Commentary on the Nov 16th Public Session of the CPAC

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The Archaeological Institute of America has published on its website two first-hand accounts of the November 16th public session of the CPAC concerning the initial requests for Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) between the United States and Belize and between the United States and Bulgaria under the Convention for Cultural Property Implementation Act (CCPIA). There are two of them, the second is by Nathan T. Elkins (Assistant Professor of Art History, Greek and Roman Art, Baylor University and member of the AIA’s Cultural Heritage Policy Committee.

He gives details of the presentation of several speakers, starting with Stephen J. Knerly ( an attorney who represented the Association of Art Museum Directors [AAMD]), then Peter Tompa (another attorney "and lobbyist representing the International Association of Professional Numismatists (IAPN) and the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG), two international trade organizations for dealers in ancient coins"). As such, he of course "opposed Bulgaria’s request outright and suggested that if a MoU is signed, the designated list ought not to include ancient coins. Mr. Tompa began by pulling out a wooden ruler...." [Uh-oh...]. He apparently "insisted that looting [...] is no worse than a traffic violation" [ever seen a kid knocked off his bike by a speeding car Mr Tompa?].

Mr. Tompa [...] believes that recent cultural heritage legislation in Bulgaria in 2009 should not be taken seriously by the committee as it was “rammed through by ex-communists only with input from archaeologists.” He stated that metal detectors should be targeted as as opposed to collectors. In his view, there is too much undocumented material in American collections and dealer inventories to force such a burden on American collectors and tradesmen.

[See article 10(a) of the UNESCO Convention - one of the many the US refuses to implement]

Kerry Wetterstrom, a former auction director for Classical Numismatic Group (CNG), offered comments on behalf of the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG), an organization governed by American dealers in ancient coins and with a broad base of collector membership. Mr. Wetterstrom made points similar to Tompa’s, although he added that it would be a better approach if Bulgaria were to adopt a scheme similar to the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in England and Wales. Under such a scheme, metal detectorists would be allowed to operate and would be encouraged to report their finds to the authorities, which may in turn record or remunerate them for their finds.

So Tompa says metal detectorists should be "regulated" (as if they are not in Bulgaria anyway) and another ACCG representative wants to see a liberalisation.

Elkins spoke next:

I indicated that Bulgaria is a primary source country for freshly discovered ancient coins and minor antiquities that enter the trade in the United States. In view of the precedents of Cyprus, China, and Italy, I suggested that a designated list include coins as there is great demand for fresh supplies of ancient coins in the United States and there is also a great deal of plunder in Bulgaria to feed the trade; I pointed to numerous seizures of ancient coins and metal artifacts that were smuggled from Bulgaria and destined for the U.S. as evidence. I also indicated that coins coming from Bulgaria are indeed the fruits of organized plunder and not casual or chance finds of isolated hoards as opponents of import restrictions have claimed in the past. This is illustrated by bulk lots or wholesale lots of ancient coins from Bulgaria that are advertised on dealer websites and eBay. I held up printouts of eBay auctions that were online at the time of the meeting; one dealer had numerous lots of earth-encrusted metal artifacts such as arrowheads, jewelry, and parcels of thousands of mixed Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman coins. Such a mixture of objects from a diverse range of chronological periods represents multiple layers of archaeological sites, not isolated hoards or casual finds. In fact, the American eBay seller explicitly stated in many of his auctions that he received the material directly from “excavators” and metal detectorists in Vidin Province in Bulgaria. Vidin Province is an area that has historically been subject to a large degree of looting and which is also home to Colonia Ulpia Traiana Ratiaria, an important archaeological site that has been systematically targeted by looters. Restricting the flow of all other archaeological materials except coins would solve nothing as it is clear from the seizures and from wholesaler inventories in the United States that the material is derived from the same sources and from the same sorts of organized metal detecting activity.

Elkins then summarises what Christina Luke (Lecturer in Anthropology at Boston University and chairperson of the AIA’s Cultural Heritage Policy Committee), Brian Daniels (Fellow of the Penn Cultural Heritage Center of the University of Pennsylvania Museum), Kevin Clinton (Professor Emeritus of Classics at Cornell University and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Research Center in Sofia). All of these spoke in favour of the US helping Bulgaria stem the flow of unlawfully exported dugup antiquities and other cultural property from the country, which - despite efforts in Bulgaria being stepped up - was still a problem.

Elkins and his colleagues believe that:

those who support a MoU with Bulgaria made a compelling case for its enactment [...] proponents of the MoU better articulated their arguments with regard to the four determinations [of CCPIA art 2602[a](1) PMB] and the actual situation in Bulgaria. We trust that the CPAC will carefully weigh the substance of the commentary provided to the committee and will make a decision that will aid Bulgaria in the preservation of its cultural heritage.

It is quite remarkable that not only are the coineys quite incapable of addressing the actual directions of the CCPIA and CPAC about the nature of public comments required (something I have commented upon too, looking at the public records of their submissions), but that they cannot even agree among the members of the board of directors of their most active lobbying group the ACCG whether metal detectorists are to be encouraged and rewarded (the Wetterstrom-PAS approach) or punished (the Tompa-numismatic dealers approach). So what is teh ACCG's policy towards metal detecting, and the purchase of artefacts which derive from metal detecting?

Imagine....

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US Coin dealer Alfredo De La Fe has a blog, and today's latest post is the predictable US coiney reaction to the latest PAS 'whoopee' news-spin:

New Viking Ruler Discovered by a Metal detectorist?
In today’s telegraph there is a story about the potential discovery of a new viking ruler based on the discovery of viking hoard by a metal detectorist. [the Silverdale Hoard of course]. This is a great example of how the Portable Antiquities Scheme works and contributes to our understanding of the past. Imagine if similar systems were in place in other source countries as opposed to restrictive laws which force the local markets under ground.

It is probably going to take another couple of decades before these dumb transatlantic people work out that the Treasure Act is administered through the Coroner, and the Portable Antiquities Scheme is something QUITE DIFFERENT. In fact the Treasure Act is exactly the same kind of vesting law that De La Fe labels "restrictive laws". If you do not report archaeological (and other) finds that fall in its remit and had them over to the Coroner in 14 days you run the risk of going to jail. I fail to see finding out the bare fact that some guy existed and called himself 'king' is such an earth-shattering event - lots of people existed in the past who we'll never learn the names of, but that is not the only aim of historic enquiry. Is our "knowledge of the past" entirely dependent on knowing which Torre, Dicke or Harthacnut briefly claimed deo-gratia kingship in Northumbria or thereabouts in the 890s before succumbing to a rival's axe at the next territorial punch-up ? Battles and Kings history is just one kind of view of the past. Surely of importance here is to understand the landscape and site context of the findspot of that lead container which when the finder hoiked it out, the "silver fell out" (or was it "prised open"?). As an archaeologist I would say that is potentially more important to our knowledge of the historical processes of this complex period than a mere king-list. Northumbria at the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth centuries had many 'kings', in the tenth it was to have many more, but what social processes lie behind this procession of names, the shifting of power-blocks delimited by the nice broad lines on the historian's maps? That some bloke called Airdeconut struck a coin (with a p.c. Christian monogram on the reverse) is good news fodder and may be exciting to coineys, but hardly advances our knowledge of the processes operating on the rest of society. This of course will not be known while all we have are a couple of hundred bits of metal hoiked out of the ground here and there and no context to put them in.

Let us be clear why the vesting legislation the coineys criticise do not work. If Terence Thugwit metal detectorist finds something like this in the Republic of Distopia which declares all finds to be the property of the state, he can avoid trouble by declaring it and be thankful he is not locked up for trashing archaeological sites with his spade and metal detector. On the other hand, he may have a mate who knows a bloke that might give him a couple of hundred (!) Euros for it. Now that bloke can only realise his investment if HE in turn finds somebody who will give him a nice profit on his money (it's a risky business breaking the law in Distopia, best to get the dodgy goods out of the country, where anyway there are better profits to be made in Can't-touch-you-for-it-land). But he knows this Bavarian dealer who has contacts in the US market...

Should there be laws about people trashing the archaeological record for entertainment and profit? I of course have to say yes - as an archaeologist I believe firmly that there should.

Should there be laws which if effective and obeyed by citizens ensure that all archaeological finds are reported and made available for study? I again would say yes (with the proviso that I personally think there should ideally also be systematic data gathering by state-funded teams as we have in Poland).

Should the citizens who go out and trash sites for entertainment and profit be made aware by every possible means of the laws and their consequences, and if caught punished with the fullest severity of the law? Yes.

Should opportunities be made available for people who want to engage in real archaeological work in the landscape (even with metal detectors if done properly)? Absolutely.

What however should be stopped is a situation where people go out with tools to trash archaeological sites (do not do so according to "best practice"), squirrel away the information and artefacts, and clandestinely sell the unreported artefacts to willing dealers. Both they and the dealers buying illicit goods should be caught and punished to the maximum extent of the law. What those countries whose archaeological heritage is being clandestinely looted away need to do is cut off culture criminals who loot sites from the irresponsible people that will give them lots of money no-questions-asked for anything they bring along for sale. These people too are aiding and abetting culture crime, and in some cases committing it themselves. And cutting the US market off from these culture criminals (artefact smugglers and their fellows) is exactly the application of the CCPIA in the US is intended to achieve and the application of these measures is exactly what the ACCG (to which Alfredo De La Fe belongs) are trying to prevent - which is why he posts nonsense about "imagine if other countries had a PAS...".

Is he suggesting that if other countries had a PAS there would be no need for the CCPIA and coin dealers would then not have to worry about documentation of legal export of the items they stock? What nonsense, the PAS has no connection whatsoever with fighting illicit exports of cultural property.

UPDATE 15.12.11: Mr DLF ("Understanding Our (sic) Past") clearly does not understand the point I made about there being other kinds of history than "Battles and Kings"... Neither does he even notice (let alone respond to it) that what was discussed in my post above was his fundamental point that if other countries had a PAS-clone, there would be no need for the CCPIA to be applied in the USA, probably because even he realises that what he postulated in dealery self-interest is nonsense ("The response over on Paul Barford’s blog was predictable").

[The word, by the way, I think you are striving for, Mr De La Fe, is "drivel", "dribble" is what you do with a football over here.]

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Why Coineys Don't Want the US to Help Bulgaria With Antiquity Smuggling

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SAFE urges: Say YES to Bulgaria

One might legitimately wonder why the coin dealers and collectors of the United States of America are so anxious that the CPAC gives a negative opinion on the request of the government of the Republic of Bulgaria for a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United States of America to restrict imports of illicit archaeological and ethnological materials from that country. The SAFE webpage on the request has some details which might help unravel the mystery of why people who claim they are "interested in history", "learning about the past", "preserving relics of the past" and are "all against looting" in fact do not want to see the smuggling of artefacts out of Bulgaria stopped - at least not when it comes to stuff going into the USA. Certainly other people who are "interested in history", "learning about the past", "preserving relics of the past" and are "all against looting" do want to see the smuggling of artefacts out of countries like Bulgaria stopped as soon as possible.

The SAFE text includes a bibliography of just a few of the news items that have been coming out of the country in recent years about the successes of the Bulgarian authorities in apprehending smugglers and looters, and the sort of items that have been involved. Here we read for example:

The United States continues to be a major market for antiquities, especially those from the Greek and Roman world and particularly for coins. Quantifying the flow of goods in an illicit market is difficult; nonetheless, a handful of important recent studies show how the US market for antiquities which originate from Bulgaria remains strong.[...] looters in Bulgaria are eager to meet the international demand for antiquities with materials from their country. How much of this Bulgarian material do we know is bound for the United States? This is very difficult to say from the looting itself as often the looters on the ground do know the ultimate destination of the materials they find. Some recent border seizures, however, especially in the case of coins, have provided strong evidence for large quantities of fresh Bulgarian antiquities entering the United States for sale.

Of course if the US border authorities had been more vigilant (since 1983 the US has been a state party of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property) and caught a larger proportion of those smuggling illicit artefacts into the the US and those importing illicit artefacts, we'd have a better idea of the US involvement in this trade. Despite huge numbers of 'erdefrisch' artefacts and coins being sold (sometimes sold in bulk by the kilogramme like potatoes) by dealers based in the US to US and foreign collectors, very few shipments have so far been challenged by the US authorities, and it would seem, none of the dealers handling this stuff been investigated.

As we can see it is US coin collectors and dealers who are most concerned that US does not pay more attention (through the issue of fresh regulations confirming US resolve to honour the obligations due to a fellow member state under the 1970 UNESCO Convention) to who imports what from Bulgaria and whether it is accompanied by the requisite export documentation. They claim that "coins are not cultural property" in the terms of the 1970 UNESCO Convention (which merely show they've not actually read the document) and curbing the imports of coins freshly smuggled from a foreign source country like Bulgaria would "destroy the hobby" and prevent collectors from getting their hands on ancient coins.

In an important study of the material and intellectual consequences of the trade in unprovenienced coins, it is reported that in 2002 one individual shipped approximately one ton of coins (approximately 340,000) from Bulgaria, through Frankfurt bound for the US (pg. 4). The same study points out another seizure which occurred in 2006, when the Bulgarian police unit for Combating Organized Crime intercepted a smuggling shipment of approximately 14,000 coins on a train from Sofia to Vienna, with the ultimate destination being the US (pg. 2). These reports point to two facts. One, that there are well-travelled illegal shipping routes which bring archaeological materials from Bulgaria for sale in the US. The second fact is that coins constitute a substantial proportion of this trade.

THIS would appear to be why US coin dealers are so concerned that their clients bombard the CPAC with negative opinions about curbing the trade in smuggled artefacts, or at least exclude smuggled coins from the list of items scrutinised at the US border for legality of origin.

UPDATE 24.10.11: In what must be, surely, the absolute peak of the stupidity of the arguments used by the dealers' lobbyists to justify the continuance of a bootleg trade in smuggled coins in the US, we now learn that one of them thinks (though whether sincerely is difficult to ascertain) that SAFE's advocacy of the US reinforcing its commitment to honouring its existing obligations under the 1970 UNESCO Convention is in reality a conspiracy to support corruption.

But, what will SAFE's campaign (and that of the AIA) for "no questions asked" import restrictions really do for Bulgaria and the protection of its cultural patrimony, but help support the corrupt status quo?

Tompa draws on a report on the involvement of organized crime in Bulgaria in the illicit antiquities and illicit drug trade and human trafficking (among other ) to suggest that "before" US dealers are required by their government to import only licit dugup artefacts, the Bulgarians should adopt the measures set out in this report. Oddly - though he gives page references to the places in the report supporting his case for the wholesale corruption the trade involves - he fails to do that for those recommendations. Probably this is because they included regulating the market (including a mention of the importance of the 1970 convention in this) page 188-9 and two sections on regulating the market in antiquities (pp 189-197). The measures which Tompa mentions are only part of the recommendations of the report as a whole. I presume Tompa is relying on the fact that coineys are not going to actually check for themselves whether his summary is a fair one of what it says or not. His blog however is not read only by shallow coineys. The rest of us will find that, on looking at the text to which Tompa refers, he covers up the fact that near the top of the list is this (page 196):

Improve international coordination to prevent the sale of contraband antiquities from Bulgaria at auction houses in Western Europe. This would probably deter attempts to traffic local cultural goods across the Bulgarian border.

Well, equally improving international coordination to prevent the sale of contraband antiquities from Bulgaria by dealers in the even bigger market in the United States of America would be an effective deterrent of attempts to traffic local cultural goods across the Bulgarian border. So sending a request to the US government asking for an MOU - which the Bulgarians have just done - is entirely within the scope of the recommendations of this report.

Tompa concludes that:

Under the circumstances, the US could best help Bulgaria(sic) by tabling any talk of import restrictions to allow Bulgaria time to act on the CSD report's recommendations. Though any looting of Bulgarian archaeological sites is regrettable, it is best addressed in Bulgaria itself through the regulation of metal detectors and serious consideration of CSD's other suggestions before import restrictions are imposed.

In the meanwhile US dealers can carry on buying coins and other antiquities from the market which Tompa has described in detail in his blog post. Some readers with a better grasp on reality than a ranting lobbyist may feel that Bulgaria can better be helped by could-not-care-less Americans being prevented from financing the illicit international deals of Bulgarian criminal groups.

On the basis of that text Tompa presumably would advocate the same about the other problems raised in the same report on transnational organized criminal activity, that the Bulgarians should be left to deal with their own drug, human trafficking and stolen vehicle problems by themselves and the American authorities should not lift a finger to stop these criminal gangs move their commodities across US borders. After all why punish consumers ("see what Prohibition did") and American free enterprise and small businesses when there is money to be made and obviously the sole fault anyway is those corrupt ex-commies over in Europe?

Vignette: Bulk lots of dugup ancient coins from the Balkans and Danubian regions are sold like potatoes in the US.

Photo: Bulgarian "tirówka" (roadside prostitute) a few years ago in Poland. Polish police fortunately do not follow the Peter Tompa "let the Bulgarians sort out their own problems with criminal gangs and not expect us to do anything at our end" school of thought, and a drive along the more notorious routes is now less colourful for lonely long-distance drivers.

The First Coiney Contributions to the Debate

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The first forty or so contributions have appeared on 19th October in the public consultation of the CPAC deliberations on Bulgaria's request for a bilateral cultural property agreement in response to the smuggling of looted artefacts on a massive scale. So far ALL of them have been from coin collectors and dealers, and ALL of them have been AGAINST THE Bulgarian MOU. I'd like to briefly discuss the trends they demonstrate, and consider these comments in two groups. The public were specifically and exclusively requested to share their reflections on issues raised in Section 303 (a).1 of the CCPIA and so I propose dividing the comments into two groups, those that do, and those that do not. The latter is the larger group so I'll begin with them.

Missing the 303 mark:
Norris Haden, MD ("common artifacts, often inexpensive, that have circulated in the coin market for many, many years")
John Robert Aitken ("millions and millions")
Brian Rowe a dealer from Canada (misunderstands what the purpose of the 1970 UNESCO Convention - sarcasm)
Wayne Melville (Texas) ("I have been privileged to have obtained many [coins] from suppliers in Bulgaria" - since the US became a state party of the 1970 Convention, has he the paperwork to show legal export? He does not say).
Spero Kinnas (coins circulated in the past, so why not now argument)
Robert Leonard (coins circulated in the past, so why not now argument),
Doug Hill (writes like an eleven year old, millions and millions)
Richard Bender (fails to understand the Convention, "Numismatism is an ancient, popular and harmless hobby")
Gary Niditch MD ("These are not rare art forms but dirt cheap common objects by and large")
Frank Robinson (Collecting [...]does no harm to archaeology, as the numbers of ancient coins discovered has been incredibly VAST. There is plenty for both archaeologists and coin collectors. ")
Eric Feder (a virulent anti-archaeological rant you can read for yourselves... totally missing the point being debated of course)
Traughber, P. (better argued than most, but misses the point)
Jack Brigham (in praise of coin collecting, misses the point)
Frederick Thies (brief, no reasons given, misses the point)
Bard Geoffrey ("coins [...] cannot be considered in the same light as unique archaelogical artifacts. In lower grades they typically trade for just over their melt value.")
Lawrence Hageman, somewhat inarticulate: "this restriction, if imposed on coinage, would make it impossible to legally import any coinage for collector purposes" - eh? The restriction would be to coins which HAD been legally exported, their import is wholly legal under both the conditions of the 1970 Convention and will be under the proposed regulation of the matter. What would not be legal is the ("minority", I am sure the trade would say) of coins arriving on American borders having been illegally exported.
Eric Karell, a coiney 'I know better than you' approach: ("This is the kind of regulation that sounds reasonable at face value but has aspects that only some people would appreciate" - but it is the writer himself who misses the point)
W.P. Lyon, does not seem to grasp what is involved at all: "I hereby state that I am completely against Bulgaria restricting any coins for import or export").
J. Conroy is "outraged that you have restricted some Roman coins from being imported from Italy". The CPAC is "destroy[ing] the hobby of coin collecting in the United States for the majority of ordinary collectors" and urges a reversal of the Italy MOU decision. Misses the point.
Bill Leubrie reckons himself a "scholar" ("This is ridiculous. No one needs to restrict the flow of ancient coins. They exist in their millions [...] Collectors of ancient coins are not criminals, but entirely a harmless, scholarly lot". He appears to think, but not be able to express properly, that the gubn'mint should "stay out of our hobby"). If coin collectors are not criminals, why do they support the opposition to this proposal to restrict US imports ONLY to legally exported coins? On whose side are they on, the responsible dealers who observe the applicable laws or those that deal with the antiquity SMUGGLERS? What is "harmless" in that? Misses the point.
Roy Iwata, ancient circulation, misses the point.
William Leitold,a longish, intelligently presented argument, worth reading for an insight into a mindset using the typical coiney pseudo justifications - see attachment for fuller text ("I hope that the US Government I voted for will not participate in this abuse of our rights"). Sadly it misses the section 303 point.
Wayne Hansen, ("Ancient coin collecting [...] is an important commercial enterprise. US access to coins is important to collectors worldwide").
Daniel Demeo, ("Not another mou with another country! [...] making it illegal to import ancient coins and artifacts from that area [...] We WILL REMEMBER in Novembers which administrations and which parties destroyed our enjoyment"). Forgetting of course that he is addressing his comments to the CPAC not the Democratic party. His point is keeping records of licit provenance is adding a responsibility and taking away the "pleasure" of collecting.
Steven Snyderman, "millions and millions", ancient circulation, "untenable", looks like cut and paste from Tompa.
Robert M. Harlick, believes there was an MOU with Turkey, "millions and millions", "ancient circulation", bloodline, "do they need all those coins"? Misses the point of the Convention, does not address section 303.
Daniel Owsen, pleads that coins not be included among the "protected" artefacts.
Constantinos Eliades, "This is to the State Department and CPAC". No it is not, it's to the CPAC. " because of the low price the vast majority of these coins will never have been through an auction and will have no verifiable provenance" - cut and paste from Tompa. Misses the point.
Robert Tromp, Conspiracy afoot: "Please look into the real issues involved, and you will find that there is a lot more right on the side of the collector than on the part of corrupt, cynical Balkan governments". Although this one too misses the point, it raises some questions I'd like to discuss tomorrow.
Jeffery Spier a "working numismatist" Fellow, American Numismatic Society (thanks to David Gill for reminding me this is a name connected with the Elmali hoard purchase). "Millions and millions", "ancient circulation", "Restrictions on collecting will certainly impoverish the long tradition of numismatic scholarship". Misses the point.
Col Dupont, C L Dupont Ancient Coin Jewelry, admonishes the Presidential advisory committee: "Come on; don't go there! It's just silly...".
Anthony Kurland, ("because of their low price the vast majority of these coins will never have been through an auction and will have no verifiable provenance" looks like cut and paste from Tompa). Misses the point.
Robert Crutchley, it is difficult to see what this guy thinks he is talking about ("The vast majority of coins found in grave robbing are of base metal and are not what the thieves are looking for because they have little value"), but it is certainly not section 303 of the CCPIA or what the CPAC is asked to give opinion upon.
Gregory Fairbanks, a mishmash of reasons not to observe the provisions (art. 3) of the 1970 UNESCO convention ("millions and millions", "ancient circulation" and they are not anyway "a part of a cultural heritage" - the latter failing to articulate with the reasons collectors give for collecting them)
Steve Benner, author, reckons restricting imports of illegally exported coins will harm numismatic scholarship.

That closes the contributions visible on the website at the close of the working day in the US on 19th October. Let us look at the comments which actually address section 303 of the CCPIA which is what the CPAC asked the public submissions to address. Unsurprisinly there are very few, as coineys apparently cannot themselves read the notices put out on behalf of the CPAC and the coin dealers'; lobbyists failed to inform them of what issues are open to public discussion. US Coineys allow themselves to be led by the nose at every turn, and a large proportion of them seem unable to enquire or think for themselves. the result is that just two even mention something which may vaguely relate to Section 303 of the CCPIA:

Brian Rowe a dealer from Canada- so outside the pernicious influence of the ACCG, says that Bulgaria and Belize should "police their borders" better.

Gregory Fairbanks might be trying to address section 303 issues writing: "Furthermore, the track record of countries protecting their so called cultural heritage is quite poor", but does not enlarge on the means it could institute to achieve the same aims as import restrictions on smuggled goods.

So basically the first thirty or so "informed contributions" to the public debate by US and Canadian coin collectors suggest so far a complete misunderstanding in those circles of what the 1970 UNESCO Convention is about. The reference to the "millions and millions" of these coins on the market betrays a lack of awareness (or concern) that this means millions and millions of HOLES in the archaeological record created so they can have their collectable geegaws to flash about (Wayne Melville). It is precisely the "minor antiquities" that are being recovered on an industrial scale that are the symptoms of the greatest damage being done to archaeological sites in Bulgaria. Furthermore the majority of these collectors write as though they are talking of a wholesale "ban on imports" rather than restrictions on coins not accompanied by paperwork verifying export from Bulgaria in accordance with the relevant laws. This not-so-subtle difference seems to be lost on the majority of collectors taking part in this campaign.

The arguments being trotted out are the same weak ones used against the other MOUs involving coins (Cyprus, China, Italy and probably Greece). Nothing new here.

Neither has anyone actually directly addressed section 303 as asked, so the first thirty six "informed" contributions to the debate on section 303 deserve to be binned. This proportion should be noted by all those that accuse the CPAC of ignoring public comments. They may or may not be ignoring them, but - as in the case of any public consultation on any issue - they will be entirely justified in doing so when the comments do not address the issue which the Committee specifically opens to public discussion.

Now, I know coineys read this blog. Why do you not go back to Mr Tompa and ask him why he is telling all of you this crap about "provenance", but failing to tell you what (Section 303) the CPAC have SPECIFICALLY asked for comment upon? Why not? Are the ACCG achieving anything useful for the hobby by NOT telling you this, when it is quite clear that the vast majority of US coin collectors have not the foggiest idea even of what the 1970 UNESCO Convention is about, or what the CCPIA actually says (even though both are a mouse-click away)? Why are you collectively following these pied pipers who are obviously and openly - and it now is very clear deliberately - misleading you about what is actually the subject of discussion? Can you be surprised that anyone observing this, and observing the scale of the resulting phenomenon, can only arrive at a certain conclusion about the intellectual abilities of virtually the entire dugup coin collecting milieu in the US? Why should any nominated member of a presidential advisory committee pay the slightest attention to flat-earthers who have not even bothered to find out what it is they are commenting upon?

The Fourth ACCG Benefit Auction

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The ACCG are soldiering on. Their fourth "annual Benefit Auction" has just opened on the VAuctions website ( http://vauctions.com ). It will close on October 13. The sale includes more than 120 lots of ancient coinage, numismatic literature and related items which have been "collectors, dealers and friends of ACCG" and the proceeds will be used "to support guild initiatives on behalf of the hobby".

The primary activities of ACCG in recent years have been related to the opposition against overly broad State Department import restrictions on ancient coins. This includes Litigation, Education and Public Affairs programs as well as frequent interaction with domestic and foreign governmental officials and U.S. legislators.

yeah, right. Well, oddly enough for an organization which has mostly been banging on about "transparency' in US gubn'mint dealings there is a notable lack of such transparency in the dealings of this "501c(4) non-profit organization". last year they said who had donated the coins and other stuff, this year clicking on the "sponsors' link gives the public no information on that subject at all. Perhaps they are afraid of being caught profiting from coins donated buy somebody who later ended up being expelled from the ACCG when faced with a court hearing about what they had or had not been doing... So the only donor we actually know by name this year is Susan Welsh (lots 108-9 dreadful soldering, ma'am). Traditionally another kind of transparency is missing from these auctions, any mention of where the objects sold were in the time between they were dug out of the ground (where, when?) taken from the source country (how, when?) and ended up on V-coins. This is odd because for example looking at the bulk lots (92- 103) they have the appearance of not being dug-up groups shoved onto the market. They look like the sortings of old collections, the lower grade coins bought by a beginner collector for example sorted out from those a dealer might sell from the same collection individually. So why can't we learn whose collections have ended up in this fragmented state? Why is that a secret?

What however is very interesting is to plot out what we know about where those coins were last known to be, ie the place where they were minted, often for a local market. The map below shows this, yellow spots are Greek and related (a bit of a misunderstanding calling Sassanian coins "Eastern Greek' in my opinion) while the black ones are of Roman date.

The cluster over Rome of course is due to this being the principle mint identifiable before the middle of the third century, but nevertheless it seems clear that many of the coins in this auction could very well have been dug up in Italy (one of the countries with an MOU with the USA because of the known scale of the looting). The concentration in another US-MOU country, Greece is notable. But look at Turkey and Bulgaria (+Macedonia). All areas where looting is known to be going on - in some cases on an industrial scale. Just look at the proportion of the coins in the ACCG benefit sale are last attested in precisely these countries. The coins from Siscia could have come to the US as dugups from the Balkans, or perhaps from Britain (+Gaul/ Germany) along with the Lugdunum coins as they circulated in the western Empire too. Then there are the coins from the Near East (Syria, Iraq, Iran) but most notably, look at the concentration of coins of Alexandria. When we know at the beginning of the year there was severe looting and museum storeroom robbery in precisely the delta region of Egypt, we may justifiably ask the anonymous donors, when and how did they leave Egypt?

I note that on one of the forums, Aussie coin dealer Cameron Day is announcing:

10% off all the coins listed on our website at www.cerberuscoins.com. We are raising funds to buy a small hoard of Roman Egyptian potin tetradrachms. The quicker we can raise the needed funds the quicker we can pass these coins on to you.

From whom, and where was it dug up, and how has it come onto the market is not revealed, we can only assume they were not dug up in Australia. It's obviously felt to be nobody else's concern how they get there so a dealer can keep his clients happy.

Actually I think these foreign no-questions-asked sales of material of completely unknown collecting history a matter of grave public concern.

What is the matter with these people? (1) - the Coiney

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Browsing Meg Lambert's blog I found this comment from somebody who signed themselves "Anonymous":

You might note that importing and collecting unprovenanced coins is not only tolerated, but encouraged in both Cyprus and China (as well as Italy and Greece). The only difference in Cyprus and Greece at least is that you need to be a registered collector to do so-- and who is registered? The connected few of course. If collecting provenanced material is such a great idea, why don't these countries require of their own citizens what they ask State to impose on US collectors?

What is the matter with these people? Where do they leave their brains when they start to write about coin collecting? This is what I answered:

"Anonymous" is afraid to put his or her real name under the post, and quite rightly so. "Anonymous" knows he or she is NOT telling the truth when he saying that "Cyprus, China, Italy and Greece" require the US to stop "collecting unprovenanced coins".

First of all the MOUs in question [for we are talking about the Convention of Cultural property Implementation (sic) Act] only regulate IMPORT, not internal circulation and consumption.

Secondly, the decisive factor is (of course as anybody fule wot can read would know) NOT whether a coin is "provenanced" but whether it is legally EXPORTED. In the same way as the UK has the PAS to record provenance, and an export licensing system to govern (duh) export. They are of course completely separate things to any straight-thinking person.

So I really do not know whether "Anonymous" is doing this deliberately or simply does not know what he or she is talking about, but the fact they did not want to use their real name here suggests that he or she is aware of one or the other. I bet they collect dug-up coins, yes?

The four countries mentioned are all states party to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, so do not in any way "encourage import" of illegally exported coins or any other antiquities. Article 3 of the convention defines such items as "illicit". The United States is one of the few countries which is a state party (one among 120) which does not honour this part of the Convention in its "implementing" legislation. Perhaps it is time it did.

I really do wonder what their problem is. The CCPIA is not an easy text to read as a piece of prose, but its not actually all that difficult, and there is not in fact all that much content to it (it is also a piece of junk as legislation). But time and time again we find that instead of reading it carefully for themselves they are relying on somebody to tell them what it says, and the "somebody" who does that are the dealers who apparently have a vested interest in believing it says and means something different from what it actually does say and mean. Even though the collectors eventually find out they were lied to (again) by the dealers, they believe the next lie, and the next one. Why? What is behind this extraordinary phenomenon?

Coiney Prophets of Doom and Gloom

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The world looks different from inside a coin collector's mind. Over on the (closed access, you have to register or know a computer hacker to see it) the signing of an US-Greece cultural property agreement is being pictured by the doomandgloom mongers as a terrible Sword of Damocles which will bring awful tribulations upon the nation and lead to the downfall of the Obama government. Jorg Lueke started it:

Between the recent arrests and the increased number of MOU's including coins causing more and more dealers to avoid bringing coins into US, the marketplace seems posied for a change.

He predicts that the demand will not diminish which means that "the increased risks will be taken by less scruplous and law abiding dealers increasing prices". Oh dear, so coins will no longer be imported with the customs declarations saying "ancient coins from Greece, value $5200", but "painted wooden box value $3,00"? Well, we know where that is likely to lead don't we? So the exclusion of coins illegally exported from Greece and Italy may lead to shortages on the market (really?) but then if that is compensated for by the future jailing of cheating dealers misrepresenting items on customs declarations, then an equilibrium will be reached, n'est ce pas?

ACCG's paid mouthpiece John Hooker concurs. He reckons that if coins are included among the items whose import will be restricted pending proof of legal export:

about the only certainty is that the illicit search for coin hoards in source countries will increase exponentially. Merely smuggling European coin dealer's stock would not give the needed profit to risk ratio.

That is the sort of statement that only looks logical after more than a few beers and being a coin collector. The rest of us might have trouble following the argument. Why on earth would legitimate stock from other European countries have to be "smuggled" into the US to make the coins saleable? It is notable that to neither of these gentlemen has occurred the option that US coin dealers could stop (I'm sure they'd prefer me to say "not start") importing smuggled coins illegally exported from the source countries. Like Lueke, Mr Hooker also sees a Darwinian resolution to the problem.

Larger honest U.S. dealers would simply move out of the country and compete in the European market.

But warns darkly: "The main loser would be Greece". That remark remains unexplained. He then adds:

I dare say that the most dedicated of U.S. Greek coin collectors would move elsewhere as Greek coins in the U.S. would become expensive while the loss of the U.S. market to European dealers should reduce the prices in Europe -- then, a larger volume of sales would be required.

Good grief, collecting Greek coins sounds almost like an affliction like drug abuse ("can't getta fix here, gotta move house to go where I can"). Then another disconnected dark warning of what will ensue:

Restrictions of any sort are always good news for organized crime -- history has confirmed this. Interesting times might be ahead.

Funnily enough some of us connect the illicit transport of illicitly obtained items with organized crime. Cleaning up the market will make this trade more difficult for criminal gangs.

Perhaps buying coins from criminals is what Lueke and Hooker see as driving prices up. There is no other reason for it, all the CCPIA requires is a piece of paper to accompany coin imports of certain types from certain places. Why should a piece of paper cost more than a piece of paper costs? And is that extra cost not worth it for the peace of mind that a responsible collector has legally acquired coins in their collection?

But it gets worse. Hooker (a Canadian resident) says this is going to bring down the US government. Yessiree. You see:

With a 70% public disapproval rate for the MOU including coins[...] it would be somewhat risky for the Obama administration to do so -- it gives a strong message that the people's wishes are being ignored -- I dare say a number of politicians will jump on this in the next election.

Well, a few thousand coin fondling US citizens conducted a fax-bombing campaign to show they wanted to continue collecting dugup archaeological artefacts without worrying about where they came from and whether or not they were legally exported. Yet 163 million US citizens did not support them. And that is going to lose Obama votes? I suppose to anyone who'd see moving to another country to be able to collect coins of a particular type as the actions of a rational man, might well indeed believe that the US electorate gives a hoot about their geekish coin fondling hobby. Especially as they all shut themselves off from interaction with the real world by closing public access to their discussion forums and blogs. That really does make it look as if behind the public façade, they have a great deal to hide. Oh yessiree.


Vignette: Harold Camping, prophet of doom.

US-Greek Bilateral Cultural Property Agreement Signed

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The US State Department has announced the signature of a bilateral cultural property agreement with Greece in the spirit of Article 9 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property. As announced the idea of this is to "to Reduce the Incentive for Further Pillage of Greece's Cultural Heritage" - a tacit recognition that the market is the motor of pillage (the "collector=looter" notion so hated by collectors). The list of Greek antiquities of the Upper Paleolithic to the Late Byzantine period designated as protected under this latest US cultural property MOU will be announced shortly.

While this is a welcome move and indicates the willingness of the Obama government to clear (at least temporarily) the US market of illicitly-obtained antiquities, Greece is directly neighboured by four countries severely affected by ongoing looting and illegal trading of archaeological artefacts (Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey) with whom the US does not have a specific cultural property MOU and through which and from which the US no-questions-asked antiquities market can and probably does import large numbers of freshly (and illegally) dugup artefacts for sale. [All four are states party to the Convention] This basically means that the 1983 US accession to the Convention does not actually reflect a commitment to help the global community as a whole fight the trade in illicitly obtained cultural property, and even less take a leading role in that. The US market is a voracious consumer of huge quantities of freshly dug up (or previously curated) antiquities. As such, it is disappointing that the US does not take a more active role as at least a partner in dealing in an effective and holistic manner with the plague of antiquity looting and smuggling. One wonders why the US is a state party of this convention at all if it only applies its measures selectively. Far more consistent would be to withdraw and rename the CCPIA.

Map: Greece (State Department)

Disturbed Dugup Dealer Dave: "Blow the whole rotten process up"

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Deranged Dugup Dealer Dave reckons over on Tim Haines' Yahoo 'AncientArtifacts' discussion list that time is up for US adherence to the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

It is time to blow the whole rotten process up, and set out to implement something better. The UK system of the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme beckons as a vastly superior, very well proven concept.

Good for him, the US "implementation" of the Convention through a pathetic CCPIA is a farce, let them set up a PAS type system and British-style export licencing procedure in the US and encourage other nations to follow suit. Go for it Dave, but leave the pitchforks, torches and violent inflammatory talk at home.


Have ancient coin collectors considered the consequences of falling in behind the likes of dealer Dave Welsh and dealer Wayne Sayles? Does the PAS appreciate this kind of "support", can it really afford to be associated with the likes of Welsh and Sayles? Should it not be distancing themselves from a group of dealers whose main concern seems to be maintaining the "right" of US dealers and collectors to import illegally exported dugup antiquities from other countries without restrictions and stalling US efforts to help protect the global archaeological resource? Shame on them all.

The Antiquity Dealers' View on Stewardship

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Coin dealer Wayne Sayles explains to a list member on coin dealer Dave Welsh's coiney microforum Unidroit-L his views on stewardship of the archaeological heritage. The occasion for this was that member's questioning of the ACCG challenge to the US government over the import of illegally exported dugup artefacts. Sayles suggests:

In my view, import restrictions are not the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it. The mentality that imposes import restrictions on any and all utilitarian objects simply because archaeologists want to be exclusive stewards over them IS potentially the beginning of the end.

First of all nobody is planning "import restrictions on any and all utilitarian objects" bought fresh from the factory in Turin, just certain types of dugup and ethnographic collectables. This is because their production involves the depletion of a resource.

So the problem is not that archaeologists want to be stewards of "them" (objects) but the archaeological record which is trashed in the production of the commodities that Sayles wants to be allowed to import even if it has been illegally exported from another country.

This is the fallacy which collectors want to propagate, that this is about the "ownership" of objects as property, but the truth is that it goes deeper than that. What is the problem for the archaeologists is the origin of the objects dealers like Sayles and his collector clients want to own, to buy and sell. The archaeologist wants to protect archaeological sites from illicit exploitation as a source of illicitly-obtained collectables. The actions of the ancient Coin Collectors Guild in opposition to the CCPIA show that collectors of the United States are not only willing to lay hands on such illicitly-obtained finds, but in fact positively desire to get their hands on them. If this were not the case any curbs on the import of illegally exported antiquities would have no affect on them whatsoever.

Vignette: Stewardship, not just about the squirrels in the park...

CPAC Resignation: "a bias against the American people, against American business, and against the rule of law.”

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Glennbeckian accusations of the Obama administration having "a bias against the American people, against American business, and against the rule of law” are said to be behind Robert Korver's resignation from the CPAC (other resignations discussed here). Korver was right to resign if he cannot see a way to be an adviser on cultural property in general if after seven years of trying he finds he cannot function as a member of the committee without seeing above his own narrower interests as a coiney. Coin collecting circles are suggesting that his resignation means that the CPAC recommended not treating coins as portable antiquities to be covered by the MOU - but (it is alleged) the State Department added them anyway.

Whether or not that is true remains to be seen, though I would have questions about a committee of "experts" that does not consider ancient dugup coins as archaeological artefacts. I suggest immediately sending the remaining ten members of the Committee on a presidential fact-finding mission to one of the "source countries" for dugup coins in Europe (probably the London offices of the Portable Antiquities Scheme would be enough) to ask experts there whether ancient coins are archaeological artefacts. Members of the Committee may be surprised by the answer, which will help them in further deliberations.

According to the Coiney tabloid, it was the US State Department, not the CPAC, that considers that:

"Coins, a significant and inseparable part of the archaeological record, are especially valuable to the understanding of the history of Italy. The unauthorized search for coins in Italy is exacerbated by metal detecting, an activity that is destructive to fragile archaeological deposits”.

Korver, apparently disagrees with that, so he'd have had something else to talk to with the PAS about if he'd asked. But perhaps he subscribes to the ACCG view which is that ancient coins are somehow supplied to the market by coin elves and do not come from the searching of archaeological sites for collectables.

Coin World News goes on at length about the CPAC and what Korver almost-says about it in the letter that appears to have been leaked to them. Most of it is the same old repetitive claptrap that we see these days from the other US coin dealers about the CCPIA and the State Department, so we can give that a miss. At the end, however, the article rather revealingly gives Korver's view of the future of the CPAC:

He closed the letter urging President Obama to appoint an independent agency to investigate the minutes and processes of CPAC to verify compliance with CPIA; to request the resignation of all current CPAC members, “thus preventing further embarrassment to your administration”; to issue an executive order suspending enforcement of MOUs with Cyprus and Italy, because of ethical failures; and finally, to move a newly constituted CPAC to the Department of Commerce.

Why would Korver want all other CPAC members to tender their resignation? I assume that the Committee contains members who do care about fulfilling the task of the CPAC (which is advising the President on the implementation of the obligations of the US incumbent on being a state party of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property). Why does Korver think they should resign? The aim of the CPAC is not furthering commerce in illegally exported cultural property taken from any countries, and in particular those that have specifically asked the US to do something to help stop it. That is not in America's interests, neither is it in the interests of the Obama administration to preside over the wholesale looting of the world's archaeological record to serve the interests of a small group of shopkeepers who want to profit from currently lax US legislation.

If Mr Korver thinks the purpose of the CPAC on which he sat for seven years was to serve those in the US engaged in no-questions-asked (at best two-minute due diligence) commerce in antiquities, I think most people who are concerned about the preservation of the archaeological heritage would agree with me in thinking that the Committee is best off without him and that President Bush should never have appointed him.

Vignette: The photos of US coineys frequently show them to be rather large gentlemen with chubby faces and ill-fitting suits (Robert Korver almost as he appears in Coin World).

My Letter to Senator Gillibrand

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New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand prides herself on transparent dealings with lobby groups, that's nice. So I am posting here my letter to her about her apparent patronage of the recent CPRI anti-CCPIA conference here, and I am hoping she will allow me to post here too any answer she may give. Maybe some readers would like to add their voice to mine, especially those from New-York-Based SAFE. Let us see how she justifies her apparent support for those in and around the US antiquities trade who we would be forgiven for believing are hell-bent on undermining what semblance of international cultural heritage protection the US has to offer, rather than strengthening it.

Dear Senator Gillibrand,
you have been named in connection with the organization of a conference in Washington under the title: „The Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CCPIA): Is it working?”.

Given the tone and content of that meeting (summarized here http://www.cprinst.org/Home/issues), may I ask therefore whether you yourself actively support the International Cultural Property Protection program of the US government (http://exchanges.state.gov/heritage/culprop.html)?

Would you like to see a strengthening or weakening of the ability of the US to set a moral lead by helping stamp out the international trade in illicitly acquired cultural property and related criminal activity?

As you are no doubt aware, the CCPIA serves to regulate the import into the United States of certain designated groups of cultural property which is threatened by illegal activity from specific states. This is done by temporarily restricting items newly coming onto the US market from those states to those which have been legally exported. In this manner, responsible collectors purchasing items on that market can be assured that they are not running the risk of purchasing illicitly acquired material, with all that this may entail. I am sure you will have the same difficulty as me in seeing why any discriminating, responsible and ethical US collector would object to that.

There is however a group of US dealers in and collectors of antiquities and coins – together with their lawyers - who are actively challenging the US Government’s application of these measures. The motives of this group for wanting to challenge measures intended to keep illicitly-obtained material off the US markets can only be guessed. I can only hope that you were unaware that there were people associated with members of this milieu among the organizers of the conference you are named in connection with.

Senator Gillibrand, do you yourself, or those in your immediate environment, collect antiquities, or have any other connection to the global antiquities market and their other advocacy groups?

In the interests of transparency, may I post a copy of your office’s reply here: http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2011/03/my-letter-to-senator-gillibrand.html?

Thank you for giving your time to reading this
Paul Barford

Thank you

I've just posted a brief note on this on the SAFE blog. Perhaps someone there might invite her and other politicians to in some way show some support for SAFE and its aims?

I note that in the list of topics in the Senator's contact form to choose from, there was no mention of culture or cultural property theft, suggesting this was not a matter about which Senator Gillbrand was expecting to get correspondence from citizens.

*PS because Americans can only imagine that the rest of the world's postal service works like theirs and nobody at all would want to ask a US Senator anything from outside the country, you can't send anything from outside without giving a Zip Code. It blocks you if you put a real postcode of another type. I therefore appended a random Washington DC one to my address. I do not expect she'll be writing back anyway, the letter is longer than it should be.

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.

Chinese Collectors of Chinoiserie? How Terrible?

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In the Kirsten Gillibrand Seminar on the CCPIA organized by the CPRI the "problem" of China was raised. As we know due to a MOU between the USA and China, the import of certain types of dugup antiquities from China is restricted to those that can be documented as having been legally exported from there. But what is this? Shock horror:

As a result, the market in such materials has just been shifted elsewhere. China is a ridiculous case. We have closed our markets to ancient Chinese art when the biggest market for such material is in China itself. State has failed to administer the statute fairly. >[...] A[rthur] H[oughton] also asks how effective the CPIA can be if 90% of the archaeological material sold is done so in a source country like China.

In a country "like" China? Somehow I think our transatlantic friends have lost sight of what the "C" in CCPIA stands for. To remind them it is called the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property. So the fact that cultural property, dugup or otherwise (and 90% of it or not) is staying in China unless legally exported is what the Convention is aiming to achieve, isn't it? Why does that indicate that "State has failed to administer the statute fairly"? It certainly is fair to the Chinese people and Chinese collectors if it true that the antiquities are not now leaking out of the country in an uncontrolled and illegal manner to the world's largest no-questions-asked antiquities market in the USA and this is due to US dealers responsibly adhering to import restrictions which support that.

Vignette: Does the CPRI want to see Chinese artefacts kept away from Chinese collectors?

Does the panel Think....?

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In the discussion of the 2010 Kirsten Gillibrand Anti-Convention-on-Cultural-Property-Implementation-Act Seminar held the other day about whether the Act is "working" or not, there is a lot of talk about something the panellists called the “concerted international response requirement”. This might lead some readers to believe that this is a requirement of the Act.

The wording of course nowhere appears in it, a United States law cannot of course dictate what other sovereign nations should or should not do on their own territory. What the CCPIA says is that the President may decide that if putting import controls on illegally exported items from source countries, "if applied in concert with similar restrictions implemented, or to be implemented within a reasonable period of time, by those nations (whether or not State Parties) individually having a significant import trade in such material, would be of substantial benefit" in deterring the illicit trade in the artefacts concerned (duh), he may do that. He may do that because to do so "is consistent with the general interest of the international community in the interchange of cultural property among nations for scientific, cultural, and educational purposes".

Note the Act nowhere says that if the United States, arguably currently the world's greatest and greediest importer of all types of dugup cultural property, would be the only nation applying "similar restrictions", these restrictions cannot be agreed upon.

In any case other nations do apply similar restrictions, Nobody in the UK can legally buy illegally obtained artefacts from other countries, like Japan and a whole host of other countries. Their legislation implementing the 1970 UNESCO Convention has a blanket ban on such tainted artefacts - not a selective one (agreed individually by the CPAC) as in the USA. It is the USA which is lagging behind the rest of the civilised world here, not the other way around. The USA is not implementing the Convention at all, it is flouting its accession to it. Shame on you all.

Note that the Cultural Policy Research Institute was discussing how the US with its outdated and ineffective 1983 act should be sliding further out of her obligations to protect the world's cultural heritage under the Convention. There seems not to have been a single word spoken about how US cultural policy can help stop the looting and illicit exports, which of course is pretty typical of the milieu. It is a shame the antiquity dealers' friend Mrs Gillibrand could not see her way to facilitating a seminar on that topic in the Russell Senate Office Building .

Photo: Kirsten (left) and Hilary enjoying a good laugh, perhaps about the American Cultural Policy Research Institute's amateurish attempts to mislead the voters.

The Cultural Property Implementation Act: Is it Working?

The Cultural Policy Research Institute, transparently a dealers' lobbyist group masquerading as a rather ineffective research institution based in Santa Fe, is hosting a meeting today: The Cultural Property Implementation Act: Is it Working? at the Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. I suppose the answer depends on whether you regard it as a cop-out law (in which case its working very well) or something which was actually intended to implement the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (in which case it most certainly is not). Is the CCPIA in any way able to effectively stop the import of illegally obtained artefacts from the looting of the Cairo Museum and archaeological sites in Egypt this very moment? (No, the Egyptians would have to ask nicely, make a number of promises, wait for the CPAC to meet a couple of times beforte this could even be "implemented", by which time who knows what could have passed onto the US market?).

The usual culprits are speaking at the seminar alongside a few token assorted others, but they each seem to get ten minutes (within antiquity collectors' attention span I presume), so I guess it will not be a very intellectually challenging meeting. No doubt we will be getting a blow-by-blow account from the observing Mr Tompa in due course. Hooray. If US dealers and collectors had any decency they'd be recommending that the US stop pretending to implement the Convention and withdraw from it and rename the CCPIA the 'United States Antiquities Market Protection Act'. But then if the majority had any real decency, the global antiquities market would not look like it does today anyway and America would not need a Reagan-era cop-out act.

'How To' Guide to US Law on Dealing with Suspected Trafficked Egyptian Cultural Objects

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Cultural heritage lawyer Ricardo St. Hilaire has a post on his blog on 'Reclaiming Trafficked Egyptian Cultural Objects: US Seizure Laws and How to Make a Report to Customs and Border Protection' well worth a read, as it provides an insight into how US laws can be used in parallel to the US CCPIA to protect the global cultural heritage. Note though that the old cultural patrimony law 117 of 1983 was amended by Law N.3 of 2010 promulgating the Antiquities Protection Law, though presumably this does not affect what St Hilaire calls the "Schultz doctrine". I really still do not understand how the ARPA applies, but it has been used in the past and they got away with it. Odd.

This is a very useful text, not least in that it can form a basis for discussions on how the system can be made more watertight in the case of freshly excavated archaeological material.

Egypt Looting: Calls for Emergency Action by US

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Cultural property lawyer Rick St Hilaire has a thought-provoking post 'Thinking Ahead: An Emergency Protection for Egyptian Cultural Antiquities Act'. he is concerned about the recent reports of large scale archaeological looting rapidly sweeping Egypt in the wake of political unrest

One effort might be to stop stolen and looted Egyptian cultural material from crossing the American border. [...] The Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA), 19 U.S.C. 2601 et seq., implements the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

This draws upon Article 9 of the Convention which is refers to just such a situation. Unfortunately the US sees this as the excuse for limiting their efforts to curb the illicit flow of antiquities ONLY to such measures (which is why I say it should do the decent and honest thing and withdraw from the Convention itself if it has no intention of respecting the rest of it). But in doing so has encumbered it with a hugely laborious and overblown process of debate. Either a country's archaeological heritage is in danger, or it is not. Seems pretty simple to me. Anyway the Act itself recognises that it is (deliberately?) cumbersome and as St Hilaire points out:

Section 2603 of the CPIA permits the President to enact import restrictions on cultural materials illegally removed from a country during an emergency situation without requiring that country’s government to make a formal legal request.

Hooray for the President, eh? Congressmen in the US can openly support the import of illegally exported artefacts, but the President can decide by himself to act to stop it in certain cases without it having to go past the noses of any cultural-property-greedy Philistines. This seems like one of them.

Senator Charles Grassley introduced emergency legislation in 2003, pursuant to the CPIA, in response to the looting of the National Museum of Iraq. The time is ripe to consider similar legislation in response to the reported looting currently occurring in Egypt.

St Hilaire suggests that temporary import controls should be established by enacting an Emergency Protection for Egyptian Cultural Antiquities Act, which could supplement authority already existing under the federal criminal code (and some would argue the Archaeological Resources Protection Act).

But then, why do the Americans need a CCPIA which implements just Article nine? This whole "system" reeks of inconsistency and senseless duplication while leaving a huge (arguably the most important) area not covered by any enforcing legislation. Time to re-debate the 1980s US approach to "cultural property protection" and its ability to take the moral lead in the light of the current form of the antiquities market and the global situation and not that of several decades ago.
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