Two Khmer Statues in the Met: What Are They Doing There?

The Cambodian government is being kept busy trying to piece together the history of two objects in the Southeast Asian galleries of New York's Metropolitan Museum. These two life-size 10th-century sandstone statues, called the Kneeling Attendants, currently "flank the doorway of the gallery where the Met displays its small but globally significant collection of artifacts from the glory days of Khmer civilization". They had been on display since 1994 when the Met opened its new Southeast Asian galleries. The heads of the two statues had been donated in 1987 and 1989, and the two torsos were given together to the museum in 1992. It now appears that they were taken around 1970,

at about the same time as a companion piece, a mythic warrior figure that the United States government sought to seize last month on Cambodia’s behalf from Sotheby’s, where it had been placed for sale [...]  Anne LeMaistre, the Unesco representative in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, said her agency is assembling a report laying out evidence that the Met statues and the Sotheby’s warrior belonged to a 12-statue Khmer empire grouping first broken up when Cambodia was destabilized by civil war. 

The evidence accumulated in the case of the 'Sotheby’s Koh Ker piece', indicates that the temple was savagely looted after 1970, during Cambodia’s chaotic and bloody years of civil war, genocide and Vietnamese occupation. There is testimony from villagers who say the temple was virtually unmolested until the 1970s, and the not insignificant detail that until the late 1960s the area lacked the roads needed to carry away large and heavy statuary. The Met had (obtained) no information to say how and when these objects had left the country, or from what site they had come (though the style should have suggested that they were from the Koh Ker site in the period of its greatest glory).

Archaeologists believe the Kneeling Attendants stood for about 1,000 years at the Prasat Chen temple in a vast site called Koh Ker, about 200 miles northwest of Phnom Penh, said Eric Bourdonneau, who directs a project at the site overseen by the French School of Asian Studies. The Met statues, the experts say, stood a few yards from the Sotheby’s warrior, a figure known as Duryodhana. 

One of the heads and both torsos are listed as gifts from Douglas A. J. Latchford (a British citizen living in Thailand who has a vast collection of Khmer antiquities). The New York Times journalists contacted  Mr. Latchford, 80, in Bangkok, he gave some interesting information:

he came upon the three items when they were the property of Spink & Son, a London dealer known for its sales of Asian art. “Spinks had had the pieces for some time,” Mr. Latchford said, “and they had not sold, so in honor of the curator, who was Martin Lerner, they requested that I would provide financial aid to donate them, and that’s what I did and why they are in my name.” Mr. Latchford said that he did not know where Spink had gotten the items, that he never took possession of them, and that he does not have any documents from the transaction. He recalled spending about £10,000. A spokesman for Spink said it no longer has any of the paperwork from that era. The family that donated the head of the other statue in 1987 also found it at Spink, a year before the gift, and said it had not come with any information on its provenance. Marsha Vargas Handley, the wife of Raymond G. Handley, one of two donors, who has since died, said the purchase price was $42,000. 

It will be recalled that Spinks (suppliers too of the ACCG illegal import stunt coins) was also mixed up in the story of the other Koh Ker statues in the news recently... Note the interesting discrepancy in prices, one knocked-off head Spinks was able to sell, without its torso (which it seems to have had), for 42000 green ones, but a few years later they were glad to offload the other bits for a far smaller sum. Perhaps most collectors on being shown the stuff were more cautious about its legitimacy than the Met.


In the wake of the Sotheby’s case Cambodian officials have formed a task force to return artifacts removed from their country and possibly held by American and other foreign museums.

Source: Tom Mashberg and Ralph Blumental, 'Cambodia to Ask Met to Return 10th-Century Statues',  New York Times, June 1, 2012.

Additional note: Kimberley Alderman has a rather scathing post about this story here, taking issue with a side-point to the main issue: 'New York Times to Assign Cultural Heritage Articles to Uninformed Generalists'("it’s not really a story yet because Cambodia hasn’t actually asked the Met to return anything. But, apparently, they will. That’s fine, ask away, and then we’ll discuss it"). In my opinion, there is something here to be thinking about before the Cambodians get their request on paper - and even if they do not.

If there were indeed twelve statues in the group, do specialists know where the other eight are? I don't suppose it would do any harm to ask Spink's...

Photo: Kneeling Male Attendant Cambodia, Angkor period, Khmer style of Koh Ker, ca. 921–45 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Sale of Cambodian Antiquities with Shaky or Non-Existent Provenance

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Nord on Art has an article on: 'Upcoming sale of Cambodian Antiquities with Shaky or Non-Existent Provenance' April 25, 2012. The auction however is coming up now, so it seems worth drawing attention to it.

The May sales of Asian art and antiquities at Galerie Koller in Zurich include a selection of Cambodian antiquities that have shaky or non-existent provenance (i.e., history of ownership). Given the ongoing tussle over the disposition of a possibly looted Khmer statue currently with Sotheby’s, why would an auction house offer up works for which there is no clear provenance? On pages 188-193 of the auction catalogue there are several items, including a beautiful bust (Lot 522, above) that should have the auction house and potential buyers very concerned. Five lots have no provenance whatsoever, four have the nebulous provenance “Swiss private collection” (the Swiss Freeport system has too often been abused as a method for laundering the provenance of antiquities), and two are listed as having been purchased in the mid to late 1980s, before Cambodia’s 1993 law nationalizing its cultural heritage, but well after the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property was adopted in November 1970. [...] The International Council of Museums (ICOM) Red List of Cambodian Antiquities at Risk warns specifically about the types of work Koller is offering.

To be fair, there could be good, clear title to all of these items that includes documented provenance demonstrating their original export from Cambodia was legally done.

Since most of these works don’t have anything near that (at least not published in the catalogue), potential buyers should avoid them.

He then pictures and describes a few, and yes, I think one would have to be rather careless and irresponsible to buy them on the basis of the information offered by the seller.

UPDATE 10th may 2012:
I note that Mr Nord has added this to his original post:

UPDATE – The online auction catalogue for this sale has the same result for all of the lots in this article: “Unsold / no responsibility is taken for the correctness of this information.” It’s unclear whether these lots failed to sell or if they were withdrawn from sale.

Tess Davis on Khmer "Blood Antiquities"

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There are many Khmer artefacts looted in the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge atrocities in the US. The audio clip 'Call to halt sale of 'blood antiques' on Australia Network News concerning the Koh Ker statues, one currently in Californian museum and one on the New York antiquities market. Tess Davis, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (the White Hat Lawyers, the Good Guys) talks about the Sotherby's statue. She says she believes the company is still trying to salvage a deal and sell the statue.

"If I were a collector myself I would be very nervous about buying an object who's title was questioned on the front page of the New York Times," Ms Davis said. She said potential buyers need to understand the scale of the crime. "A number of American and European museums and auction houses have been caught with illicit, illicit Cambodian antiquities, many of these were taken from Khmer Rouge occupied areas during the countries long conflict, which makes them blood antiquities," she said. "It's no different to blood diamonds from Sierra Leone."

Ms Davis has an answer to those among collectors applying the 'Witschonke Premise' that countries which cannot unaided stop the looting of archaeological sites on their territory should not be helped:

The Cambodian Government have introduced measures to combat looting, but Ms Davis said the problem is a global one. "As long as there is a demand for stolen and looted Khmer art there will be looting," she said.

And Ms Davis said while it is often assumed most of the looting is being done by poor villagers, this is not always the case. "When you look at these vast temple complexes that have literally been taken apart stone by stone and carted over the border to Thailand," she said. "I mean think about this, this is sandstone blocks we are talking about, weighing hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, that is not being done by poor villagers, that would require money and organisation."

Indeed, criminal organization to commit culture crime. Collectors are often buying no-questions-asked, items supplied to markets by culture criminals.

US law is loathe to help the victims of culture crime, even though US citizens are responsible for the perpetuation of its effects. Ms Davis has recently discovered French laws from 1925 which could help Cambodia prove title over looted antiques. I was struck by her explanation of this (2:06 before the end onwards, not reported in the article): "from 1975 to 1979 most of Cambodia's legal profession died in the killing fields, law schools and libraries were decimated, and as a result, the codes, decrees and regulations that once governed the country's archaeological sites and antiquities were nearly lost to history, but recent research at the national archives in Phnom Penh have unearthed [...] dozens of documents that demonstrate that cultural heritage [...] has long been protected [..], and in particular a series of laws of 1925".

AUDIO
Connect Asia's Liam Cochrane speaks to Tess Davis
Created: Fri, 02 Mar 2012

Cambodia's Trunkless Legs of Stone

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In Cambodia, in a place known as Koh Ker, 60 miles northeast of the Angkor Wat complex, lies another large important urban site. In one of the temples, dating from the mid-900s (thus about 200 years older than the famous sculptures at Angkor Wat) there were a pair of sandstone statues depicting scowling athlete-combatants in intricate headdresses positioned in battle-ready stances flanking one of the entrances. The pair of sculptures ('five feet tall and weighing 250 pounds'), were still in position in old photos of the temple. The site however was one of those plundered in the 1970s amid the chaos of power struggle and genocide, when the Khmer Rouge ravaged Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Looters hacked their way into long-inaccessible temples, pillaged priceless antiquities and sold them to Thai and Western collectors.

In 2007 archaeologist Eric Bourdonneau located one of the Koh Ker statues as being on display since 1980 at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. The lower portion matches perfectly the pedestal from which it had been detached and which still stands in situ on the site. Norton Simon, an industrialist and collector, reportedly bought this statue in 1975 from a leading Madison Avenue antiquities dealer, William H. Wolff.

Now there is controversy about the other one, offered for sale last year at Sotheby's with a catalog estimate of $2 million to $3 million. The item was withdrawn on the day it was to be sold, March 24, 2011, after a Cambodian official working with the United Nations stated “that this statue was illegally removed from the site”, “illegally removed” from the country and asked Sotheby’s to “facilitate its return.” The Cambodian government also contacted the State Department, prompting an ongoing investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch.

Archaeologists and Cambodian officials say the case of the footless statue is all the more poignant because of the country’s recent history of genocide and plunder, and because researchers have found the very pedestal and feet belonging to the artwork.

Sotheby’s says that the seller is a “noble European lady” who acquired it in 1975. Although it was severed from its feet and pedestal, which were left behind at a remote Cambodian archaeological site, Sotheby’s says there is no proof that it was taken illegally. They say that their pre-sales research proved that its unnamed client has had “clear title” to the work since buying it from Spink & Son in London in December 1975. Most inconveniently, or perhaps conveniently, a spokeswoman for Spink said the 1975 records about where the company had obtained the statue were no longer available.

Jane A. Levine, senior vice president and worldwide compliance director for Sotheby’s (and also now CPAC member) says that because the statue was exported “long before the passage of a 1993 Cambodian law that nationalized cultural heritage,” there were no restrictions on its sale or auction. This seems not to be true. There is a 1925 French colonial law declaring all antiquities from Cambodia’s multitude of temples to be “part of the national domain” and “the exclusive property of the state.” This law seems to have remained in force after Cambodian independence in 1953:

Tess Davis, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation and the Cambodia scholar who dug out the law, said it had been analyzed by three French-speaking lawyers conversant in cultural heritage litigation and by [Anne] LeMaistre[, the Unesco representative in Phnom Penh]. All four say it “nationalizes ownership of Cambodian cultural artifacts.” If international legal authorities and American civil courts agree, the law could establish 1925, rather than 1993, as the dividing point after which Cambodian artifacts taken without government permits can be treated as stolen property. Cambodia would still have to prove that the statue was looted after 1925.

Archaeologist Eric Bourdonneau says the relics were looted in the early 1970s. He said French records in Paris indicate that the statues were in place in 1939, and that the Koh Ker temple was thickly covered by jungle and inaccessible by road until it became a military staging area for Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces.

The New York Times journalists Mashberg and Blumenthalsum up the antiquities trade and the Koh Ker affair thus:

The quiet tussle over the relic reveals the swampy terrain of auctioning antiquities with incomplete or disputed pedigrees. Sellers with a good-faith belief in their ownership rights enter a landscape in which ethics and regulations are evolving, governments are increasingly assertive, and lawyers versed in arcane statutes are as necessary as jungle guides. “We live in a different world, and what was acceptable 50 years ago is no longer so,” said Matthew F. Bogdanos, a Marine Corps Reserve colonel and a lawyer, [...] “Whatever the letter of the law may state, in the end you have to ask yourself, ‘Does the item pass the smell test?’ ” [...] “Every red flag on the planet should have gone off (sic) when this was offered for sale,” said Herbert V. Larson Jr., a New Orleans lawyer and antiquities expert who teaches legal issues involving smuggled artifacts. “It screams ‘loot.’ ”[...] When asked whether the statue could have been stolen, Ms. Levine countered that the statue could have been removed any time in its thousand-year history, and said the word stolen was often “used loosely.”

I must say, journalists Mashberg and Blumenthal do not seem very sympathetic to Ms Levine's position.


Source: Tom Mashberg and Ralph Blumenthal, 'Mythic Warrior Is Held Captive in an International Art Conflict', The New York Times, February 28, 2012

Vignette, two trunkless legs of stone alone in the jungle stand (after Agnes Dherbeys, The New York Times), map by New York Times.

Taking Home a Piece of Angkor Wat

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Damien Huffer (here and a well-argued response on his own blog here) draws attention to a text called "Taking Home a Piece of Angkor Wat" which exposes a couple of issues connected with the trade in dug-up and knocked-off bits of "ancient art". The text is by some guy from Minnesota using the name of thinkCHUA who describes himself as:

an explorer seeking to understand the world's places and people. Currently on a multi-year expedition across Asia and Oceania with my wife, LOCAVORista, we are exploring the places to go, things to do, and uncovering business opportunities.

The object, a chunk of carved stone apparently from the facade of the Bayon Temple in Cambodia, is undeniably beautiful and the article's authors were sorely tempted, and we see the same weasly "maybe I'm not doing anything wrong after all" reasoning we see among the buyers of dug-up antiquities applied to their individual purchases:

Due to the difficulties in proving authenticity, the galleries were confident that US Customs would not be an issue. They would provide two sets of paperwork, one with certifications of the piece’s heritage, a second that would travel with it for US Customs. The traveling papers would state that it was a reproduction created in the last 50 years, therefore legal for importation without further scrutiny. We had been assured by many dealers that they had never had problems with US Customs doing this.

Then there is the:
"safer in my living room than a foreign museum storeroom" argument, the
"the beauty of man’s creation is best shared; it is this sharing that builds empathy, interest and relations" argument. ["Sharing" (taking) looted art (by keeping it in a living room) apparently stops human rights abuses or something].
The colonialist White Man's Burden argument:
"the wealthy nations are uniquely qualified to maintain paintings, artifacts and documents", ["it is either in a living room or suffering the fate of the Buddhas of Baniyan in Afghanistan"].

Upon arriving, excited and scared, to purchase our piece of the Angkor Kingdom we received bad news. The price we had been quoted was incorrect by one zero. Previously it was very expensive, but attainable, but now it was just too expensive. The lessons we learned in the process though, were worth it, without finding a piece we loved, doing the research, debating among ourselves, and deciding, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to think through the right, wrong and grey area of being a tomb raider.

Raider, indeed. In other words a thief.

Crooks who protect crooks

"It is time to come clean and expose crooks who protect crooks" proclaims metal detectorist Alan Hassell in his article co-authored with shipyard-worker turned amateur history sleuth Alan Wilson "The Discovery of the ARK of the COVENANT". Here's another one that accuses me of being a crook:

A certain Paul Barford is an Archaeologist living in Poland who goes around detecting forums spreading his vile hatred for metal detectorist then reports them to PAS. He is what is know in gangland terms a grass an informer not a very good one at that.

"Reports metal detectorists to the PAS", for... ummm, metal detecting? I very rarely contact the PAS these days, most of my comments, queries, reports are ignored.

Apparently

this person gives the impression he is working with PAS and yet is not listed on their staff? (sic) This raises the question about Paul Barfords qualifications as a responsible Archaeologist. [...] His conduct as a professional archaeologist is questionable because he visits numerous metal detecting forums gleaming information from them hoping one day he will hit the jackpot and get lucky as a collector. I wonder if his superiors are aware of his current activities and the mischief and lies he is speading about other people.

I think the last thing anyone who actually read this blog would think is that I work for or even "with" the PAS.

Hundreds of Illegally Traded Khmer Artifacts Auctioned in US?

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According to a study published last month during the 1990s (available online at Springer Science + Business Media), the US-based auction house Sotheby's handled sales of hundreds of ancient Khmer artefacts without proper documentation on their origins. This, it is claimed by the study by researcher Tess Davis from the US Lawyers Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, indicates that most of these expensive antiquities were looted in Cambodia or had left the country illegally. She found that from 1988 to 2010, Sotheby's Auction House in New York City put 377 Khmer pieces on the auction block. Of these pieces, 71 percent lacked a proper collecting history while the remainder had weak provenance.

"None established that any of the artifacts had entered the market legally, ... [and] came from archaeological excavations, colonial collections, or the Cambodian state or its institutions," Ms Davis wrote. Throughout the 1990s up to 28 Khmer artifacts per year were sold at Sotheby's, with numbers spiking early in the decade when Cambodia was plagued by organized looting and illicit trading of Angkorian artifacts. However, auctioning of Khmer artifacts at Sotheby's had dropped to just a few pieces annually since 2000, after US-Cambodian bilateral restrictions on the import of archeological material came into place, the study found.

yes, but the US became a state party of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property in September 1983, so what was America doing about this trade in illicit antiquities through its territory between 1983 and 2000? The trade in illicitly obtained artefacts in which the study claims Sotheby's was involved coincided with a period of turmoil in Cambodia, there was war and the state was experiencing economic problems and it seems the 'art" market took advantage of this. With a greater stability in the country, the trade in illicit items has apparently decreased from the 1990s levels.

The traded antiquities consisted mostly of 11th- and 12th-century Angkorian Hindu and Buddhist sculptures and were sold at prices averaging from $17,000 to $24,000. One piece was sold for $600,000. The "shoddy excavation and looting" of such illicitly traded antiquities, Ms Davis wrote, means that even when they are returned, key archeological information on how a piece was found is lost. [...] Ms Davis added that the prestigious auction house has refused requests from "numerous organizations, scholars, foreign governments and the media" to provide valid provenance information for its Khmer sales.

See, among other places, here for looting at Angkor. This is not the first time that Sotheby's has faced allegations of handling stolen "art". Not long ago the auction house had to facilitate the return of two sandstone heads and a statuette to Cambodia after they were published in "Looting in Angkor: One Hundred Missing Objects", a 1993 report by Unesco and the International Council of Museums aimed at returning Khmer art. So far only 10 of the 100 missing objects documented in the report had been retrieved and repatriated to Cambodia.

Cambodia currently has bilateral cultural property agreements with the US, Australia and Thailand. The 2010 Cambodian Antiquities Red List, a brochure for Interpol and customs officers worldwide with photos of at-risk Khmer artifacts, was also helping stem illicit trade. On Monday Cambodia urged the return of 36 Khmer artifacts in Thailand, which were found being smuggled into the country in 2000.

Paul Vrieze, 'Sotheby's Auctioned Hundreds of Illegally Traded Khmer Artifacts, Study Says', The Cambodia Daily 11 August 2011

Photo: headless statue from Angkor, some more stunning photos from the same site. In whose collection is this looted head now?

WHC Fuss in Thailand

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Thailand has been a state party to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (1972) since 1987. At the moment it has five sites (3 historical, including Ban Chiang, two natural) on the World Heritage List, and was preparing other sites for referral in an effort to boost tourism. Despite this, Bangkok Pundit is reporting that: 'Thailand leaves UNESCO World Heritage Convention', Jun 27, 2011.

This is all about that Preah Vihear site, a Khmer temple, on the disputed border between that country and Cambodia (one of Cambodia's two cultural sites on the WHL, the other is Siem reap- Angkor Wat). The Preah Vihear site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008 after being referred by the Cambodian government a year earlier. The fuss about this site has been going on for a while now. The Thai government is angered by this and about a week ago informed the World Heritage Council that Thailand was renouncing the World Heritage Convention because, according to Suwit Khunkitti, the Thai representative to the World Heritage Committee the committee:

“did not care about our sovereignty and territory [...] “They cared only about the conservation of the temple.

which makes one wonder what the silly man thought the World Heritage Convention was about.

Accession to the Convention is not about exploiting UNESCO resources to boost 'cultural tourism' income, but expressing an obligation towards the preservation of the World's heritage. Perhaps cultural tourists should keep well away from countries like Thailand who seem not really to appreciate this fact.

Vignette: Dimwit Khunkitti.

Stolen Cambodian artefacts repatriated from US museums case (Operation Antiquity)

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In a feelgood press release, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), summarise current progress in Operation Antiquity ('Ancient artifacts returned to Cambodia via the USNS Mercy ICE/HSI led investigations have museums looking closer at their collections'). In Operation Antiquity, "federal agents from ICE/HSI, the National Park Service (NPS) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) worked together in a massive investigation that unveiled an interconnected web of individuals involved in the plundering of Southeast Asian ancient objects then smuggling and selling them within the U.S.".

Operation Antiquity initially focused on Robert Olson, a U.S. citizen and importer of Southeast Asian items. Olson worked with Cambodian and Thai "brokers." These brokers hired private "diggers" who visited ancient sites with the purpose of pillaging, sometimes cutting away friezes and other parts of a structure's ornamentation. Olson falsified documents as the goods were shipped into the United States. Olson was breaking several U.S. and international laws and bilateral agreements in his profit-making venture. His nearly 25-year scam was so prodigious that Crabb says Olson was responsible for Thailand's loss of one-third of its remnants from the ancient Ban Chiang culture.

But when the law caught up with Olson, federal agents, working undercover, discovered they had just scratched the surface. One of Olson's associates was a wealthy and well-traveled Wall Street financial analyst who was also cashing in on the theft and importation of Southeast Asian antiquities. Another buyer was a private museum owner who bought vast amounts of illicit items concealing them in containerized cargo shipments. One shipment authorities intercepted contained a 7th century Khumer sandstone head and a 2nd century Dong Son bronze container. Together these items were worth more than $35,000. But coming through U.S. customs, the smuggler declared the entire shipment as "handicrafts" worth $250.

The smuggling scheme not only involved undervaluing the worth of ancient items to pass them through U.S. customs, but inflating their value when the purpose was to donate an artifact to a museum and write it off as a charitable tax donation.

In January 2008, more than 400 federal agents from the ICE Special Agent in Charge (SAC) office in Los Angeles, the NPS and the IRS conducted a massive raid, sanctioned by search warrants issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office in California. Law enforcement officials surprised owners, curators, registrars and collection mangers from 16 museums and galleries in California and Illinois, interviewing them and examining their collections. Several people were indicted, one individual was prosecuted and thousands of objects were seized.

The press release makes no mention of a victim of the case, Roxanna Brown. Whatever happened to Mr Olsen? Is "Operation Antiquity" over now?

The ICE press release goes on to say that as a result of these investigations US museums are increasingly looking again at their acquisition policies. As these tighten up, the dealers in stolen antiquities will be looking increasingly to the no-questions-asked private collectors' market to maintain their profits. US authorities however will be on their tail here too:

U.S. customs inspectors have [...] wised up to the tricks of the antiquity trafficking trade, and these officials have gained more expertise in how to catch this type of thief. An unfortunate phenomenon in today's world is that historical and cultural artifacts that are looted and smuggled out of their home countries are often auctioned and sold in cyberspace, rapidly changing hands. But the Internet is no safe haven for criminals of any kind, including illegal traffickers of antiquities. [...] ICE Special Agent Razmik Madoyan of SAC Los Angeles who led an Internet investigation that helped recover some of the artifacts, said "Sometimes people turn a blind eye to what they are purchasing and don't care about the provenance. If it looks good they buy it. But if these individuals are purchasing historical or cultural property that's been stolen, they are breaking U.S. and international laws." The red flag indicators of stolen artifacts, said Madoyan, "are an item's lack of provenance or provenance with nonspecific item descriptions or country of origin, such as "Babylonian items" or "the Middle East."

"ICE's Homeland Security Investigations goes the distance when it comes to investigating and tracking the true ownership of ancient treasures being traded and sold within the U.S.," said Herbert Kaufer, acting executive deputy assistant director of ICE International Affairs. "We'll hunt down the perpetrators of these crimes and use every law on the books against aspiring profiteers so they'll learn to keep their paws off historical and cultural heirlooms they have no right to acquire".

Lawyers like Miami's Adler and Urice of course are not supportive of the idea of "using every law in the book" to go after such culture thieves. The rest of us though would approve the adoption of tougher policies by the US authorities to fight this problem, accompanied of course by the appropriate and effective tightening up of US law.

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Smashed up bits of Angkor from US Market Given Back

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Seven stolen antiquities returned to Cambodia by the United States were handed over in a ceremony on 18th July after being found on the no-questions-asked market there. They included an engraved plinth from the 11th Century weighing nearly 500 pounds and a sandstone carving of a head from the 12th Century (I discussed these pieces here earlier).

The objects had been looted from the Angkor complex in Siem Reap and had arrived in the US after being smuggled through Thailand. Officials of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security recovered the objects in 2008 as part of an operation imaginitively codenamed "Operation Antiquity", a special program to investigate cultural antiquities trafficking from Southeast Asia to the United States. In 2003 the United States and Cambodia had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that protects Cambodian artefacts and prevents the import of illegally exported items into the United States. In 2008, the MOU was renewed and expanded to include artefacts from the Bronze Age to the Khmer era. All of the recent batch of returned items are from the Angkor period.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns symbolically handed over the pieces to Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Mem San An at a ceremony at the National Museum in Phnom Penh on Sunday, July 18, 2010.

The State Department news releases concentrate on the handing-back ceremony and offer no details whatsoever of in whose hands the items were found in the US or what their intended destination was, nor whether the people who had supplied them were investigated.

Most likely it will never be known from which parts of the monumental complex these "collectable bits" had been taken, Cambodia's past is being shattered by unscrupulous looters who have contacts willing to buy them and smuggle them out to the no-questions-asked foreign markets which provide the financial motor. Instead of smilingly handing back a few bits and bobs American dealers did not manage to sell, maybe the US should be doing something to clean up the no-questions-asked market which allows others like it to pass through without a hitch. Merely handing back a few loose bits for a photo opportunity and chatter away about "international cooperation" is not preventing the ongoing destruction of the archaeological record to fill the needs of one of the world's largest no-questions-asked markets for dug-up and knocked-off "antiquities" in the United States of America.

Photo: Uncle Sam graciously hands out largesse to the little people of the Third World. At a ceremony at the National Museum in Phnom Penh on Sunday, July 18, 2010, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns hands over a sandstone carving to Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Mem San An [Photo: US State Department].

Cambodia gets US-held Stolen Statues Back

The "It Surfaced Down-Under" blog has a post about the recent news of some stolen Cambodian antiquities being repatriated from the US (Angkorian Statuary Repatriation: What's Behind the Headlines? ) the story attracted a lot of media attention, but almost all the articles were duplicates of each other, and they all missed the vital information:

The article makes some to-do about these pieces being recovered during a 2008 "raid" by US Immigrations and Customs (I.C.E.) agents, on the location they were being held at somewhere in Los Angeles, yet fails to report where this locations is, who possessed them, if they were recovered from private residences or institutions post-sale or were in some warehouse somewhere awaiting delivery. The article notes that, despite the M.O.U. (Memorandum of Understanding) signed between Cambodia and the US (and, I should note, the existence of an I.C.O.M. "Red List" for Cambodia since 2009), numerous artifacts large and small have ended up in private collections overseas. This is indeed true, and ongoing. What I question is whether there's more to this story than meets the eye.

To look at the way these "stolen cultural property repatriated from the US" stories inevitably written on the basis of ICE press releases, one cannot avoid getting the impression that the ICE does not really seem all that interested in actually catching smugglers, still less investigating the sources that supply them (to allow others to get back to the looters). The press stories give the impression that the ICE mostly interested in getting its hands on showy and easily identified things to "send back" to create photo opportunities and show US "co-operation" with other nations and America taking some form of moral leadership. Stopping the actual looting is entirely secondary to that, in fact helps to provide material for the backslapping stories.

The Cambodian statues is just one case where the back story is never provided. Where did they suddenly "surface"? That is not deemed important to the reporting of these stories, what is reported is they went back and the Cambodians are ever so grateful to the wonderful USA for handing them back. Again we have the object-centric approach, totally ignoring the destruction of a monument, or context to produce those "works of art" which everyone is so pleased about. What however is more important is how on earth did they get to the staes in the first place, what sort of deals lie behind that, and what unscrupulous US collectors or dealers were actually buying these items despite the existence of an MOU?

Where is the Stolen Buddha Heritage of Laos Ending up?

Luang Prabang is an ancient city on the Mekong River about 425 kilometres north of Vientiane, in north-central Laos. It was the capital city of Lan Xang kingdom, which was established in the 14th century, and is now a World Heritage Site. Students of Minobusan University in Minobucho, Japan are helping restore the Buddhist statues of this site. These are wooden Theravada Buddhism statues made in the 14th century or later, and are of high historical value. Originally the number requiring work was not precisely known, so in 2001 they began a survey of the statues and in 2007 reported to the Laotian government that the study had confirmed the presence of 1174 statues. In the past few years more than a tenth of them have since been stolen presumably by illegal artefact hunters for collection or for sale to collectors both inside the country and abroad. A survey conducted in 2009 revealed that 100 statues were missing from 35 temples. In 2010, another 20 statues were found to be missing. While monks at the temples have begun keeping guard over the statues by sleeping at the temples, Minobusan University students have distributed brochures at the Luang Prabang National Museum to sound the alarm over the property loss and to call for increased security in the city.

This problem is not restricted to a single region. According to figures from teh ao Ministry of Culture and Information, between September 2008 and February 2010, more than 200 Buddha statues were stolen from temples in the southern Lao province of Savannakhet.

Social changes in the country - one of the poorest in Asia - are leading to the breakdown of old attitudes and an increasing awareness of the financial rewards available for looting such items. There had not previously been a tradition in Laos of having anybody be able to deal in Buddhist art. The attraction of money from the art market in Thailand, often a staging point for artifacts on their way to collectors in the West, is strong enough to attract would-be thieves regardless of concerns about desecrating religious sites.

Mark Pratt, a retired U.S. diplomat who served in Laos during the 1960s and 70s, said foreigners could be creating demand for the artifacts. “Foreigners … in Laos would certainly be susceptible if someone [selling artifacts] came around and banged on their door,” Pratt said. “Most likely these are persons working on behalf of people outside who can get the stuff [sold] on elsewhere in the world”. [...] The trade in Buddhist artifacts thrives in the markets of Southeast Asia—from Bangkok’s River City district to the high-end boutiques of Hong Kong and Singapore—making the theft of such items extremely lucrative.

Justin McDaniel, a professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of California-Riverside is quoted as saying:

“The problem is not what they’re selling. The problem is what people are buying. There generally needs to be a broader education about this issue,[...] If you see a beautiful image in an antique store, no matter what they tell you, there is a very good chance that it was stolen ”.

Sources:

Joshua Lipes Buddha images stolen in Laos AFP March 10, 2010
Norimasa Tahara Thieves loot Lao city's Buddha statue heritage Sydney Morning Herald, March 13th 2010 (Heads-up From Museum Security Network)

LUANG PRABANG, Laos: Lao monk displays a wooden carving of a Buddha.
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No Wrath of the Phantom Army for Foreign Collectors

Cambodian artefact hunters have made a mockery of every institution that has tried to stop them so far. The government’s Heritage Department has proved powerless, the police and local authorities failed and UNESCO has made little impact. While the main historical sites such as Angkor Wat and its surrounding temples are now relatively well protected, but Cambodia’s less-celebrated monuments are regularly plundered.

Many of the artefacts are stolen to order for clients overseas, but some end up on sale at international auction houses or on the internet. Ancient necklaces, beads and even statues can easily be found at markets in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Many rural villages are built on or near ancient burial grounds without the inhabitants even realising. When antiquities dealers find out about the grave sites and offer the impoverished villagers cash for anything they find, they spark a frenzy of digging and inadvertent destruction.

Heritage Watch was set up in 2003 to attempt to combat the problem. Dougald O’Reilly, its director of Heritage Watch, said: “It’s our responsibility to at least give people an informed opinion about what they’re doing.” Five years ago to further these aims, the organization produced a comic book Wrath of the Phantom Army to fight against the looters. (Story by Heritage Watch, illustrated by Y Lida. 24 full-colour pages on glossy paper.) This action-packed story tried to get over an important message, that looting is destroying Cambodia’s great past and risking its future and plays on popular superstitions to ward off potential raiders. (Guy De Launey Tomb raiders and the phantom army, The Times October 1, 2005). Dougald O’Reilly stressed “We needed a medium to effectively communicate the harm looting does, but in an entertaining way, that can be appreciated by the literate and illiterate alike.” Illiteracy is common in Cambodia’s villages, and a picture- heavy, text-light publication stands at least a chance of making an impact. Its use of ghosts is also likely to strike a chord in a highly superstitious country.The story is set in provincial Cambodia, where villagers earn extra money through looting a prehistoric site. They are encouraged to do so by an unscrupulous middleman who enriches himself through selling antiquities. When the protagonists dig up and desecrate ancient graves in search of treasure, angry spirits cause the village animals to fall sick. As the young men continue to loot, the unearthing of a chiefly grave causes a 'phantom army' of skeletons to rise from a burial mound to confront them. A wise old monk educates the looters in the error of their ways, and they soon conclude that grave robbing is a profession with no future.
HeritageWatch intended this comic to be an important part of their campaign to educate Cambodians and foreigners alike about the dangers facing Cambodia’s heritage. The Khmer version of the comic is being given away in rural, impoverished communities where looting is most likely to occur. To cover the costs of this distribution, editions in foreign languages are available for sale throughout Cambodia and online, and generate revenue to help pay for free distribution of Khmer Language version in rural Cambodia. Nonetheless, some observers were highly sceptical about the degree to which it would achieve success given the curent manner in which the looting is funded by indiscriminate dealers, buyers and collectors:

At the old market in Siem Reap, only a few miles from Angkor Wat, Srey Raksmey, read the comic surrounded by the prehistoric gold beads and ancient temple bells in her souvenir shop. “People in the villages have money problems,” she said. “As long as they’re poor and the dealers have cash, they’ll continue to dig.”

It would be interesting to hear five years on how successful this campaign was felt to have been. Surely the real answer to this is to prevent the middlemen financing this destruction by educating not the ignorant peasants in rural Cambodia but the ignorant and undiscriminating peasants who buy this stuff no questions asked in foreign countries.

Heritage Friendly Tourism

Nobody who has worked on an archaeological site which is at the same time a popular tourist destination can avoid reflecting on the relationship between the idea that archaeology is somehow contributing to society by providing what these people are coming to see. Though this is one of our professional mantras (yes, archaeology has them too), the truth is that probably we are not.

Tourism is itself erosive and damaging. Take the case of Angkor Wat in in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Tourism in Cambodia, one of Southeast Asia's poorest countries, continues to grow to an average of 30 percent a year with 3 million tourists predicted for 2010, and the country's ancient monuments are a prime tourist destination. The Angkor Wat temple was built between the ninth and fifteenth centuries AD, and was officially "rediscovered" in 1860 by French naturalist Henri Mouhot, and was later restored with the help of both UNESCO and archaeologists from France and Japan. It is a fast growing tourist destination with more than 2 million visiting last year. This has led to the need for a rapid development of the infrastructure, for example new shopping centers and hotels lining the streets of Siem Reap. This has led to concerns about damage created by constant overcrowding in touring the temple with numbers exceeding the capacity the site can manage.

Sarah Dowdey has written a piece on this ("Angkor: How can a UNESCO site keep tourist temple raiders in check?") which despite the cutesy title addresses a real problem:

"It only takes a quick Google image search to understand why Angkor, the Khmer empire's ancient seat, makes plenty of "must-see" travel lists. Its ruined temple complexes pop out through the forests, and its sprawling reservoirs offer a testament to the city's impressive engineering. [...] The ruined complex, situated near Siem Reap, has been one of Cambodia's tourist cornerstones since the country opened as a safe destination after years of war and internal strife. And while Angkor has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992, and spent 12 years on the group's "threatened" list, such a designation requires some trade-offs. With international protection comes international exposure and a flood of new visitors. According to the non-governmental organization Heritage Watch, Angkor saw 7600 visitors in 1993; by 2006, the number was 1.6 million; by the time 2010 is up, the complex will likely draw 3 million. Tourists of course bring in money for the developing country, as well as help assure a certain degree of protection for cultural sites. But they also walk everywhere. They touch things. They require hotels, resorts and transportation. The development of Siem Reap may even be sucking Angkor dry, drawing out its groundwater and weakening the temples' foundations. Fortunately, groups like Heritage Watch are advocating for a more sustainable type of tourism. Working with the Cambodian government, they've started a "heritage friendly tourism campaign" to save antiquities, discourage looters and encourage visitors to fan out, spread their wealth and take a little heat off of Angkor".

The Heritage Watch website gives some details of this campaign which has seven key aims:
Promote Responsible Tourism
Promote the arts, culture, heritage and development projects in Cambodia.
Discourage Heritage Destruction
Encourage Private Sector Philanthropy
Inspire Visitors to Discover more of Cambodia's Fascinating Heritage
Encourage Longer Stays in Cambodia
Alleviate Stresses on Heritage Sites by Suggesting Alternative Routes/Destinations
Travel agencies and hotels will promote and disseminate heritage friendly guidelines to visitors, who receive the added value of a newsletter and calendar. The guidelines promote heritage awareness and include suggested behaviours such as refraining from touching the bas reliefs, being respectful of these sacred spaces, conservation of water, etc. Participating businesses receive a "Heritage Friendly Operator" designation.

See also Neil Wilford's post "The importance of preserving Cambodia's cultural Heritage" on the Changemakers website.

Tom Fawthrop: Will Angkor Wat survive the invasion of mass tourism?

Sun-Herald: Invasion of Angkor Wat, November 13, 2008

Ron Gluckman Angkor: Over!Ron Gluckman's roving reporter pages

Photo: Hundreds of tourists walk on the grounds of the Angkor Wat temple November 20, 2007 (Photo Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

US to return huge shipment of looted Khmer antiquities

It seems to me that there is something a bit tongue in cheek in the article in the Phnom Penh Post ('Cambodia's Journal of Record') entitled "
US vows to return shipment of looted Khmer antiquities ". According to this the US government plans to return to Cambodia later this year a “very large” shipment of cultural artefacts plundered from temples in the kingdom, which "had found their way into the US".
The decision was announced yesterday by John Morton, the assistant secretary of homeland security for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The logistic problems of moving these "portable antiquities" back to the country of origin were signficant, some of them are very heavy. Morton told reporters after a meeting with Cambodian officials in Siem Reap Tuesday

"In 2007, we returned small items [...] For this next repatriation, the items are very large and weigh several thousand pounds. We have to make special arrangements for them to be shipped to Cambodia.”

Morton said the artefacts were large pieces removed from a single temple. US officials have also promised to help Cambodia with skills training and hope to open a permanent office in Cambodia to work on antiquities issues.

Cambodian artefacts, looted from ancient burial sites or wrenched from important monuments and temples throughout the country, are often highly sought after on the illicit international art market.

“This is international business, and unfortunately, there is a black market in cultural artefacts,” said Morton [...]. “It can be very difficult to investigate these cases because the items have been stolen many, many years ago”. The US has pledged to work with Cambodian authorities to stem the flow of the illegal art trade. An ongoing memorandum of understanding between US authorities and the Ministry of Culture bans the importation of Cambodian artefacts dating back to the Iron Age into America.

The MOU first entered effect on September 19, 2003, applying to stone, metal and ceramic archaeological artifacts of Khmer date (sixth to sixteenth century AD). An extension took effect on September 19, 2008 and will last for five years. The MOU now includes artefacts of bronze and iron age date dating back to 1500 BC. The designated list of protected categories of artifacts was published in the Federal Register (Vol. 73, no. 183, September 19, 54309-13). The MOU prohibits the import into the US of any designated Cambodian artifact unless accompanied by a Cambodian export permit or verifiable documentation that it left Cambodia prior to the effective date of the restriction.
Needless to say, as is usual, the article fails to make any mention of the name of the intended recipient of the items that "found their way" to the USA. Is this in some way classified information? Which dealers in the USA were willing to trade in (apparently) looted Cambodian artefacts, despite the existence of the MOU?

Red list aims to combat plunder of Cambodia's rich heritage

Cambodian authorities are struggling to stem the illegal trade in plundered artefacts from their country. The looting of ancient sites and temples for saleable artefacts has a long history in the region, affected by widespread poverty and inefficient policing but with a rich cultural heritage. Some experts say the problem of looting has worsened since the collapse of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1990s, not least because its downfall allowed for its development in areas that were previously off-limits.

Cambodia is renowned for many sculpted temples (including the magnificent religious complex at Angkor Wat, visited by 2 million foreign tourists each year). Numerous temples and sites around the country have been hacked at and dug up in recent years by those looking to make money from unscrupulous buyers of Khmer statues and jewellery.

Heritage Watch is an award-winning non-governmental organization set up to preserve Cambodia's heritage in the face of its wholesale destruction. Dougald O'Reilly, its founder and director says "The level of looting is almost unprecedented with hectare after hectare being illegally excavated and the resulting artefacts flooding the market [...] Soon there will be little left to document Cambodia's prehistoric past". But despite this, the buying goes on.

Road workers uncovered a treasure trove of ancient artefacts 10 years ago at Phum Snay in western Cambodia. Among the finds were jewellery, ceramic pottery and even human bones. But shortly after news of the find got out, looters moved in. Within a year, Phum Snay had been stripped bare and its archaeological worth destroyed.

A new colour booklet (called the 'Red List') has been published by Cambodian authorities aims to teach police and border officials what to look for to try to combat this trade. It is an eight-page glossy booklet listing the types of Khmer artefacts most at risk of being stolen and smuggled out of the country. It was produced in collaboration with the International Council of Museums (and is the sixth of its kind in the council's efforts to combat the illicit trade in artefacts around the world). Protecting every historical temple and site scattered around Cambodia is practically impossible, which makes essential educating those who man the borders about what kinds of Khmer artefacts are now at risk .

The illicit trade in archeological artefacts is driven, particularly in the context of the country's endemic poverty, by the high prices commanded in foreign markets by items such as stone and bronze heads. A paper written by a Heritage Watch researcher four years ago analyzed more than 300 Khmer artefacts auctioned at Sotheby's in New York. It found that the offer prices ranged from 7,500 dollars to almost 30,000 dollars each. Around 80 per cent of the pieces had no known provenance, raising suspicions that they were stolen.

Heritage Watch's O'Reilly says domestic and regional buyers account for most of the illicit demand for Khmer antiquities. It is because many items are small, easy to smuggle and hard to identify as ancient that the Red List may prove so useful, he says. But the experts agree that a single document cannot counteract the demand for stolen Khmer artefacts. Given Cambodia's poverty, its inability to protect many of its ancient sites and its porous borders, the plunder of its cultural heritage is likely to continue

Vignette: Cambodian statuary

Asian "art collector" apprehended

The Phnom Penh Post recently reported that a 34-year-old man from Banteay Meanchey suspected of illegally hunting for ancient artefacts at Angkor Wat was arrested and will appear in court at Siem Reap. Chea Sophart, a deputy director of the Heritage Police, said man identified only as Ryn was arrested “while using an electric-powered machine to collect artefacts about 400 metres northeast of Takeo temple”. This wasn't the first case of thievery at the temple. Ryn is quoted as saying that on 10 previous occasions he had collected statues and other artefacts from the Banteay Chhmar temple compound in Banteay Meanchey province, which he then sold to Thai clients. An investigation into a suspected gang of artefact thieves is now under way. Ryn could face a prison term of between one and three years if convicted. The dealers and collectors who no-questions-asking buy the sawn off bits of SE Asian monuments as classy (sic) exotic home decoration are probably risking no punishment whatsoever in their own countries.

Photos: Legitimate, looted or fake? Some of the many sculptural fragments on sale today - funny how its most often the heads. Do bodhisattvas have no buttocks?