London Student Tells the Egyptians What's What

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"Nationalist Retentionist Laws Don't Work" Keith Amery (Graduate Student, Cultural Policy and Management) instructs the Egyptians. Seriously. "The argument just needs to be turned on its head", he reckons. Of course no prizes for quessing why,

"the UK has both a thriving archaeological community and a free market in antiquities from excavations and I believe it is a model system that would reduce the risk of looting at archaeological sites considerably".

Really? Britain has a "free market in artefacts from EXCAVATIONS"? Anyway his proposal is just make it legal for people to dig up artefacts and sell them, and stop calling it "looting" and then the number of cases of looting go down. PAS-Brilliant, except seen as a means of protecting the archaeological record from people treating it as a mine for collectables. I hate to think what they teach them in London nowadays, but Mr Amery reckons (note the scare quotes and capitalisation):

History has shown that 'looting' has exploded since the abolition of Partage and the introduction of what John Henry Merryman termed 'Nationalist Retentionist' laws. 

No, looting (including in the UK) has exploded with the expansion of the market for antiquities, and that these days is largely due to the ease of selling high volumes of objects through the internet, by which money transfer is also facilitated. The 'explosion' is a post-1970 (and in fact mostly a post-1990) phenomenon related to economic factors and certainly has nothing to do with any "partage". Exploitation of sites (like for example the vast majority of the Theban tombs) to feed the market was going on precisely in the period when there was an unchecked flow of antiquities out of the country to eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieh century collections. What arrant nonsense it therefore is to announce glibly that:

Egyptian antiquities were, converesely better protected under the system of partage where a licenced antiquities trade meant collections were registered. [...] Let's see a return to system that actually works in the protection of cultural heritage, namely 'Partage'.

Somebody has been reading too much Cuno. Whose collections were registered, and what has that got to do with protection of sites? Because it is of just such artefact-centred approach of which Merryman is guilty (here for example).

The term "partage" of course has nothing whatsoever to do with any "licenced antiquities trade", it refers to the division of a project archive. Splitting assemblages up and scattering them all around the globe is hardly my idea of "protecting the cultural heritage", it sounds like legalised robbery and colonialism. So how many current excavation projects in Britain involve partage of the finds Mr Amery? 

I would be very interested to hear how Mr Amery thinks "partage" would work in the case on which he passed his comment, the case of the Giza Three caught with a bunch of dugup antiquities and fakes on their hands. A fifty-fifty split? To what purpose?


It seems Mr Amery's thesis will have the title "The effect of the Dealing in Cultural Goods (offences) Act 2003 on the Illicit Antiquities Trade in the UK". That's likely to be the shortest thesis in British academic history.
 


UPDATE 20.06.2012:
I should have done this first, shouldn't I?

Collectibles in Surrey:
 Keith Amery

[...] Keith Amery Middle East Ephemera - Surbiton. 

Philately, Prints, Maps, Photographs, Antiquities etc.

[coins, no?] Not only deals in antiquities, but is a stamp collector too. Ble!

Vignette:  Keith Amery, Graduate Student and small-time dealer, 

another big fan of the PAS, wears a silver cross 

but has no idea what partage was.