Collectors' Vandalism of Islamic Art,

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Souren Melikan has a piece in the New York Times (Century-Old Vandalism of Islamic Art, and Its Price, April 15, 2011) about the way so-called cosmopolitan ("cultural property internationalist") collectors dismember unique handwritten manuscript books to separate the attractive pictures from the text which does not interest them and call it "Islamic art". To me, this is a very precise parallel to the way that so-called cosmopolitan ("cultural property internationalist") collectors encourage the dismemberment of unique archaeological sites and the separation of the attractive objects from their context which does not interest them and call it "Ancient art". Its the same thing, the same vandalism. This is how Melikan's article begins:

A chorus of praise greeted the “record for an Islamic work of art at auction” achieved when a painted page torn from a royal Iranian manuscript, the Shah-Name or Book of Kings, brought £7.43 million at the Sotheby’s auction of the Stuart Cary Welch collection on April 6. Little was said about the destruction of the greatest manuscript from 16th-century Iran, intact until 1957 when the French collector Maurice de Rothschild who owned it died.

The extraordinary manuscript commissioned for the library of Shah Tahmasp (1524-76) was acquired by Arthur A. Houghton Jr., a bibliophile whose interest lay in rare English books. He was presumably advised by Mr. Welch, who had long been buying manuscript paintings from Iran and Moghul India. Soon after, Mr. Houghton began breaking up the manuscript. In November 1976, seven pages appeared at Christie’s. Many more would follow, sold through art galleries and at auction, notably at Christie’s London on Oct. 11, 1988.

This astounding example of calculated vandalism perpetrated by a cultivated man is perhaps the most extreme where Eastern art is concerned. But it was by no means unusual. Ripping apart the thousands of precious painted manuscripts removed from Iran, India or Turkey and taken to Europe in the 19th and 20th century was routine among Western dealers. It allowed them to make a bigger profit[...]

Manuscripts from Moghul India, where Persian was the language of literature and administration, suffered a similar fate. In the Sotheby’s sale, a page painted with a scene featuring a ship sailing in choppy waters had been cut from a manuscript. The upper line reproduces a couplet by the 14th-century poet Hafez (not identified in the catalog) and the lower line has a couplet by another poet that does not rhyme with the former, which Sotheby’s does not mention. This botched assemblage, carried out in the 20th century, would be unthinkable in a manuscript of Persian poetry. Pompously dubbed “a page from the Salim [the future emperor Jahangir] album,” the beautiful but mishandled painting brought an astonishing £193,250.

The late Mr. Welch, who studied neither Persian nor Arabic, used to say that it is not necessary to know the languages to look at the paintings. To look perhaps, but to see, and to understand their meaning, it is. Had he mastered a reading knowledge of Persian, the American collector might have realized how intricate the connection is between the image and the written word.

I think the same goes for the commercial dismemberment of the archaeological record, it is clear that the dealers and collectors one talks to about it have not the foggiest idea about how the 'text' of an archaeological site is 'read'. They think its all about who gets to hold the 'pictures'.

In the context of this discussion about destroying archaeology to get out the geegaws, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the names Houghton and Wel[s]h. I assume that the Arthur A. Houghton ("junior" - this one?) is not related to the Arthur A. Horton of CPRI, but who knows? One ripped up manuscripts to sell the dismembered bits on the international market, the other has misgivings about the CCPIA intended to curb the treatment of foreign archaeological sites in the same way, the distinction seems to me to be a fine one. (There is a Corning glass connection).

Melikan talks of the effects of the way foreign collectors treat this cultural property in the following terms:

Detached from their volume and framed as “Persian miniatures,” book paintings are reduced to an arbitrary construct suiting the desire of collectors unaware of the nature of the art. The artificial construct fits into the overall reinvention of the Eastern world by the West.

He refers to the "misapprehension of historical reality that goes together with this reinvention", which again seems to me a perfect parallel to what happens when artefact collectors (such as the coineys) set out to rewrite history on the basis of a few decontextualised and visually attractive "pieces of the past" in their grubby hands.

Collectors of ancient dugups claim a special and privileged familiarity with ancient cultures which somehow magically infuses into them from possession, but Melikan highlights a number of examples of complete ignorance of these matters exhibited by both collectors and the cataloguers of the auction houses which sell these decontextualised "art works".

More on the Shahnameh:
Metropolitan Museum NY: 'The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp',
and its destruction here - Thomas Stone: 'The Houghton Shahnameh, The Whole Is Greater Then The Parts but Sometimes the Parts are more Marketable--Book Destruction for Profit'

Vignette: Decontextualised and put on sale: a framed page of the sixteenth century folio 'Faridun in the Guise of a Dragon Tests His Sons' attributed to Aqa Mirak "part of the scholarly collection of Islamic and Indian Art assembled by the late Stuart Cary Welch" (REUTERS/Toby Melville)

April Fool from CPRI

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It seems to me that the Santa Fe-based "Cultural Property Research Institute" (an antiquity dealers' advocacy group masquerading as an inefficient "research institute") has got its dates wrong. A text they have released (State Department in Contravention of the Law?) can only be seen as an April Fool joke accidentally published two days early. Still, I suppose that's better than all those promised pieces of "research" which are months overdue.

Among the gems of deadpan humour contained in this obviously satirical text, the reader will spot the following:

- "has disregarded the criteria established by the law that created it", the enquiring reader will ask what might they be, and in what way do they benefit the world's cultural heritage?

- "the Act was intended not just to save objects, but to save context and heritage". Where does it say that? Where? It actually says nothing of the kind in the CCPIA (which in general it has to be admitted is a badly-written text, but that is no excuse for the CPRI making things up).

- "limitations placed by the Act on the ability of the US Government to enter into agreements with other countries to impose import restrictions", eh? This is in an act intended to IMPLEMENT the 1970 UNESCO Convention on what? Oh yes, "on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property", so why did the US government issue an "implementing" act limiting its own ability to actually "implement" the actual measures of the Convention? Why would the US government fail to enter into an agreement with another country who requests it to actually implement the measures implicit in becoming a state party to the Convention? That's just plain daft, but then all of this US pretence to be implementing the Convention is plain double daft. Let the US just end the farce and withdraw from the Convention they have for nearly three decades obviously had no intention of fully honouring. Let the existing Wild West ethos of much of the US antiquity market show itself for what it is.

- "a provision requiring U.S. restrictions to be part of a "concerted international response" had been violated" eh? So where actually is this mythical "provision"? Where? How can you "violate" a provision that is not there?

- "in a manner that discriminated against Americans and that moved the trade abroad". Like keeping Chinese artefacts from being illegally exported FROM China? Isn't that what the 1970 Convention "on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property" supposed to do? What did the Americans think it was supposed to do when they became a state party? And how funny, an American law which affects Americans in America and not foreigners living outside America.

"Seminar summary at http://www.cprinst.org/Home/issues. Full transcript available soon". Can they manage it by April 1st?

The comedy is continued by that master of black humour, D.C. lawyer Peter Tompa, who asks "A related question is whether the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is listening or whether Assistant Secretary Anne Stock and her staff remain tone deaf as ever". Listen to what? The inventive rantings of the lunatic fringe of the US no-questions-asked market in dugup antiquities? That is a real joke.

What on earth is New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand thinking of aligning herself with these people with their all-too-transparent antisocial aims? Maybe readers in the States might like to write to her office and ask her http://gillibrand.senate.gov/contact/.

Vignette: Hilary and lookalike Kirsten (left) show their appreciation of the 2011 CPIA April Fool joke at the expense of the skeletal US International Cultural Property Protection program, such as it is.

Christmas Truths About the Built Heritage

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US Lawyer Peter Tompa ("No Christmas Truce" (sic)) considers that the discussion by "archaeological busybodies Gill and Barford (along with a sympathetic journalist)" of looted and smuggled artefacts held in US collections is mere "foolishness" intended to "divert attention away from the poor stewardship of archaeological treasures in countries like Greece and Italy". After all:

Pompeii is falling down through gross mismanagement and neglect. The Greek cultural establishment is as bankrupt as the Hellenic Republic.

As readers will recall, one of the main current arguments of the lobbyists for the no-questions-asked antiquities market is that we should ignore the manner by which they were acquired and consider that looted and smuggled artefacts are somehow better off where they can be "properly looked after" (ie in private and museum collections in the United States) than in those foreign countries from which they were clandestinely taken. If the Greek cultural establishment is "as bankrupt as the Hellenic Republic" (sic), that really should surprise nobody, but that surely is no reason to contemplate stealing from them. The notion that the weakness of one nation is adequate justification for another to take away its resources in an unfair exchange, supported by the "we can use it better than them" argument are the basis of colonialist claims.

Tompa spitefully suggests: "If Gill, Barford and friends really care about protecting the archaeological record, perhaps they should devote at least some of their considerable talents to publicizing these larger issues in 2011". While I am as concerned as the next man about bits of the built heritage falling down, whether it is in my own country or abroad, it is not really the focus of my own blog, which as its title declares is portable antiquities, so not standing buildings or complexes of them.

We may note though that Tompa is very selective where he sees the problems of neglect. His blog concentrates on examples from countries like Greece and Cyprus, Italy, China, Afghanistan and Cambodia. These are all countries that have been in a struggle with the US over smuggled dugup artefacts. A struggle where Tompa represents the other side. In fact this is a notable pattern of the majority of Tompa's "cultural property observations". He talks of (no) "Christmas truce", I think we should look at a few Christmas truths about the activities of bloggers like Tompa, Welsh and Sayles.

While poking their fingers at foreigners for their impudent desires to keep US dealers flogging off their stolen heritage, Tompa and his fellow writers consistently fail to see the same problems under their own noses. They insist other nations "must" adopt the "better" (for US dealers and collectors) "British PAS/TA system" in favour of laws which make curation of archaeological cultural property the remit of the state. Yet they fail to note that the US has precisely such legislation in its 1979 ARPA (under which "collectors' rights" are eroded) and the US has no equivalent of the PAS system. Let US "collectors' rights" advocates lead the way by insisting the US adopt one before telling the rest of the world outside that they must change their legislation to suit the US antiquities market. Why does the US not take the moral lead in this, if that is what they really think it is?

US dealers and collectors are the first to point out abuses where a museum in countries with brown-skinned inhabitants falls victim to theft, especially if it is an inside job. Their blogs and discussion lists are full of finger-poking whenever this happens. They are on the whole silent however when it is a US museum which falls victim (see the MSN list for the examples that Tompa, Welsh, Sayles and all the rest routinely do not discuss). US collections, especially the smaller ones, have their storage and conservation problems too, and the current financial climate is not likely to be conducive to their easing.

The reader will seek the blogs of the US "collectors' rights" advocates like Tompa, Welsh, Sayles et al. in vain for any discussion of the arrests in the Four Corners region, or the ongoing looting of artefact rich Native American sites or Civil War battlefields etc. on public land in many regions of the US. You will not find there either any mention of the vandalism of petroglyph sites recently in the news, not even as a Cultural Property Observation. There is much on the coiney blogs about a lack of education of brown-skinned people over the seas, no mention that the root of the problem of US cultural vandalism like the graffiti at Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas and the destruction of archaeological deposits in the Four Corners region is a lack of outreach and eduction where it matters. It seems US cultural property "observers" are unobservant of, even blind to, the problems in their own backyard. Let us hope we see a more holistic approach from them in 2011. Who knows, it might improve their readership figures.

Anyhow, since he suggested I should pay attention to such issues, just to set the ball rolling, I thought I'd draw attention in the post below this to a few built heritage problems closer to home for Mr Tompa than the coiney source-countries he so likes to maul.

Vignette: wonderful picture worth a thousand words, I found it searching for something else, can't find where I got it from, will update when I know.
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Not Just "Greece" and "Italy": Christmas Truths About the Built Heritage

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Since the US coineys love to point the finger at the "neglect of the heritage" of foreign governments (in particular those that do not want their archaeological heritage dug up clandestinely and smuggled out of the country to the US and other markets), I thought it would balance the picture if we could look at where they might in return point the finger at the US.

Unlike most of these countries, the US does not have a dedicated heritage policy-formulation and protection service, this function is scattered between different institutions working, in theory, in parallel. It is therefore rather difficult to see what percentage of the public budget is spent on the preservation of the cultural heritage. Obviously though - even in the US - the funds available, and legislative background, are inadequate to the task when we consider the below ground archaeological record of most of the country, and the above-ground built heritage and cultural landscapes. As everywhere, there is always more that can be done, and the US cannot legitimately claim superiority to any other country in this regard. That US ancient coin and artefact dealers and collectors fail to recognise this is really a reflection of their own unreasonableness and blinkered view of the heritage as much as anything else.

The US organization, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has a scheme highlighting annually, the Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places in the USA . Since it was begun in 1998 it has identified more than 200 one-of-a-kind historic treasures, mostly of the built heritage and cultural landscapes in the USA and dependent territories which have for various reasons been endangered. The problem is as great in the US as it is anywhere else in today's world: "boarded up churches, overgrown parks, abandoned schools, forgotten Main Streets – every city or town has historic places that have seen better days".

From urban districts to rural landscapes, Native American landmarks to 20th-century sports arenas, entire communities to single buildings, the list spotlights places across America that are threatened by neglect, insufficient funds, inappropriate development, or insensitive public policy.

The 2010 shortlist contains a variety of cases, I note one on this year's endangered shortlist even from Mr Tompa's home city.

The first case is quite worrying, and shows that the US is finding it as difficult to maintain its cultural properties as the Italy and Greece being roundly condemned by US coineys because they too have the same problem. It is worth noting that all of the structures mentioned here were constructed well after the date of erection of the classical buildings in Greece and Italy which the US coiney bloggers keep harping on about.

America's State Parks and State-Owned Historic Sites Current Status: Endangered, Threat: Budget Cuts. Significance: "State park systems welcome an estimated 725 million visits every year and include places of national significance – from Native American historic sites to Revolutionary War forts to Civil War battlefields to country estates..."

America’s state parks and state-owned historic sites are threatened – perhaps more than at any other time in recent history – with deep funding cuts and uncertain futures. In response to record-breaking deficits, state governments are cutting funding for state-owned and -managed parks and historic sites from coast to coast. [...] This year nearly 30 states have experienced cuts to parks’ and sites’ budgets, and a recent survey estimates as many as 400 state parks could close.

Black Mountain, Lynch & Benham, Kentucky: Threat mining: "The latest permit application, if approved, would bring a 500-acre strip mine close to Lynch's historic buildings..." (Cf Tompa on an Afghan copper mine).

Hinchliffe Stadium, Paterson, New Jersey, - Endangered, Threat: Deterioration, Neglect, Significance: "On a bluff above the Great Falls National Historical Park in Paterson, N.J., Hinchliffe Stadium, one of only three remaining Negro League stadiums in the country, stands vacant and dilapidated... "

Industrial Arts Building, Lincoln, Nebraska, - Endangered, Threat: Demolition. "With Palladian windows, natural skylights, intricate roof trusses and a 4-story fountained interior, the Agricultural Hall, as it was called, was a showstopper [...] the Industrial Arts Building is not part of the university's master plan and will soon meet the wrecking ball unless a developer steps forward to rescue and reuse the building..."

Juana Briones House, Palo Alto, California, Endangered, Threat: Demolition. Significance: In the heart of Silicon Valley, what is traditionally known as the Juana Briones House is a rare reminder of California’s early Spanish and Mexican heritage...


Merritt Parkway, Fairfield County, Connecticut - Endangered, Threat: Neglect, Poor Planning. Significance: [...] "Although the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave the Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) an Honor Award in 1995 for sensitive preservation of the Merritt Parkway, much has changed in recent years..."

Metropolitan AME Church, Washington, District of Columbia - Endangered, Threat: Deterioration. Significance: "A major landmark of African American heritage and one of the most important religious institutions in the United States..."

Saugatuck Dunes, Michigan - Endangered, Threat: Development. Significance: "It is an area of striking beauty. Along the shores of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River, the 2,500 acres that comprise the Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Area boast a sparsely-developed landscape of spectacular beach, rare freshwater dunes, water, woods and wetlands; habitat to several endangered species; and home to a large number of significant historic and archaeological sites..."

Threefoot Building, Meridian, Mississippi - Endangered, Threat: Demolition. Significance: "The Art Deco Queen of Meridian continues to deteriorate, and locals fear that her next date may be with the wrecking ball. In the last several years, the building has experienced significant deterioration. Terra-cotta tiles are falling off the facade, water is infiltrating in several locations and windows are in poor shape. Without immediate action, portions of the masonry are at risk of falling into pedestrian and vehicular traffic... "

Wilderness Civil War Battlefield, Orange & Spotsylvania Counties, Virginia - Endangered, Threat: Development. Significance: "One of the most significant engagements of the Civil War [...] If Walmart ignores American heritage and bulldozes the battlefield, the first impression 95 percent of visitors to the National Park would have of the Wilderness Battlefield would be an oversized bunker of a big-box store in a sea of asphalt perched above a massive intersection..."

It is not therefore only in countries with upstanding and below ground remains of the "classical" past that preservation of heritage values comes into head-on collision with economic realities. This is a world-wide problem and a world-wide concern. But of course everybody who actually cares about the heritage is already well aware of that, everybody that is except self-righteous and self-centred US dealers and collectors with their heads stuck in their coin cabinets and coiney websites who selectively misrepresent it as a justification for their own lack of moral qualms about their asocial and selfish activities.

Vignette: The Adams House, US cultural icon notable for its bad state of preservation.
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"Internationalist" collectors Urge US Not to "Prop up the Status Quo in Greece"

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As readers will know, last week in Washington, there was a public session of the CPAC on a bilateral agreement between Greece and the US over the movement of illegally exported cultural cultural property. The lawyer who represented the dealers' organizations there (the International Association of Professional Numismatists and the Professional Numismatists Guild) has just posed what he sees as the "ultimate question". Given the country's current economic and political differences:

should the US help prop up the status quo in Greece?

or should the collectors and dealers Tompa represents import antiquities from that country without attention to whether they are licit or not? The aim would be to further destabilise "the status quo" and force changes upon the foreign government. That's "Internationalist" revolutionary talk there. In effect, Tompa's suggestion is for dealers and collectors to carry on stealing from the Greeks while they are still less able to respond. There is clearly an opportunity here for the collector, which they are being urged to make use owhile they can - like Lord Elgin. After all, as Tompa says (following Roger Bland's pal, Rick Witschonke), its all in support of the legal rights of the Greeks themselves. After all there is nothing in the IAPN and PNG codes of ethics about not attempting regime change in source countries.

So the lawyer retained by both the IAPN and PNG is suggesting stealing from the Greeks to give the Greeks a taste of good old western values; it's called "kicking a man when he is down" Mr Tompa.

Vignette: Cultural property banditry in action: the cowboy dealer's code, kicking a man when he's down (from the magazine "Life")

A Presumption Too Far?

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I have several times mentioned here two alarmist fictions concocted by the lobby for no-questions-asked dealing in dugup antiquities to drum up support from collectors.

The first is that if the US comes to a cultural property agreement with Italy, it will mean that it is acceding to alleged demands by the Italians that every ancient Roman artefact found anywhere will be treated as "Italian cultural property". No information is offered where these demands are documented or even hinted at.

The second piece of nonsense is the variant story that if the US comes to a cultural property agreement with the Hellenic Republic of Greece, it will mean that it is acceding to alleged demands by the Greeks that every ancient Greek artefact found anywhere will be treated as "Greek cultural property". No information is offered where these demands are documented or even hinted at.

This is self-evidently arrant nonsense, but as we have seen is a story swallowed hook line and sinker by the xenophobic, gullible and less critically thinking individuals in the antiquity collecting community and even as we saw the other day by academics in the US and outside. Where does it come from? Well, it can be traced back to the inventive brains of several individuals in the Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild, apparently a cover organization for the anti-preservationist lobbying of antiquity dealers such as CNG and V-Coins.

One of those who promotes this story is Peter Tompa (aka "Cultural Property Observer"), as discussed by me for example recently here. In answer to that post Tompa attempted to explain this away by suggesting that what was "meant" (which is totally a odds with what was and is actually being SAID to collectors) was that US customs officials would get confused and presume that all ancient Roman antiquities, exported from Lebanon, Bulgaria, Heathrow and Spain were somehow "Italian cultural property". Apart from that not being what is said, the logic of that totally escapes me.

Sebastian Heath questions it too ("This sentence might carry more weight if it came with a source. Do you have one? I don't believe you can cite such a statement ..."). Tompa indeed cannot, but undeterred he then replies:

Sebastian- Presumptions are what import restrictions are all about. For example, Customs seized the ACCG's unprovenanced Cypriot and Chinese coins because it presumed they were covered by the MOUs with Cyprus and China.

Well, Mr Tompa's brand of blogged speculations, spite and conspiracy theories does not have many readers, but I am one of his regular fans and attentive readers, and I knew this was not in fact the way he himself had presented facts earlier. This is what we find he himself had written on May 21st:

The ACCG imported the coins in April 2009. ACCG’s Customs Broker had to tell Customs that the coins were subject to potential restrictions. On the 5th attempt, Customs seized the coins, but instead of filing the required forfeiture action, Customs did nothing. ACCG waited for almost a year, and then filed its own suit against Customs and the State Department.

So it was the ACCG who put customs up to this seizure, not any "presumption" by US customs, and it took five "attempts" to effect the detention and then seizure of these coins so the ACCG could then use that as an excuse for an expensive court case (which apparently starts next week by the way).

So, we are really no nearer to understanding why US coin dealers and academics are being led by the dealers' lobby to believe that if the US adopts measures requiring the examination of the paperwork of antiquities leaving Italy and Greece over a five year period, it means every single Roman and Greek coin anywhere in the world is suddenly made somehow into "Italian" and "Greek" cultural property. That is simply a bad attack of self-induced paranoia.

Why can't the ACCG and their dealer pals just come clean and say WHY they do not want the US ICE looking too carefully at the paperwork of the antiquities they import from Greece and Italy? What's the problem? (Rhetorical question).

PAS Does Not Care: Take the Lot, Why Don't You?

Two weeks ago I discussed here the loudly trumpeted purchase by an employee of the Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild of a piece of decorated Celtic metalwork which its new owner proudly asserts is so "nationally important" as a source of information about the insular development of celtic art that it really should never have received an export licence. He also revealed that the item had been discovered by metal detecting in Oxfordshire and it had never been reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (as the Code on Responsible Metal Detecting requires of responsible artefact hunters). As such it is one of the many thousands of potentially significant metal detected items from British soil not recorded on the PAS database.

Since the object had been discussed most widely on the closed access Yahoo "Ancient Artifacts" discussion list, it was possible that the PAS had not received this information. I therefore wrote (30th July) to the Director, Dr Roger Bland at the British Museum with a copy sent to the Oxfordshire FLO Anni Byard at the Oxfordshire Museum Resource Centre in Standlake suggesting they contact the dealer who had sold it overseas without any record being made first and get some information about where it had come from for the PAS database, and maybe adopt a standpoint on the opinions that were being expressed on collectors' forums about, for example, the "unimportance" of provenance in cases like this. Dr Bland was out of the office, so I copied the letter to his Deputy, Michael Lewis. I learnt that at about the same time Dr David Gill of the University of Swansea also wrote to them expressing similar disquiet.

Since then neither I nor (I learn just now) Dr Gill have received any response from the PAS, perhaps they are all on holiday and the Scheme is drifting like a rudderless ship at the beginning of the metal detecting season at harvest time. Or perhaps actually contacting the relevant parties about a single unrecorded item is just too much more bother, rather than going along to a metal detecting "find of the month" competition.

There are a number of reasons why it is clear that the PAS should have responded immediately to the ongoing discussion of this item [now on several online forums, reaching several thousand (literally) collectors on at least two continents]. The PAS is supposedly engaged in "outreach", but to do that, some of my readers may feel like me, it actually has to respond to situations like this when notified, and not sit back and ignore them.

Taxpayers of Oxfordshire might like to pop along to the Museums resource Centre and ask Ms Byard why an apparently unique piece of the county's history has slipped through her fingers without anyone being any the wiser, and what she has done to try and at least get some information for the database. They can then email me and let me know what she said, as I for one am interested and am apparently not going to get an answer from Oxfordshire or the apparently deserted desks of Bloomsbury.

Anyway the message to metal detectorists and antiquity dealers in the UK is clear, if you do not want to record even "significant" pieces before they are sold off, you really do not have to, and nobody cares enough in England and Wales to chase you up after it. The question is then, why bother? Everybody in the YouKay is so jubilant about the numbers of finds coming in from metal detecting club visits and rally attendance rather than even mentioning that large numbers of finds from artefact mining of archaeological sites in Britain are not being reported at all. If the numbers of finds noted on the AS database is enough to legitimise the hobby, then why bother about the rest? After all, its a waste of breath the PAS criticising irresponsible "metal detectorists" and ACCG collectors like the purchaser of this item, and only creates bad feeling, no?
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Slime Attack

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ACCG's Peter Tompa continues his slime-attack on whistle-blowing archaeologist Donny George, reinforcing his earlier intimations (on the basis of unconfirmed second-hand information) that the archaeologist had been involved in “looting” of museums and collections in Kuweit during the 1990 Iraqi invasion. Now he writes:

Despite Dr. George's protestations that all was done in accordance with international law, does anyone really believe that Saddam's Baathist regime intended to give everything back voluntarily after the end of hostilities had Iraq prevailed in the First Gulf War? Or is it more likely Saddam's government [which Dr. George willingly served at the time] intended to take the same path as past conquerors […]?

In line with the typical black propaganda Americans now consistently use against their former close Middle Eastern ally Saddam Hussein, the “past conquerors” to which Tompa compares the late Iraqi leader however were not Eisenhower, MacArthur or even (since we are dealing with Moslem leaders from Tikrit, Saladin) but – how could it be otherwise - “like Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, etc” (Scipio Africanus, Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Tommy Franks etc too no doubt).

Mr Tompa claims godlike ability to see into men’s hearts. Just how “willingly” somebody has served a country’s strongly enforced regime seems however to me remarkably difficult to measure, especially from afar. It is the subject of still-ongoing deep reflection and public discussion here in post communist Eastern Europe, but I expect Tompa is unaware of any of that.

While I am not going to speak for Donny George, I can say that I would be placed in an ethical dilemma if as an archaeologist I was asked to help empty a storeroom at an airbase in northern Poland containing antiquities and artworks because my (democratically elected) government could not guarantee their safety because the buildings were going to be turned over to the a foreign government’s agents (let’s say the CIA) to use as one of their secret prisons in which they were going to illegally hold and torture “suspects”. Should I refuse, not wanting to facilitate my government allowing something that I abhore and regard as immoral or illegal? Then, on the other hand if I refuse, would a few dozen boxes of potsherds and bones, old coins and other stuff stop the foreign agents moving in? If no properly trained professionals could be found to do it, would not my country's government property agency anyway just get a band of squaddies to bundle the whole lot in some lorries and shift them to some leaky sheds and hangers somewhere, thus clearing space for the torturers? To be honest I really do not know what I would do. My job however is to preserve the remains of the past, to look after the heritage of the past, leaving a museum store to be cleared by unsupervised unskilled and uncaring squaddies potentially leading to loss of information and damage to the objects would not be ethical either.

Mr Tompa until recently served a government of the (as far as I am concerned) war-criminals that in his name invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, killed civilians, tortured prisoners imprisoned in various secret bases and camps all over the world, and one infamous one in Cuba, without charges and generally made a bloody great mess. Did he do it “willingly” though? Who knows? Maybe he found it convenient just to play along, close his eyes to the abuse and corruption, do what he was required to, and wait for another government to come in?

Tompa has not noted that Iraq ratified the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in December 1967. This, among other things, obliges them to take care of museum collections in territory under their occupation. Tompa suggests that this is somehow against "international law". He fails to note that Dr George reports that a full inventory was made of the material that was removed when Iraq occupied Kuwait City. The material was apparently packed properly and evacuated to a place outside the zone of unrest and further conflict. It also was returned when peace was restored (and I really do not think Dr George is responsible for what was in Saddam’s heart or plans for the future of the material). Tompa calls this securing of the collections “looting”. Let us compare it with what happened just a few years later in the same region during the chaos of another invasion.

The stormtroopers of the United States shot and bombed their way into Baghdad in April 2003 and the occupying forces allowed public order to break down almost immediately. Looting began within a few hours, the Iraq National Museum was one of the targets of this robbing. The United States of America to their shame only ratified the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in 2009, well after these disgraceful events. No inventory was made by the US occupier of what was taken out of the museums that were in their hands, it was not packed up in nice boxes and removed under military guard to safe storerooms outside the zone of unrest and further conflict. And neither, seven years on, has a substantial part of it been returned, because the US occupier immediately lost control of it. Some of it has now been appearing in markets all over the Middle East and in the United States. What happened to the museums and libraries of Iraq under occupation by the forces led by Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush and General Tommy Franks was “looting”.

What Saddam’s intentions were for the cultural property from the Kuwaiti collections might of course be revealed by the archives of the Ba’ath party . But these were siezed by the Americans during the invasion. They managed to hold on to much of them and withold the information they contain from the Iraqi people. Seven years on they are no nearer being restored to Iraq (Iraqi Files in U.S.: Plunder or Rescue?)

In the context of the accusation Tompa levels at Donny George, let us also note that the "internationalist" antiquity collecting and dealing clients of Mr Tompa's law firm ( Bailey and Ehrenberg PLLC) are only too happy to profit from the dispersal of 'ancient art' as a result of the military exploits of the US in sovereign states. The ACCG notoriously fought the passing of regulations to curb the illicit flow of looted material from Afghanistan onto the US market after the US invasion. The ACCP reportedly wanted to see a free market for newly dispersed collectable antiquities from Mesopotamia on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq (and Tompa sits on the board of the CPRI which though now moribund, seems likely to have been intended as a revival of the discredited ACCP in a new form). Bailey and Ehrenberg are reportedly now on their clients' behalf fighting government measures on curbing the imports of illegally obtained items from Cyprus and China, aiming to (re-)establish a free trade in such items in the US.

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium;
atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Tacitus Agricola Bk 1 (21)
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Photo: July 1990, U.S. Ambassador in Iraq, April Glaspie assures Saddam the US will not interfere in his border dispute with Kuwait - but then as we all know they went back on that assurance.

Why the Silence Over Violations of "Rights"?

In my discussion of the seizure in Canada of some coins and other antiquities exported from Bulgaria, I asked: Will the public ever learn anything about the intended destination of the items seized, so people can make their own minds up about the no-questions-asked trade in antiquities?

The fact that the people involved in most such cases are passed over not only in silence, but details are actively suppressed is telling. Somebody in Canada was waiting for those coins to come, probably they had already been paid for, and they did not arrive.

As we have seen, "collectors "rights" lobbyists consistently insist that in the business practices of North American dealers and collectors, "no North American law is broken". That is the basis for their claim that the whole business is not only legal, but legitimate and ethical.

The same lobbyists claim that buying material imported from foreign source countries is their "collectors' rights". They further claim that these "rights" are being eroded under the influence of archaeologists, gubn'mint agents and other evil people. This is the basis for their militant "internationalist" stance.

Imagine a normal bloke in a normal democracy like the UK, Canada or the USA, confronted by an over-zealous official overstepping the mark who accuses them of doing something wrong when they are in fact fully within their rights. If they are offered the choice between paying a 100 000 Euro fine to keep it quiet or going to court to contest the accusation of wrongdoing, what are they going to do? Pay the fine, sit back and say nothing? Or come out in public protest against the wrong that has been done and the officials that have infringed his personal rights?

Is it not odd that when seizures like this take place, the "wronged" party, the importer, invariably stays silent? If charges are hardly ever brought in such cases, what have they got to hide?

Where is the ACCG? Why are they not publicising the "wrong" that has been done to "Mr X"? The guy is 100 000 Euros out of pocket, a crippling loss to a small business for example in these financially difficult times. Or is this business such a big one that the sudden and unexpected loss of 100 000 Euros worth of stock is but a drop in the ocean?

Nevertheless, surely the "collectors' rights" organizations should be using cases like these of the "wrongs" that are being done against these busnesses, against collectors in their public agitation to get these "collectors' rights" in the public eye and get public support behind the coiney "internationalist" movement. Silence over the "victims" of these seizures allows their presentation in the media as nameless miscreants, but these martyrs for the "internationalist" cause should (surely) be holding their heads high and coming out in public to protest their case and the wrongs that have been done, and to make officials think again before repeating such actions. Why then, allow the state media hide their names, nay - even suppress them? The ACCG are clearly letting the other side pus them around if they do not fight this suppression of the information aout the identity of the "victims" of state-sponsored cultural property repression. At least that is what would result from the logic of their own arguments. So why are they not naming the victims, why are they not naming and shaming the officials (public servants after all) responsible for "infringing their rights"?

For all their talk about "transparency", there is a singular lack of transparency over this particular area where groups like the ACCG would argue "collectors' rights" are being actively infringed upon. Why? That is simply illogical.

Who is "Mr X"?

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Mysterious funds, mysterious photos

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Peter Tompa comments on the SAFECorner blog (which has a larger readership than his own):

PRNewswire is a paid service [...] Prof. Gill's funding for this PR effort remains a mystery as is the source of at least some of the photos with which he plays his game of "gotcha" on collectors and museums.

Mr Tompa surmises that Gill has a powerful benefactor who enables these news releases. The ACCG has no such benefactor. Just Mr Tompa. There is no mystery about where Mr Tompa of Bailey and Ehrensburg gets his funding from, his firm is one of those retained by the ACCG - and his blog's conspiracy theorising is presumably funded directly from the ACCG fighting fund, which in turn comes from the sale of ancient coins supplied by local dealers in "benefit auctions". I find it interesting that Tompa will not let the question rest of where Gill finances his information campaign, but is not in the least concerned where those US dealers got their coins from.

ACCG employee John Hooker asserts that each press release costs Gill $400 (USD), that means he has spent so far 14,400 USD on them. That is a fraction of the 80 000 dollars the ACCG has raised through its "benefit auctions". It seems to me there has been a lot more benefit arising from Gill's use of the social media to spread the word about "looting matters" than the silly posing, conspiracy theorising and frivolous court cases of the ACCG.

Yahoo Artifacts Group to Join UK Festival of Archaeology?

Tim Haines on the closed access Yahoo "AncientArtifacts" discussion group where all sorts of things go on unseen has, oblivious to the irony, just advertised the CBA's British Archaeology Festival there. While I am sure pretended association with this event may aid the presentation of this shipload of parrotting antiquitist pirates and hangers-on as a "responsible" venue, I am pretty sure it does not do the image of archaeology any favours. This is despite the fact that its list owner claims it has lots of archaeologists and museum curators on it, if it has they are the poor meek souls who are afraid to speak out there for responsible collecting for fear that such a stand will get them too chucked off the ship. The list is on the whole anti-archaeological, a mouthpiece for the "international" ACCG ranters with their biogotted views on any country that attempts to protect its archaeological heritage from being sold off to foreign collectors and with minimal toleration for any voices in opposition to such views. This is what Mr Haines apparently regards as a "responsible" approach to collecting.

Communists and Worse-that-Nazis and the US Establishment

It is difficult not to comment on this rant from a Californian coin dealer called "The Cyprus Disconnection" about the alleged-spy-leader-that-got-away story which is worth discussing here as it is typical of the world view of at least part of the antiquity collecting community (my emphasis):

After the US State Department betrayed the interests of US citizens to curry favor with the Greek Cypriot regime, here is how that favor has been repaid: [Washington Post article...]. What a wonderfully well managed foreign policy the United States has. What a magnificent governmental organization US citizens appear to have in the State Department, which has traded away their interests to curry favor with foreign governments such as the Republic of Cyprus whose president is a Communist and whose government is evidently at the disposal of Russian spymasters, whose approach to managing international relations apparently does not in any way correspond to what US citizens think of when the word "honorable" is mentioned.

And what a magnificent organization US archaeologists seem to have in the AIA, which after all that it and other archaeological institutions did to curry favor with the Baathist regime in Iraq - arguably the most evil and unprincipled since the Third Reich - subsequently did everything in its power to ensure that the Republic of Cyprus would get whatever it wanted from the US State Department.

There is a higher law than the cynical back room deals by which the State Department, at the behest of the AIA, double-crossed and betrayed the interests of US citizens interested in the licit collecting of minor antiquities such as ancient coins. There is a higher law than"archaeologie ueber alles" which seems to be the doctrinaire approach of the AIA in determining its attitude toward private collecting. It is time that this higher law is considered.

Perhaps it is also time for the US State Department to give some thought to how it is being perceived by the citizens of this great Republic, and for the AIA to consider whether it is really in the best interests of that organization to be associated with foreign governments such as the Baathist regime in Iraq and the Republic of Cyprus.

Phew. Creepy stuff, eh? That's a prime demonstration what prolongued contact with multiple examples of corroded coins from the soil does to the brain. "Currying favour with the worse-than-Nazis", eh? Allied with "Communists"? If Mr Welsh thinks that Iraq had "arguably the most evil and unprincipled [government] since the Third Reich" then what does he think of a government that actively co-operated with it in the years when Hussein was consolidating his power? That supplied it with weapons? Did Mr Welsh speak out US foreign policy in the early 1980s, or only when the war-hungry imperialist hyenas started wailing? There are many corrupt and unjust governments in the world, but ACCG dealers are perfectly willing to sell coins apparently from the territories of some of them I see.

Frankly, I think if the AIA or any of its members had any guts, they would get in touch with a decent lawyer and haul Welsh over the coals over his accusation that the Institute actively "curried favour" with the worse-than-Nazis. What form did this take? Have we video of Brian Rose shaking hands with the now-deposed ruler? Well, we have pictures of a prominent collector sitting smilingly next to the President of this Institute, obviously unperturbed by what Welsh alleges, presumably Shelby White's membership of the ACCG has been revoked.

As we read in the papers, the real reason why the Cypriots did not lock Mr Metzos up seems to be that the US bungled the arrests. The Department of Justice was slow in sending the requisite papers to Cyprus, even though they had been preparing for this for years. So it is nothing to do with the State Department, nothing to do with ancient coins, cultural property or any of the other issues the silly US coineys attempt to link this with.

Who is "betraying" "the interests of US citizens", those who persist in loudly shouting that US citizens all want to buy illegally exported coins, or those that quietly try to regulate the market to attempt to cut down the number of illegally exported coins that US dealers can import? Do US citizens as a whole want to buy stolen property or not? Do 310 million people want the ACCG to speak for their "interests", or would they, if they knew what the ACCG was up to, consider that this group of ranting no-questions-asked indicriminate peddlars of artefacts taken from the archaelogical heritage of other countries speaks for them?

It seems that not even all the collectors think that way. Here is the comment from Ancient Antiquities list of one Al Schlaf from Des Moines, IA:

As I read the original posting, I noted it got more whackadoodle as it went on. I frequent several current events/political fora and have seen the truly nut job rants of the Tea Party types, but this most definitely goes way beyond that, well nigh into the Roman Piso theory quackery. As my son would say, "Dude, just step away from the bong".

That just about sums up the intellectual level of the coiney rants. The coins clearly have the same deleterious effects on the thinking process as prolongued use of narcotics (parents of ACE-outreached kids please note).

Roman Piso ("The True Authorship of the New Testament"), for those who've never come across it is a classic literary genre in its own right, bet it was written by a collector of Roman coins.
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Reworded Coiney Code of Ethics: "SS" Holds Out

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There was a surprisingly telling reaction to the announcement that by amending the wording of its code of ethics, the ACCG was clarifying its position on the trade in illicitly obtained artefacts. A "SS" (who has been mentioned here before) angrily reacts with a one-liner:

Clarification? I'd call it capitulation. Scott Semans.

Scott Semans of Issaquah, Washington (WA 98027) deals in all sorts of stuff, but in particular in Asian, including Chinese coins. So if he refers to attempts to establish more ethical dealing practices in such items "capitulation", I would suggest that Mr Semans is not a coin dealer that an ethical collector would want to do any further business with.

"Capitulation" to what Mr Semans? In what? Are dealers like you really at war with the rest of the world? Why?

If Mr Semans refuses to accept the new wording (were ACCG members consulted?) then will he be withdrawing from the ACCG in protest? If he refuses to be bound by this code of ethics, will Mr Semans be expelled from the ACCG (after all he is a dealer and not [just?] a collector anyway).

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The Big Lie in Action

A Californian coin dealer who has had ample occasion to learn my actual opinion, even if he apparently has a regrettably short attention span and capacity for absorbing and remembering information writes:

Mr. Barford would, consistently with his past excesses, portray such a result as supporting his view that no one should be allowed to collect unprovenanced artifacts.

I suppose it will come as no surprise to anyone that the ideology of "Internationalist coin collecting" incorporates the Big Lie premise (if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough the gullible hoi polloi will come to believe it). But that in itself indicates to whom Welsh and all the rest see themselves as addressing; the intelligent and critical reader will see through the big lies they tell and try to get to the bottom of the issue.

Why would, despite all I write here (and elsewhere) the Big Lie-spreading coin dealers want uncritical collectors to think that what I am saying is that "no one should be allowed to collect unprovenanced artifacts" rather than what I am saying is that an ethical collector would only buy antiquities which have a verifiable collecting history showing they were licitly obtained? A moment's thought will inevitably suggest at least one reason why a certain type of dealer might be concerned to scare collectors off from listening to such talk, to shut such ideas from their minds. To cover up their own shortcomings by distorting what the proponents of ethical collecting are saying to make it sound "radical", when in fact it is nothing of the sort.

Oddly enough Welsh's post is called "Looting: the essence of the lie".

Monetans Hiding Again?

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Somebody told me the other day that the Moneta-L archives, which had been opened to public view, were closed. Frankly, I did not believe them since no such announcement had been made on the list (and one was made earlier about the decision to open them). Also all posts carry the footer:

List users are reminded that they must sign their name to all posts. All posts on MONETA-L are the responsibility of the poster. MONETA-L has an open archive policy, which means that all posts are available to the public and may be archived on search engines. Think before you write. The opinions expressed on this list are not necessarily those of the list moderators.

But just now somebody has confirmed independently, the archives are no longer visible to non-members. They also surmised that I would:

no doubt be interested in this, especially, I think, because its closure coincides with the lengthy discussion challenging the ACCG's role in the issues and the unmeasured responses from the dealers (esp. Sayles, Welsh, and De La Fe).

A question therefore to Moneta-L moderators, have the list archives been been closed deliberately, and is it just a coincidence that this occurred at the moment the measures taken by the ACCG to support imports of illegally exported coins were being openly discussed by collectors who disagreed with these tactics? If so, what precisely is this intended to hide? That some collectors have different opinions from others? That not all collectors follow the Party line of the ACCG "Internationalists"? Is the closure temporary, or have you decided to hide coin-based discussions from the public permanently? If the subject of the list was collecting Codd bottles, Staffordshire pottery or Toby Jugs, would it have a closed archive, and for what reason therefore does the ethical collecting of coins require one?

A question to the ACCG, if public access to the Moneta-L archives was deliberately blocked, was this at the request of the ACCG? What is the ACCG position on the subject of the free flow of information about differing opinions in the collecting community and on the politics of collecting? Does the ACCG welcome a free and frank exchange of views from collectors such as Reid Goldsborough and Chris W., or would they rather that such views were silenced?

In whose interest is the censoring of information on the artefact trade and collecting so the general public (the real major stakehholders in the heritage) cannot see how harmless, beneficial and rewarding a hobby ancient coin collecting is? What have the collectors of ancient coins, who are so vociferous in demanding 'transparency' in other contexts, got to hide?

Vignette: Sweeping the dirt under the carpet (Banksy in Camden)