Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues

Having built this new museum for the Elgin Marbles, the Greeks have managed to rustle up one or two British journalists credulous or naïve enough to write articles calling for their return. But if anyone thinks the building is ever going to house anything other than the plaster casts that are on display there
now, they are hopelessly out of touch with reality. There is virtually no chance that the director or trustees of the British Museum, now or in the future, will comply with this outlandish demand.

Thus writes the Telegraph's outspoken art critic Richard Dorment. "The Greeks should erect a statue of Lord Elgin near the Parthenon to express their nation's gratitude to him for saving the Marbles", he says "instead of whining about events that happened more than two centuries ago, perhaps the Greek ambassador should formally thank Britain for displaying the marbles in those beautiful galleries at the British Museum".

He ends predictably: "Let the new museum stand as a monument to the futility of cultural nationalism — in this case trying to claim back something that by now belongs to the whole world". [Well, the British Museum at any rate, and of course the Torygraph never expresses any nationalistic sentiments of its own does it?].

The Parthenon marbles are a case which shows that any "antiquity" can be made "portable" if you cut it into suitably sized pieces. Like all "portable antiquities", they do not make full sense when individual "displayable" bits are taken out of the context of the rest of the assemblage. The overused term "cultural nationalism" does not seem to have much sense here. In fact, one might reflect that it does not ever have much sense when applied to the removal of material from a country when it is self-evident that this is reducing to a significant degree the size and scope of the resource of such material available for study, collection and display within that country. Is trying to reduce or even reverse the process in itself "nationalism"? James Cuno and no-questions-asked collectors would prefer people to think it was, I wonder whether they could give us a more precise definition of what they mean by the use of the term. Probably not.

The coineys like to pretend that "archaeologist Barford knows nothing about ancient coins" which is as illogical as it is presumptuous and insulting. As it happens, it was me and not they who solved the sixtieth WOGE on Nathan Elkins' "Numismatics and Archaeology" blog, and answered the additional numismatic question related to it.

So here is WOGE 61, it is connected in a not-so roundabout way with the topic of a recent post here, so in addition to the usual stuff incorportated in the rules of this game, I'd like to hear from the winner the connection they perceive.

North is at the top, the frame here is about 350 metres across. Colurs more or less 'as is', though rendered a little more contrasty to pick out some of the features.

In this game heap-of-loose-ancient- coins-on-a-table numismatists or absolvents of the ACE program[me] can also take part ( apart from Nathan I do not recall there being numismatist or a (declared) ancient dugup coin collector among the winners , I stand to be corrected). So, Mr Tompa, Sayles, Welsh all the rest of you who pretend not to be reading this blog, let's hear from you. It should not be at all difficult for you.

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There is a remark on the Yahoo Ancient Artifacts forum that is worth a brief comment. The author of the post, a collector mentioned in these pages earlier, says that collectors of portable antiquities can all agree that an attempt should be made to stop the on-going destruction of archaeological sites by looting to supply the antiquities market.

"the question is what the effective means to achieve it are. To demonize collectors of antiquities does not work I think, even though clearly the antiquities market is part of the problem. [...] But as the antiquities market is not going to disappear any time soon the solution must be to work with the market instead of against it".

I ask why, instead of the other way round, "the market" cannot work with the preservationists, governments and museums. Why is it that collectors and dealers always expect everybody else to accept their no-questions-asked approach and compromise, when it is the compromise itself that is allowing the damage to continue? Time and time again we see from collectors the attitude that if the preservationists, if governments, want things to change in the antiquities market, then it is up to the preservationists and governments to present a solution to the collectors on a plate (like setting up recording systems and financial incentives). The proviso is that these solutions cannot involve the dealer or collector is any additional effort or resposibilities, and must allow the continuance of the current status quo in the market. Forums like Unidroit-L and Ancient Artifacts are full of such demands made by collectors. I have commented on some of them here.

The attitudes of the naysayers of the no-questions-asked advocacy need no demonisation from me, they only need to be pointed out and their loud demands and denials speak for themselves, it is they that form the public image of "collectors of portable aniquities". If other more ethical collectors are unhappy about the image they create, they need to speak out more against the naysaying troublemakers in their midst. Nobody can discuss their views if they stay silent.

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Here is a metal detecting video from England ("Buried Treasure" by Andy and Dave Holton) which sort of sums up the ethos of looking only for buried metal items to keep and ignoring what they are buried with. It also shows what opinion some Brits have of "metal detectorists" and what they are up to (the authors of this film are obviously not metal detectorists, the sweep technique is wrong and nobody goes metal detecting in white trousers).

EBay seller mickymoor of Durham is selling nine coins which he describes as a "small hoard of 9 Roman bronze coins" -

This auction is for Small Hoard of 9 Roman Bronze Coins found at the Water Newton Metal-Detecting Rally 2 years ago and just returned/disclaimed from the British Museum, buy with confidence, just look at my Feedback

The seller is careful to note in answer to a question from a "John", that "water newton is in cambridgeshire, they were found 2 fields away from the roman town and declared".

That would be somewhere in the centre of this Google Earth frame then which covers the area which was denuded of metal finds in the 2007 commercial artefact hunting rally. The scheduled site of the Roman town of Durobrivae is marked with the placemark. The (reported) site of the famous Water Newton Hoard is just off the centre of the upper edge of the frame:
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They were declared to the British Museum under the Treasure Act, but the mere holding of a commercial artefact hunting here was in itself controversial, as was the involvement of British archaeologists in the process. Anyhow, it is interesting to note that this particular participants' attendance was not to "learn about the history" of the region as the pro-collecting propaganda of the time would have it (it is 259 km from Durham to Water Newton), but apparently to find stuff to flog off. The seller's other items are here.

They include:

3 Pieces of Viking Hack Silver/ 1 Piece Tin/ 1 Piece Bronze.
this is from my old collection and was bought many years ago at london coin sales. sorry no province.[sic] This Has Been Rcorded With The Local FLO And Disclaimed.

Which I guess is not surprising for a group of items bought in "London coin sales" and about which there is no information whatsoever concerning its origin. There are seeral other pieces on offer "from my old collection".

There are seventeen hours to go, and some of the items on sale have attracted a number of bids. Let us take note of the derisory prices some people are offering to get their hands on little bits of "dugup" history. The archaeological record is being dug up piecemeal and sold off for a song.

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The ACCG shows signs of exasperation in their efforts to win minds and hearts and overthrow the law with their illegal coin import stunt. Readers will know that Missouri coin dealer Wayne Sayles, the unelected executive director of said lobby group, has an “Ancient Coin Collecting” blog (which has just undergone a facelift from that morbid black - maybe now we'll even have some posts on it about ancient coin collecting). On it he frequently discusses matters connected with maintaining the status quo in the no-questions-asked ancient coin market. Thus it was that this morning I woke up to find there another attack on the writer of these words - this seems to be becoming rather a tradition among US coin collectors and British "metal detectorists".

Mr Sayles' new post is called “Archaeologist defends State Department Secrecy” and it is the usual stuff. Its author justifies its tone by pointing out that “the controversial Barford paints” ancient coin collectors and dealers,”as looters and criminals”. I rather think he is simplifying my arguments somewhat. Apparently:

hot on the heels of Obama administration guidance that transparency is the new order of the day, archaeologist Paul Barford has defended DOS refusal to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.

have I? Frankly, I do not care a bit what documents the State Department show Mr Sayles and his coin collecting mates or the Belgian coin dealers’ association, or the big auction houses and petty dealers financing this FOI suit. I think their lawyers and employees are obviously having great fun leading them a merry dance for their members' misspent money. What I find ironic is what this is all ultimately about.

It is about transparency. The coin dealers do not want to have to show US customs one of two types of pieces of paper when bringing ancient coins from certain source countries into the US. They do not want to have to reveal to their customers where the objects they are selling come from. The whole global antiquities trade is built on secrecy, on the right of the dealer to withold information when a specific commodity (antiquities) is concerned. In other words on a lack of transparency. This is important as it is under such conditions that looted and smuggled material can easily enter the market and generate revenue for those involved in the looting process. Having more transparency and accountability in the antiquities trade would greatly reduce the possibilities for this to happen.

The introduction of import restrictions which requires demonstrating licit origins of selected types of artefact is obviously perceived by those opposed to these measures as threatening the introduction of transparency into the trade, and so one may deduce that this is the reason why coin dealers are particularly concerned. They presumably see this as the thin end of the wedge which could lead (together with public concern about its place in encouraging looting) to the end of the no-questions-asked buying and selling of archaeological artefacts.

ACCG Executive Director Wayne Sayles has a business selling ancient coins. It can be found by going to ACCG president Bill Puetz’s V-coins portal described as the "ethical alternative to ebay". There we see that Mr Sayles currently has several thousand items on sale. Clicking on the majority of the items being sold on V-Coins by Mr Sayles will not reveal any information whatsoever on their provenance or pedigree. Why not? Where is this transparency Mr Sayles is so concerned about? Mote and beam come to mind here. Why is he acquiring for resale ancient artefacts which he transparently cannot state frankly and openly where they come from? Why the secrecy (which one might say is similar to that attributed by him to the US State Department) over this? If we demanded "Freedom of Information" from Mr Sayles, I wonder how much information would be forthcoming about where those items came from and in what circumstances they left the source countries?

What is interesting in all this is that the ACCG and PNG are not by any means the only North American trade associations involved in the dealing in items covered by the implementation of the CPIA. There are a number of antique and antiquity dealers’ associations for example. How have their members reacted to the requirements that in importing certain types of art objects into the US [such as ethnographic objects and certain paintings like Cypriot icons], they have to show a piece of paper? Are they too trying to overturn the law? Are they too attacking people for saying it is a good thing that there is a bit of transparency in the trade of such items? Well (I am sure Mr Sayles will correct me if I am wrong), there does not seem to be a parallel move from US dealers in these types of material to the actions being taken by US coin dealers. Why not? So what makes coin dealers think they are in any way special?

Predictably, Mr Sayles applies the "Petrarch collected coins" argument in summing up what he'd like his readers to believe this is about:

Representing the views of a venerable 600-year-old hobby and its modern adherents, the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild is challenging what it sees as bias leading to arbitrary and capricious actions on the part of the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

This has nothing to do with any altruistic challenge to "arbitrary and capricious actions", it is about defending the no-questions-asked market in antiquities. It is about defending the lack of transparency in this particular segment of the market. The question is, is this whole action ultimately to the benefit of ethical collectors or merely the less-than-fastidious importers?

Mr Sayles provided a link to a Google search for "State+Department+secrecy". Here are the corresponding results for "antiquity+collecting+secrecy" and "antiquity+dealing+secrecy". The vignette shows the ACCG defending the non-transparency of the no-questions-asked antiquities trade .

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In contrast to the „dig-em-up and sell-em-off” attitudes of the pro-collecting lobby, independent filmmaker Gray Warriner writes that in the United States “Current laws are inadequate to protect antiquities” (Salt Lake Tribune 26th June 2009). In a well-written essay he argues that “demand powers the antiquities market; driven by auctioneers, wealthy collectors and a global clientele”. He points out that “we are about the only civilized nation in the world that allows this unrestricted, unrepentant erasure of history. Inadequate laws have created a thriving business in backhoe archeology and looting on both public and private lands”. [It must be added that they are behind the attitude of total disregard for the erasure of the archaeological record of other regions by commercial artefact mining that we see in the words of US collectors and especially dealers]. Warriner points out that “Some may not feel archeological preservation laws are important, but like all laws it is not our personal liberty to pick and choose which we obey or ignore”, but that is exactly what collectors do.

Describing the pulic/private land loophole in the current law, Warriner asks:

Why is it consistently so hard to muster a little public backbone and say enough? We've done it before. In the early 1900s, songbirds were being slaughtered to provide colorful feathers for women's hats and feather boas. Entire species teetered on the edge of extinction. At that time, we the people said no to fashions that kill because we could see the eventual outcome. If we can save songbirds and eagles by enacting clear, unambiguous laws that just say no, we can certainly do the same thing for prehistoric artifacts. Artifacts and ruins are finite, and the story they tell is in danger of being lost and gone forever. The overarching truth is that our antiquities laws are political compromises and doomed to fail. It is time to declare artifacts off-limits for private possession, period. This century-old cat-and-mouse game (requiring expensive law enforcement, sting operations, and prosecution dollars) won't slow down until the money flow diminishes or until all of our artifacts and history are stolen. At present, the laws are almost unenforceable in the vast canyon country of Utah and the Southwest. Professional diggers systematically work this giant loophole for treasure, buying and exploiting properties and then moving on to the next ruin. Call it what it is; legalized theft. It needs to be addressed, once and for all, or we will never be able to protect our past from ourselves.

Let us hope that other voices will be found to address this problem. By all means let us also hear the collectors argue their case for their position that this kind of exploitation of the archaeological record should be totally legalised and bring the collectors' "dig-em-up-regardless-and-sell-them-to-me" attitude into public scrutiny in the US.

The libertarian Las Vegas Review-Journal on Jun. 21, 2009 published an (unsigned) editorial "Do the feds own everything?". In it we read:

"Pot hunting" is legal on private land; it is considered a crime on lands controlled by the government. But the tiny ratio of private to "government-controlled" land in the West would be considered outrageous anywhere else. No one is endorsing wanton vandalism of such sites or artifacts. But it would be useful and realistic if a cooperative, rather than an adversarial, approach allowed quick surveys of such sites, with the most archaeologically promising being set aside for near-future professional digs, with residents told "Harvest the rest if you can".[my emphasis]

"Harvest the rest"? The article is unsigned, but it is a fair assumption that its author has few sympathies for or connections to Native Americans or US archaeologists and conservationists (let us recall that the Archaeological Resources Protection Act does not onlyprotect sites on public land). But apart from the author's outrage that more state-owned land in the region is not sold off to private owners, what lies behind this suggestion? It seems the author is convinced that the justification for digging over archaeological sites in theregion is that the owners of these "bowls, stone pipes, sandals, arrowheads and pendants", the Anasazi "abandoned them, perhaps more than a thousand years ago". So it's finders keepers then. It comes down to property rights and salvage law. The author argues that if these objects are left untouched in the ground, those boring old archaeologists will not come and dig them up right away, but the evidence of past lives will remain unexplored in the ground, until it is "most likely" eroded out,"to be trampled by animals, washed away in the next rains". Obviously the writer does not regard the archaeological evidence of the site being dug through to get a few saleable collectables to sell to a no-questions-asked buyer for a few thouand dollars any kind of threat (presumably "private enterprise"). In fact it seems the writer sees the problem as consisting only of what to do with the "portable antiquities" ("bowls, stone pipes, sandals, arrowheads and pendants") rather than one of conserving ancient sites so they do not suffer unmitigated erosion and looting.

This is the sort of thing that the unthinking propagation of the Portable Aniquities Scheme approach leads to. Peter Tompa is a great fan of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, though it is clear that like many of its US promotors with no real understanding of the issues behind it. He writes:

Perhaps, federal authorities should consult with Roger Bland and the PAS to see if that program might provide some ideas for what can be done in the American Southwest [...]. There should be some way to balance the interests of Native Americans, archaeologists, pot hunters interested in local history and the Federal Government outside the purely punitive approach exemplified by the raids in the Four Corners area.

I would indeed welcome hearing what Roger Bland would recommend as a remedy here, liberalise all the heritage protection laws in the US in order tha local pot diggers can "harvest" the bits of the archaeological record that archaeologists have not scheduled to dig up this year or next year? Mr Tompa represents pot hunters as only "interested in local history" (a PAS mantra) when the Blanding "Action Cerberus" was of course aimed entirely at people that were selling their "dugups", and for no small sums of money.

I think the ACCG and the rest of us really should hear from their numismatic "friend" what the PAS position would be here. Would the PAS be for punishing illegal digging of Native American sites and graveyards for collectables, or would it urge a way to "balance the interests" of collectors and the antiquities trade in the American Southwest as Mr Tompa suggests? Since the ACCG seem to feel free to speak for the PAS to an international audience in matters like this, I think we have a right to know what position the PAS itself holds on such matters.

It is nice to look at the comments to that editorial to observe just what kind of company Mr Tompa is with thoughts like he has.

Photo: Native American (Caddo) cemetery recently "harvested" by artefact hunters. Is this what the ACCG have in mind?

The American coin sellers' lobby group, the Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild is not known for issuing clear and unambiguous statements. In the long long post ('Questions and Truth') by its executive director last night complaining about something my colleague Dr David Gill wrote, we have a number. The one that caught my eye concerned the (Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC):

The truth is that CPAC did NOT restrict the import of ancient coins minted in Cyprus. CPAC voted against adding coins to the extension of the existing MOU. The U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs added coins on its own volition, disregarding the advice of its own advisory committee.

Now wait a second, that is a committee that advises the coin trade or is that a committee that advises the President or his designee? How does Mr Sayles know what they recommended? Previously the ACCG has been very ambiguous about what it believes to be the case, now we have a clear statement, the ACCG knows what the Committee advised the President. Mr Sayles is not a member of the CPAC, and even if he was, would he be authorised to reveal the results of the voting and the contents of its report? After all, according to the State Department,

Given the confidential nature of the government-to-government communications to which they are privy, members of the Committee are special employees of the Department of State, receive a security clearance, and are bound by the laws and ethical guidelines by which all Department employees abide.[my emphasis]

Let's also take a look at the The Federal Advisory Committee Act . That raises some "questions", I guess the upcoming trial resulting from the illegal coin import stunt will reveal more than one "truth" about the coin trade in the United States.

ADDENDUM 29.06.09
Mr Sayles has challenged my account, stating "Making such claims without a credible basis would certainly be enough to submarine [sic] the integrity of any genuine [sic] academic" and "As usual, Mr. Barford is way out of his league and is just shooting wildly from the hip with no concern for, or concept whatever of, truth". Apparently in the USA they don't do irony, so Mr Sayles perhaps failed to recognise it. He might have looked a bit deeper in my blog, for example at the post "leaky old CPC - mystery solved" before accusing: "Mr. Barford obviously did not read the filings in the current law suit that ACCG provided " since there was a post (blog readership in Foggy Bottom) discussing them after I did indeed read them.

Let us note however the subtle difference which obviously escaped Mr Sayles. Mr Sayles does not in the post to which I refer give the source of his unambiguous statement - which is what I was querying. In the discussed statement, Mr Kislak says he"believed" that there was a discrepancy between what his committee determined and what the State Department decreed. In his statement, Kislak urges that the documents be made available in full and compared, Sayles jumps the gun and tells us what (in his opinion) such a comparison will show. My question again, how does Mr Sayles know? Question two, under what circumstances was Mr Kislak asked to make his statement, by whom, when and on what basis? In other words, had Mr Kislak been in touch with the dealers' lobby earlier (when?) about this matter, and in what capacity?

As for Sayles' statement "the State Department took the rare and unusual step of publicly proclaiming, apologetically in a way, that it has a right to override CPAC recommendations". TheACCG's legal advisors will confirm that this is precisely what the Federal Advisory Committee Act says at the beginning, I do not think there is anything "apologetic" about that, neither does it need any of Mr Tompa's conspiracy theories to explain why. Coins are archaeological artefacts whatever the CPAC may "recommend" to the President.

As I said earlier, I too would like to see the whole report as if the differentiation of the treatment of ancient coins from any other ancient "dugup" metal artefacts is recommended to the US President, then it would seem to me that the CPAC were not doing their job properly. If this is for some reason what they decided, that in itself would be a biased ("arbitrary and capricious") opinion, and I think we have every right to ask on what basis it would have been taken, and make them answerable for it.

Photo: the CPAC in session. Manuscript collector Jay Kislak in the chair.

The executive director of the Ancient Coin collectors' Guild Wayne Sales, criticising Dr David Gill's "ignorance and malevolence" states

The ACCG has always condemned illicit digging on archaeological sites.

In actual fact I cannot see that explicit statement on their website. Perhaps they should remedy this and at the same time issue a firm statement whether they condone their members buying coins and other artefacts which seem likely - given the current state of the no-question-asked market- to have come from such illicit digging. Recommending in no uncertain terms that the ethical collector takes all possile steps to ensure that they are not contributing to the process by being even if inadvertantly) a consumer of its products.

Sayles asks apparently rhetorically whether even if the ACCG/PNG/IAPN lawsuit against the US government "were commercially motivated, so what? Is commerce immoral or against the law?" (see also ACCG's former president Tompa on this). Well, of course the answer is that if that commerce is generally believed to be financing, aiding and abetting the destruction of an important and finite resource, the the answer is yes, it is immoral. When those involved in such commerce could well take steps to minimise their participation in the destruction of archaeological sites for merely commercial reasons, then, yes, it is immoral if it does nothing. If however an enlightened nation sets up some system to aid another country cut down on the erosion f its archaeological heritage by the market, and a grouop of dealers and selfish collectors fight it in order to overturn it, well, that would be immoral too would't it?

Mr Sayles and the ancient coin collectors of the United States and Belgium can call the preservationists all the names they want. They usually do. It does not make what they are engaged in any the more moral. Indeed it shows the world all to clearly how limited the sense of morality of ancient coin collectors is.

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The destruction of archaeological sites and assemblages in the search for collectable artefacts, which is accompanied by a huge loss of knowledge is a global problem of increasing severity that few people aware of it would deny. In recent years there has been a move away from the nineteenth century collecting ethos which in effect lasted until the middle of the last century, now many public institutions like museums adopted effective ethical codes and together with them more stringent acquisitions policies. By this means they intend to reduce the role that their acquisitions of recently surfaced antiquities had been playing in this destructive process.

Unfortunately outside these circles there remain a minority (composed mainly of private collectors and especially dealers who make their money from comercialising decontextualised archaeological artefacts) who refuse to recognise the need to change the ethics of the way they handle archaeological materal. These naysayers pretend looting is not a problem and nothing to do with the antiquities trade. They assert that neither dealers or private collectors should not be held to or practice any due diligence standards. It goes without saying that this obstructive mentality is a stumbling block to any progress in reducing the damage done year in and year out by the digging for artefacts to supply the no-questions-asked market. In the maintenance of the detrimental status quo, dealers and collectors of the United States are especially vociferous, and there is clarly a massive drain of the global historical heritage to the hungry markets of that country.

In the past few years the United States has come to an agreement with a number of neighbouring countries that it will apply import controls on antiquities deriving from those countries. This means that import of such objects into the United States will only be considered lawful if they are accompanied by documentation which shows they had been legitmately exported from them.

One would have thought that collectors from that country would have welcomed such moves, after all, who would want to buy illicitly exported items? While these restrictions affected material like pre-Columbian ceramics and textiles, collected only by a minority of specialist US collectors, there was relative calm. Things changed dramatically in 2007 when one of these import restrictions affcted ancient coins. Collectors of ancient coins in the US for some reason do not regard the objects they covet as archaeological artefacts (the logic of this escapes everyone except coin dealers). They also regard themselves as some kind of cultural elite whic they represent as somehow spreading enlightenment in a world of declining standards by their altruistic collecting activities. These "benefits" are enough - they say - to counter all the arguments of the preservationists (who they accuse of ulterior motives, malevolence and incompetence).

So it is that US (and Belgian *) coin collectors decided to overturn the decision of the Bush government of the United States of America. they want a court to be caused to rule that it was "unlawful" to declare coins archaeological artefacts in the was that was done in the case of Cyprus and China.

David Gill has now produced a brief introduction to this topic which should reach a wider public than the blogs and other discussions we take part in over this issue. His post to the PR Newswire "Why are ancient coins from Cyprus featured in a suit against the US Department of State?" links to his cleverly-titled and informative blog"Looting Matters" from which the interested reader can explore the issue themselves. Of course the "coiney" lobby is unlikely to be best pleased by this. I think Dr Gill can expect some more of the name calling and unpleasantness which seems to be all that the US coin collecting lobby is capable of these days.

* who knows where they came into the equation, but how ironic it is in the light of a certain commentator's misgivings about "foreign organizations" allegedly interefering in the doings of the US no-questions-asked antiquities market.

The problem of the destruction of archaeological information by individuals digging up archaeological sites to gain collectable artifacts for entertainment and profit is not restricted to a few continents and countries with ancient civilisations. Like the United States, Canada too has problems with artefact hunters like pot diggers acting illegally (Dustin Walker, Archeologists mum about find Daily News June 24, 2009, on the basis of which this text was compiled).

This problem is being studied by Andrew Mason, a Vancouver archeologist. He however is encountering difficulties in assessing its scale since he admits that the government doesn't always keep track of how often ancient sites are raided by artefact thieves and collectors, and without that information, it is impossible to know how much of Canada's ancient heritage is being stolen or what measures should be taken to curb it. He says that we really don't have a sense of how big the market is or how big the problem is. A better framework needs to be developed to keep track of stolen relics across Canada which will allow authorities to compare notes and see trends developing. This will help the government determine why people are taking the items and whether it's even a problem worth addressing. "It's been a bit of a struggle just finding out compared to other countries. Do we seriously have a problem, do we need to step in to curb it or is it an infrequent occurrence?" he asked.

Mason is the co-author of a 1991 paper about 'public attitudes towards archaeological resources and their management') available online which addresses the problem of site looting and vandalism which are major threats to the archaeological resource base. The authors say that "more stringent laws alone will not resolve this problem. Rather, an effective solution requires a major change in public opinion to increase awareness and understanding of our archaeological heritage".

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Robert Kokotailo, one of the moderators of the Moneta-L discussion list has just made an important announcement to members of the list. The archives of the list are as of now made public, that means the reader of this blog no longer has to join the forum to see them. That is great news. The Moneta-L list was originally created in April 1999 as a closed one where only members could see the archives (this was to prevent spammers using them to harvest addresses). Eleven years have passed and as Kokotailo continues:

Unfortunately, some aspects of the world we live in have changed, making it necessary to open the archives to the general public. That change arrived as small group of bloggers who joined Moneta in order to sifts the posts for information they could use against the coin collecting community. This is
not really a problem as long as they quote people correctly, in the context of what was said. Their problem is that there is so little of actual use for them in the posts, that some have taken to misrepresenting the statements of our membership by quoting either out of context, quoting incompletely, and occasionally simply lying about what was actually said.To give an appearance of credibility they provide links to the original posts, but seem to understand that most of their target audience are not Moneta members, and probably will not join Moneta just to view a single post. Since they have no reason to believe the blog is misleading, and with a closed list they cannot view the original posts to find out, most will just assume the bloggers are correct.

Personally I never assume superficiality in my blog's readers, I provide links so anyone who wants to see the source of what I am quoting, can (whether they do or not is not my problem, but certainly there is no intention to deceive). You will find that the majority of the ACCG-collector (in particular) bloggers like Wayne Sayles, Peter Tompa, Dave Welsh and others pretty consistently fail to supply such links whatsoever if the material referred to is from the critics of no-questions-asked collecting. They are presumably afraid their reader will read more than the little bit they want to direct attention to - that dreaded "context" again.

I applaud Moneta-L for making it easier for readers of this blog and others to peek in at the numismatic world and judge the assessments presented here in their wider context for themselves. [There is a thread on Moneta-L there at this moment about this blog - though as I have stated here, rather missing the point].

I suggest that the Canadian coin dealer is presenting a totally misleading interpretation of the methods and motives of some archaeological bloggers. I can of course only speak for myself. I started this blog because I was fed up of what was happening on the various forums to which I belong whenever the topic of artefact hunting and collecting came up.

So why join forums? As I have said here before, I think discussion forums give a great insight into what collectors think and talk about and attitudes, fifteen years ago to find out what "metal detectorists" talk about and do, you'd have to go along to a club in a pub somewhere. Few people really want to do that (I naively did in northeast Essex in the 1970s - depressing experience, probably very influential in my approach to tekkies today). Today without leaving their desks, anyone with a computer can drop in on the tekkies as they discuss their latest adventures and concerns about the evil doings of "the establishment" plotting against the innocent collector (sound familiar?). People in Wisconsin and Utah can see what the Woking Wreckers Detecting Group (made-up name) has been up to in the UK this week. In Warsaw I can listen in to a conversation between a Wichita collector and an erudite Canadian coin dealer about Roman coin die production techniques. Fascinating stuff (no sarcasm there). We can look in on what French heritage campaigners are saying about British archaeologists, and what British archaeologists might say about French campaigners. So I would encourage anyone interested in heritage issues to spend time examining the contents of these forums for the insights into the mindsets of artefact collectors and artefact hunters.

Artefact hunters and collectors do not particularly like it however when their hobby (or trade) is the subject of scrutiny. Every time the issue came up, no matter on what forum, all members were barraged with a cacophony of time-wasting totally irrelevant issues (including nasty personal attacks) raised by artefact hunters as a smokescreen. In such an atmosphere, discussion easily gets out of hand (and I cannot regard myself as without fault). Predictably there were also salvos of remarks of the type: "we don't want any of your kind here mate/ not that metal detecting stuff again" any time anyone opened their mouth on these forums about their thoughts on artefact hunting and collecting, or in reaction to something another member had said. Mr Kokotailo has himself in fact made precisely that sort of comment about me (all three types if I recall correctly - I might try and attach some links later) on at least two different forums. For this reason, after nearly a decade of this (OK, slow learner) and after briefly running my own forum dedicated to artefact hunting and its problems, I have given up participating in discussions on a number of archaeological and artefact collecting forums. Hence this blog and the book. Here I react in the way I want to what I see in the news, as well as on the forums. Things which I do not necessarily want to thrust under the noses of all the members of those forums, and which I am sure not all the members of those forums (some being no-questions-askers) want thrust under their noses. Some of them come over here out of curiosity, many (most probably) studiously avoid even the mention of this blog. But basically I see this is my own little private corner where I write for myself about what angers, frustrates, puzzles me and explore some of the issues by putting them down in black on white and trying to get the words I want to use and commas in approximately the right places.

So the Monetans have shown the world they have nothing to hide. Good for them. Take the opportunity to see what they've been discussing all those eleven years, there are some fascinating - and revealing - posts in those archives. Searchable too and numbered sequentially so any deletions will show up. Now what about all those other forums about portable antiquity collecting which hide all their discourse in non-public archives hidden behind passwords and listowner approval to even read the posts? When are the UK "metal detecting" forums going to show the outside world that they too have nothing to hide? Or perhaps they feel they do.

Well I guess HAPPAH have ruined their chances of being asked along to the PAS annual conference this year at which various European people will be asked to show how wonderful it is England and Wales have a collectors’ free-for-all. HAPPAH are among the Europeans who don’t think it’s wonderful, and say so.

Happah have just produced the third issue of their newsletter full of stuff that ought to shock the pants off the complacent. It starts with an article about a demonstration of Spanish metal detectorists in Seville, they look such idiots detecting along the tramlines I am sure HAPPAH will not mind me pinching their photograph. They could do with practicing their scanning technique too.

[I wonder if yellow shirts are de rigeur 'tekking togs in Spain, instead of the military fatigues we find spread across Northern Europe from Wales to Belorussia?]

There's a bit about tombaroli and coin collecting in Italy, and the article that’ll get them banned from the PAS love-in: Nouvelle affaire de pillage transfrontalier au Portugal. Une conséquence du Portable Antiquities Scheme anglo-gallois ? (personally I do not see the connection, but it’s a view of the collector’s partner organization worth recording). Then there is a bit on the arrest of four loooters in Bulgaria, the looting of Libyan ruins and the pillaging of archaeological sites in a national park with dynamite. Good stuff, more power to them. At the top of the page is their erosion counter: "L'estimation basse du nombre d'objets prélevés illégalement depuis le décret du 19 août 1991 : 9,269,448" and the slogan...

MOBILISONS-NOUS CONTRE LE PILLAGE DU PATRIMOINE !(Unless you are a British archaeologist that is)

Photo "Les braconniers du patrimoine dans la rue" apparently stealing old tramlines in Seville (HAPPAH).

The misinformation process about the ACCG illegal import coin stunt is still in full swing among the US collectors of decontextualised numismata. Over on Moneta-L the ACCG position is being reiterated (again) for the benefit of those whose confidence that they were being told the whole truth about the stunt was being swayed (as well it might). Heaven forbid that collectors might question why they were being dragged into this confrontatiuon by dealers and what's in it for them.

I pointed out ten days ago that the CPIA has a handy loophole for all those people who want to import antiquities from countries with an MOU about import restrictions. It applies to those who somehow have not had the opportunity to organize their legal import with an export licence. It’s really quite simple, just a piece of paper with a statement and a signature on it. Apparently speaking on behalf of the ACCG, John Hooker however ignores that totally and announces on the Moneta-L coiney forum: “Apparently, Paul Barford really does not understand what I wrote”. Quite right, I do not understand why he insists on writing about “export licences” when its not now about export licences, I do not understand why Dave Welsh and John Hooker refuse to admit to monetan collectors that there is in fact another way around the lack of export licence embodied in the CPIA. The only reason I can see for this is that to do that would reveal that the system currently in place for the import of coins from source countries which have asked the USA to control this is not so “unreasonable” after all.

To avoid talking about that, Mr Hooker patronisingly explains to his readers what a “test case” is and ventures that “all of his [that’s mine] advice on getting the right paperwork together really misses the whole point”. Well, it is not “advice” so much. What I am saying is that the collectors whose money is being used to finance this stunt (for that IS what it is) and who are ultimately going to be affected when it fails, really ought to be aware of what is going on, who is to blame for the path of confrontation that has been forced upon them by the dealers' lobby and what alternatives there are/were.

We therefore come back to the statement that “It is about changing unreasonable and restrictive laws”. Are these laws really so unreasonable when there’s a whopping big loophole in the CCPIA just waiting to be used? Are they unreasonable to collectors? The only unreasonable thing here is the attitudes of certain 'don't-ask-me-any-questions' dealers who are intent on divisive confrontation between exploiters and conservers, who form a sort of Ku Klux Klan of collecting united in their hatred of “archaeologists” and “archaeology” and its concerns which comes through very clearly in the writings of the ACCG members.

Another rather startling fact has just come to light and I am not sure what to make of it. Not only was the strategy of this Baltimore illegal import stunt not presented to the ACCG’s own members (“collectors”) for consideration as one of a number of alternatives to be democratically discussed, Dave Welsh revealed in a private letter in answer to my questions, that not even he, a member of the ACCG Board of Directors, knows where the coins were bought, and to whom the seized package was addressed in the US. So does this mean that fundamental decisions like this were taken without even consultation within the ACCG’s Board of Directors?

If so, it would mean that this whole affair is not the doing of the estimated "50 000" ancient coin collectors in the USA, not the estimated "5000" collector-members affiliated with the ACCG, not the cabal of a dozen or so members of the Board of Directors of the ACCG itself, but the doings of [a secret core] of maybe one or two people working within and ostensibly on behalf of all those people - but without it seems asking them first whether they agree that this confrontation is necessary or the right way to go. They will all however be required to suffer any consequences of it going badly wrong. Good, serves them right for not standing up to the unreasonable bully boys that are the source of all the trouble here.

11:07

Coin collectors in the US should take note that there are still twenty days for the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG), Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG) and International Association of Professional Numismatists (IAPN) to call off their stunt involving using their members' money to fight a case brought on by an attempt to illegally import ancient coins without the requisite paperwork. This goes against the codes of ethics of these three organizations, a fact that all those who thought they actually meant something should note.

There has been some confusion introduced into the discussion which is failing to take place in no-questions-asked collecting circles over this. About ten days ago I made a post here in which any interested coin collectors and other observers can learn for themselves what piece of paper is missing to make this ACCG import legal and above board. It's not a particularly onerous task to get it. I even copied out the relevant paragraphs of the CPIA for them so they do not have to tire their mouse-clicking fingers overly to look at it.

Coin dealer Dave Welsh however says something different. On Moneta-L yesterday he informed members:

But to read what Barford said about this test case in his blog, you would think that this is an unethical gambit on the part of the ACCG.

[I must interrupt him here, actually, there is absolutely NO question about it, it is (even by the weasel-worded ACCG code of ethics... which is thereby shown to be worth nothing) an unethical gambit, it is also supremely mis-timed, but more of that later]

He harps upon the "piece of paper" that is all that has to be presented to secure the release of the coins, never of course mentioning that this document is not a packing list or other easily obtained bit of paperwork, but is instead an official export permit that cannot be obtained in practice.

Now that is sheer nonsense, since in my post I very clearly define what this missing piece of paper consists of. Very precisely. It is as easily obtainable from a reputable (note that word) dealer who is exporting these items, and it has nothing to do at this stage with "export licences". I find this comment on a numismatic forum from one of the officers of the main organization involved in this stunt extremely odd. Unless this is deliberate misinformation, it firstly suggests he apparently does not - as an importer of ancient coins - actually know in any detail what the laws of his own country at least say. That is shocking. Secondly the tracking widget over in the margin of this blog shows that somebody in Goleta California (which is where his Classical coins business is based) has been reading those specific posts about the ACCG illegal import stunt where I write quite clearly what this piece of paper should look like. (If its not Dave Welsh, and the person responsible is reading this now, give him a ring and tell him what you read).

But that's not the end of the misinformation, John Hooker who the ACCG is now increasingly relying on to produce "ideologies" for collecting (he's going to start up a "conservation spoof" blog soon and write some ideological bit about Jung) has joined in the effort to misinform "Monetans". He too says that I do not understand why there cannot be an "export licence". John, read the CPIA for yourself. We are not talking now about export licences.

Mr Hooker tells Monetans that the law is being broken by those involved:

to fight unreasonable U.S. import restrictions. The only way that this can be done under U.S. law is through an actual case and in the courts.

Well, first of all a detailed reading of the CPIA actually shows it gives such leeway to importers to be virtually meaningless (which was probably the intent of its authors), so I really think in the circumstances that the coineys' claim that these are "unreasonable U.S. import restrictions" is simply laughable. Secondly of course even in the US there is no need to break a law to get it repealed or rewritten. There are other mechanisms. The ACCG has however decided to flaunt the law to influence international policy.

Fine, but let them be totally honest and open with their members about what this is about. What kind of piece of paper is it Mr Welsh? Answers on Moneta-L please.

Photo: astronomical clock. Time is running out... .

"Numismatic research is broader than just archaeology" pronounces Cultural Property Observer ("Archaeological tail wags numismatic dog" [sic]). That is a quote that would be hard to beat, especially as it is the reaction of former ACCG president to the publication of the book "Coins in Context" discussed here earlier. What he actually says is this:

"Numismatic research is broader than just archaeology and however useful the study of coins and their context may be, there are simply far too many coins out there to be studied, preserved and displayed solely by archaeologists or museums in source countries. In other words, the archaeological tail should not be allowed to wag the numismatic dog".

So the ACCG remedy seems to be get artefact hunters to dig 'em all up to "decontextualise" them, throw away the non-coiney bits, smuggle them out of those "source countries", throw them onto some intermediate market in the EU, stick them on a plane to Baltimore and sell them all off to the numismatic dogs so eager to get their teeth into them in an ACCG benefit sale to finance the US war on the rest of the world's archaeological resource protection measures.

Now I really do not know what Tompa, a Washington lawyer, actually knows about archaeology. I wonder how he sees his "numismatics" differing in any way from the typological, iconographical, metrological and philological work which is typically done within archaeology on various other kinds of archaeological finds. For there is no doubt in anyone else's mind that ancient coins are just one type of archaeological find. Just like any other. Within archaeology there are specialists who study wall paintings, medieval iron spurs, intaglios, ecclesiastical vessels, sculpture and a whole load of other artefact types which are studied in exactly the same way as Tompa's contextless-coin-grabbing friends treat coins (the ones that actually study rather than just accumulate and fondle them). Inasmuch as the study of coins is a form of the study of the past through the material remains, it follows that the study of ancient coins is no more or less than a part of archaeology. there really seems no sense in denying it, or suggesting that it is anything else. In its current ACCG-promoted form it is a retrograde one, because its no-questions-asked adherents seem to negate the meaning of context of discovery as a source of information, but they will eventually leave the Petrarchian model of decontextualised coin accumulation and come into the nineteenth century, from which it is but a step to becoming a modern discipline with a defined methodlogy and theoretical basis to guide and act as a check on the pragmatic operations and the interpretation of the results.

Photo: Hans Memling, portrait of Peter Tompa as a young man, c. 1480 (oil on oak panel 23 x 31 cm Koninklijk Museum, Antwerp). The Roman coin Peter is holding is in fact miraculously now in the collection of every ancient coin collector in the US.

.

Today I replaced my trusty ancient automobile with a newer used one. I know nothing about cars, do not trust used car salesmen an inch, so paid especial attention to the paperwork and asked lots of questions about where that car had actually been since it came out of the factory eight months ago. I doubt whether I would have bought anything on the sole basis of an advert like this:

Used blue saloon car
European made blue saloon car
Circa 1900 – 2009 AD
Contains five
Four wheels, one spare, windscreen, windows (as photo)
Serviced regularly
4568 X 1769 mm
From previous owners in this country
SCARCE type

But that is exactly what buyers of portable antiquities do. In the antiquities trade, descriptions of the offered items are invariably extremely laconic and seldom reveal much more than can be seen on the photos. The one above is a spoof of an actual description of an object discussed here a few days ago. I suspect this is part laziness, dealers know that there will always be a sucker who will buy it no matter what (vide the sales successes of the fake sellers on ebay). Partly however this may be deliberate, if the seller goes into details about the object itself, then the reader is going to look suspiciously about what he avoids saying, when it left the ground, and in what circumstances it came into the hands of the seller. This is an area which one gets the impression many sellers would like to keep the transaction no-questions-asked.

Even when an object is accompanied by a longer text, the additional material is most frequently not additional information about the object on offer, but "filling in the background" a ready-made narrative to make the object more attractive - they are often lifted from sources like Wikipedia.

Obviously behind laconic and secretive statements like a cuneiform tablet offered as "From a private US collection" can hide a multitude of sins. Surely the seller who has nothing to hide (for he knows the item he has on offer can be shown to be of totally legitimate origin) would have no reason to hide his light under a bushel, on the contrary. So what does it mean when they remain tight-lipped ? In fact the car I bought had an internet advert which contained two 'pages' worth of description of that specific vehicle which I went through before even contacting the dealer's showroom to examine the registration documents and service log and question the explanation of the rather strange quoted mileage. I do not see why buyers of antiquities should expect anything less from a dealer who has nothing to hide.

Photo: Swiss Tony, not an antiquities dealer.

Several times here I have raised the question to what degree the UK's Treasure Act and its reward system actually promotes best practice among metal detector using artefact hunters, and to what degree it just gives a carte blanche to dig up buried treasure anywhere and anyhow.

It seems I am not the only person asking such questions, and I find that Trevor Austin, of the National Council of Metal Deetectorists has been doing some dirt-digging on this topic and produced a helpful table of reductions due to bad practice in the period 1999-2004 to Treasure Awards [in England and Wales , I presume]. Now let us remember that in this period several hundred "Treasures" were dug up (in 2003 it was 427, in 2004, it was 506 in England wales and Northern Ireland).

The table shows however that only in a very few of these cases were there any reductions in the amount paid out. I expect we will be asked to believe that this was due to every single Treasure recovery being in full accord with the utmost in best practice. What is more interesting is the small percentages that the finder forfeits for even infringements of the law, let alone not fully complying with the Treasure Act Code of Practice.

So for taking the stuff out of the ground instead of leaving it in situ and calling an archaeologist, as the Code of Practice asks, nobody lost any Treasure dosh whatsoever. We and the public lose any chance of observing the archaeological context of the find, but the Treasure hunter gets full cash. Several people gave information about findspots which was judged to be dubious, so once again, no reliable archaeologically useful information there, how much did the Treasure hunter lose for that? Look at the table.

Failure to report gold coins within the statutory period, 25% reduction. There are even two cases of so-called "nighthawking". In one case, failure to obtain permission to detect and failure to report finds earnt a 2.5% reduction. In another case failure to get permission compounded by soldering (!) two bits together, 7.5% of the total. In no case was payment to the finder refused. I wonder what the comparable data are for the period 2005-8, what about the torc finder on a WW2 aircraft crash site who according to information obtained from the relevant agency seems not to have had the search permit, for example?

This is only England and Wales, perhaps the situation is better in Scotland?

Vignette: treasure

In reference to John Hooker's rambling name-dropping reaction to a post on this blog, Californian portable antiquity dealer Dave Welsh apparently in all seriousness announces on Moneta-L:

In the detailed post below, John Hooker meticulously refutes Paul Barford (yet again ....) and then goes on to say that Barford "... just doesn't get it. It is all invisible to him.

Well, John Hooker’s post on Moneta-L is long, a bit short on the (relevant) detail, but despite his efforts to legitimate the mere dismissal of what I wrote, I do not accept that Hooker has “refuted” what I said. Neither has Welsh for that matter.

I would like to point out to the scolding and moralizing Californian coin dealer that the points I was highlighting here were made by Dr. Hans-Markus von Kaenel, of the Goethe University, Frankfurt-am-Main. I would say he merits the term “professional numismatist” more than a mere shopkeeper with - as far as I can see – few articles in proper peer-reviewed numismatic journals or monographs to his name. So Mr Welsh will forgive me if I tend more to be interested in von Kaenel's assessment of the situation in current numismatics this side of the Atlantic than his own.

What I said would however be very helpful would be if the heap-of-loose-artefacts-on-a-table “numismatists” would attempt to produce (a) a review of the book about “coins in context” and (b) a methodological treatise [let's call it "Coins OUT OF Context"] which shows how ignoring the context from which the objects they collect come can in any way advance a fuller understanding of the past.

Hannah Bolton, the British Museum's spokesperson does not have an enviable job these days. It is bad enough that she has to speak up in favour of the Portable Antiquity Scheme's disturbing "partnership" with portable antiquity collectors in the UK. Now the poor lady even has to side with James Cuno over universalism in collecting. The opening of the Parthenon Museum in Athens of course puts the BM in extremely bad light and they are going to have to do a lot more nifty PR work now to escape increasing international condemnation (for example, listen to David Gill waxing poetical on Looting Matters). Elena Becatoros (New Acropolis Museum seeks missing frieze return, Associated Press Sat. Jun. 20th 2009) quotes Culture Minister Antonis Samaras at the opening ceremony on Friday night as saying:

"We cannot dedicate this magnificent new museum with full hearts [...] We cannot illuminate fully the artistic achievement created in 5th Century (B.C.) Athens, because almost half of the sculptures from the Parthenon were taken from here 207 years ago to reside in enforced exile 4,000 kilometers away [...] The abduction of these sculptures is not only an injustice to us Greeks but to everyone in the world [...] They were made to be seen in sequence and in total, something that cannot happen as long as half of them are held hostage in the British Museum".

In reply Ms Bolton could only lamely reply:

"I think they belong to all of us. We are all global citizens these days [...] here in the British Museum, they can tell this equally important, although different story about ancient Athens' place, in world cultures".

What nonsense. Half of the marbles tells a very fragmentary story, when instead the "global citizens" can hop on a plane, train or coach to Athens to see the whole frieze telling the story it was meant to tell, and not the one modern collectors want to impose on it. The British Museum could equally "tell that story" about fifth century Athens with other "things" it has in its huge storerooms, including other items from Periclean Athens no doubt (vases, or any bits knocked or pried off other monuments they may have knocking about in the British public collections from over two centuries of Grand Tour collecting).

In any case, the only "story" these torn off, sawn off, dragged-away, overcleaned battered fragments of marble arranged around the inside walls of a cramped London museum gallery currently tell the viewer is a sad one. Only one of the greed of a small minority of British collectors and souvenir hunters in the past. The act is one that characterises the centuries before 'last minute' flights and cheap weekend breaks in almost any capital of Europe make the new museum accessible to all (to the same group of people at least that can afford the train fare to the British capital and a night in a London hotel, which is what the "Marbles" cost most people that see the "Elgin" marbles today).

OK, so let us hear this "this equally important, although different story " the British Museum feels it can tell us "all" about "about ancient Athens' place in world cultures" which London claims can be told better in a 1930s gallery tacked onto the side of the Greek rooms in London than a new museum in Athens right by the buildings concerned. I think we'd "all" like to hear it.

Over on his Numismatics blog, Nathan Elkins has begun a series of comments on a recent book (H.-M von Kaenel and F. Kemmers (eds.) 2009, Coins in Context I: New Perspectives for the Interpretation of Coin Finds, Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike 23 - Mainz). In the second post in what promises to be a thought-provoking series, he discusses the first essay [in the section "Methodological Overviews"] which is by one of the volume’s editors H.-M. von Kaenel ("Coins in context - a personal approach", pp. 9-24). Nathan has summarised the text for those – like me – who have not yet seen the book itself. I was struck by several of the quotes he gives. For example he reports that Von Kaenel writes:

"Never before has so much archaeological material been removed from the earth through illegal looting as it has since the 1990s. We are witness to a 'decontextualisation process' on an enormous scale which affects all archaeological objects. However, as regards sheer numbers, coins take first place."

I think this word “decontextualisation” is a useful concept to describe what is taking place and its effects; objects which have a context, are deprived of them by entry into the market of contextless “dugups” which collectors buy no-questions-asked. Von Kaenel continues:

"This is a loss of historical source material that is without comparison, and it cannot be replaced. The situation for archaeology is just as disastrous as it is for numismatics. Many colleagues are aware of this, but only a few speak out and
the authorities responsible have so far not been prepared to intervene actively and consistently."

I am not sure it is "without comparison", I'd liken it to the burning of the Alexandrine library many hundred times over. The question of why there are so many colleagues that are aware of this but few of whom speak out is an interesting one.

There is also a section of the paper called: "From 'numismatics or archaeology' to 'archaeology and numismatics'". Von Kaenel suggests that it is a younger generation of numismatists which is coming to realize that the study of ancient coins (which are after all just ONE type of archaeological artefact) cannot take part in isolation from (and to the detriment of) other branches of the study of the past. He uses an example taken from the realms of “Celtic” coinage in central Europe where the evidence from stratified coin finds overturned the traditional chronology based on typology. Von Kaenel suggests that:

"today no one seriously asks the question 'numismatics or archaeology' – the title of a paper by K. Castelin published in 1976. In fact, in Celtic numismatics today it is a matter of 'archaeology and numismatics'."

It would seem that Dr Von Kaenel has not come across (or paid attention to) the ACCG. Their spokesmen claim to be “professional numismatists”, and the dealers' lobby group does indeed proclaim that it is either archaeology OR the coin collector, as we have seen time and time again, they apparently do not see room for both unless the other side (the conservationsist) makes vast compromises to the exclusive benefit of the coin collector and dealer. The ACCG which seeks at every step to discredit the archaeological study of artefacts such as coins and all that goes with it, including those that would protect the archaeological record from exploitation for commercial purposes. I could not help a wry smile on reading the next part:

"In no other area of ancient numismatics has the discussion on coins and money been so productively stimulated and advanced by archaeologists as in Celtic numismatics".

It is in this field that the current main ideologue of the ACCG (Canadian John Hooker), claims to have his expertise, and we may note that while he is very willing to quote archaeologists when it suits him, in general he is an advocate of the autonomy and primacy of “numismatics” and typology over archaeology and context.

I look forward to the ACCG review of “Coins in Context I”, perhaps as one of the “Hooker papers” series.

The opening of the new Parthenon Museum in Athens today poignently reminds us of the marble fragments now kept defiantly in the stark gallery in the British Museum in London. The gallery itself was built in 1937-8 and named after its founder Joseph Duveen (1st Baron Duveen of Millbank), arguably one of the most influential art dealers of all time. In the context of the subject of this blog, though not directly involved in the trade in portable antiquities per se, Duveen seems to have been to no little extent influential on the development of the attitudes that lay behind a substantial part of it. Duveen died almost exactly seventy years ago (May 25th 1939), so it seems worth paying a little attention to this gentleman.*

Born into a family involved in the import business in Hull, from 1909 onwards Duveen began to focus on the lucrative trade in paintings. Due to his good eye, skilled salesmanship and insight into human behavior he quickly became one of the world's leading art dealers. In this he was helped by his partnership (between 1912 and 1936) with Bernard Berenson and together they above all generated increased interest in the US in works of art of the Renaissance. Duveen was knighted for his philanthropy in 1919 and in 1933 he was created Baron Duveen, of Millbank (in the City of Westminster).
A large part of the market on which Duveen concentrated was in the States, he famously noted that "Europe has a great deal of art, and America has a great deal of money". He thus found a niche buying works of art from declining European aristocrats and selling them to the millionaires of the United States in which he was very successfull. See also the online review of the biography "Duveen: A Life in Art", by Meryle Secrest, New York, Knopf, 2004; by Peter Dailey ('The Dealer King').
Duveen played an important role in convincing the so-called "robber baron " industrialists and financiers that buying art was a means of social legitimation, a means of buying upper-class status and reknown. Duveen's clients included Henry Clay Frick, William Randolph Hearst, Henry E. Huntington, J.P. Morgan, Samuel H. Kress, Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller, and Frank Porter Wood in Canadia. Another of his clients in his later years was J. Paul Getty. Through the donation of the collections of these individuals to public institutions, many of the works that Duveen shipped across the Atlantic now comprise the core of the collections of many of the United States' finest museums, for example the Frick collection in New York, the Frank P. Wood collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Huntington Library, and the Mellon and Kress collections now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington and elsewhere.

The marketing skills of dealers like Duveen seem to be responsible for the current attitudes of US collectors of portable antiquities such as coins. We see these collectors time and time again presenting themselves as some kind of intellectual elites, preserving for the hoi polloi around them selected elements of "classical culture" and an awareness of "other cultures" which (they argue) is being eroded by declining standards in public education in the States. They present their mission as a public one pursued through private collection, a paradox that is not peceived due to the legacy of dealers like Duveen and the "robber baron" collectors. The main difference is that the collections today are so much more widespread and down market from Duveen's day, instead of the second Ardabil Carpet, these collectors are buying "English dug ups" (bulk lots of Roman coins for "zapping"), bulk lots of broken metal artefacts stripped from Balkan Roman settlements and cemeteries, grave pots and lamps, shabti figures from Egyptian tombs and the odd mummified foot or other such grisly status-enhancing (sic) "relic".

* This text is largely compiled from Wikipedia, which is also the source of the photo used here.

A second defendant in the federal crackdown on archaeological looting in southern Utah has killed himself (Patty Henetz and Brandon Loomis Another suicide in American Indian artifacts looting case, The Salt Lake Tribune 19/6/09). Steven L. Shrader, 56 a single man from Santa Fe, New Mexico, faced trial on two felonies in the antiquities case. He had reportedly had gone to visit his mother, in the village of Shabbona, Ill. While there, he shot himself twice in the chest late Thursday or early Friday behind the elementary school near his mother's house, authorities said. He died on Friday morning, the day he was supposed to appear in court in Salt Lake City on charges connected with trafficking of American Indian artifacts illicitly taken from public and tribal land in southeastern Utah. Shrader was not one of those arrested in the sweep on June 10th, but

turned himself in last Friday at the FBI offices in Santa Fe and
was released after an initial appearance Monday in federal court in Albuquerque. Federal agents took him back to Santa Fe that day. His residence was not the subject of any of the search warrants executed by the FBI and Bureau of Land Management.

Shrader was indicted for allegedly being party to the trafficking of stolen artifacts -- specifically ancient sandals and a basket -- along with Carl "Vern" Crites, 74, Marie Crites, 68, and Richard Bourret, 59, all of Durango, Colo. His role though is described as "peripheral" to the main case. (Salt Lake Tribune Latest court papers reveal grisly side of artifact digging).

Within an hour or so of my posting a message on my blog concerning a disastrous attempt to clean an unfired Mesopotamian clay tablet by running it under the cold tap, instead of the two posts in the original thread, the following message appeared here and here in the archives of the discussion group concerned.

"Message does not exist in Ancientartifacts".

This is very interesting. An attempt has been made to push the original post "Down the Memory Hole" (as in Orwell's "1984"). The collector in question posted the information to an artefact discussion list about what happened as a warning to other collectors not to do anything like this. This was done with perfectly honourable intentions and also at the risk of attracting criticism, but hopefully eliciting discussion and information of benefit to other collectors about how to deal with such objects in future. Such a discussion will not now take place since somebody with their finger on the "delete" button obviously wants to try to hide certain aspects of collecting under the carpet. Surely instead of deleting the post from the archives and digests, a much more helpful approach would have been to draw attention to the point in the Portable Antiquities Collector's Code of Ethics which I discussed earlier here :

"(4) Recognise your role as custodian/ Do your utmost to ensure the wellbeing of the objects in your care./ Consider the condition of artifacts prior to purchase and whether you will be able to carry out any necessary conservation or repairs. Any intrusive operation should ideally be carried out by a competent professional."

There are two points here, first there should perhaps be a short guide (with references to more extensive literature) written specifically for the collector of portable antiquities which explains in simple terms what can and should not be done with artefacts of various commonly-collected kinds. It seems that while antiques of various types have a number of such guides, but there is nothing to help the collector of fresh "dug-ups".

See also here for another collector wanting to do dangerous things to the object in his stewardship, this post has not been removed yet from the archives.

The second thing is the issue of how the collecting community deals with criticism. In general the collector justifies themselves that they are "doing nothing wrong". In face of criticism some turn away and block out any criticisms as applying only to "other" collectors and not themselves. By this means they try to hush up embarrassing issues which they would prefer not to talk about (perhaps trying to shame the critic into not mentioning them). Others react more aggressively with loud protests that they are misunderstood by individuals who are themselves members of a group that are not above reproach. Thus the spiral of silence about the issues surrounding collecting of portable antiquities and the archaeological resource continues to develop.

Vignette: ammonite logo.

Apparently there are two things which are limitless, the Universe and human stupidity. That is why plastic bags have writing on them to inform people not to put them over their babies’ heads (duh!), in a US fast food chain coffee cups reputedly now tell you the contents are hot and should not be spilt on your bodily parts (duh!), cigarette packets inform the user that smoking kills (duh!) and so on.

We are constantly told by the pro-collecting lobby that portable antiquity collectors are not collecting for the sake of collecting but are educated people who want to “add to their [and thus our] knowledge of the past”. Seldom however do they demonstrate it.

Coin collectors are the noisiest and tell us that only by making collections of contextless coins can they add to “numismatic knowledge”, and that collectors are much better curators of the objects they treasure than public institutions. I really doubt that one can make such a generalisation.

Yesterday on an internet auction site however I saw a sad sight, what is left after a bulk lot of archaeological artifacts (coins) has been “zapped” by a domestic corrosion-stripping numismofanatic and then the better coins picked out. What was left (and being sold on) was a pile of utterly destroyed archaeological artifacts, stripped to the bare pitted metal, and original surface preserved in the corrosion layers now gone.

Yesterday too I came across another heart-breaking example. On the Yahoo Ancient Artifact forum, one Andrea – a collector for whom English is apparently not their native language - had a cautionary tale for other collectors which put me in mind of the story of the lady who put her pet poodle in the microwave to dry it. To it was attached a plaintive question “Can someone can explain what happen?”.

Andrea apparently bought a 4000 year old cuneiform tablet “from a very reputable seller” ( unnamed originally, now we know it was David Liebert's "The Time Machine Co." from Flushing NY, apparently sold through ACCG president Bill Puetz's V-coins [sic] portal). We are not informed where it came from or what documentation accompanied it, so it is impossible to say whether or not it was freshly looted (that word “reputation” in the collecting community means something else than what the casual observer might think). All the seller says is "From a a private US collection" (no other information offered about the collector or their acquisition policy). The tablet apparently was supposed to be an "Old Babylonian Period pottery administrative ledger tablet/ Circa 1900 - 1000 BC /Containing 7 columns /Listing foods at left and names at right on two sides/ Recomposed from fragments/2 X 4 inches”. After admiring their purchase, the delighted collector then did something… well, not to put a fine point on it, utterly stupid:

after the pleasure of touch and see it in my hand as I made very often with terracotta objects I wet it with light water spray to see restoration, to taste smell.. etc, after seeing that same sand seem to go out from the break lines I put for 4-5 seconds the tablet under powerful (but however middle) flow of water...but instead cleaning the table that seems had skin literally melt down
under my eyes.

Yes, clay tends to do that in water. The first rule of the treatment of any object is to identify the material it is made from and be aware of its properties and needs. Clearly the collector had acted on the basis of a false (diasterously false) assumption without checking. Unless the archives that contained them had been burnt down in antiquity, most cuneiform tablets as excavated are unfired clay. In the early days of excavation in Mesopotamia, they were fired after excavation in order to make them durable enough to handle, but also to allow the soluable salts to be soaked from them. This process is described in some of the earliest texts on the conservation of archaeological finds (the venerable Plenderleith and Werner for example), so really should be within the radar of any collector who cares about the proper curation and preservation of the archaeological items over which they have appointed themselves stewards.

Andrea however seems not to have come across any of the literature about Mesopotamian writing materials or archaeology containing any such information. One might ask then how that accumulator will add to our knowledge. The text goes on:

How can be happen? Does this terracotta was uncompletely fired? In meanwhile was wet I try to write upon it...and it seems clay manufactered 1 minute ago...very soft, the colour of the skin seem dark than core I hope this is a sign of fakeness...but I don't think... Now in 20 minutes seems returned hard but much of the skin wrote has cleaned for ever.

Sadly the fact that clay can be softened in water even after 4000 years underground in relatively dry conditions really is not evidence that the object was fake. The assumption that if real it would have been “terracotta” is also unfounded. This collector has just completed the destruction caused by the looter’s spade, as Andrea notes now “...however remain the photos...” only of the artifacts, their archaeological context has gone for ever.

Photos: Cuneiform tablet in a private collection shown before and after its "conservation" under a running tap (photos from Ancient Artifacts forum)

Message updated 23.06.09, thanks to Andrea for pointing out I used an illustration of the wrong side of the tablet, now rectified

Postscript 23rd June: Perhaps I was a little too hard on Andrea. Look at the seller's description. It clearly says "pottery". The dealer apart from not providing proper provenence detail in the sales offer showing it was legally exported from the source country misrepresents the material from which it is made. If I were Andrea, I'd ask for my money back on two counts.

Craig Childs has an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times called The Southwest's good ol' artifact boys (June 15th 2009) concerning last week's "Operation Cerberus" illicit antiquities bust which makes interesting reading. Childs points out that the people concerned were ordinary citizens:

You might have an imaginary picture of the pot hunters and collectors who live there, a crew of dirty, well-armed black-market privateers roving the desert (in the case of many Western pot hunters, you'd be right). But the scenario becomes more complicated when you look closely at who is actually named. The federal action laid bare a little known culture of ordinary citizens who collect and sell human history. [...] Half of those indicted are in their 60s and 70s, people who grew up pot hunting when it was not even thought of as unethical, much less illegal. The federal action, a lot of locals think, was akin to busting a bunch of good ol' boys with a backwoods still. They don't give much thought to how illegal digging in the Four Corners has decimated one of the richest archaeological regions in the country, putting thousands of years of human history into private hands. Pulling artifacts from the land without documentation and adding them to private collections is a form of archaeological genocide, erasing the record of a people from a place. Yet for many in the Four Corners area, it is like collecting seashells. Sunday picnics used to include shovels. An old-timer once told me that there were so many pots they were like pumpkins on the ground, and few saw anything wrong with digging and collecting. [...] Perhaps last week's raid of so many ordinary citizens was a necessary step in pushing pot hunting further from the realm of what is acceptable.

I guess nobody really paused to think why those pots are no longer "like pumpkins on the ground" and where those pots are now and whether they can ever be traced back to the assemblages dismantled by artefact hunters.

An interesting feature of the article is that the arguments reported as being offered here in support of the excavation of artefacts in the States are almost the same as those used by the pro-collecting lobby in connection with artefact hunting and collecting in the UK. US no-questions-asked collectors of antiquities imported from the Old World (many of whom are more likely than not looted) have recently been verty loudly advocating that the latter is "not their fault" because these source countries "should" introduce laws and systems like those of portable antiquity Topsyturveyland, England and Wales. I say, let them first advocate that such systems are applied across the board in the US. Let them first lobby their own lawmakers and public opinion to make artefact hunting a free for all on public lands as it is in Britain.

Collectors' rights activist Peter Tompa on his blog is, I think I am right in saying, the only person in the whole collectors' rights blogosphere to date to note the Utah raids. The rest are maintaining an embarrassed siilence, pretending it is not in any way connected with their "collectors' rights" battles with their own government and the world as a whole.* Tompa notes "while various archaeological blogs applaud the government's prosecutions of pot hunters, public opinion amongst the locals out West may not be so approving" (Heavy-handed Feds ) and quotes some outraged "locals" stating that "some contend artifacts are not hard to find, as easy as looking down on the ground". I have no doubt that artefacts can be found on the ground on both private and public land. The speciofic artefacts however at the centre of this case were one assumes not the sort of thing that is (any longer) lying on the ground in the region for the taking, otherwise nobody would be asking or paying thousands of dollars for them.

Were the federal authorities "heavy handed" in carrying out this operation? I must say that I have spent some time reading through the comments made by locals on the Salt Lake Tribune website. From this I conclude that, "ordinary citizens" or not, it would be a rash officer who sent two or three unprotected men in without any kind of support to knock on the doors of these locals and announce that they were going to confiscate property (illicit artefacts) worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from each collector - potentially a gun owner (if they have illegal artefacts, then why not illegal guns?). The media report that several of the people arrested in fact had already had a brush with the law earlier on a variety of counts. A federal officer who did not provide adequate support for the men under his command (and it would appear from the search warrants civilian experts accompanying the search teams) in a potentially explosive situation like this would clearly be failing in his duty.

* It is interesting to note that the word often used to describe the surrendering of Native American artefacts to representatives of modern tribes is the one hated by portable antiquity collectors: "repatriation".

The documentation released by the ACCG of its Freedom of Information request took me back to the days when I used to sit in a dreary Ministry office in a palace in a park, surrounded by lawyers and administrators processing very similar material concerning appeals from decisions made by the provincial monuments curators. These were of two types. Many were appeals from crafty businessmen thwarted from making money out of destroying the cultural heritage, but then for a bit of light bureaucratic entertainment were the stubborn individuals playing David with the governmental Goliath. They obviously had surprising amounts of time on their hands and a rabid hatred of the conservation services coupled with a certain knowledge of the legal obligations of state administration and not a little initiative in trying to use them against our inspectors. Some of these cases dragged on years and ate up resources that should have been being used elsewhere. It was the job of the office I worked in to deal with the mountains of paperwork these trouble-makers generated knowing that in the end it would all end up in the Higher Administrative Court. Of course the main aim was to make sure that the ultimate decision came down in favour of the protection of the cultural heritage, and for this we had some superb lawyers (the late Albert Soldani is one I will always remember).

So I was recently looking at the ACCG submissions with the eye of someone at the receiving end. The Department of State have obviously done this before and as far as I can see its going well for them. This will be all but over soon I suspect. So what are the International Association of Professional Numismatists (“IAPN”), the Professional Numismatists Guild (“PNG”), and the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (“ACCG”), going to do if they fail to get more documents from the State Department than they’ve got? Their case falls flat, since they can hardly go to court over their illegally imported Chinese and Cypriot coins with Mr Tompa’s conspiracy theories and whatever it is that Jay Kislak asserts. That’s just a waste of time and their members’ money.

The latest document in the trail which the ACCG has published is a bit of whining and wheedling from the plaintiffs. In it we read:

“Defendant claims ACCG is pursuing that matter in support of the “commercial interests” of some its benefactors. This tact, evidently cribbed from some of the more outspoken archaeological blogs, is not only inaccurate, but beside the
point. See http://ancientcoincollecting.blogspot.com/2009/05/rose-is-rose.html (last visited June 2, 2009) and http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/
2009/05/whatswrong-with-commercial-interests.html (last visited June 2, 2009).”

Now interestingly, the blogs to which Scott Hodes the Washington lawyer refers are explicitly named by Sayles and Tompa. They are those of Nathan Elkins and myself. I am flattered by the suggestion that the State Department might be cribbing ideas how to fight these people from what I write. I doubt that really is the case. Actually Mr Hodes, it is not irrelevant that this matter is pursued for commercial reasons, it is very much relevant to the case.

[If, however, by any chance its author is right and the State Department really is lost for ideas dealing with this menace to the international reputation of the United States and is reduced to looking at opinions expressed on blogs like this, I'd be glad to help out. Although I cannot speak for Mr Elkins, if required, I announce my readiness to come over to Foggy Bottom and for what it’s worth give the State Department some thoughts on how to deal with the troublesome "coineys" and their ilk, once and for all. In four steps. But if the ACCG et al. are not very careful the US administration is likely to come to the same conclusions by themselves, and then all portable artefact collectors (not just "coineys") will be sorry they listened to Messers Sayles and Tompa and all the rest of their supporters. I raise a glass to them].

Photo: Houses in Foggy Bottom (atmospheric shot by by Tiggerlane, the Neophyte Blogger)

Over the past few days, various news outlets have been carrying stories about a new (?) fuss brewing about the Nefertiti bust (AFP):

Egypt will soon provide evidence that the 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti was taken illegally out of the country by Germany, Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Sunday. "We are still gathering information, but I expect we will shortly have enough to place a formal request to the Berlin Museum for the return of the bust," Hawass told the Tagesspiegel in an interview”.

I suspect this is nothing more than an extension of the news story covered here a few weeks back. If so this seems more likely to be aimed at public opinion than building a case to be solved by international law. One wonders whether this type of posing and strutting is not ultimately harmful. Eternally playing the victim does not do the wider cause any good. Sure, lots of antiquities left Egypt under highly dubious and regretable circumstances, this bust perhaps being one of them. In my opinion though the Egyptians cannot expect every single Egyptian antiquity to end up back in Egypt, even if questions arise how they were removed. Even though the Egyptian Antiquities Service has huge numbers of staff, concentrating on the wrongs of the past may well be taking energy and resources from dealing with problems of the present, and those matters which certainly need to find a resolution.

For example, instead of gathering documentation about the Nefertiti bust, it is suspicious that nothing much seems to be happening on the Ka Nefer Nefer front, Dr Hawass seems to find more possibilities in engaging in a paperchase with what may be seen as a partage gone wrong at the beginning of the century than displaying the paperwork proving a theft from a museum storeroom in the 1950s. Have they got such documentation or not?

Every so often the antiquities showman Hawass brings out into the light of publicity a royal mummy or some such item which had lain forgotten in a dusty corner of a museum somewhere or other. Perhaps the Egyptians should first concentrate on getting the archivisation of what they have already got in order before trying to accumulate more. In my opinion, Hawass should be chasing up items on the market now (like the Wenneb... shabti discussed here a few weeks ago) and finding out how they got there than worrying at the moment what went wrong in 1912. Protecting the archaeological resource which is threatened now rather than chasing objects safely archived in museums. Of course there is less easy publicity in that...

Perhaps like Athens, Hawass should go through the old spoilheaps and museum storerooms (or perhaps now search among the private collections) to find the missing eye from the famous bust, and then display it in an otherwise empty showcase to make the point.

Photo: the one-eyed Queen seems calm in the knowledge that she'll be staying in Berlin for a while yet (AFP).

By my reckoning, today is the sixtieth day since a Brtish Airways plane landed at Baltimore Airport on April 15th carrying some coins of Cyprus and China which the US Ancient Coin Collectors Guild were trying to import illegally (ie without the paperwork currently required for such items). Although, to judge by the quantities of fresh material on sale there many parcels of ancient artefacts seem to be getting through US customs unchallenged these days, this small one was stopped. What made customs officials particularly suspiciuous about this one? Was it the address of the sender or the intended recipient? Anyway, the coins were seized.

Now according to US law, even though neither exporters or importers sent any paperwork to accompany these items, US law (ever-so collector friendly) allows them ninety days to present it. More, it actually allows them ninety days not to present it, but two other pieces of paper instead. Sect. 307 (b) (2) A and B and (c) (1) of the US CPIA (Collectors Privileges and Indulgence Act). According to this "the definition of satisfactory evidence" that the material left the source country at least ten years before its import, or left the source country before the US imposed import restrictions is:

(A) one or more declarations under oath by the importer, or the
person for whose account the material is imported, stating that, to the best of his knowledge-
(i) the material was exported from the State Party not less than
ten years before the date of entry into the United States, and
(ii) neither such importer or person (or any related person)
contracted for or acquired an interest, directly or indirectly, in
such material more than one year before the date of entry of the material; and
(B) a statement provided by the consignor, or person who sold the material to the importer, which states the date, or, if not known, his belief, that the material was exported from the State Party not less than ten years before the date of entry into the United States, and the reasons on which the statement is based; and
(2) for purposes of subsection (b)(2)(B)- (A) one or more declarations under oath by the importer or the person for whose account the material is to be imported, stating that, to the best of his knowledge, the material was exported from the State Party on or before the date such material was designated under section 305, and
(B) a statement by the consignor or person who sold the material to the importer which states the date, or if not known, his belief, that the material was exported from the State Party on or before the date such material was designated under section 305, and the reasons on which the statement is based.

So that's not so difficult is it? You still have thirty days left guys. So, let's get this right. The Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild bought - with their members' money - some coins from some dealer in Britain (?) which they claim are licit, but it looks as if (since there is not a hint that the papers have been submitted) this dealer cannot actually provide assurances to that effect? What is the dealer's name please? Why actually can an antiquity dealer in Britain or anywhere else not vouch for the legitimacy of material they themselves sent to the United States? What about the British dealing in cultural objects (Offences) Act ? I would like publicly to urge that if these coins are seized as illicit by the US authorities in thirty days' time, that the British authorities begin an investigation of the firms whose hands they passed through in Britain when they were put onto BA Flight 229/16. That is the least Britain can do to help countries like Cyprus (used to be ours you know) and China to combat illegal exports. Can the British authorities at least "pull their fingers out" over this one and do something? *

I think we all have the right to know the identity of this mysterious dealer from whom these coins were bought and whether they are a member of both the International Association of Professional Numismatists (IAPN) and the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG) who we know were prosecuting this action against the Cyprus MOU together with the ACCG - I think we need to know to what degree they and their members are involved in this second phase involving the attempted illegal importation of these coins and how they explain any such involvement.

On the other hand, let's watch the US coin collectors try their stunt. I think there is a very big chance that they are going to come out of this with a bloodied nose and a weakened overall position. They are putting their trust (and money) in the wrong people and the wrong tactics.

* They will not of course lift a finger, their advisors would only advise them that by reminding people that such an act exists would be upsetting the precarious balance with British archaeology's "partners", the metal detectorists. Like the US CPIA, the British act is mainly for show. Toothless.

Photo: and how many smuggled clandestinely excavated archaeological artefacts are in the cargo hold of this one then?

We have seen here several times how collectors of portable antiquities in the United States advocate other countries abandoning their current "restrictive" archaeological heritage protection legislation. They demand that they adopt the current laissez faire approach of England and Wales to the collecting of so-called "portable antiquities" with a voluntary reporting of finds and an unregulated market. These advocates fail to recognise that the United States has itself in fact just such a "restrictive" system of archaeological resources protection legislation in the case of sites and artefacts from "federal and indian lands", which is in fact the greater part of the land area of the country. Nevertheless such legislation offers next to little protection to sites on private land. This means that US artefact hunters can legally dig up and sell almost what they want from private land, but cannot touch sites on public land without a permit. From the collectors' point of view, the US system embodies the "best of both worlds".

It does not however work that way, because in the milieu of portable antiquity collectors the world over are greedy self-centred individuals who care little about where the items they covet come from. The "best" Native American sites (richest, easier to find and dig) in the US are often on public land.

We saw an example of this in southern Utah, where 24 people were recently arrested for illegal activities concerning Native American antiquities. This case has received wide publicity pour encourager les autres and there has been some reaction on the associated forums. This material is useful to give those of us not from rural Utah an insight into the collecting mentality and what has been going on in portable antiquity collecting circles. In particular, the affadavit to the search warrant issued in the case of schoolteacher Dave Lacy published online by two US news media organizations gives us the information based on the investigating officer’s “knowledge, experience and information provided by other law enforcement officers” concerning artefact hunting and the antiquities trade in the area.

Given the discussion that has been going on with US collectors of ancient coins removed from foreign archaeological sites on documenting provenance of the ancient items being offered for sale, my attention was caught by the issue of documentation of provenance in this milieu. It is, however, a complex matter. Apparently, in this milieu in the US engaged in the collecting of this sort of portable antiquity:

“objects typically are sold with a letter or provenance which acts as a sort of title document. Letters of provenance usually list the individual who found the item, usually the location where it as found, and include assurances that the item was not illegally collected from public or Indian lands.” (Affadavit point
13).

This is interesting, it suggests that in one part of the portable antiquity collecting community in the US due to the structure of the legislation the maintenance of documentation for the legal origin of objects in the collection is standard practice for law abiding collectors and dealers, which makes even more incomprehensible the refusal of collectors of other types of portable antiquity prone to contamination with illicitly obtained material (like ancient coins) to maintain such documentation.

The problem is not so straightforward however, since - depite the abundant opportunities to collect archaeological material without any conflict with the law - in the collecting of archaeological material from the US there are unscrupulous law-breakers too. The same text notes that

“Individuals who deal in stolen archaeological objects are usually very careful to disguise the site of origin. This is usually done by identifying the site of origin as leased and/or private property” (Affadavit points 13 and 17).

The affadavit goes on to describe how in some cases a blank letter of provenance form may be supplied by the buyer for the seller to complete with false provenance details. This is what allegedly happened in a transaction which reportedly occurred in December 2007 in Blanding, Utah, when the accused man Dave Lacy offered the individual (“the Source”) working undercover for the FBI several items from his collection. The deal was made (over six thousand dollars were paid for four groups of artifacts) and

“Lacy asked the source if he had something for him to sign. The Source provided Lacy with a Letter of Provenience. The source stated that lacy needed to put private property as the location where the artifacts were found. Lacy then listed a private property location, Eugene Guyman’s land Mustang Mesa and signed the false letter of provenience”.

The problem is that when he indicated the true origin of the items, a blanket, a digging stick and knife, they had come from other sites, including public land.

The document alleges that in a second sale of artefact by the same person took place in the middle of January involved organic finds from several different sites (loincloth, menstrual pad, basket, sandals) and a pot. Two of the sandals came from a burial in Cottonwood Wash (an area mentioned in a previous prosecution case), while the pot was in fact from a piece of private property and was thus a licitly obtained find. The affadavit alleges:

Lacy filled out a letter of provenance stating that all the above items were found on “Preston Nielsons property (Westwater) ”. Lacy then signed this fraudulent Letter of Provenience.

It should be noted that one of the items in this group (the pot) could apparently have been sold under its real provenence, but it was given a false one at the time of the sale by the digger (Affadavit points 24-28). This means that as it passes throught successive private collections, it will perpetuate the deceit that it comes from to an archaeological site which in fact does not exist.

If these sorts of practice are at all prevalent in US pot-digging circles, it means that even here any letters of provenience indicating which cannot be independently verified are suspect. What can be done to prevent liars and cheats misrepresenting archaeological material in the United States? Perhaps they need to introduce some form of Portable Antiquities Scheme there before insisting that other countries adopt something like it.

Vignette: Some of the sites mentioned in the case (source Salt Lake Tribune)

Perhaps Peter Tompa will still cling to his unreasonable theory about some conspiracy between FBI agents and "the Italians", but there is another story from an Atlanta paper about the recent Sisto case which is stronger on the 'human interest' and letting slip more about the deceased man's knowledge and involvement than the initial reports.

These things are three-times cursed, Sisto, of Duluth, would tell his father, John. Cursed once because they were stolen, cursed twice because they were smuggled, and cursed thrice because concealing the cache in their home had robbed the family of its peace of mind.
“It didn’t feel right. It never felt right,” Joseph Sisto said. “To me, having the stuff was always a burden.”
Now, after a lifetime of secrecy, Sisto, 48, finally feels a burden has been lifted. Early last week, the FBI announced the conclusion of its two-year investigation into the theft and transportation of the artifacts.
For more than 20 years, John Sisto, of Berwyn, Ill., amassed a collection of more than 3,500 precious antiquities that would have been the envy of any museum curator.
Just about every piece of it had been looted from historic Italian sites or stolen from private collections, the FBI said. The elder Sisto knew it when he bought the goods, the agents said. Joseph Sisto agrees.
In fact, after his father died two years ago, it was Joseph Sisto who finally picked up the phone and called the police to tell them about the treasures that filled nearly every corner of the house in Berwyn.

The rest here. Joseph Sisto does not really sound from this like the sort of person easily "indoctrinated" as Tompa suggests.

Mr Tompa obviously needs to get in contact with Sue Newton of Brighton (below). He has just published on his blog a post based on a wikpedia article he found entitled "Paul Barford: Voice of the Archaeological Community on Portable Antiquities?". I'll answer that question for him. No. No, I am not. On the contrary. Though there are few archaeologists even British ones who will tell me they think I am wholly wrong on portable artefact collecting. Not to my face anyway.

I learn from Mr Tompa that I have a whole Wikipedia page to myself, written by a person (one "Steve Welton") who cannot spell or use apostrophes, focus his writing or do basic research. Must be a UK "metal detectorist", a surmise well supported by observing what the person's account concentrates on, instead of what I've really been up to and published since 1974.

To judge by the discourse on their forums, UK "metal detectorists" do not in general have a very sophisticated taste in humour. They are fairly simple folk and there are few exceptions that in jest can extend beyond the level of schoolyard "knock knock" and "tit and bum (snigger, snigger)" jokes. One droll individual however was a little more ambitious.
On the Times Online is an article of 10th July about a group of Neolithic long barrows at Damerham “near Stonehenge” (actually 15 miles from it – hardly “near” in Neolithic terms) discovered by aerial photography. So far the site has been examined by non-invasive means. The investigator, Dr Helen Wickstead says whether they are excavated or not “will depend on local feeling […] we’re treading very carefully on the excavation issue […] we want to be sure that it’s what people living in Damerham village want. It’s their heritage.”

There are some reader’s comments, and one “Steve” from London wrote “Are you people crazy? Print the name of the place and the fact that there's untouched barrows there - you might as well give every putative tomb raider a metal detector and a shovel. They'll all be on Google Earth now, just looking for these barrows. Took me 30 seconds to find some candidates...”.

Mr Steve may be good on Google Earth, but obviously does not know that in Britain you are supposed to call all men with metal detectors “partners with archaeology” and “heritage heroes” and not “tomb raiders”.

Anyhow a “metal detectorist” just back from the pub reading this clearly thought this is an issue I would have something to say on, but instead of waiting for me to express an opinion, they decided to send a reply for me.
So falsely calling themselves “Paul Barford, Warsaw, Poland” wrote:

“This is the Nations Heritage and should be excavated as soon as possible to see what lays beneath the soil and what grave goods were buried with the bodies. Why should the villagers feelings come into this?. They never took a blind bit of notice of some humps and bumps until now so dig it I say.”

[You can tell it’s a metal detectorist because they cannot use apostrophes, it is one of the conditions of becoming one it seems]. I am heartened to see that members of the apostrophe-using Times-reading public reacted to this in the correct manner:

Perhaps Mr Barford might want to consider how selfish he is being with his 'dig it up' attitude and disregard for local people. It's all very well wanting to dig up the grave for your own selfish enjoyment of history but it has remained untouched for thousands of years until now so why disturb it? Sue Crawford, Plymouth.

So I guess Ms Crawford is not a “metal detectorist”. Good for her !

Joel Darlow, London writes:

“Bit of a joke someone from Poland saying dig up Britains heritage for a bit of sport by nabbing grave goods and then saying they don't give a monkeys about the locals thoughts on the matter”.

Good for you Joe, what do you think about US coin collectors buying “British dugups” taken from Roman sites without as much as a by your leave? They do not give a monkeys either.

Sue Newton from Brighton claims to know who I am:

“Paul Barford is a well know (sic) archaeological agitator and radical heritigite (sic) so no suprise he wants to dig it up for entertainment and profit. Just leave it be as nature and our predecessors intended. It is after all a burial place so deserves respect”

Hmmm. I’m going to take a guess that Sue Newton (if its her real name) is a “metal detectorist” (“well know”, "heritig[e]") and is taking the mickey with her use of the phrase “dig it up for entertainment and profit”. Maybe Sue Newton would like to say whether in her opinion UK "metal detectorists" leave burial places alone, or can we currently see a lot of Anglo-Saxon personal ornaments goods on the British antiquities market coming from the emptying of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries onto eBay, Sue? If that is not grave robbing for entertainment and profit, what is? (Not to mention the bloke that was searching the site of a crashed WW2 aircraft apparently without a permit we discused here earlier too). If Sue Newton is not a "heritagite", how would she describe herself I wonder?

What is interesting however is that to judge from the comments, a fair number of the apostrophe-using readers of “the Times” are mostly in favour of protecting the archaeological heritage and not using it up randomly for short-term aims, which is what the real Paul Barford would advocate.

One of the 24 people accused two days ago of illegal treatment of Native American artefacts from the region, Dr James Redd was found dead at his home today.

Collectors of portable antiquities in the United States are indignant when somebody suggests that the fact that they are apparently willing to fork out money no-questions-asked for all manner of items, no matter where they come from, means that they are part of the looting process. The suggestion that "collectors are the real looters" is an anathema to them, though to the rest of us it seems a pretty self-evident truth.

I was therefore interested in a phrase in the published search warrant issued in the Utah "Action Cerberus" bust which might clarify how the FBI see these matters during their investigations. Point 12 of the document talks of the identification of an "illegal network" of "individuals who regularly pillage archaeological sites [...] Besides these excavators or "diggers", other individuals in the illegal network are dealers, who buy, sell and transport this material and collectors who are end users". It seems to me the climate could be turning against no-questions-asked collecting of portable antiquities even in the region of the world which is one of its major bastions, the USA.

I reported here earlier (The Problems of Inheriting a No-questions-asked Collection), on investigations of some of the objects from the collection of collectables dealer John A. Sisto in Chicago. It transpired that a number of them were identified as having been stolen in Italy a number of years ago, and accordingly these items were now being returned to that country. The day after I wrote about it commending Mr Sisto's son Joseph, lawyer Peter Tompa, of a Washington legal firm he’d apparently prefer me not to mention, made a bizarre post on his "cultural Property Observer" blog calling this a “strange case”. I examined this characterisation here, but now I see that there has appeared on his blog an even more bizarre contribution to the discussion ("Some Other Thoughts About the Materials from the Sisto Collection Repatriated to Italy") .

In this he relates: “a scholar and expert in the international trade in cultural artifacts provided me with the following thoughts on reviewing the list of materials repatriated from Italy…”. Funnily enough though, he does not name this benefactor who has stepped in like a fairy godmother to declare that “everything I see here is virtually useless junk”. The unnamed expert suggests that "it is truly inconceivable that all but the smallest fraction of this material is of any importance at all [...] I think the Sisto family is probably lucky to have gotten rid of all this". That is not very respectful to the memory of the dead man who spent the best part of his life collecting, looking after and studying it.

Junk or not, does the anonymous "expert in international trade in cultural artefacts" believe that if they were stolen, an attempt should be made to return them to the collections they were stolen from? I think this is an important point. His statements as reported by Peter Tompa seem to suggest that he considers this "worthless junk” should stay in the USA, no matter what its status because the Italians "already have a lot of stuff like this". I hope that is not the case.

Like Mr Tompa, the anonymous expert who sees nothing of value here apparently has difficulty believing that the items investigated by the FBI are stolen, indeed they even suggest that one possibility is that this could all have been “thrown out from libraries” and not stolen at all. In addition, Mr Tompa apparently believes (for some reason which he does not divulge) that it is simply impossible that the Italian police can possibly still find any records concerning unsolved cases of thefts of antiques which took place in Italy before 1982.

Mr Tompa in particular seems to be of the opinion that instead of this being a case of the US fulfilling its international obligations, there is much more to this than meets the eye and that the whole affair is some kind of international conspiracy and that the Italian authorities are simply making all this up to wrest some more cratefulls of artefacts from innocent US collectors and their families (even if they are really rubbish) and the FBI is colluding with them, and thus lying to the American people. Joseph Sisto is going along with this nefarious plan, Tompa states on his blog, because he has been "indoctrinated" when he was a student. I wonder what precisely Mr Tompa has against "the Italians", the FBI or people with an education in cultural anthropology.

I am also totally at a loss to understand Mr Tompa's friend's statment that: "if no real expert in America was asked to go through this material, a reputable book or manuscript dealer, and the FBI relied only on the Italians on the question of importance of possible theft; this is a major scandal". I am not sure who he thinks should be informing the US authorities what objects were stolen in Italy, or why he does not think this IS the job of the Italian law enforcement officers. After all, the case notes would be in Italy, not Chicago. It seems furthermore that this unnamed expert is suggesting that there is in some way a differentiation between thefts which are of "importance" and those which are not. (I wonder if they have ever had their house burgled or car stolen?) If some of the objects in the Sisto collection are stolen, they are stolen, and I really find this expert's line of reasoning difficult to follow. It seemingly makes a mockery of even the most skeletal 'codes of ethics' of antiques dealers all over the world who, whatever else, deny that they would ever handle stolen goods. No wonder the person Tompa cites wishes to remain anonymous.

I ask again, do such comments indicate that deep down, US collectors think that, once they have their hands on some property illegally taken from other owners, they should be allowed to keep it if the original owners were foreigners? Especially if (as this astonishing outburst seems to suggest) they are from Italy, who’ve got lots (too much) of it anyway and the stolen items are only of "minor importance"?

Public opinion in the US seems to be against the trashing of archaeological sites in their own country as a source of collectables for the entertainment and profit of a minority of portable antiquity collectors. Pot-diggers presumably want to preserve their freedom to collect what they want how they want without bothersome officials poking their noses into their business asking awkward questions about where the items actually came from. These collectors could perhaps take the same road as the US no-questions-asked ancient coin dealing lobby. Perhaps as a result of this scrutiny of their hobby caused by the Utah bust, they will decide to get together and form an "Ancient Ceramics Collectors Guild".... "a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving our freedom to collect, committed to fighting restrictive heritage protection legislation, promoting the free and independent collecting of ancient dugup ceramic and other ancient artifacts from our native country's past. The Guild will foster an environment in which the general public can confidently acquire and hold any artifact of historical interest regardless of date or place of origin. It will strive to achieve its goals througheducation, political action, and consumer protection...." Yeah, right. I guess like the illegal coin import stunt of the coin dealers' ACCG they could stage an illegal pot-dig in Baltimore and then in a court case challenge the US government's "retentionist" and "nationalist" policies of declaring certain ancient artefacts from US soil state property....

Seriously, I would be interested to learn from readers of any analogous groups in Native American (or other) artefact collecting circles in the USA which have a similar modus operandi as the ancient coin milieu's ACCG or the old DIG campaign in Britain, I have not come across any.

The Salt Lake Tribune account of the "Action Cerberus" antiquities bust mentions an old case from the same region which seems of interest.

In 1995, Moab resident Earl Shumway was found guilty of stealing sandals, a sleeping mat and an infant's burial blanket from the Dop-Ki Cave in Canyonlands National Park and the Manti-LaSal National Forest. He was sentenced to 5½ years
in prison. Shumway also was arrested 10 years earlier, accused of stealing 34 prehistoric baskets. He was placed on probation with the promise he would help agents investigate other thefts. Unashamed of being a professional looter, Shumway claimed he was able to make $5,000 a day from his activities, which he described as a "way of life."

There was quite a long article about Earl Shumway in the New York Times in 1995 (Timothy Egan, In the Indian Southwest, Heritage Takes a Hit New York Times Nov. 2 1995). He is also discussed at some length in Craig Childs' article "Pillaging the past", and Julie Cart's 'Looting Indian Grave Sites Is Big Business in Utah' (Los Angeles Times, Sunday, April 8, 2001).

(Yesterday, three people from Blanding with the same surname were arrested (Kevin, Tammy and Sharon) though whether they are related to Earl was not established).

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Wayne Dance prosecuted most of Utah's Archaeological Resource Protection Act cases from the early 1990s until his 2007 retirement. He expressed both pleasure and dismay over yesterday's indictments of 24 Utah artefact hunters and collectors. He said, "the negative is that there is still destruction of cultural resources [...], the plus is that Utah still leads the nation in protecting them. ... We have a stronger commitment from law enforcement to investigate". Dance estimated that citizen complaints had prompted up to half his prosecutions, reflecting a broad social appreciation of the value of the archaeological evidence being destroyed by the activity. He emphasised that "this serious crime involves far more than artifacts [...], the attention is given too much to the physical artifacts themselves rather than the knowledge potential and cultural significance of these artifacts in conjunction with their context".

Two online Utah sources have very full accounts of the bust of illegal artefact hunting and trade in Utah on 10th June. The first is KSL news, which has a story “compiled with contributions from John Daley and Ben Winslow",‘ Dozens arrested in archeological artifacts bust' KSL June 10th, 2009).

"The suspects are excavators, dealers and collectors. They were arrested and indicted as part a two-year investigation, code named 'Cerberus Action,'" explained U.S. Deputy Attorney General David Ogden. The defendants began making
their appearances in a Moab court on Wednesday. A federal magistrate judge was transported to Moab just to handle the cases.

There is an informative video. The site also gives a list of defendents and, particulrly interesting, a pdf of one of the FBI search warrants (that concerning David Lacy). There is also a 17-slide photo gallery but disappointingly this shows “Artifacts similar to those that were stolen but are not the stolen items themselves" (which seem not to have been removed from the homes of the defendents).

An even more satisfying account was provided by the Salt Lake Tribune. The main article (Patty Henez, ‘FBI charges 24 in federal artifact looting case’, SLT 10th June 2009) details the investigations. They are reported to have begun in November 2006. Then, in March 2007, the person identified in court records only as "the Source" agreed to collaborate with federal authorities. It was evidence gathered by this person which lay behind the 24 prosecutions. There is a separate but brief "questions and answer" format article on the mechanism of the "Artifact theft bust". Again there is a list of defendents in the text of the main article as well as a separate article giving a “breakdown of the artifact theft charges”. To this article too is appended a pdf of the search warrant concerning 55-year-old San Juan High teacher David Lacy of Blanding which federal authorities said was also representative of affidavits filed in cases against the 23 others.

Most of the suspects come from San Juan County, and some of them are said to be familiar to readers of the paper. These include Blanding doctor James Redd and his wife, Jeanne who the newspaper said were accused in 1996 in state court of desecrating a Native American grave while pot hunting in Cottonwood Wash near Bluff (an appeals court struck down the felony charges because, under Utah law, prosecutors had to prove the body was intentionally buried at the site, which they were unable to do). The list also includes a 78-year-old man recently inducted into the Utah Tourism Hall of Fame.

From the point of view of public outreach, most satisfying of all in the Salt Lake Tribune coverage is a sizable article by Brian Maffly 'Looters move artifacts and destroy their value (Location is key to understanding ancient cultures)' which explains to the non-specialist reader why taking these artefacts out of the ground in the way that they were is such a problem. It also has appended an informative text box 'About the ancient cultures of the Colorado Plateau'.

The article contains a number of notable quotes:

Winston Hurst, a Blanding archaeologist who has helped document cultural sites near Bluff and Blanding, said he welcomes the crackdown to preserve what's left of "a fragile and severely damaged record of 13,000 years of human experience that left no written history." If the defendants are guilty, Hurst wrote in an e-mail, they deserve the consequences. "It is no longer acceptable to plead ignorance or innocence of the importance of the archaeological record, our need to preserve it or the laws that our society has passed to protect it," he wrote.
"Anyone who doesn't get it is inexcusably clueless. Having said that, I don't think most of these people are stupid, and expect to find that there are some very nuanced back stories, and that some of the charges are based on misinformation."
FBI Special Agent in Charge Timothy Fuhrman of the Salt Lake City field office said the illegal trade is a multimillion-dollar industry. "They are people who know what they are doing," he said. "There's a network."
[U.S. Attorney for Utah, Brett] Tolman vowed such buying and selling of history would stop. "Those who remove or damage artifacts from public lands take something from all of us," he said. "They take something that can never be replaced." "You look at the people involved," Tolman added, "and it has been pervasive." […]
A 2008 Bureau of Land Management report says the agency began several looting investigations last year and is continuing work begun at least nine years ago that discovered a connection between artifact thefts and methamphetamine trade in the West. Tolman declined to say whether the Utah probe showed drug links, but said more charges and additional defendants could be found during what is an ongoing investigation.

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On looking up the links for the text (below) on the recent arrests made in Utah of pot-digger/sellers in which Craig Childs (photo) is quoted, I came across a nicely-written text of an essay of his posted a few days ago which is in a way a bit of promotion for his forthcoming (June 2010) book "Finders keepers". The essay presented an interesting and thought-provoking viewpoint on the collection and study of portable antiquities which seemed worth sharing and discussing. It is called "Obsessed with the Oldness of Things...".

The oldness of things can become infectious. Some take to the sciences and become archaeologists, while others delve into the precarious underworld of dealing and collecting....

What makes this text interesting is that its author is as hard on the archaeologist as he is on collectors and dealers. He says "stacks of books have been published on the ethics of archaeology attempting to answer the ever-elusive question of who has the right to own antiquity. But that is a dead-end question. If someone tells you they have an answer, you can bet they are with one side or another". Childs presents himself as in the middle, it seems he is of the view that nobody owns the past. He apparently believes that artefacts should not be dug up for collection or study, but the integrity of their context in the earth should be respected and artefacts should be allowed to rest where they have lain for centuries. Presumably here we may discern some elements of beliefs deriving from Native American circles.

Childs describes how he began writing his forthcoming book on global issues surrounding artifacts in which presumably he will argue this case. He explains: "I have set out to find if any common ground exists that might lead to greater understanding of why we are so drawn to old things. It is a common ground I hope might ease the destruction and removal of archaeology from the land". He quotes one of my old lecturers Kathryn Walker Tubb of University College of London, when she writes, "Ultimately the hope, currently so forlorn, must be that some form of reconciliation can be discovered before the archaeological resource is exploited to the point of extinction". Childs declarees that he has been "trying to write that reconciliation. I have found that the various players in antiquities, though often at each other's throats, are mirrors for each other. They are each driven by the same fundamental desire to create a link in the contemporary mind to those who lived in the distant past. Beyond that, they choose slightly different paths which throws them into far corners of the fight". He describes how difficult it has been to maintain the 'middle way' between these two corners of the fight over cultural property:

My journey proved much more difficult and revelatory than I expected as I immersed myself in a world of scholars, thieves, and would-be saviors. [...] Discourse among scientists, curators, dealers, and collectors tends to be polarized at best, vitriolic at worst. The cast of characters involved in ancient things gets along like a pen of angry dogs. Some are even willing to kill. At one point I interviewed an antiquities broker - he seemed like a nice enough fellow - and a few days later heard that he put a price on the head of a troublesome foreign journalist. Another man, an amateur archaeologists cum pothunter now in prison, explained to an undercover agent that you have to go into the field well armed, and if law enforcement pays a visit to your digging operation, you "drop 'em... and never come back." [...] You don't get this kind of talk from geologists or stamp collectors. It is a phenomenon of archaeology.

[I do wonder though about Mr Childs' precise definition of the words "archaeologist" and "archaeology"]. He writes:

I met an elderly pothunter who took off his bracelet and handed it to me, an inlay of silver and turquoise probably a century and a half old. "You know where I got that?" he asked. "Off a dead Navajo." He was a grave-digger with a mischievous grin on his face and the bracelet in my hands suddenly felt like ice. Though I had to swallow my sudden discomfort, I listened to him whimsically explain his love for the past, saying an artifact like this is holy, physically embodying stories that take him back in time. In his mind, he was honoring the bracelet by giving it another go around, but I remained stuck on the fact that he had driven a shovel through a nest of human bones to get it.

Childs asks what it is that draws people to artefacts in the first place. He suggests that we need to consider the motivation and emotion of artefact hunters and collectors, and I am sure he is right there. He says that these are the factors that are "missing from the stacks of books. What is at the core of our attraction to ancient objects? What is so damned important about a clay seal lying in the desert for 2,000 years? Why will we kill for it?".

I was struck by this passage:

Where did this journey ultimately lead? To the side of a road in New Mexico last week. I was walking along a gravelly shoulder when I strayed to look down a dry arroyo. On the ground before me, I spotted a small red arrowhead. It was made of Jasper stone, for which I named my first son. I picked it up, held it against the sky, a perfect little bird-point. I instantly wanted it. Having it for my own would mark this day and this place on the side of the road. I have seen plenty of arrowheads, and they all cry out with their small voices to be pocketed, this one especially. For the name of my son, for the turquoise sky overhead, for the silent buttes in the distance, and for the long spans of time that fall between. But there was an older, deeper voice that came through. It had to do with respect for the object, and for the place, reminding me of the brevity of my own life while this arrowhead has been here for centuries. It was the gut feeling I grew up with. I flicked the arrowhead away with my thumb and it landed back in the dirt. I left it there wishing the earth to be populated with memory, a stone on the ground bright as blood.

Photos: Craig Childs (Bruce Hucko http://www.brucehuckophoto.com/); difficult to put down but this one is a wonderful freshly knapped jasper arrowhead http://www.urbanscout.org/a-team-camp/

A two-year major undercover sting operation aimed at gathering information on part of the flourishing illegal market in ancient American Indian artefacts in the United States has led to federal indictments in Utah naming 24 people (Howard Berkes, 'Arrests Made In Sale Of American Indian Artifacts' NPR News June 10, 2009; Nicholas Riccardi and Jim Tankersley, 24 charged in crackdown on Native American artifact looting, Los Angeles Times 11th June 2009). This was what authorities have called the largest investigation ever into the looting of Native American artifacts on public lands in the United States. On Wednesday, about 150 federal agents, sheriffs' deputies and local and tribal police served arrest and search warrants in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. Most of those targeted by Wednesday's early morning raids live in southeastern Utah, most of them took place in Blanding, which is a centre of both legitimate and illegal artefact markets, while other arrests took place in Moab and Monticello (Utah), and in neighboring Colorado and New Mexico. The region has a rich archaeological heritage and contains thousands of archaeological sites, settlements, dwellings and burial grounds and cliff paintings and engravings of ancient groups who 'mysteriously vanished' before modern tribes appeared. Many of these sites are rich in collectable 'portable antiquities' including beautifuilly painted pottery.

It was in this region in the late 1800s that rancher Richard Wetherill and his family discovered the cliff dwellings (now Mese Verde National Park) burial sites containing clay pots, reed sandals and religious items of a 'lost culture' colloquially referred to as the Anasazi. That attracted the interest of collectors and museums. Since the early 20th century, settlers were even encouraged to dig up arrowheads, pottery and other remains. In the 1920s the University of Utah paid Blanding residents $2 per ancient pot. A lucrative trade in Native American artefacts developed that continues in both legal and black market forms today. It was the destruction to sites in this region by indiscriminate collecting that was behind the creation of the 1906 'Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities' (16 USC 431-433), see the very interesting website ' The Story of the Antiquities Act ', by Ronald F. Lee. Currently the Archaeological Resource Protection Act (ARPA) prohibits among other things the digging and selling of centuries-old pots, bowls, baskets, mugs, sandals, pipes, religious items and other artefacts left by ancient Native Americans on what is now federal and tribal land. Federal law does not however prohibit the digging and removal of artefacts from private land.

Collecting and trade in Native American artefacts of the Anasazi and related cultures in the region has been going on, legally and illegally, in this region for generations, the collectors forming a sort of artefact hunting subculture. Craig Childs, who is writing a book ("Finders Keepers") on artefact theft emphasises that as with all artefact hunting, not all US "pothunters," are motivated by profit: "The stronger focus is finding the thing … and figuring out the puzzle and getting your treasure, It is definitely a treasure hunter's sport". Protecting archaeological sites of the region from artefact theft is extremely difficult, enforcing the laws is hindered by the vast size of the region and the remoteness of many of the sites. Pothunters are rarely caught in the act, and they often claim that the items they sell were found on private land. Federal authorities estimate that 90% of the 20,000 archaeological sites in San Juan County, where Blanding is located, have already been plundered.

Archaeologists, Native American groups and preservationists have long argued that the government has not moved aggressively enough to stamp out the plundering of artifacts. There had last been an antiquities raid in Utah in the 1980s, and it is reported that the execution of the search warrants in collectors' homes caused much anti-government feeling and a 'cold dead hands' attitude among collectors in the region, especially as in the event nobody was actually prosecuted. One of President George W. Bush's final pardons was granted to the first Utah man convicted of stealing artifacts from public lands. This time authorities seem to have taken action and been concerned to make a watertight case.

Wednesday's sting involved the purchase of 256 artefacts by an undercover informant for $335,685. Interestingly, According to a search warrant affidavit, the FBI and Bureau of Land Management in October 2006 persuaded a person described as "a major dealer of archaeological artifacts for 10 years" to work with the authorities to help them unravel the informal network of pot hunters illicitly profiting off the land's history. The dealer was 'wired' and the transactions were recorded, and the informant managed to get information on where the artefacts in question had been found, some of the suspects indicated by pointing to spots on a map that they had been taken from federal and tribal land. The charges allege:

... theft of government property, theft from tribal lands and depredation of government property. Both felony and misdemeanor counts are involved. Penalties upon conviction range up to 10 years in prison.

The accused are named in several sources. In December 2007, for example, David Lacy, 55 (who another source suggests is the brother of San Juan County Sheriff Mike Lacy); and another defendant allegedly came to the dealer with a wide range of artifacts that they indicated had been found on public land, but asking that they be listed as coming from private land. The asking price was $6,000. Another person indicted was Harold Lyman, 78, who is accused of selling the source an ancient pipe bowl. Jeanne Redd, 59, was indicted for allegedly selling a tribal bird pendant. A woman with that name had been charged previously with desecrating Native American grave sites in southern Utah. No doubt in coming weeks we will be hearing more about the progress of this case.

At a Salt Lake City news conference about the arrests, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar described thse events as "a sad reminder that the stealing and destruction of archaeological and American Indian treasures from public lands is a highly lucrative business [...] We will not tolerate that kind of activity in the United States".

It is a shame though that the United States not only tolerates but does not more frequently take similar action against those of its citizens who ignore heritage protection laws of other countries to accumulate collections of portable antiquities such as pots coins and artworks looted from archaeological sites overseas and which are the basis of a massive no-questions-asked trade in the States which is just as damaging to the archaeological heritage as the pot-diggers they prosecute at home, and for precisely the same reasons.

(basic text largely based on the article Howard Berkes, 'Arrests Made In Sale Of American Indian Artifacts' NPR News June 10, 2009 - listen to a broadcast: map from the LA Times).

More details are emerging about the Sisto Collection issue which was the subject of an FBI press conference on Monday. There is an interview with Joseph Sisto on NPR News ('Son 'Relieved' To Tell Cops Of Dad's Stolen Artifacts') in which he talks to Melissa Bloch a little about his motives and the schism between him and his late father about the items in the collection. You can listen to it here. It turns out that Joseph Sisto studied (as a third degree) cultural anthropology, hence his concern. The question of the origins of this material seems more complex than originally reported. It is confirmed that far from Mr Sisto obtaining the material only from the grandfather as the FBI press release was suggesting, he was buying some of the material in the collection himself from 'third parties'.

It would be interesting to hear the version of the second brother.

Coincidentally the announcement from the PAS of their upcoming promotional conference (British Museum, 7th September) has just appeared on Britarch. It is not about how many artefacts are being removed from the record by artefact hunters without anybody knowing, or how the PAS can increase public awareness of archaeological issues or help deal with 'nighthawking' or anything like that, but about:

Recording the PASt: How Different European Countries Deal (sic) with Portable Antiquities. The blurb announces:

This conference aims to gain a wider understanding of how different European countries deal with portable antiquities (archaeological small finds) found by members of the public and promote best practice amongst finders. The key questions that speakers will address are: whether there is a legal requirement for finders of portable antiquities to report archaeological objects and whether the state claims ownership of them; whether it is permissible to search for such finds with a metal-detector or by other means; how many people (in that country) are known to search for archaeological objects (legally or not); how many objects are reported each year; and whether the systems in place (in that country) work as well as they could or whether improvements could be made. It is hoped the conference will help identify the main strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches adopted by countries across Europe, in order to draw conclusions as to how best to preserve an archaeological record of finds found, develop best practice, and find ways to educate the public about the importance of such finds for understanding the past.

Oddly enough, not a word then about the protection of the archaeological record from the exploitation by artefact hunters and collectors as a source of collectables for entertainment and profit. Surely that is the key issue in discussing legislation and response concerning archaeological finds which are potential collectables, not whether by becoming "partners" with those involved in this destructive process, archaeology can gain a little information (which is I bet the way the discussion is headed).

Also missing is mention of the participants providing any definition of what constitutes a "portable antiquity" in each country which seems to me likely to lead to confusion. Surely a more efficient way to organize this sort of international discussion is first to gather the information on legislation etc, publish it and then have a discussion of participants based on the reading and diogesting and reflection on the information presented rather than a series of twenty minute potted and inevitably incomplete and superficial presentations of what are extremely complex and multi-aspectual issues.

I was amused for example to see that the organizers have allocated just 25 minutes for Roger Bland to present his paper "The English and Welsh approach to portable antiquities: a perfect system or fundamentally flawed?" Personally I see no question about it (the latter), but since we can all guess what conclusion the Head of the Scheme will inevitably come to, I wonder just how many words he can devote to exploring whether becoming "partners" with those that dig up the archaeological record for collectables for entertainment and profit is in archaeological and heritage management terms a "fundamentally flawed" approach. Not many, I wager.

These "different European countries" considered in the conference do not actually seem all that different in their legislative and social conditions and archaeological organization as they could be. There are three groups, there is England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic. Then there will be the Netherlands, Schleswig Holstein and Denmark. Then the edges of Europe, Slovenia, Hungary and Poland (Alek Bursche). This is followed by just half an hour "discussion" - no doubt just the amount of time needed for everyone to agree that the PAS partnership with collectors is the "best thing since sliced bread for portable antiquities" before rushing for their trains.

Presumably there will be a conference publication intended to promote the same message for all those US collectors and dealers in portable antiquities who could not make it to the conference to use in their lobbying. The use that is made of the PAS by the lobbyists of this 'no-questions-asked antiquities trade protection lobby' (such as the PAS' "numismatic friends" the ACCG) is one of the disasterous and the most damaging of the home goals the PAS has scored for archaeological heritage management. This conference seems almost designed to compound that effect.

That this question is being treated instrumentally seems to be suggested by the programme. Is the range of papers collected in the preliminary programme really representative of the European panorama of problems and responses? Where is Europe's biggest portable antiquity mine, Bulgaria? What about the German response in other Lander where progress is being made against the illicit antiquity market? France is conspicuous by its absence (I dare PAS to invite somebody from HAPPAH to take part in the discussions). Spain, Italy and Greece (not to mention Cyprus and soon-to-be EU-Turkey) have experiences in these issues which it would be rash to ignore. Loss of archaeological information from artefact hunting is a huge problem in the Crimea too.

I imagine participants from these regions of Europe would have some useful things to say about coping (or failing to cope) with artefact hunting and other finders but I presume that they would not say things the PAS would like to hear - especially in response to any suggestion that archaeologists should just let the artefact miners get on with quarrying the archaeological sites for saleable collectables and show a few of the things they've dug up (voluntarily of course) to the archaeologists which is the PAS approach. I wonder whether their absence is fortunate (for the PAS, less so for the archaeological heritage) accident or design?

Furthermore we see once again the confusion between two entirely different issues - which are treated separately in the legislation of other countries - which is the accidental finding of archaeological material, and the deliberate seeking and exploitation of it as collectables. These are not the same thing at all, although the PAS and its supporters and even (oddly) reviewers, insist it is.

Vignette: Even Lewis Carroll appreciated that suggesting imposing a PAS-like system on the rest of the world is rather like the idea of stuffing a fat dormouse into a tiny teapot.....

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Over on the blog of Cultural Property Observer (Bailey and Ehrenberg lawyer Peter Tompa) is a post made on Tuesday (so apparently a day after my own) called “The Strange Case of the Sisto Collection”. Personally, as my own account of the topic indicates, I see nothing "strange" about it at all; it was another example of a US private collection of portable antiquities, antiques and art objects containing items of questionable provenance and exported from the source country in dubious circumstances, like probably countless others.

The former president of the ACCG however puts a collectors’ spin on the tale:

Mr. Sisto's heirs apparently did not know what to do with
the trove. They called the police, who were only too happy to turn it over to Italian cultural authorities.

Reference to the material I quoted makes it clear that Mr Sisto’s son Joseph was far from ignorant in these matters and was quite certain two years earlier what his father should have done with the objects illegally obtained by the grandfather. This is the reason the police were involved after the collector’s death, and why I think Joseph Sisto should be commended.

Not so Cultural Property Observer, who continues “It is unclear why exactly why the FBI concluded that 1,600 items of some 3,500 found in the home were "stolen."….” [the inverted commas are Cultural Property Observer's ]. It seems he has not given adequate attention to the FBI press release of June 8th. There he would have learnt:

Members of the FBI’s Art Crime Team (ACT) then took possession of over 3,500 items and began the exhaustive process of trying to identify and authenticate each one. Investigators worked closely with the Italian Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage and the Italian Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities, whose assistance was invaluable to this process.

The objects were apparently laboriously checked against records of previous art thefts in Italy, as a result of which FBI investigators came to believe “that the elder Sisto obtained the artifacts by various means, primarily from third parties who would loot private collections for personal gain”. The articles that are being sent back to Italy had been stolen from other collections.

So this has nothing to do with Italian export licencing legislation (the 2000 objects not identified as resulting from thefts in Italy were not returned to Italy, even though they too it seems had been illegally exported). Cultural Property Observer asks rhetorically:

Is this really a case of "stolen property" or more of one of Italian authorities "cherry picking" artifacts of cultural interest for repatriation? Without more information, we will never know whether the FBI acceded to Italy's "guilty until proven innocent" mentality or whether some real evidence was provided that the material was actually "stolen."

Well, in fact the information is available, and Cultural Property Observer's remarks are no less than an unjustied slight on the FBI and the Italian authorities. The allegation is thus another in the series of conspiracy theories from the Tompa/ACCG stable about "innocent" collectors being the "victims" of oppressive and ignoble authorities.

At the end of his blog post, Cultural Property Observer sneers:

Hopefully, at a minimum, Mr. Sisto's son will keep tabs on what Italian authorities actually do with his deceased father's beloved collection. Wouldn't it be a shame if the trove just ended up in storage somewhere or, even worse, if it was displayed as a "trophy" in Italy's ongoing campaign to repatriate artifacts?

Instead, it seems that the search will be on for the collectors from whom the objects were initially stolen, or the heirs of the victims.

The codes of ethics of even coin dealers do not condone hanging on to, still less trading in, artifacts from anyone’s "beloved collection" if it turns out that they had been acquired as a result of theft from other owners and collections. It is odd to witness a US collector (and a lawyer to boot) who seems uneasy about these items going back from a US private collection to where they were stolen from. Question: in the eyes of US collectors, do “collectors rights” somehow not apply when the owner of cultural property is a foreign one and it is a US citizen who has got his hands on it? Cultural Property Observer's treatment of the Sisto collection investigation as a "strange case" implies he sees US law enforcement agencies colluding like the undercover agents of "foreign governments" which Mr Tompa apparently imagines exist.

Photo: FBI black helicopter - if you are a portable antiquity collector and not yet a member of the ACCG, they could be coming after YOU next!

We are constantly being told by the pro-collecting lobby (in Britain especially) that for various reasons archaeologists should welcome the phenomenon of portable artefact collecting because it allegedly has so many benefits for us all. This is sheer lunacy, and totally ignores what the rest of the world's archaeologists consider to be the fundamental point, which is that in its current form the collection of so-called portable antiquities is nothing more or less than the erosive, exploitive and selective mining of the archaeological record merely for collectables for profit and entertainment. This process is widely recognised outside the topsy-turvey world of British archaeology as causing severe damage to the archaeological record. Renfrew does not hesitate to call it a "crisis", while virtually the rest of British archaeologists and archaeological bodies (and antiquities collectors and dealers of course) see it as "opportunity". In a comment on my post here about the potential number of metal detected artifacts which are not being reported by metal detector using artefact hunters in Britain, Roger Bland valiantly offers the statement:

A French scholar, Xavier Loriot, and I, are working on finds of Roman gold coins from Britain, comparing the data with a corpus he wrote of finds from France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland and the pattern is very
similar: from Britain the rate of new discoveries has more than doubled since 1973, whereas on the Continent it has declined.

Whoopee. More numismatic "excitement", a complete list of Roman coin finds from the UK, but just of one metal. I cannot identify which corpus of Loriot he is referring to. Sadly, Dr Bland does not inform us how he interprets the statement about the doubling of the "reporting rate", so we are left to guess from the context of the statement that we are being asked to assume we are comparing “like with like” and on that basis we are expected to conclude that Britain’s PAS is “a jolly good thing”. I think that the interpretation of the pattern of the varying “rate of discoveries” and reporting (for that is what we are discussing) of gold coins is not such a simple one as this suggestion would imply - as I am sure Bland and Loriot will acknowledge in the final publication of their joint research project.

From a recent study of the Gaulish gold coins (J.-P. Callu, X. Loriot 1990, L'or monnayé II, la dispersion des aurei en Gaule romaine sous l'Empire which I had a glance at in the library here looking for the work Bland mentioned), it emerges that the peak in reported finds in 1850-1900 was the result of a sort of “fashion” to collect information of this type in this period, a tendency that continued in the first half of the twentieth century and indeed is not restricted to France. After c. 1950 however, the number of reported finds from France drops off sharply. This is not however just a result of changing fashion, more importantly neither is it a result of the French law on metal detector use which most collectors blame this on (for that dates to 1989). Other factors are involved, and it would be interesting to explore them in more detail.

What is clear is that since the middle of the century (and especially after c. 1970), there has been a vast increase in the size of the market for “minor” portable antiquities, including [perhaps especially] coins, in Europe, the USA and further afield. This is closely related to the appearance of the hobbyists’ metal detector. The difficulties of supplying a sharply expanding trade with legitimately-obtained material heightened the tendencies to secrecy already present in the antiquities trade and led to the emergence of the no-questions-asked approach which is today the root of all the damage this trade is doing. It is this which is behind the fact that for a certain period ‘finders’ have no longer announcing where the items at their disposal have come from, and there is a ready market for these items despite this and which tends to bypass the usual channels by which new finds came to the attention of the academic world. It is thus that fewer reported findspots have become known in comparison to earlier periods.

Dr Bland apparently thinks we should rejoice that, apparently through the existence of the Portable Antiquity Scheme, we now have a two-fold increase in the “rate of reporting” of one specific group of finds. In reply I would point out that in 1950, very few people had access to tools such as metal detecting devices to seek for such items, today in the UK there has been an increase ten-thousand times of the number of people out there equipped with electronic equipment to locate precisely such finds. This means a ten thousand fold increase in the rate archaeological sites and assemblages are being eroded in the search for collectables. Moreover this is a cumulative process which has been going on since the 1970s.

In such circumstances it seems somewhat odd to be rejoicing about a two-fold increase in Roman gold coins being reported “since 1973”. In the same period there has been an increase ten thousand fold in the number of people in the UK alone going out into the fields equipped to seek ancient treasures, including some who are not overly concerned about the legalities of where they search and what they actually tell anyone about the results. The knowledge that we have a few dozen more reported gold coin finds from the whole of the UK in recent years is therefore tempered by a few moments spent on internet sales sites such as eBay and ACCG President Bill Puetz’s V-Coins. Where actually have all those unprovenanced gold coins come from?*

It seems very much a “never mind the quality feel the width” approach which extols the virtue of being “partners” with artefact hunters while ignoring the fundamental issue here. A considerable amount of erosion of the archaeological record and damage to sites is being caused by this search for collectables for entertainment and profit, and only to a certain degree is our knowledge of the past benefiting (if that is the right word) from it. The degree to which this is relative to the erosion and destruction is totally unknown, as bodies like the PAS refuse to investigate and discuss this. Indeed the British pro-collecting "partnership" insists on presenting an extremely optimistic picture of the "success" they have allegedly been having dealing with the artefact hunting problem, one that is parrotted overseas by collectors and dealers without much understanding of what is involved. This picture is based entirely on superficial asessments glib statements like the ones presented by Bland earlier here, rather than a proper analysis of the overall effects of artefact hunting on the archaeological resource of Britain. What kind of a “policy” is that? In my opinion, the pro-collecting case is more of a fairy story than a policy.

Photo: Gold coin of Emperor Constantine III (the western one), source: Wikipedia commons.

* I am not claiming they all come from metal detecting in England, but the most careful data collection cannot be interpreted reliably when we do not have any inkling of the degree to which they are representative of those from the potential sample space. The fact that there are a disquieting number of gold coins passing through various hands without record prompts us to be extremely cautious in assuming they are.

Collectors of portable antiquities assume that the chances of getting found out acquiring no-questions-asked illegal antiquities locked away behind the doors of their homes are remote. Several cases recently have shown that the computer networks that allow their purchase have in fact led law enforcement authorities to those doors. I think we will be seeing more of this in coming months and years.

Another mechanism that leads to the discovery of private ownership of illicit cultural property is when collectors die and their heirs have to deal with the accumulated items. Whether or not the original buyer asked the right questions when they acquired them, their heirs are forced to answer questions when they wish to dispose of them. A case of this is being reported from Chicago (Joseph Ruzich, 'Illegally acquired items' in Berwyn's hidden treasure to be returned to Italy: Stolen antiquities were in bungalow for decades' Chicago Tribune June 6, 2009; Mike Robinson, ‘Stolen artifacts being sent back to Italy’, Chicago tribune June 8th 2009; Margaret Ramirez and Robert Mitchum, 'FBI sending back stolen artifacts found in Berwyn', Chicago Tribune June 9, 2009). See also the FBI press release.

In March 2007, a collector and dealer of antiquities, books and antiques, Italian immigrant John A. Sisto died at the age of 78. When his two sons came to clear out his bungalow on South Elmwood Avenue in Berwyn, a suburb of Chicago, they found a hoard of some 3500 antiquities and antiques stacked away in boxes and stored around the house. It turns out that more than half of them could be shown to have been illegally obtained and illegally removed from Italy, and at a press conference on Monday they were displayed by the FBI and it was announced that the items, with an estimated value of $5 million and $10 million, will be returned to Italy later this week. Although the items were removed from Italy in violation of its cultural property laws, Rice said there would be no U.S. criminal prosecutions in connection with theft, transportation or possession of stolen artifacts. The ownership of the remaining 2,000 items could not be verified, so they were being returned to the Sisto family.

John Sisto was born in Bari, Italy, and emigrated to the US in 1958. Soon after this he began to receive items sent to him for sale in the collectables store he operated in Berwyn, and they seem to have been primarily sent by his father Giuseppe Sisto, a geography and history professor at the University of Bari. While some seem to have been bought legitimately at estate sales, the FBI indicate that many of the objects had come from thefts . These seemingly had been bought by Giuseppe from fences who had obtained them from thieves who had looted them from private collections (these are presumably those that were now being returned to Italy - presumably to the heirs of the owners). The illegally exported items most likely started to arrive in the early 1960s and continued to be shipped to Berwyn until the elder Sisto died in 1982. In addition to dealing in the items he received, Sisto began to collect them. There is no assurance that some of the stolen items weren't sold to US collectors, FBI spokesman Ross Rice said, "Whatever additional items were sent here, we wouldn't know". One wonders how many people bought goods from this shop without asking where the dealer had obtained them from.

Most of the items appear to have come from the Bari region in southern Italy. Objects in the collection include hundreds of Etruscan artifacts produced between 500 B.C. and 900 B.C., parchments and manuscripts, some with wax papal seals dating to the 12th century, and more than 1,000 books and documents written by kings and popes.

Mr Sisto's son, Joseph 48, who now lives in Duluth, Ga. was aware of his father's collection when he was growing up. In the mid-2000s, Joseph learnt that many of the items were likely illegal and confronted his father, saying that the artifacts should be returned to Italy. But his father refused, provoking a family dispute that separated the son from his father during the final years of his life. When his father died, Joseph Sisto asked Berwyn police to enter the home with him, knowing that the thousands of artifacts would need to be investigated by authorities. The subsequent investigation into these artefacts lasted two years. FBI officials worked with Italian authorities and determined the origins of the stolen artifacts. The cost of all this to the US taxpayer was not revealed.

But let us hear it for Mr Joseph Sisto, who knew the right thing to do, despite the pain it produced in the family after his father's death. So many collectors' heirs would presumably be tempted to just sell the stuff to whoever will buy it. It seems that in future many children of today's no-questions-asked accumulators of archaeological artefacts (not to mention dealers) will be faced with similar dilemmas.

Video here.

Roger Bland’s comments on my recent post concerning the Heritage Action Erosion Counter don’t really bring us any closer to why we have to search for and present these data and the PAS cannot. He does bring up though “Roman” votive axes, though one might wonder what relevance they have to the question…. According to Mr Bland, instead of discussing the effects on the archaeological record of current policies:

Is it not more relevant to compare the situation in Britain with that in other countries? A recent study of Roman miniature axes from the Roman North-West by a Canadian researcher, Philip Kiernan (`Miniature Votive Offerings in the Roman North-West', Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen, Mainz) has details of 120 specimens, more than half of which (64) are from Britain and 27 of the 64 British examples were recorded by PAS. Kiernan only recorded 21 examples from the whole of France, despite the fact that it is at least twice as large as Britain.

Oh whoopee. More axes, contexts poorly known of course, but some dots to put on a distribution map. Three points, I really do not see why we have to assume that Roman period Gallic worshippers were depositing votive objects in the same pattern as insular ones, secondly if we are talking about accidental finds by modern members of the public, France has a much lower population density (115/km2) than the UK (246/km2). Thirdly at this very moment there are seven of these axes identified as "British antiquities" on eBay (so one seventh the number recovered in over a hundred years of collecting, a quarter of the number accumulated in the ten-million quid in the PAS database, probably next week, next month there could be seven more, and so on). Presumably these items were found by “metal detectorists” under the current regime in the UK and simply not recorded. If these represent the sale of duplicates to the searchers’ own collections, heaven knows how many votive axes have been dug out and simply hidden away somewhere in the ten year period of operation of the PAS. I really do not think that looking more carefully at the evidence advanced shows that things are any degree “better” than in any other country. Furthermore looking at the number of items which this suggests are being recovered and not reported, one wonders about the use of the record of just 27 of them in the PAS record. Are these a statistically valid random sample, or is there an inherent bias in the ones that are finding their way into the record, compared with those that are not? It seems to me that Mr Kiernan's book does not look at this problem at all, to judge from the contents I found online. What use are these data for detailed research when we have no information whatsoever from the PAS of what is getting thorough in what quantities? This brings us back to the original point.

Here are the seven I found on eBay today. The first is the familiar figure of "Antiqubottledigger" from Nottingham mentioned in several earlier posts here. He has one. Then there is the seller "Boarsandhorses" in Essex. He has three: here, here and here (are they from the same site?). "Empireantiquities", Retford, also in Nottinghamshire has one "found in Lincolnshire". "Hiddenhistory" in PAS Paradiseland, Norfolk has a “Roman Votive Bronze Axe. Comes complete with Museum report, see pic's. Found Norfolk”. But I do not think that is a PAS artefact report, pretty basic, no provenance mentioned. Then for completeness let's mention "roberth6979" selling “Roman bronze decorations artifacts UK lot of 21” from Aurora, Ilinois, United States (export licence?), but I suspect looking at the fibula fragments that this is Balkan stuff and the identification of the 'axe' is anyway a bit dubious. [Note by the way what this tells us about the ultimate fate of many of the artefacts dug up from sites thus trashed, shipped across international borders to collectors, stuffed in a box and sold off when the owner gets bored of the thrill of having "old stuff" to fondle].

Photo: Votive axe, one of two shown on a UK metal detectorist's website, no mention there of the PAS either. There are another three on the UKDFD, one only is recorded with the PAS.

[For the uninitiated, the title of this post comes from a Monty Python sketch - while thousands of objects are coming out of the ground and scattered without record among innumerable personal collections, we've still got 27 votive axes in the ten million quid database, the parrot may be dead, but it has beautiful plumage]

In my recent post on the Heritage Action Erosion Counter I remarked that the last PAS annual Report to be published covers 2006, and that in fact overlaps with the previous one for 2005/6 confusing the figures of the progress in outreach terribly. By the middle of 2009 we have no report for 2007 and no report for 2008. Roger Bland replies to this:

There is no secret about the number of finds recorded by PAS and we are happy to give these data to anyone who enquires. In 2007 66,311 objects were recorded on the PAS database (in addition 11,295 coins from Norfolk, recorded before 2007, were added to the database in that year) and in 2008 the figure was
56,065, a result of the cuts in funding to PAS that year. *

That as may be, but this is close to that of the 2005/6 total (57341) and up on the 2006 one (55244) when there were no "cuts". Here however we see the amalgamation of two sets of figures, accidental finds by non-collecting members of the public, and finds made by those deliberately going out seeking artefacts for collection and sale. In 2005/6 the latter accounted for 68% of the items in the database, in 2006 it was 76.8%. So what was the contribution of "metal detectorists" in 2007 and 2008 (numbers and percent)? I'd be grateful if the PAS would treat that as an enquiry. Thanks.

*Is that record numbers or numbers of artefacts?
.

From: Bulgarian Archaeological Association <info@archbg.net>
The general intention of this letter is to ask you for your help to preserve the biggest archaeological site in North Bulgaria - COLONIA ULPIA TRAIANA RATIARA. The capital of the Roman province of Dacia Ripensis is being completely destroyed by out-of-control treasure-hunters' digging. For the last 30 years, the Bulgarian government and the municipal directions in the region have not allocated any funds for this
archaeologically valuable site. Recent finds from this place shows that every day we are losing inestimable information which is important not only for Bulgaria but for European and Roman Archaeology. The Bulgarian Archaeological Association would appreciate any support you are able to offer. Please donate us even 1 EUR to support our cause here. Remember that any amount helps!

With compliments, Olia Milanova (archaeologist Vidin Ragional Historical Museum),
http://www.archaeology.archbg.net/
http://www.cambustica.archbg.net/
bularchaeo@archbg.net
Bulgarian Archaeological Association 21 Tsarigradsko sosse blv., 1124 Sofia, Bulgaria Telephone: +359 878 940223

Maybe this is another one the ACCG can set up a fund for, after all, the dealers and collectors gathered under its aegis have been the primary beneficiaries of all this digging. The site is at Archar, just south of Vidin in northeast Bulgaria, in other words one of the two sites most frequently mentioned as the source of the bulk lots of "dugup" coins and artefacts which help fuel the no-questions-asked classical antiquities market of the UK and USA.

There has recently been quite a bit of discussion of the bulk lots of unrecorded "British dugup" coins on sale - apparently without export licences - in the US, which seem to be touchstone of coin collectors' and dealers' attitudes. On SAFECorner Nathan Elkins notes that the ACCG has finally got around to something it should have done a while back. It has posted on its website a text called "UK Authorities post helpful advice for export of coins (sic)" referring to a facility that was made part of the PAS website in 2006. Nathan remarks:

I do hope this reflects a growing sensitivity within the trade community and that the ACCG leadership will, in the future, be more proactive in addressing the looting problem directly rather than simply lobbying against and challenging protective legislation. Knowledge will only be preserved if all stakeholders, including dealers and collectors, start to value it over purely commercial and self-interests. The preservation of information is something we should all be concerned about and something which we all ought to
work towards, especially for those of us who study the past or buy and sell pieces of it.

Indeed dealers and collectors in the US claim to do both, in the buying and selling they claim they are engaged in the "study of the past".

Now that the ACCG has clarified for its members the legal situation concerning artefacts dug up in the UK, perhaps we can expect soon similar features on the laws of regions like the Near East and Balkans concerning the finding and export of ancient items, including numismatic collectables. This is after all, according to the online extract from the ACCG 'responsibilities of key personnel, task forces and committees' manual, the task of its international affairs committee. This will enable collectors (whom the Guild ostensibly serves) to judge whether ancient coins on offer at any given time by ACCG affiliated and other dealers have been obtained according to the relevant laws or outside them.

Metal detecting sandals. Detect metal while you walk - find buried artifacts while strolling around the countryside. They are for real, we are told. "Sure you might look a bit like a huge dork strolling [around] in these [...], but you'll also be having the last laugh as they detect buried metal treasures. These high-tech sandals use beat frequency oscillation technology coming from a built-in copper coil in the right sandal that is powered via a battery pack that straps to your calf. All you need to do is take a leisurely walk on the sand and if it detects any metal artifacts like coins or jewelry up to 2' below the surface [...].

Features:
Copper coil built into the right sandal
Powered via a battery pack that straps to your calf
Uses beat frequency oscillation technology
Detects metal up to 2' deep
Alerts: Flashing red light, gentle vibration or an audible buzz
Battery lasts up to six hours
Non-skid soles and polyurethane foam footbeds".

I guess the real diehards will be waiting for the model with discriminator mode.

Photo: The version for the fashion conscious "metal detectorist" - with built-in digging tool.

.

The Heritage Action Erosion Counter has been ticking away in the background as each metal detectorist in the UK takes away a few items worthy of PAS record here and a few items there for their personal collections from the soil. Today it has reached 10 500 000 objects. In the same time (though we still await the 2007 PAS annual report [!], not to mention the 2008 one), the number of items found by metal detectorists in England and Wales recorded by the PAS is a fraction of that.

The pro-collecting lobby (predictably) say the HA counter is ticking too fast (predictably without producing any evidence to support this case). In fact it corresponds to a rate of each metal detectorist in all the searching of "productive sites" and all the rallies they go to finding less than 30 objects of archaeological interest a year. Many "metal detectorists" however can find half that number of relics in a single weekend. I personally think that until we have more reliable evidence from a proper review of "metal detecting" and collecting practices, the HA erosion counter produces an entirely realistic picture, and one that poses a number of questions for the pro-collecting lobby to answer. I doubt, though, that they will.

“Buy it Now” price eight quid for:

200336679876 Lot of 10 artefacts from various periods all identified with PAS information slips. Postage and packaging is £2.00 inland UK and £4.00 USA and worldwide.

They seem mostly to be buckle elements. The seller Antiquebottledigger based in Nottingham UK has been on eBay since June 1998, now registered as a ‘business seller’ and has 2572 transaction points. He has been mentioned here before as the vendor of one of the group of shabtis I was querying here earlier – still no buyers.

The seller currently has on offer 503 auctions of metal artifacts (77 of which are coins, and a number of which are multiple objects offered as a single lot), probably the overwhelming majority of which are metal detector finds. But they are not his own, some are labelled as being from Lincolnshire, others from the Thames foreshore. To this the seller has added other items bought somewhere on the market, as evidenced not by the shabti, but also a Dark Age belt fitting are of southern central European type.

While it is nice to see that some of the items dug up in the UK have been recorded by the PAS before they were sold on, it is notable that this only applies to ten objects sold as a single lot out of the five hundred. While some of the items offered are old-timey pieces of no great age or archaeological significance, so not particularly PAS record-worthy, scattered among them are a sizable number of items which certainly are. The ten items out of more than 500 lots means that this dealer is showing that only a fifth of a percent of the metal detected finds on offer have been reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. This is pretty typical of what we see on eBay in general. All the rest of the items on sale by this seller have been removed from the ground without any kind of record (as we have seen in this blog, in the case of the Balkan and Egyptian finds also probably found their way onto eBay by illicit channels). Still, I am sure if a foreign buyer purchases one of these items Mr Antiquebottledigger will be sending any items which are the direct products of excavation abroad with the export licence sorted out, apparently (since he makes no mention of one) for no extra charge.

Several factors lead us to the conclusion that the items being reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme are only a relatively small proportion of those being removed day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year from archaeological assemblages all over Britain. The most British archaeologists and policy makers can do is shrug their shoulders.

From Yahoo ancientartifacts forum:

"i myself only buy because i love the thought of holding and owning a piece of history.when i hold a corinthian helmet in my hands that coulde have been worn by a greek hoppolite at themopolye or marathon well that sends a shiver down my
spine that money cant buy".

Yes, I imagine holding it really effortlessly takes one back to the days when the 'hoppolites' were hopping along to do battle with all those nasty opponents of 'truth, justice and the Spartan way' far better than reading any difficult book (no danger either of homegrown scholars of the past actually finding out from them what their real name was). But surely it is a mistake to say that "money cannot buy" these emotions, since the writer admits that is why they buy these things. Still, they are quite difficult to get on eBay now... some vague reproductions are available though. I guess its not the same "shiver" though.

Vignette; "hoppolites" by Frank Miller in a comic book.

Was the Tiananmen Tank Man an archaeologist? Some suggest he was (Times May 30th 2009 Identity of Tank Man of Tiananmen Square remains a mystery). That would be odd wouldn't it that an archaeologist might stand in front of the advancing tanks of a repressive government but British archaeologists become "partners" with those engaged in artefact hunting and collecting...
Photo: Tank Man (Times Online)

I see that in an undated addendum to the original blog post “Paul Barford and the rape of History” "Cultural property Observer" [Peter Tompa] now writes:

I asked Paul Barford to clarify this statement in his latest salvo:
"'The study of "Numismatics' by itself is not really important in the broader scope of research on the human past ...." […] In this, Barford is demonstrably wrong. For example, much of our knowledge about Bactria is derived from the work of scholars who put together a chronology of the Kingdom based on the study of well-known coin types”.

Mr Tompa had asked me to explain what I said, which I put some effort into doing. The reader can judge for themselves, but it seems to me that the coin-collecting lawyer of Bailey and Ehrenberg PLLC really has not “demonstrated” at all that what I said is "wrong". In fact he totally ignores each of the several points I made in clarification of the statement he challenged. The lawyer should know that this is not “demonstration”, it is evasion.

Mr Tompa merely facilely dismisses what I said by saying: “Despite his stated respect for numismatists, it appears Barford's actual experience with coins is limited and that he indeed only values them as archaeological artifacts”. Well, apart from the self-evident point that coins are (no more no less than) just one category of archaeological artefacts, this seems to be another example of "cultural property clairvoyance" that ignores what I said but instead determines that somehow somebody involved in European archaeology mainly of the Roman, and Medieval and post medieval periods as myself can only have had “limited actual experience with coins”. The only explanation of such a statement is that this again reflects the inexplicable US coin-collectors’ mindset which perceives coins as isolated objects which never occurs in assemblages with other finds and so would never be encountered by anyone actively researching archaeological material and sites. Instead coins would thus be only the preserve of special coin seekers and coiney-scholars and nobody else in the world can ever have come across them or be able to comprehend what they are about (this is of course precisely what lobby-ranting collectors accuse archaeologists of). This is of course a totally false presumption. Coins do of course occur primarily in association with other material and sites and most British and European archaeologists and finds specialists have hands on experience with dealing with coins from archaeological contexts and assemblages. I would suggest that most collectors of said coins in the United States and Canada however lack this experience, as comes out clearly in their writings.

I perhaps did not add something that seems totally obvious to me the other day, but feel in hindsight that I should have expanded on it out in reply to Mr Tompa’s challenge. The geographical and chronological extent of coin use is pretty minimal when compared with the extent of the human past which is the subject (through various means) of archaeological study. This is what I meant by "in the broader scope of research on the human past". It really seems to me to be incontrovertible.
Peter Tompa says I am wrong in stating what seems to me to be a self-evident truth. The study of coins by themselves does not have the overriding importance in the broader scope of research on the human past that coin collectors ("numismatists") would have us - and US lawmakers - believe. Mr Tompa says he can “demonstrate” the fallacy of my assessment, but it seems to me that so far he has failed to do so.

Not only that, but Mr Tompa also ignores totally the fact that I pointed out that what I would regard as numismatics is not at all what his coin collecting mates do buying up no-questions-asked whatever classical numismatic geegaws they can get their hands on and merely comparing one with another (a point also made by Elkins). This “numismatic context” (a la Welsh; John Hooker wrote something similar on a forum back in 2004) may provide some information about die use in mints, but there is nothing but a very tenuous link from that to the history of communities and societies and whole human groups which is the aim of archaeology.

But then in fact as the forums demonstrate what many coin colectors do is collect thematically ('one of every emperor', 'all the reverses of Septimus Severus', 'one from each Greek city around the Black Sea', 'coins with mythological reverses', 'coins with ladies with shapely bosoms/bottoms' or whatever). Others try to find rare varieties for the cheapest money on eBay. None of this type of collecting is advancing scholarship in any way. So what percentage of the 50 000 ancient coin collectors in the US actually are?

The contribution of “heap-of-loose-coin-on-a-table collecting” to our knowledge of Bactria which is taken by Mr Tompa as proof positive that I have incorrectly assessed the “true value” of coin collecting will be considered in the post below.

Peter Tompa produces Bactria as an example to prove that I am "demonstrably wrong" in being cautious about the claims of the ACCG collectors and dealers lobby that heap-of-loose-coins-on-a-table coin collecting can create historical knowledge.

He assures us that: “much of our knowledge about Bactria is derived from the work of scholars who put together a chronology of the Kingdom based on the study of well-known coin types”. Well, since it is supposed to be proof positive that what I said was untenable, let's have a closer look at the lawyer's argument about the cognitive value of artefact collecting here.

First of all the chronology of Bactria is not based on coin evidence alone, the coins are in fact fitted into a framework constructed on the basis of the written mentions of neighbours. In any case, there is also a whole load of pretty informative iconographic and even epigraphic material from Bactria, totally unrelated to the coins.

Secondly as far as I understand it, not all of those coin types are all that “well-known”, and the chronology of the coinage for the period of the floruit of Bactria from the mid third century BC up to the beginning of the first century AD is far from fixed. Coin collectors cannot even decide (or have they now?) how many rulers named Demetrios there were. Of course if these coins were coming into the scientific realm from stratified contexts and from documented associated finds from known parts of the extensive Bactrian region, instead of loose through V-coins and eBay, we’d know a lot more about them.

Apart from all that, for goodness’ sake, is creating the “chronology of the [royal dynasty of] the Kingdom” actually telling us anything much about history of societies and human communities in the region? It may tell us who ruled after whom, but that is the story of just one small group of people, not the whole of society, their subjects. It tells us nothing about them.

To take an analogy, does a mere list of Norman kings of England from 1066 to 1485 presented in order and giving the dates of their rule reconstructed from the numismatic evidence actually tell us anything about the development of English society? I doubt even whether in isolation from any other information that you’d get very far in studying socio-economic systems, trade, urbanism, social structure, settlement patterns or even the function of money let alone all the rest of things that make up our picture of Medieval England from any amount of study of the coins alone – with or without findspots. A coin-based history would be at best a partial history.

Certainly historiography has these days gone well beyond regarding the study of ‘kings and battles’ as the subject matter of the discipline. Once again in terms of scholarship, the US coin collectors’ lobby show themselves well and truly embedded in nineteenth century models of the humanities.

Actually, what Tompa says about coins being the primary source of information about the past of Bactria is anyway pure nonsense. I have on my own bookshelves a number of books produced in the former Soviet Union, both before and after their intervention in Afghanistan precisely on the archaeology of ancient Bactria. In the two academic libraries I most frequently use here in Warsaw, there is a much more extensive selection. Almost all of them are based on the archaeological study of the region (though there are some on "Bactrian Art" as well which concentrates on much more than just the coin images). There are indeed coins mentioned and pictured in these archaeology books, but also pottery, tile and a host of other pieces of evidence (including some powerful sculpture), alongside plans of the towns, and individual structures in them, sections through the layers showing the development of the sites through time, the distributions of settlements around central places and so on.

In these studies, the coins are only a very incidental element of the whole picture. None of the coins used in the writing of these books came from V-coins. Though some of the Bactrian coins on V-Coins may well have come from the same sites now the American soldiers are in Afghanistan (and we remember US coin dealers' opposition to HR 915).

Surely the coins of Bactria are best studied as part of the archaeological record of the region, in the context of sites they come from, the contexts of deposition, the spread of different issues across the Kingdom. Like any coins of the period, they need to be studied with other information about social organization and economy of the societies that produced them. This obviously is best done in the region, not some backroom in suburban Wisconsin. If US scholars wish to make advances in our knowledge of Bactrian society, then they should do so on material recovered legally and properly in ‘Bactria’ and not material of unascertained origins bought on V-coins or eBay and studied in isolation from the other evidence.

Tompa’s ACCG colleague says the same thing about “Parthia” (here and here for example), but the same comments apply. But then between and around Bactria and Parthia were other polities and societies no less important in the story of the region which the coin evidence (especially the heap-of-loose-coins-on-a-Wisconsin-table type) tells us next to nothing about. Is that only because not enough have yet been smuggled out of the region to appear in the stocks of US dealers for ACCG members to buy them and heap them on their desks?

Map: one of several versions of "where Bactria was" This one from the Miho Museum website.

Dan Pett of the PAS twittered on May 22nd

Metal detecting on Hollyoaks and the Archers. Not a mention of recording objects and they also get their Treasure defn wrong! Research?

This rather raises the question of whose fault this is, the BBC's or the PAS. Who is charged with delivering the message to the public, the BBC or the PAS? This might be taken as a symptom of too much time talking to "metal detectorists" at their clubs and rallies, not enough time informing the wider public it would seem. By the way, who is the FLO responsible for Ambridge and why are there no objects from here in the PAS database either?

Apparently: "A United States judge has ruled that the treasure found by the Odyssey salvage team be returned to Spain. The decision is a judicial victory for the Spanish Government in a case which has gone on for more than two years, although the company has said it is to appeal. Judge Mark Pizzo, in the court in Tampa, Florida, considered that the cargo and treasure carried on the Spanish ship ‘Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes’, did not come under his jurisdiction, and therefore the items, with an estimated value of more than 500 million dollars, should be returned to Spain".
(h.b.'Tampa court says Odyssey should return treasure to Spain', Typically Spanish Jun 4, 2009)

More here, no doubt we will be hearing more soon, and especially as the appeal gets underway. Still, if this is true, it gives out the right message, and I expect the value of the stocks of the treasure hunting company are slumping, I'll not be buying any. Maybe US coin collectors might like to set up a fund to help the firm recover the costs of getting the artefacts out of this otherwise unthreatened archaeological site (and grave site) which they no longer will be able to sell.

Now it seems a good time to return to an unanswered question. How is it possible that seventeen tonnes of valuable artefacts belonging to Spain were flown from British-held Gibraltar to Florida in 2007? Why when landed in Gibraltar was this shipment not challenged by the British authorities?

Addendum 5/6/09: See now the Times Online article

Canadian coin collector John Hooker writes this morning to ancient coin collectors on Moneta-L on the subject of "Bulk lots of Roman coins" and reveals something of his taste in literature.

There is a tremendous amount of nonsense being spread about bulk lots of Roman coins from Britain being sold in the U.S. Almost all of this is by people who have very little knowledge of numismatics, have never published anything on the subject and who have even less knowledge of coins in the archaeological context. Only one of these spokesmen can make any claim to some knowledge of these subjects and he is a tyro to the subject. In dealing with the more complex levels of numismatics, especially in its archaeological context, one starts to get the hang of things usually after about twenty years. [...] As for these supposedly "well-meaning" "concerned citizens" with little real knowledge of the subject and no art at all, what can I say? I think that Winnie the Pooh sums it up nicely: “When you are a Bear of very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”

Well, of course one of the purposes of blogging thoughts is so that it gets them out in the open and has other people looking at them and examining them in various contexts. This discussion is of course not about coins as art objects or subject of typological study, but about coins as archaeological artefacts (just like any other). It is about the use (or in this case prevention of use) of a particular group of ancient metal artefacts as evidence of the patterns of human activity within a region. That region is not in Canada or Wisconsin, but the place from where those archaeological artefacts were removed from the ground. On that subject I do have (well) more than twenty years experience.

I say that removing random elements from among the patterns and assemblages of archaeological artefacts from the soil in the places where they have been laying since they were deposited is damaging our ability to interpret those patterns. John Hooker likens me to a "bear of little brain" for saying so. He seems to be of the view that removing year after year an unknown (but obviously large) quantity of material like ancient coins from unknown areas of relict landscapes all over the old world has no 'significant' effect whatsoever on the archaeological record. Like Mr Tompa then.

I really think the PAS, "partner" of collectors, and "Friend of Numismatists" needs to step in here. Collecting these data and making them available for research is what it does. Collector Hooker is questioning the fundamental reasons behind that. Let the PAS for once defend what they do against the misinformation that is being constantly spread by ACCG-affiliated collectors of ancient coins who see the Scheme only as a shield for their hobby when it suits them. Until they do, with reference to what Hooker says, I'll add that no amount of "statistics" can compensate for a randomly damaged database. John Hooker suggests that:

if you want to attempt some sort of distribution pattern from non-site surface finds, then go ahead. It will not be very useful because you must make a number of assumptions without good evidence. Should you try to include every coin found? of course not!

I'd question what Mr Hooker really knows about the "assumptions" that he claims lie behind archaeological field survey. So, by that argument, we can pack up the PAS then as we've already gathered some hundreds of thousands of pieces of information about findspots. It seems to me that there is a different problem, if we allow destruction of a finite, fragile and important resource, then we cannot let that damage go on unmitigated. All we "tyros" are asking is that collectors ("friends" and "partners" of archaeology ostensibly) help ensure that it is by only buying material which has been properly recorded and legally obtained and exported. Obviously for people like Mr Hooker that is far too much of us to ask or expect and merely suggesting it is enough to make individuals the object of his comments.

What is more, John Hooker reckons that because of the concerns that have been raised about unethical and illegal practices on the antiquities market:

Asking a European dealer for a provenance sets up alarm bells with them these days. They know what can then happen. It is far simpler to say "it's from an old ___ collection". This is what these supposedly well-meaning fools have accomplished.

The dealers admitting where the stuff they sell comes from "know what can then happen", so that's why they keep quiet? Well, one of the things might be that they could go to jail if it turns out they are dealing in illegally obtained materials. Hooker suggests that if a dealer will not reveal where something comes from and where they got it from its the fault of those "fools" in the heritage protection lobby, and not the collectors who will buy stuff no matter where it came from and how it got there? A neat way for collectors to absolve themselves of responsibility.

Readers can find the rest of John Hooker's lengthy post here.

Photo: Bear of Very Little Brain (Allegro).

One of the candidates in the upcoming elections for the Board of Governors of the American Numismatic Association, Dr Scott Rottinghaus has been canvassing for votes on the Moneta-L forum on the grounds that he is the first candidate in any time with “a primary focus on ancient coins”. He says he is “ very interested in making the ANA more relevant to collectors of ancient coins, and in preserving our ability to collect and trade ancient coins”. The latter of course refers to efforts being made to curb the sales in the US of illegally excavated and illegally exported material. I think it would be helpful to the 90% of US collectors of ancient coins who are not affiliated to the ACCG to see a public statement of the standpoint Dr Rottinghaus has on the recent attempted illegal import of coins by the ACCG through Baltimore Airport in April. The ANA has a code of ethics of a sort created in the 1960s before the current internet-based market in looted material began to develop which obliges its members "to neither buy nor sell numismatic items of which the ownership is questionable". It is not stipulated what is meant by this, whether just stolen from another collector or collection, or whether removed from a country which has state ownership of certain categories of archaeological material without documentation showing proper process being followed. The ANA dealers’ code of ethics obliges its members "to abide by all local, state and federal laws in all numismatic matters and to assist in the prosecution of violators of the law in this respect" . Again it is not stipulated whether “all laws” in “all numismatic matters” includes assuring that purchased goods come with documentation of legal excavation and legal export from the source countries. The test of this would be to ask how many dealers have been expelled from the ANA for selling ancient coins freshly dug up from (for example) the Balkans for which they cannot show a valid export licence.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE - part of Homeland Security) has recently recovered from “a Manhattan auction house” seven artifacts of Egyptian origin that were recordsed in the Arts Loss Register as having previously been stolen from the Bijbels Museum in Amsterdam in July 2007. "The recovery of these artifacts sends a strong message to thieves that the market to sell stolen antiquities in the United States is freezing up." said Peter J. Smith, special agent in charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in New York. "ICE is committed to working closely with foreign governments and organizations like the ALR to recover priceless works of art and antiquities so they can be returned to their rightful owners".

Kashgar, China — A thousand years ago, the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road converged at this oasis town near the western edge of the Taklamakan Desert. Traders from Delhi and Samarkand, wearied by frigid treks through the world’s most daunting mountain ranges, unloaded their pack horses here and sold saffron and lutes along the city’s cramped streets. Chinese traders, their camels laden with silk and porcelain, did the same. […] Over the next few years, city officials say, they will demolish at least 85 percent of this warren of picturesque, if run-down homes and shops. […] In its place will rise a new Old City, a mix of midrise apartments, plazas, alleys widened into avenues and reproductions of ancient Islamic architecture “to preserve the Uighur culture,” […] No archaeologists monitor the razings, he said, because the government already knows everything about old Kashgar.

I really cannot believe I read that. Unbelievable. Scandalous. Quite apart from the human tragedy of communities being uprooted and the destruction of part of the cultural landscape, the foundations and infrastructure of “midrise apartments, plazas, alleys widened into avenues and reproductions of ancient Islamic architecture” will irreparably damage the archaeological record of two millennia or more of events under today’s houses and streets in the town centre. Within those layers will be enormous quantities of archaeological evidence, finds, environmental samples (and yes, items that could be counted as "ancient art"). Nobody can say whether this evidence would change our knowledge of this place or not until the material has been documented and studied. Eighty five percent destruction of the archaeological record means there must be archaeological mitigation of damage to eighty five percent of the archaeological record.

In any case, having worked on a number of urban projects in the past, I very much doubt anyway if the Chinese government knows “everything” about the archaeology of Old Kashgar. Let us see the international community challenge the Chinese government to justify this view before they do any earthmoving here.

But this evidence does not just refer to one place, Kashgar has the potential of revealing much about the rhythms of exchange of various products along one of the most spectacular and interesting of the long-distance trade routes of the ancient world. Destroying the archaeological record here is not just destruction of evidence about Kashgar, its implications go much wider. To commit such a culture crime would be highly irresponsible on a scale much greater than the destruction of the Bamiyan buddhas. What on earth is the Chinese government thinking about?

This is the head of the Chinese government President Hu Jintao.

And here is his political creed, the Ba Rong Ba Chi: "Eight Honours and Eight Shames":

Love the country; do it no harm.
Serve the people; never betray them.
Follow science; discard superstition.
Be diligent; not indolent.
Be united, help each other; make no gains at others' expense.
Be honest and trustworthy; do not sacrifice ethics for profit.
Be disciplined and law-abiding; not chaotic and lawless.
Live plainly, work hard; do not wallow in luxuries and pleasures.

I think Mr Hu's government has just added a ninth shame.

It is pure hypocrisy to demand that cultural goods in outside markets return to China, while China wantonly destroys hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of the unwritten history of part of its territory in the form of 85% of the archaeological heritage of a site of national significance like Kashgar. How much else of other less prominent sites is going under the bulldozer as I write?

Photo: death of a town.

A new book on metal detecting in the UK and elsewhere edited by Suzie Thomas and Peter Stone has just appeared. Well done to all concerned. Nice cover. The publisher's website say it costs fifty quid, but at least one on-line bookshop thinks it is worth much more. I have not seen it yet but am more or less conversant with what was planned to go into the book, and think it should be read by anyone interested in the portable antiquities debate. Despite ten years of "liaison" with artefact hunters and collectors in Britain, as far as I am aware there is not much in the way of book-length academic treatments of the subject on the market at the moment, so any account is bound to be valuable for students as well as the general heritage-keen reader.

Having said that, I am co-author (with Nigel Swift) of the less conventional 'alternative' view (due out soon from the same publisher which is nice - maybe our cover should have had the BACK end of the lion on it...), so I'd say to get a rounder view of the problems, it would be useful to buy both when the second one (which is just about the UK) comes out.

Peter Tompa, the cultural property observing coin-collecting Washington lawyer of Bailey and Ehrenberg PLLC seems to be able to decide the archaeological significance of the contexts from which artefacts were taken just by looking at a photo of a pile of them on a dealer's table. It must be some kind of clairvoyance. I wish my archaeological colleagues were as gifted as him, most of us need the contextual information recorded in detail first in order to analyses it and determine the significance. Tompa writes:

let's be realistic about the worth of these coins for the study of British history.

It is a shame Mr Tompa does not listen to the PAS outreach he so glibly praises when it suits the ACCG to do so. Mr Tompa seems to think that archaeology only gains information from the rare, exceptional artefacts and not for example from studying the context of "very common coins of the Gallo-Roman Empire or later". He seems to believe that archaeology advances only from finding new types of artefacts and not "types already known". Tompa seems to regard archaeology as only basing its conclusions on artefacts recovered from deep underground and seems not to have much concept of the value of surface survey using precisely that patterns of distribution of "groups of single surface or near-surface finds", even if they are "from disturbed contexts". There is of course in archaeology (British archaeology in particular) a whole methodology concening this type of evidence, books have been written about it. The fact that Mr Tompa seems not to be aware of any of this literature really does not put him in a very favourable position to comment on what is and what is not "significant" in British archaeology.

Certainly if the value of such finds was "minimal, or even non-existent", then there would be no ten-million quid PAS. This seems a very weak excuse for accepting the digging up of hundreds and thousands of such coins to feed the North American market.

As for his criticism of British archaeologists that "such coins are so common that they have been ignored by scholars" and it would "not surprise" Tompa "if such coins were recorded in any real detail when found at most archaeological sites". I invite him to get on a plane at Baltimore airport and drop in on (for example, for eease of access from Heathrow) the Museum of London after having first made an appointment to see the excavation archives they hold. I venture that he would find the coins better recorded than we would find the original provenances of the Hungarian and Greek coins in his own collection documented.

Mr Tompa really should not need reminding that the aim of recording the provences of artefacts recovered by members of the public (including artefact hunters) in Britain is far broader than merely "advance the study of numismatics". Not all of us share his apparently rather narrow and (round flat pictured) artefact-orientated perspective on the true object of study of the past.

Just to be clear. Not all of us accept the ACCG creed. The study of "Numismatics" by itself is not really important in the broader scope of research on the human past, no-questions-asked collecting of heaps of contextless coins from the Old World on a Wisconsin kitchen table top especially so. I am well aware of what can be achieved by studying coins in context and association, there is much literature on the subject and some important contributions have passed through my hands as ediitor and translator, I asked for some references to the methodology of "heap-of-loose-coins-on-a-table-numismatics" (maybe "HOLCOT Numismatics"?) but so far the no-questions-asked ancient coin-heapers have failed to come up with any.

From this point of view Tompa's parting shot is devoid of any sense:

Mr. Barford apparently has a lot of free time on his hands. Perhaps, if he truly thinks these coins are so significant, he could volunteer some of that time to help record, clean and identify by catalogue reference number some of the thousands upon thousands of similar coins found each year in the UK.

It is not the coins at all I am bothered with, it is the evidence that has been lost throught their accumulation in piles ("kilogramme lots of uncleaned coins"). It is the treatment of archaeological assemblages as "mines" to produce a commodity for no-questions-asked dealers like those discussed here (and ACCG dealer-members) to make a profit from that irritates me. As do their careless dismissals of any reasons why this status quo is damaging. It is the web of false arguments offered to justify maintaining this status quo that is deplorable. I consider examining and exposing these half truths about no-questions-asked portable antiquity collecting and commerce spread by those involved in it to be worth my time. For Mr Tompa's information, I have done my stint (in the 1970s/80s) recording something far more mundane than flat pieces of metal with ancient pictures on them with reference to published picture books full of them, greyware cooking pot sherds counted weighed and classified and then written up. Really you cannot get more mundane and repetetive than Romano-British pottery and tile, and yet (and a whole load of other mudnane material) when recovered in excavations and field surveys it is routinely studied in detail and the records kept in excavation archives up and down the country - alongside the coin reports.

(PS - Actually Mr Tompa, I was discussing the same coins as before. Read the posts before you criticise them please. Oh, and try and find out something more about archaeology before suggesting what it should and should not do with its source material. Still credit where credit is due, unlike the rest of the ACCG blogging bunch when polemising with views expressed here, in his post Tompa actually gives a link to this blog, something he has only once before done though he polemises with my views expressed here a number of times.)

Given the unseemly fuss I mentioned here which was being kicked up last week by some US dealers about just two lots of “English dugups” being discussed by Frankfurt University numismatist Nathan Elkins, I thought I would take a look to see how typical of the material being offered for sale this morning they actually are.

On Monday morning at 7.00 am CET on eBay there were 6875 items being offered in the “Ancient coins” section of eBay(US) of which 721 finish in the next 24 hours. Some of these coins are fakes, many are single offers of selected cleaned coins. Others however are similar to those being sold by the three dealers discussed in these pages and by Nathan Elkins earlier. These are multiple lots of coins of less select condition, many are roughly cleaned or still have layers of earth on them. Most of these seem likely to be the remains of bulk shipments to the seller from which more presentable coins have been selected for individual sale. Most of them are described as “lots”, which is the search term I used. The eBay search engine told me that this morning there were 446 bulk lots of coins on sale in eBay's "ancient coins" category. That is quite disturbing if we take into account that some of them are “1000” coins, “500 coins”, “hundreds of coins” or a “kilogramme of ancient coins”. Matters are not so simple however; looking through these 446 lots (and I did) shows that not all are multiple dugups, a number are single coins, two coins or three similar coins (usually semi-clean of cleaned, so potentially from the splitting up of old ordered collections). I decided to ignore groups of three or less coins. Most of the ones I saw though were considerably more.

The breakdown of these coins was interesting, there were a large number of lots of Roman coins. There were was 232 Imperial, 33 “provincial” and 34 “Republican” (though in the case of bulk lots the division between the three was somewhat fuzzy, judging from the photos, the sellers of these items do not really have any idea of what the word "Republican” means in Roman numismatics - which in itself is telling). In total, on eBay this morning there were thus 299 lots of Roman coins – mostly uncleaned and many cases the seller exclaiming they were “direct from the excavator” and not infrequently specifying a region of the Balkans as the source.

There were 18 lots of Byzantine coins listed and another 18 in eBay stores. The coins from “Biblical Times” (so from the area of modern Palestine) were scattered throughout several categories (primarily “Other" and "Greek") when collected together there were 22, mostly so-called “widow’s mites” (how could they not be?). What is interesting is the eBay seller definition of the word “Medieval”. Being a medievalist, I was particularly interested in this category, but although eBay reckons it is selling 19 lots, there were really only seven (including a group from Poland but these were post-Medieval in fact). We are constantly told that collecting coins is a "gateway to history" (or some such claptrap). Well, here is aperiod of coin-rich history about a thousand years long which does not seem to be eliciting much interest and are invisible to the homegrown numismoscholars of eBay-land.

More interesting still was the section labeled “Greek”. This encapsulates very nicely the extent of the problems with the ancient coin trade. Misrepresentations abounded here. The first lot I clicked on were egregious [Bulgarian] fakes of Istrian (Istros, Thrace) coins. The second were copper alloy Seated goddess/seated king coins of Kashmir (like these ) of which there were several lots by the same seller mislabeled “Greek”. As mentioned above there were some Judean in this category too. In the end I discovered there were seven lots of Greek coins, though this includes two lots of Athenian tetradrachms being sold from Dubai and looking for all the world as part of a hoard (similar lots have been sold from here in the past both on eBay and V-coins). There is a section of ancient coins called “Persian, Indian and Asian” which has three real “lots” but 80 in eBay stores, mostly from India (which as we know restricts export of such material). Again Dubai is a source of some of the bigger lots in this and the next category, Islamic, today 20 lots. China the subject of the ACCG coin import stunt is represented by 12 lots (six listed, six stores) including three which would be covered by the US MOU if no paperwork is provided. I am sure though it was/will be.

What is significant is that most of the larger lots are clearly being offered by US sellers. This is more evidence that large quantities of the erdfrisch coins now entering the market are going to the American market. We should remember that many bulk lots of “dugups” are sold outside ebay from bulk sellers to smaller dealers or advertised on lists like “uncleaned coins”.

ACCG President Bill Puetz’s V-coins hosts 138 dealers in ancient coins. Today the homepage says it has 92,238 items on sale (so that is 13 times the total volume on offer on eBay today) and the joint worth of them is over 18 million dollars (aver. 196 dollars a coin). Using the search engine to find “lots” indicates that V-coin sellers have 1455 “lots” of coins… but searching through them quickly reveals that the name covers a multitude of sins. Some of them are not coins, and many are not even artifacts. In the first page of 200 items brought up by the search 65 were not bulk lots of coins, so although I found it a depressing experience to look through the whole site, let us assume this is representative and which would mean that the number of bulk lots being offered here is somewhere about 940. That is still more than eBay.

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