"It's perfectly legitimate"

The "all-knowing rosemary85" mentioned here in an earlier post appears not to be too bothered about the origin of the artefacts on the global antiquities market. In a text where she attacks people for asking questions of an Oxford scholar for publishing an artefact without going into any details about where it came from, she writes:

for the record, there are many circumstances in which selling, buying, and collecting papyri is (sic) perfectly legal and legitimate, even if the find doesn't come from a properly documented archaeological dig. "Without provenance" does not imply that the person who owns it now is a looter or supporting looters: it is much more probable that the find was on the market several decades ago. 

Well, except the items "on the market several decades ago" for the most part went into somebody's collection, and when they come out of that collection to reappear on the market, there is no reason (in an open, responsible, transparent and legitimate market) why it cannot be documented where they were previously. So one does not need to rely on "nudge-nudge-wink-wink-much-more-probable, you-can-trust-your-old-dealer mate" persuasion ("go on, you KNOW you want to buy it!"). Collection hygiene requires acquisition of objects with documented collecting history, if there is none, responsible collectors will just say no, however tempting the offer. Greedy collectors and self-interested scholars may like to assume that an object without a collecting history is "much more likely to be kosher" than not. But then it is a fact that there is a constant movement of looted and stolen artefacts out of the Middle East (Egypt for example) which is not vanishing into thin air. Thus it is only logical to point out that any object that appears, apparently out of thin air with no verifiable collecting history, simply cannot be automatically assumed to be licit because "it might be". Rather, if we are reduced to going on probability, given the state of the market and the increasing scale of the looting that has been going on in the last few decades, even the diehards surely must admit that the opposite is what actually seems much more probable.

This legality of which Rosemary85 speaks is in reality a "they can't touch you for it" legality. In the US, for example, there is no law (but in the UK there is one) specifically against handling tainted artefacts. There of course should be. But for this to happen there has to be a change of attitudes. 

Yes, somebody who, whether inadvertently or deliberately, buys stolen and smuggled manuscripts IS supporting looters. Surely a responsible buyer and a responsible scholar should take every step possible to avoid that, not kid him or herself that its "most probably OK" in the case of something which they themselves have their eye on. Buying looted goods is something that collectors always kid themselves, I get the impression from reading what they write,  "only happens to somebody else, not me".    

I would differentiate therefore between what in the world of antiquity collecting is merely "legal" and what can actually be considered in this day and age "legitimate". I would take issue with people, like Rosemary85 who, in pursuit of their own narrow aims, persist in confusing the two.

Is that really so "idiotic"?

Vignette: One of the (several) "Rosemay85"s active on the Internet.