More Dual Presence (Ukrainian) Artefacts Spotted on Austrian Market

The draining of Ukraine's archaeological record by artefact hunters has been going on for some time now (see Sam Hardy 2018 '‘Black archaeology’ in Eastern Europe: metal detecting, illicit trafficking of cultural objects, and ‘legal nihilism’ in Belarus, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine') and there are no end of dealers in the west willing to make a huge profit by buying illegally obtained artefacts through online markets in Ukraine (bidding against local collectors) and then getting them exported and selling them with a huge markup through a western auction provider. Or at least that's the alternative to the model that I proposed earlier that in some mysterious way antiquities straddle a space-time disruption that means they are present in dual parallel universes at the same time. Knowledgeable collector "Renate" has documented three more such examples of “dual presence” brooches (all offered by the mysterious dealer aesnumismatics on Catawiki)

Cicada brooch [...]

Violity: Фибула цикада , с солярными знаками (Cicada fibula, with solar symbols). Sold on 18-May-2021, the seller was located in the Vinnitsa region, Ukraine then and wanted to send the piece only within Ukraine

Catawiki: Ancient Roman Bronze Exceptionally Well Preserved and Richly Decorated Cicade Brooch Fibula (shaped as a Fly) Sold on 16-Mar-2022. “Purchased by the current owner in 2016 in Austria, Wien. Collected Since: 1990's. Previous owners history: Old Austrian Private Collection. The Seller can prove that the lot was obtained legally , provenance statement seen by Catawiki.” The catch plate was repaired, possibly in antiquity. The pin could be new.


“Slavic” brooch (discussed in the pdf)

Violity: Пятипалая фибула ПК (Five-fingered fibula PC) PC= Penkovo culture. Sold on 31.Okt.2020, the seller was located in the Vinnitsa region, Ukraine then and wanted to send the piece only within Ukraine.

Catawiki: The Great Migration Period, Germanic Tribe- Ostrogothic Bronze Huge (16,8cm) Zoomorphic Fibula engraved with Solar Ornamentation-5 Beams&Dragon Head& 2 Raven Heads. Ended 8-Jun-22, not sold: “Purchased by the current owner in 2016 in Austria, Wien. Collected Since: 1990's. Previous owners history: Old Austrian Private Collection. The Seller can prove that the lot was obtained legally , provenance statement seen by Catawiki.


Another “Slavic” brooch [...]

Violity: Пятипалые пеньковские фибулы 4 шт, две большие (Five-fingered Penkovo fibulae 4 pieces, two large). It’s the small green piece on the right of the first image. Sold on 26. Nov. 2020, the seller was located in the Cherkassy region, Ukraine then and wanted to send the piece only within Ukraine.

Catawiki: Great Migration Period, Germanic tribes Ostrogothic Bronze Superb Zoomorphic Brooch-Fibula with Seven Ravens Heads in Openwork Technique and Dragon Head – bidding ended 15-Jun-2022, not sold. “Purchased by the current owner in 2016 in Austria, Wien. Collected Since: 1990's. Previous owners history: Old Austrian Private Collection. The Seller can prove that the lot was obtained legally , provenance statement seen by Catawiki.”

Yeah, I bet he can. But that still does not solve the problem that it was both being sold as a dugup in Ukraine in 2020 but at the same time the dealer can prove (?) it was in Austria in 2016.

I leave it up to the reader to decide which of these three alternatives is the best explanation:

1) There are parallel universes  in which the same antiquity is present in two separate space-time continuums at the same time and dealer aesnumismatics has the ability to time-travel to retrieve this information,

2) Dealer aesnumismatics has such an unprofessional complete mess in the records of their company that they got muddled about which artefact was from where, and where the export documents are. 

3) Dealer aesnumismatics is making up these collection histories to hide the real origin of looted artefacts smuggled out of Ukraine.

I prefer the first, it's most romantic My son-in-law goes periodically to CERN to make antimatter and says parallel universes are a real possibility, and who am I to argue with that? 

But on the other hand, who I am is somebody who is vitally interested that the rare sites where we have intact deposits with datable Penkovska Culture [Пеньківська культура] metalwork in them are not trashed by artefact hunters so that dealers like aesnumismatics can make a profit by hiding where they come from. As far as I am concerned they are Early Slavic (as far as anything is) and we still know precious little about where the Slav-speaking communities came from, what happened to them, and how they ended up occupying about half of Europe in a span of a few centuries. The only way we can sort that out is from the archaeological evidence, evidence that is endangered by artefact hunting and antiquities collecting. 

And just to put in context just how much intellectual damage is caused by the dealer's representation of the brooches as "Ostrogothic", this (right) is more-or-less where the sixth century brooches of this type are coming from... (it's from here). 

The Penkovska Culture (which perhaps we should be calling now the Penkivska Culture, as the type-sites are in Ukraine, not Russia) is a bit difficult to pin down. In the archaeology of the Soviet Blok and post-Soviet Early Medieval, especially here, there is some doubt about which assemblages are and which are not groupable in a whole load of shifting entities, this applies especially to the northern (north of the Prypets) forest zone and the forest-steppe zone (as here). The dating is 5th to the late seventh century (might be eighth century), it's all up in the air - which is why we need to be able to do more archaeological work on undamaged sites.  Below is how Ukrainian and Russian Wikipedia represent them (the Russian one is based on: Седов В. В. Славяне в раннем средневековье, Moscow Институт археологии РАН, 1995). The German one shows something rather different (and no, no, no, these brooches are not the archaeological correlate of the written-source people  that distant and muddled-up old Jordanes called the Antes). The Siverskyi Donets where the fighting now is (as it runs through the Don[ets]-bas[in]) is on the right of both maps. So there's quite a distance between where the seller says the brooches come from, and where they were actually dug up.