The 'Artefact Craze' in Texas

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Bob McWilliams, the owner of Texas AtlAtl Artifacts says he has been in the artefact business "full time" since February 1994. He says: "I got started just as the artifact craze was beginning(1994) ".

This is quite a significant date as, among other things, it is concurrent with the beginnings of the Internet trade in antiquities. Although AtlAtl artefacts does not seem to have been online itself at this date it is clear that the few years around 1995 saw a clear watershed in the development of the antiquities trade across the US and parts of western Europe (at least) when many sellers started to advertise their stock through the Internet as an expansion of existing mail order facilities. This allowed a wider range of people to see what was on offer, and also allowed a decrease of overheads, meaning artefacts could now be traded at lower prices. It also greatly facilitated contact with buyers in a far wider zone than those that could come to a 'bricks and mortar' store. This affordability and increased accessibility of inherently desirable objects such as dugup coins and little knick-knacks sold as examples of "ancient art" and "pieces of history in your hand" inevitably led to an expansion of the market. This in turn quickly far outstripped the existing stocks of material accessible through the circulation of material released through the splitting up of old collections and new material was required. Thus began the "surfacing" of new material which could not be given a (truthful) pedigree of coming from a known old collection, thus the need for the development of a no-questions-asked market.*

In reality, both the 1970 UNESCO Convention as well as the US CCPIA were both written in a period when the antiquities market had a form quite unlike that of the period post 1995, which has taken on a shape scope and extent unimagined then. Perhaps it is time to consider creating new international documents more suited to the current state of the market and the problems its current form represent.

*If you look at the Texas firm's "Relic Certificate" you will not see the actual name of the findspot given, merely in the "area" of which county it was found, even here no questions are asked or it would seem entertained, except for those objects oming from the owner's own "Association dig sites".