precious finds to middlemen who supplied the global no-questions-asked antiquities markets with a flood of small metal antiquities. This is despite the existence of archaeological resource protection laws which make such artefact mining illegal, and export procedures which are supposed to hinder it going abroad. Those involved in the process however pay scant attention to the law, those who have been buying these artifacts also. This artefact hunting began in 1990 just after the collapse of the “Iron Curtain” and the pillaging continued between then and 2000-2004. At that time it proved impossible to open a police station in the village of Archar, where Ratiaria is located, to protect the site. Gencheva asked whether the finds made by these artefact hunters have brought something beneficial to archeologists, she replied that she did not think they have. Like their counterparts in other countries, the artefact hunters gain access to the scientist’s information (made available to society as a whole) and abuse it in this way, targeting areas known to be productive of artifacts. In this way they did not discover any new information about the existence of sites, but destroyed any evidence that existed in them. “They have not unearthed something we do not know about,” she highlighted.

Of course all this digging and metal detecting use failed to find a single one of the ancient coins that have been flooding the US market, since... well, since about 1990... officers of the coin dealers lobby group ACCG assure us that the no-questions-asked sales methods of its members have nothing to do with this damage to archaeological sites, since the coins they sell were - they insist - buried in hoards at the edges of battlefields, or were brought to the market by elves, or something.

Photo: just one of the many treasure-hunters' holes in Archar (Photo: Valentina Petrova/AFP/Getty Images)

The second part of Jame's Cuno's new book (Whose Culture? The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities 2009) comprises three texts called “The Value of Antiquities” which in effect seems intended to be an attack on the fundamentals of archaeology - though I cannot see why anyone would be so philistine to do that. So it starts off with a text by James C.Y.Watt the head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Asian Art (sic) who makes known the extent of his knowledge and personal views on the value of archaeology. This is followed by Sir John Boardman about "archaeologists, collectors, and museums”. The third is a text by David I. Owen from Cornell called “Censoring Knowledge: The Case for the Publication of Unprovenanced Cuneiform Tablets”. In this it turns out he argues that archaeologists who do not publish unprovenanced cuneiform records lead to us "losing" a lot of information, and claims that this is in effect “censorship of knowledge”.

The author is one of the signatories of the 2006 statement of Harvard University archaeologist Lawrence Stager in the Biblical Archaeology Review urging the abandonment of the ethical stand of US archaeologists against adding to the value of unprovenanced items in the no-questions-asked trade by sanctioning them with an official publication (interestingly the link to the BAR page on this initiative is a dead one).

I wonder if apart from the inscribed and pictured goodies, these signatories would be so keen on publishing the vast numbers of other unprovenanced items dug out of their archaeological contexts in order to find and extract those cuneiform records – the tens of thousands of artifacts without writing or pictures on them? Once again we see the argument for toleration of archaeological destruction focusing on so-called “addressed sources” (items which by their nature were made in themselves to convey information, like coins and inscribed objects of various kinds). The vast majority of archaeological artifacts are non-addressed sources (i.e., were not primarily made to convey information). Of course in digging artefacts in general (and so of both kinds together) out of the archaeological record ‘blind’, archaeological evidence is destroyed without any returns whatsoever, and there is no way for the artefact digger to only disturb "addressed sources" without destroying in the process the context of the far more numerous non-addressed sources - not to mention seriously damaging the stratigraphical record of a site.

Objects without information about the context of finding are not just items which have lost their provenance. Their recovery and commodification in this manner has actively destroyed that information. The case that certain items with "writing and pictures" on them like coins, shabtis, cuneiform tablets, papyri can produce "some kind of information" is by no means justification for turning a blind eye to the utter destruction caused by the no-questions-asked antiquities market. Those who from the narrow viewpoint of their own discipline (numismatics, sfragists, cuneiform philology, papyrus studies) urge that we should turn a blind eye are simply refusing to accept their part in encouraging this type of trade.

The AIA publication ban has a point, it is argued that academic publication lends spurious legitimacy to these no-questions-asked purchases, it adds value to the objects. A good example of this is the willingness with which, in his desire to see new and previously unknown artefacts, Prof Wilfred Lambert (former professor at the University of Birmingham) will examine and comment on artefacts shown him by the antiquities trade (some turning up in the USA with documents contaiining his opinions). His handwritten or typed (sic) 'opinions' are seen in the trade as valuable documents, allowing clients to know what the writing or scenes represent, as a guarantee of authenticity, but also adding an air of legitimacy to an otherwise wholly dubious commodity. It is not true therefore that achaeologists as a whole are unwilling to examine such items. There are some who will. Personally, I have my doubts about the ethicality of what Professor Lambert is doing with these items, and wonder to what degree he is aware of how he is being utilised by the dealers with whom he has collaborated.

Owen’s seems a case of special pleading based on the specific characteristics of one small group of archaeological artifacts – it cannot serve as a pars pro toto argument to be applied to the whole issue of unprovenanced artefacts on the market. There is of course nothing stopping Owen from publishing the material which interests him in an English, German, Polish, Australian or Zimbabwean archaeological series. He can do it under an assumed name if he is afraid of the AIA "thought police" (or would that mean he cannot put these publications of "unknown sources" on his CV?). He can always join the IFA or EAA if he's worried about being kicked out of the AIA.

You know the rules to this game, you know who won previously and all that. All you have to do is say where this archaeological site is and what date it is (it's not a site I've mentioned here as a portable antiquities issue).

The colours really are like that, I think that's rather pretty, isn't it? Phil Barker always used to argue that archaeology is a very 'visual' discipline. There is an excavation going on in the upper right. That's the open sea by the way in case you could not tell.

Readers of the Cultural Resource Preservation literature cannot fail to have noticed that last year James Cuno, the director of the Art Institute of Chicago published a book Who Owns Antiquity? (2008) which was met with many serious criticisms (see a list of reviews in Looting Matters). Instead of answering these, Cuno subsequently over the next few months wrote a number of articles which merely reiterated the same arguments. Now his publisher has released another book of collected articles under Cuno’s editorship (several of which are outdated reprints) apparently making very much the same points, suggesting it is intended to provide a cover for the gaffe of writing the first book.

This work, Whose Culture? The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities (2009) has apparently been written with the intent of challenging “the perception of museums as rapacious acquisitors of ill-gotten goods and to argue instead that our public museums build their antiquities collections responsibly and for the public’s benefit”. This is all well and good, if museums really are acquiring their exhibits responsibly and curating them properly, then nobody has any doubt that museums are beneficial institutions in many regards. Institutions, indeed, with “promise”. What is in question, however, is the degree to which museums (worldwide) have been fulfilling these obligations over the past few decades. Clearly though, the answer is not simply to encourage the no-questions-asked collecting of so-called portable antiquities in scattered and ephemeral personal collections, which is what (as we all know) the pro-collecting lobby will be using Cuno’s book for, despite this not being the author’s intention.

Cuno's new book has just received a lengthy review by the indefatigable Kwame Opoku. (Whose “Universal Museum”? Comments on James Cuno’s “Whose Culture”?). Like most of his recent texts on these issues, it is a good read, (but a lengthy “fresh-pot-of-coffee, plump-up-the-cushions-first” one).

Dr Opoku is as we all know primarily interested in the restitution to their original cultural context of items taken from other countries (especially Africa) as a result of colonial attitudes – and their hoarding by the retentionist countries that hold them in their museums and will not give them back (which is an expression of the continuance of those attitudes). What is interesting though is the degree to which he finds that Cuno’s arguments for the continued expansion of “universal museums” overlap with those of private collectors of decontextualised archaeological artifacts as objects of commerce. It is therefore of interest to me because to a high degree the comments critical of Cuno apply equally to the views of the so-called “collectors rights” lobby in general.

In reading Opoku’s text, I highlighted a few fragments of text which I found significant from the latter point of view, and I'd like to add a few comments of my own to whet he wrote, so this is a sort of a review of a review. I am not sure I will be buying the latest of Cuno’s books, getting every single new work like this over here is an expensive game. Despite the advance of the discussion around them, it would seem that the pro-collecting literature also seems to be getting very repetitive and ultimately unsatisfactory.

Opoku starts off with a discussion of Cuno’s “Introduction” to the volume. He states: “The editor of Whose Culture? has an astonishing way of presenting statements that are wrong or only partially correct as if they described the obvious plain truth that everybody would accept without hesitation” and then discusses a few of them. These apparently include the tired old suggestion that modern societies really should have no claim to the archaeological heritage in the soil of the land they inhabit as they are not genetic descendants of the “vanished cultures”. This argument of the ‘Cunoites’ is of course the result of the application of nineteenth century views of identity based on genetic descent. It totally fails to take into account that in many branches of the humanities, after several decades of penetrating discussion of identity and ethnicity, we see the problem as a far more complex one including ideas about power of place and shared responsibility for care of the historic environment – developments that private collectors in general simply do not wish to consider.

Opoku writes: “Cuno is obviously a past master in misrepresenting the argument of others and in displacing the weight of the argument in directions that distort the real issue. He continues to misrepresent the main argument of the archaeologists against illegal diggings and the acquisition of unprovenanced objects. He creates the impression that archaeologists are against the acquisition of looted objects or objects without clear histories because they consider them to be of no great value or as not providing any valuable information”. Dr Opoku is no archaeologist, but can see the fallacy of this argument – as one would hope most educated people (the ones who are not portable antiquity collectors) can. Opoku realizes that the main concern of archaeologists “is that illegal diggings or looting deprive us of the possibility of studying artefacts in their context and that by removing these objects we lose valuable information which may never be recovered. Furthermore, the purchase of objects without clear history encourages plunder […]”. In a nutshell.

Opoku says that having ignored that issue totally, the art institute director “takes some pages examining famous objects which, according to present standards, were procured without any clear history, out of their context but have nevertheless provided useful information about the societies that produced them” including the Laocoön and Rosetta Stone as “examples of […] objects [that] would be, according to Cuno, regarded as meaningless by archaeologists and rejected as unprovenanced by today’s standards”. Really? Are archaeologists such an ignorant bunch of oiks that any of them actually would “reject” such items as “meaningless”? My question is however what meaning Mr Cuno would see in a rimsherd of Dragendorff form 29 terra sigillata? (One of my personal favourites and relatively chronologically and functionally distinct), or a coarseware cooking pot base with burnt food residue in it.

Opoku rightly observed that the function of Cuno’s paper tiger argument is to shift the weight of the argument of the archaeologists “from the damage and loss that unlawful digging causes to archaeological sites and placed on the value of the single object or objects looted”. As Dr Opoku points out, this seems like the sort of twisted logic we hear all to often from the pro-collecting bunch, who simply fail to address the core issues (and one cannot but conclude that this is deliberate).

Opoku points out that the common ploy of the pro-collectors’ “rights” lobby of placing all the blame for their woes on (“elitist, ivory tower”) “archaeologists” who – it is argued - have some other “agenda” than merely preserving archaeological sites from plundering, is also a false one. “What is not said in all these comments is that it is not only the archaeologists who wish to preserve such sites but also lawyers, administrators and a whole lot of others”. I would guess many educated members of the public too would prefer the archaeological heritage from the countryside around their homes being used to enrich knowledge about the history of the area (for them, their children and children’s children), rather than merely helping contribute to the back-payments on some antiquity seller’s new Porsche.

Opoku notes that “the retentionists of looted artefacts, have a very remarkable facility of attributing to all those who seek the recovery of their cultural artefacts a political motivation or design. This is assigned without any reference or relevant information from the persons concerned but solely on the basis of the statement of the retentionists”. An example of this is the alleged way in which laws protecting the archaeological heritage serve “to support a state’s nationalist political agenda: its claim on cultural continuity since antiquity […] archaeology and antiquities at the service of modern nationalist identity politics”. As Opoku notes, “it is doubtful whether many intelligent people would accept this misleading picture by Cuno and his supporters”. I wonder how many of Cuno’s supporters in the collecting world would care to apply his arguments to the USA’s own 1979 Archaeological Resource Protection Act and the fates of the cultures of various groups of Native Americans. That certainly would place a different slant on a model which so far is (disgracefully) being applied by US collectors only to the culture and identity of an “other”. Opoku summarises his comments by saying that Cuno’s introduction “clearly does not provide anything new except more attacks on the archaeologists and those he regards as nationalists”. Nothing new in that then, that is all the pro-collecting lobby can manage also.

In order to bolster his own atavistic views, Cuno enlists the help of a few similar-thinking museum directors and scholars, the first part called (collectors should note) “The Value of Museums”, consists of articles by Neil Macgregor, Phillipe de Montebello (both originally delivered at a 2006 Association of Art Museum Directors conference), and Kwame Anthony Appiah (the latter as David Gill has noted is a reprint of an article available online here).

The second part of the book (entitled “The Value of Antiquities”) contains three texts pointing out what in the views of their authors we can learn from unprovenanced artefacts, even if we do not know their archaeological context. James C.Y.Watt (Chairman of the Metropolitan's Department of Asian Art ) apparently reckons (“Antiquities and the Importance - and Limitations - of Archaeological Contexts”) that archaeological context is more important in the case of early historical periods but this importance diminishes with time and “after arriving at a critical point in the accumulation of archaeological data of a certain type of site of a certain period, further excavation data becomes (sic) superfluous” (!). As an archaeologist, both of these reported statements seem utter nonsense to me - does he really say this? The contribution by Sir John Boardman, entitled “Archaeologists, Collectors, and Museums” is another of those reprints so adds nothing we’ve not heard before to the debate, it is a repeat of his criticism of fellow archaeologists (not all of it undeserved) we are already familiar with from this classicist. I’ll probably discuss the notions behind the third (Owen) in another post here.

Part Three is called “Museums, Antiquities, and Cultural Property” which has three texts purporting to examine the nature of cultural heritage and the underlying philosophical and political currents. Two of its three articles ( Gillman and Merryman) are also reprints.

Dr Opoku criticizes Cuno for his statement “Some readers will be disappointed that not “all sides” of the debate are presented here. It is our view that other books already do this and well enough that we needn’t repeat the “both sides of the argument” formula here”. He comments that this statement of Cuno “sounds like an open abandonment of all pretence to objectivity and impartiality”. I see nothing wrong in this. Many onlookers may of course be undecided and confused by opposing arguments they cannot place comfortably in context maybe. Nobody seriously involved in the discussion can seriously claim to be impartial in this debate where totally opposing interests are confronted in the no-questions-asked market and collecting of portable antiquities. What however is disappointing is that there already other books (including Kate Fitz Gibbon (ed.) Who owns the past: Cultural Policy, Cultural Property, and the Law - Rutgers University Press 2005) which presents the ACCP/ collectors’ “rights” arguments in an equally partisan manner (just as there are many more which present the views of the resource conservation lobby), but Cuno and Princeton University Press have in effect produced nothing new. It’s the same old arguments, the same dialogue of the deaf, the same pars pro toto and straw man constructions being churned out – and totally ignoring the fact that a number of perfectly pertinent questions were raised in response to Who Owns Antiquity? One may only charitably suspect that for some reason Princeton had signed a contract with Cuno for this second book well before the extent of the critical comment on the first book became obvious. Does this mean we can expect a third one in the series? A Cuno Trilogy where in the final (?) one Cuno does his best in the spirit of academic enquiry (as would befit a book published by Princeton University Press) to seriously address at last the questions raised by the first two?

The Los Angeles Times has an article about the Getty (Getty Trust to slash budget and lay off 97 workers April 27, 2009) about the effects of the current US economic crisis on the institution. Besides running a museum of classical 'art', pre-20th century European art and and photographic art some of it in a replica Roman villa (!), the J. Paul Getty Trust issues grants to other arts institutions and operates institutes dedicated to art research and global programs in art conservation.

The Trust has announced that under a newly adopted budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year that begins July 1, it will slash its workforce by 14%. Among other things the cuts will include reductions in the amount of money the institution spends on acquisitions of more ancient Greek and Roman antiquities. That at least is good news for the archaeological heritage of the “source countries”.

The ‘Silence Dogetty’ blog makes depressing reading, it is a blog for Getty Museum employees on the eve of the decisions concerning the staff cuts that were announced at the end of April, and immediately following. The posts are all anonymous. Those of us who have been in the same position (and who has not?) can sympathise. One comment (April 28th 7:13 AM) caught my eye:

Where could the Getty be at this point if we had not spent millions – MILLIONS – in antiquities acquisitions that have been returned to the countries of origin? It’s not like we didn’t know that these acquisitions were high risk. Talk about
bad stewardship of resources! Has anyone assumed responsibility? Only Marion [Marion True PMB] made the scapegoat - where was the Board? Not use wondering
now, but perhaps we can draw a lesson for the future about thinking about consequences down the line.

Consequences of course not just for the Getty and its staff.

Sunday, 31 May 2009

Thursday, 28 May 2009

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