Aharrrr! Straight to the Heart of the "Flawed Reasoning" of Barford

Alfredo de la Fe announces that he feels called out in some way to make a response to something he read here. Speaking of a post I wrote a few days ago: "he draws a parallel between the trade in pirated music CD’s and the antiquities trade" which "goes straight to the heart of the flawed reasoning of Barford and friends". Ooo-er eh?

De la Fe argues that when CDs are pirated royalties are lost. But in the case of a Roman artefact, the original owner "is unknown and will in all likelihood never be known. Chances are that he (or she), his children and even his grandchildren have been dust for many centuries". See? Logical innit? Culture theft is according to the US dealer in imported dugup artefacts a victimeless crime.

The notion of archaeological record or collectable objects in it being part of a common heritage which should be used for the eventual benefit of all is dismissed by this US antiquities dealer as a "Communist ideal". Furthermore he assures his readers that if an artefact

"is turned over to the government authorities, at best it ends up in a bin somewhere never to be studied, outside of the reach of [...] researchers and at worst, the government agent that receives it is corrupt and sells it [...]".

We are talking here about the Italy MOU by the way.

I really do not understand how these people can come out so uncritically with statements which on the one hand insist there is no common cultural heritage, and yet express their "collectors' rights" in terms of these objects being part of some common heritage which is theirs too. De La Fe is surely being disingenuous when asserting that the original owner of the objects are dead and cannot claim their lost property, and so looting is merely a case of "finders keepers" and "free enterprise". So if the archaeological record and its contents are NOT a heritage, why do the same dealers insist all nations should adopt a Portable-Antiquities-Scheme-Clone system to deal with archaeological finds? Why would Iraq, Italy, Egypt, Nigeria and Bulgaria or any other country be asked to scrap existing legislation and adopt this type of measure if NOT for the justification that the archaeological record and its contents are a common heritage and making a record of what is found available for public use is one way of using it?

Once again, we find that the coin dealers making excuses, in this case Alfredo de la Fe, are simply not making any sense. This seems to me to be another exhibition of the symptoms of the apparent disorder of the cognitive facilities of the central nervous system brought on by prolongued contact with ancient dugup artefacts in a domestic environment that seems to afflict increasing numbers of the artefact collecting community. Sadly there seems to be no remedy.

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Vignette: Slightly mad and not very convincing pirate of the Caribbean