The Leon Levy Foundation and "Partage" of Research Archives

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The Leon Levy Foundation recently organized a meeting "Archaeology Experts Discuss Publication Of “Partage” Records". David Gill remarks on the presence of one of its participants. Peter ["archaeologists in bed with Saddam Hussein"] Tompa comments on another. SAFECorner (Talking about "partage") remarks on them all and especially who else is not there. SAFE points out that again collectors are disenfranchising the stakeholders in the heritage, the people from whose lands the items held in western collections came from. The sole possessors of this material and the source-based and non-source-based information it are not collectors, museum men or "scholars".

At this meeting,

several distinguished archaeologists, museum directors, and curators from around the world gathered at the Foundation’s offices. Led by the Foundation’s Special Advisor, Philippe de Montebello, they discussed how best to make available the trove of unpublished information from important ancient world sites excavated under “partage” agreements. [...] The Foundation hopes to play a leadership role in making this information available to scholars around the world.

This is indeed an awkward problem.If the division of the excavated material and their records took place after the final excavation report was written, then the latter remains the basis for making the trove of information from these projects available for study. The blurb however clearly states "unpublished" information is the topic of discussion. So it seems we are dealing with excavations carried out by foreign expeditions in foreign lands, they then cart off a portion of the material evidence ("partage") and then sit on it, without getting round to writing the report. No wonder then the practice of allowing untrustworthy western archaeologists to split project archives like this fell into disfavour.

Former Metropolitan Museum Director Phillipe de Montebello was 'special advisor' at this meeting, and the Met's own excavations at Deir El Bahari in Egypt are a case in point. The main reports of many season's work by Herbert Winlock were chatty accounts in the museum's bulletin, some portions of the work were written up in more detyail, many were not. Some of the finds are in New York, some are in various storerooms in Egypt (where I was privileged to see them earlier on this year - including some amazing unpublished material). The records however are in New York. Mr Winlock will not be publishing the final account of all his excavations, since he died leaving this undone, and it falls to others to complete the job, but the material from the excavations being separated in two (at least) groups of storerooms 10000 km apart is somewhat of a hindrance. Perhaps the presence of Dorothea Arnold at the meeting is a hopeful sign. Today material from projects like these is catalogued and studied in situ and what the foreign expeditions take home is a duplicate of the records made in situ, while the material itself is archived in one place (often in storerooms built for [and sometimes by] the project itself).

I do wonder rather about what the Levy Foundation has in mind by "making available" the "trove of unpublished information from important ancient world sites excavated under “partage” agreements". I rather suspect that what they have in mind is primarily the publication of the finds now in western institutions. But of course the results of an archaeological project do not consist of lots of "things dug up", but the dismemberment of stratigraphical sequences and associations. The aim of any project on this material should be the creation of a single full report in accordance with modern standards of the results of these old projects utilising the material and records scattered by "partage" around the globe.

Methinks this whole affair is a propaganda exercise on behalf of the notion of "partage" much praised by Cuno (more interested in the trophy objects from excavations than the practicalities of writing them up). The non-publication of much of the material partaged away acrosss the seas is a strong argument for the host countries not renewing this unreliable type of research "partnership" which brings more dugups to western collections.

(what was Dr Mindayev of Sankt Petersburg's trans-Baikal expedition doing there?)

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Vignette: The President of the Archaeological Institute of America smiles as he poses for a photo with the "owner" of the looted "Icklingham Bronzes" (images from Leon Levy foundation website).