.
The Glasgow encyclopedia continues to expand and as it does so I admit I am more and more at a loss to see what this is about. Much was made at the beginning about putting together a team, and I think I am not alone in thinking that this meant that the approach to be adopted was therefore going to be a multi-disciplinary one - which is of course an entirely logical approach. The text that emerged yesterday however suggests that this teamwork has not yet crystallised, was it consulted with other team members? I also think we are beginning to feel even more the significance of a lack of a proper definition just what it is the Glasgow team is studying. "Trafficking culture" is still not defined, "culture" is not a material object, you cannot "traffic it", cultural property can be trafficked, is that what they mean? And if so, what kind of cultural property? Is it everything listed in the 'definitions' Article 1 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention for example? Is that what this group is studying? While certain indications were emerging at the beginning that a primary focus of the project was the "trafficking" of looted archaeological material, the latest encyclopedia entry mentions a painting of Vermeer and almost totally ignores archaeology. In any attempt to understand what is currently being produced by this team on their website, a hindrance is therefore the utter lack of clarity of definition of the scope of this project. Surely that should be the starting point of the website, not something that is slotted in weeks or months after it has been supplemented by more and more material.
I am referring in particular here to the text summarising for the reader the issue of "fakes and forgery" published yesterday. Like several other recent texts in this resource what we getting is a series of little bits culled from other work of the author. This most recent text is from an article in the field of criminology, so instead of presenting an encyclopaedic overview of the topic, it concentrates only on the criminological terminology. While it is very helpful for outsiders to have that in a nice bite-sized summary with references to the criminological literature, it is less than clear to me what use it is (in that form) in the wider discussion.
The importance to the Glasgow team seems to be that in many jurisdictions forgery is a crime while fakery is not (they do not say in which; in Poland according to the new archaeological resource protection legislation you can in theory go to jail for faking archaeological artefacts). Intentionally misrepresenting a fake as authentic however may be fraud, which is a crime.
Anyhow, we are told the criminological definitions of the English terms like fake, forgery, counterfeit differ from the way it is used colloquially (hopefully they will be discussing other terms applied to antiquities and collectable cultural property such as authentic, inauthentic etc in another text). Now that is fine, but it should be made clear in a work of this nature either that just one view of several is presented, or some attempt made to put that in context of the other views.
The apparent near total lack of input to the discussed text from the archaeologists on the team means that the whole issue has been flattened to a dichotomy between forgery (which is about impersonation of the emitter of a text) and a more general term "fake". The text seems to imply that it is improper in criminological terms to talk of "archaeological forgeries", we ought to be calling them archaeological fakes. This terminology would imply that it is semantically incorrect to talk of "forgeries" of artefacts such as coins - so for twelve years the "Coin Forgery" discussion group has been pounding away at a phenomenon that the Glasgow team tell us does not exist. Picasso paintings are faked, they cannot be forged, so by these terms there are no "art forgers" only fakers. The Oded Golan et al forgery trial never took place, it was a "fakery" trial. So you can forge a collecting history, but only "fake" a provenance? . But you can forge the documents that support it - so what is the difference? (There is therefore some confusion in the encyclopedia's text on Marion True over this issue.)
But then, if they are attempting to create a harmonisation of the terminology, we need more information from them. What about the case of artefacts with texts on them (addressed sources)? Are they forged or faked? Or is the object faked but the text on it forged? If the object is an authentic antiquity (potsherd) to which an inscription was added in modern times to raise its value on the market is the resultant composite a forgery or a fake? The coin in the picture is a flat chunk of metal with just a text on it, are modern examples of such items made to deceive one or the other or both?
It seems the Glasgow encyclopaedists are themselves unclear which term to use. Another member wrote a text about the "Getty Kouros forgery", while a third member writes of objects in museum collections which are "forgeries". If they wish to introduce some new usage to the outside world, it would be helpful if some consistency of terminology were striven for at least in the same resource produced by the same team.
I am a bit worried about the implication of this attempt to make a distinction in referring to archaeological material. Quite apart from the issues about text-bearing artefacts (and monuments) mentioned above, the use of non-addressed archaeological sources (artefacts, evidence) as "documents" from which the past can be "read" has been the subject of much discussion since the 1950s (over here in the east of Europe) and somewhat later over there, it has been written about ad nauseam - yet it would seem from this that not a trace of this has so far filtered through to the Glasgow discussion of the handling of such objects. We have here instead a reflection of a typical antiquitist object-centred approach. In any case is not somebody producing a fake shabti for the market impersonating the emitter of the original "message"? A modern inhabitant of Gurna firing it in his backyard and burying it in donkey poo and nails wants the buyer to believe it was made by a long-dead inhabitant of Khefret-her-neb-es; he is impersonating the imagined emitter. If we treat an artefact as a document which entangles some kind of a message from the past, then its production is as much a "forgery" as if somebody scratched "Romanes eunt domus" on a rock in the Judean desert and claimed it was an ancient inscription.
In any case, my big Oxford Dictionary has no problems with applying both nouns "forgery" with "works of art". I am not sure that Glasgow has much chance in a head-on confrontation with the authority of the "Oxford".
The concentration on terminology in this entry has obscured the important questions. In what ways is forgery/fakery related to the "trafficking" of "culture"? What does it mean for "culture"? Perhaps more fundamentally, why does it matter? Or more fundamentally still, does it matter? After all if fake artefacts are "trafficked", then to some extent they replace the trafficking of authentic artefacts (or do they? This should be discussed.
Now, on that topic, where's the mention of Muscarella's seminal work on the forging of culture by the market in trafficked antiquities (Oscar White Muscarella, 'The Lie Became Great: The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures', Groningen: Styx, 2000)? Is it omitted because in the opinion of the encyclopedia's compilers it used the wrong "F-word" in the title?
Reference: Simon Mackenzie, 'Fakes and Forgeries' http://traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia/terminology/fakes-2/ 03 Sep 2012
Vignette: Fake or forgery for the crimininologist? 'Thing' or document? Dirhem of Ma`din Amir al-Mu`minin 105AH/724AD
The Glasgow encyclopedia continues to expand and as it does so I admit I am more and more at a loss to see what this is about. Much was made at the beginning about putting together a team, and I think I am not alone in thinking that this meant that the approach to be adopted was therefore going to be a multi-disciplinary one - which is of course an entirely logical approach. The text that emerged yesterday however suggests that this teamwork has not yet crystallised, was it consulted with other team members? I also think we are beginning to feel even more the significance of a lack of a proper definition just what it is the Glasgow team is studying. "Trafficking culture" is still not defined, "culture" is not a material object, you cannot "traffic it", cultural property can be trafficked, is that what they mean? And if so, what kind of cultural property? Is it everything listed in the 'definitions' Article 1 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention for example? Is that what this group is studying? While certain indications were emerging at the beginning that a primary focus of the project was the "trafficking" of looted archaeological material, the latest encyclopedia entry mentions a painting of Vermeer and almost totally ignores archaeology. In any attempt to understand what is currently being produced by this team on their website, a hindrance is therefore the utter lack of clarity of definition of the scope of this project. Surely that should be the starting point of the website, not something that is slotted in weeks or months after it has been supplemented by more and more material.
I am referring in particular here to the text summarising for the reader the issue of "fakes and forgery" published yesterday. Like several other recent texts in this resource what we getting is a series of little bits culled from other work of the author. This most recent text is from an article in the field of criminology, so instead of presenting an encyclopaedic overview of the topic, it concentrates only on the criminological terminology. While it is very helpful for outsiders to have that in a nice bite-sized summary with references to the criminological literature, it is less than clear to me what use it is (in that form) in the wider discussion.
The importance to the Glasgow team seems to be that in many jurisdictions forgery is a crime while fakery is not (they do not say in which; in Poland according to the new archaeological resource protection legislation you can in theory go to jail for faking archaeological artefacts). Intentionally misrepresenting a fake as authentic however may be fraud, which is a crime.
Anyhow, we are told the criminological definitions of the English terms like fake, forgery, counterfeit differ from the way it is used colloquially (hopefully they will be discussing other terms applied to antiquities and collectable cultural property such as authentic, inauthentic etc in another text). Now that is fine, but it should be made clear in a work of this nature either that just one view of several is presented, or some attempt made to put that in context of the other views.
The apparent near total lack of input to the discussed text from the archaeologists on the team means that the whole issue has been flattened to a dichotomy between forgery (which is about impersonation of the emitter of a text) and a more general term "fake". The text seems to imply that it is improper in criminological terms to talk of "archaeological forgeries", we ought to be calling them archaeological fakes. This terminology would imply that it is semantically incorrect to talk of "forgeries" of artefacts such as coins - so for twelve years the "Coin Forgery" discussion group has been pounding away at a phenomenon that the Glasgow team tell us does not exist. Picasso paintings are faked, they cannot be forged, so by these terms there are no "art forgers" only fakers. The Oded Golan et al forgery trial never took place, it was a "fakery" trial. So you can forge a collecting history, but only "fake" a provenance? . But you can forge the documents that support it - so what is the difference? (There is therefore some confusion in the encyclopedia's text on Marion True over this issue.)
But then, if they are attempting to create a harmonisation of the terminology, we need more information from them. What about the case of artefacts with texts on them (addressed sources)? Are they forged or faked? Or is the object faked but the text on it forged? If the object is an authentic antiquity (potsherd) to which an inscription was added in modern times to raise its value on the market is the resultant composite a forgery or a fake? The coin in the picture is a flat chunk of metal with just a text on it, are modern examples of such items made to deceive one or the other or both?
I am a bit worried about the implication of this attempt to make a distinction in referring to archaeological material. Quite apart from the issues about text-bearing artefacts (and monuments) mentioned above, the use of non-addressed archaeological sources (artefacts, evidence) as "documents" from which the past can be "read" has been the subject of much discussion since the 1950s (over here in the east of Europe) and somewhat later over there, it has been written about ad nauseam - yet it would seem from this that not a trace of this has so far filtered through to the Glasgow discussion of the handling of such objects. We have here instead a reflection of a typical antiquitist object-centred approach. In any case is not somebody producing a fake shabti for the market impersonating the emitter of the original "message"? A modern inhabitant of Gurna firing it in his backyard and burying it in donkey poo and nails wants the buyer to believe it was made by a long-dead inhabitant of Khefret-her-neb-es; he is impersonating the imagined emitter. If we treat an artefact as a document which entangles some kind of a message from the past, then its production is as much a "forgery" as if somebody scratched "Romanes eunt domus" on a rock in the Judean desert and claimed it was an ancient inscription.
In any case, my big Oxford Dictionary has no problems with applying both nouns "forgery" with "works of art". I am not sure that Glasgow has much chance in a head-on confrontation with the authority of the "Oxford".
The concentration on terminology in this entry has obscured the important questions. In what ways is forgery/fakery related to the "trafficking" of "culture"? What does it mean for "culture"? Perhaps more fundamentally, why does it matter? Or more fundamentally still, does it matter? After all if fake artefacts are "trafficked", then to some extent they replace the trafficking of authentic artefacts (or do they? This should be discussed.
Now, on that topic, where's the mention of Muscarella's seminal work on the forging of culture by the market in trafficked antiquities (Oscar White Muscarella, 'The Lie Became Great: The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures', Groningen: Styx, 2000)? Is it omitted because in the opinion of the encyclopedia's compilers it used the wrong "F-word" in the title?
Reference: Simon Mackenzie, 'Fakes and Forgeries' http://traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia/terminology/fakes-2/ 03 Sep 2012
Vignette: Fake or forgery for the crimininologist? 'Thing' or document? Dirhem of Ma`din Amir al-Mu`minin 105AH/724AD
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