Sayles Suspends Sales

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Over the past few days there have been a number of sycophantic posts on coiney blogs lauding Wayne Sayles. There was Dealer Dave's fluff piece: "Wayne vs. Goliath" (March 16, 2012, cross posted onto several lists) and Lobboblogger Peter's "Help David Take on Goliath" (March 15th 2012) with the US government cast as the Philistines. One wonders why so much attention is suddenly being paid by the dealers' lobbyists to why Sayles has been battling his own country's government over its efforts to prevent culture crime at such great risk to himself. One might wonder whether they are preparing their readers for something?

I ask this because readers may recall that a while ago Wayne Sayles was moaning that because of his anti-government activities in the ACCG in favour of suspending import controls on unlawfully-exported coins into the US, he probably was on an ICE 'watch list'. Now it seems that Mr Sayles' firm Sayles and Lavender went offline. - nota bene, this seems to have happened about the same time as a coin dealer was arrested at a numismatic conference in New York and is facing a court case over a numismatic items he was selling. Nevertheless, according to Sayles' current LinkedIn profile it should still be online:

Sayles and Lavender [January 2007 – Present (5 years 3 months)] is a limited liability corporation chartered in the state of Georgia. The primary activity of this corporation is retail sales of ancient coins and books about them. Marketing activities are directed mainly at online venues. The firm maintains three storefronts at http://vcoins.com and serves other customers through private treaty.

We find however that despite this, his V-Coins shop Sayles & Lavender has also gone. Odd. I recall I have seen that happen equally suddenly at least once before recently...

Is it a coincidence that in the last few days we observe a fellow coin dealer, also in the ACCG board of directors, suddenly changing his tack over the Greeks "who cannot look after their own heritage [so they might as well sell it to us]", and making a hefty donation to the Greek Archaeologists' Association (and no I'm not going to give him free advertising by giving the link), writing of "the importance of safeguarding Greece’s antiquities and protecting that nation's more than 1,000 archaeological sites", against looting? What a volte face from someone notorious for his constant anti-archaeological sniping and carping ! What has happened to make him - suddenly it would seem - believe it is worth making a gesture to show that deep down inside he has warm cuddly feelings for all archaeologists and he "really is" all for "protecting sites" and halting looting, theft and smuggling?

What is going on here? Why has Mr Sayles' sales site gone off line? Has something unpleasant befallen the veteran warrior for "Truth, Justice and the American Way" in coin collecting? Or has he just got tired of dealing with suppliers who cannot tell him where what they are trading actually comes from? Has he realised the days of nineteenth century no-questions-asked dealing are numbered and is getting out while the going is good? What has happened to his stock, his business records which are a vital link in the collecting histories of all the coins he handled in his career as a dealer? In whose hands are they now? Where will they end up?

ACCG: Arrogance, Cretinism, Calumny, Going-too-far

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The words of Wayne:

Today, some archaeologists know so little about ancient coins that they see their only function as a means to date an archaeological site. These misguided academics lobby against private collecting and support overreaching regulation of the hobby and trade. None of them have significantly enriched our understanding of the past through ancient coins and some have gone so far as to condemn the efforts of private scholars. Fortunately, coin collecting is still a democratic activity and not a cloistered and sequestered exercise.

Today, most US ancient dugup coin fondlers know so little about the study of the past that they see in ancient coins only something to commodify and collect. These misguided buffoons lobby against the academic study of the past and the preservation of archaeological resources. They wish further deregulation of the international market in archaeological artefacts, to the benefit of the no-questions-asked trade and the smugglers and looters that benefit from it and the detriment of the preservation of the archaeological record. None of them have significantly enriched our understanding of the past through ancient coins and many of them have gone so far as to condemn the academic efforts of institutional scholars. Fortunately, archaeology is still an activity which is not a cloistered and sequestered exercise like private collecting and has much informed public support.

Contact: Wayne G. Sayles, 417-679-2142, wgs@wgs.cc, www.accg.us and tell him what you think. The venomous old man will be glad to have attracted some attention by his attacks on archaeologists and preservationists.

US Artefact Collectors and the Law

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Over in Krause Publications' "World Coin News" coin-dealer-investigative-journalist Richard Giedroyć is publicising some wild claims.

Countries including Bulgaria, China, Cyprus, Italy, Spain and Turkey have been making increasing demands not only to restrict the import of certain coins, but to repatriate coins now in private or museum collections they claim should be able to be returned regardless of how long these coins have been out of their country of origin or where the coins were discovered.

Do they? Where can he document such a statement, or does he want his readers to believe that the claims are part of secret backroom gubn'mint deals involving concessions to foreign governments in return for them buying Big Business's GM mutant popcorn? The mind boggles. The occasion for this latest literary production of the hapless numismo-journalist was a Jan. 7 meeting of the ACCG held during the New York International Numismatic Convention (you know, the one where 'the recent arrest' took place). The subject was '[US] Import Restrictions Declared 'Extra Legal', and the meeting was addressed by (of course, who else but) Peter Tompa and (who else but) Wayne Sayles. The name of the person they invited representing the Department of State's legal department was not given, probably because inviting such a speaker was not on their agenda. Tompa opened by saying:

two University of Miami law professors [...] examined laws regarding the import of certain coins and how these laws are being enforced, despite having no personal interest in coins or in coin collecting. Their conclusion, according to Tompa, was that those enforcing these laws have been going beyond the letter of the law, using the law term “extra legal” to describe these actions.

Now this is old "news", the article to which Tompa refers is obviously such old hat in coiney circles, everybody having read it, that no need is felt here to give details of the names of these professors (Stephen Urice and Andrew Adler) or the context of what they wrote. So basically the coineys are not coming up with anything new.

There is however a welcome new emphasis in the ACCG which now:

encourages those individuals and organizations with an interest in coins as collectibles to lobby to change or to discourage new laws that may restrict ownership rights regarding specific coins. [...] Sayles was careful to clarify what collectors and dealers should and should not do. “It is not in our best interests to find a way to get around the law. It is in our best interest to change the law,” he declared.

Of course one of the primary prerequisites of this is ensuring that they know the existing laws, which statements like the one started this text with do not help. In order to take active part in political life of their country the coineys will need to know how the system they want to change actually works, what it does and what it does not.

One word of sense from the WCN jurnlist:

Sayles told those at the ACCG meeting some coin dealers are now giving clients invoices on which photographs of their coins appear. Current statutes require an affidavit both from the dealer and from the buyer that some specific ancient coins are being imported legally. The provenance and the date of purchase of such coins is becoming increasingly important due to these restrictions.

Yes, and always has been, its just it has taken coin dealers and coin purchasers a long time to drag their hobby into the modern world. But its not just due to the restrictions, keeping proper records of holdings is a requisite of responsible and ethical collecting of such material.

On Urice and Adler:
'Miami Law: US Cultural Property Policies a Shambles'(17 August 2010)
'Talking Rot About "Rot at the Top" ' (20 August 2010)
'Well, it was inevitable was it not?' (23 August 2010)
'Urice and Adler Redraft' (31 March 2011)

Note though that the ACCG are very selective about informing their readers about Urice's writings on cultural property law: 'What the Dealers' lobbyists are Not telling Collectors' 5 December 2011 (and other posts here)

Cyprus and US Colonialism

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Missouri Coin dealer Wayne Sayles is "shocked" to learn (Stefanos Evripidou, 'Cypriot woman arrested in Syria', Cyprus Mail February 10, 2012) that Cyprus is forgetting its proper place in the world [which is as a colonial "source country" and petitioner of the United States of America], and instead has coin collectors and a market for ancient coins of its own. The xenophobic and colonial attitudes simply reek from the old man's recent post ('Smuggling and Cyprus') on his blog. ("Into Cyprus of all places", how dare they?)

Perhaps the ACCG will be calling on the US to mount a punitive expedition to teach those uppity islanders a thing or two with relation to their relationship with Uncle Sam?

This of course is the whole crux of the CCPIA. Instead of the USA simply applying the measures of the 1970 UNESCO Convention across the board like the rest of the civilized world, they have turned it into a competition between those states who gain US favour by becoming petitioners and client states, and those who are not. By these means they exercise a control on the objects considered as carriers of regional or even national historical identity of foreign groups as another element in its foreign policy. All the client states can do is beg and plead with them to continue to (temporarily) uphold the principles of the 1970 Convention with regard their own cultural patrimony. This is the same as the sickening spectacle of the US manipulating UNESCO in response to the vote to allow Palestinian membership. The ACCG moaning away in the background that none of these nations should be shown any favour and the US should pinch all and any antiquities that they can get their hands on and garner as much as possible on their side of the Ocean only adds to the distastefulness of the spectacle.

I think the US should withdraw from the 1970 UNESCO Convention while it has ambitions to use it and the CCPIA as a political tool against other nations.

Per Lucem ad... What? Welsh on "Barford's Attack on Wayne Sayles"

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Coin dealer Dave Welsh obviously gets awfully confused reading my blog. He complains of it:

It is extremely difficult in reading his blog to distinguish between what is actually the law, what Mr. Barford wishes the law to be, and what he is fantasizing about at the moment. Everything is blurred together in a manner that tends to be very confusing and unclear.

Hmm. It seems to me that a coin dealer dealing in coins, especially if he is the chair of the ACCG International Affairs committee (as obviously should every dealer and collector), should jolly well know what the law actually is without having to read about it on my blog. When I cite the law, I generally give a link which the curious or sceptical can click on to check the actual wording. It's not very difficult to click on links, is it? I think Welsh's problem is he reads far too laterally of the real meaning of my words. For instance the above remark is prompted by the allegation that "Paul Barford believes" and then followed by a passage which does not represent my views at all (and that hardly can be due to me being laconic about what I think about various aspects of the issues surrounding the collecting or portable antiquities). Whatever happened to that old coin dealers' lobby group jingo-motto: Per lucem ad veritatem? Where is the "light" in what these people say, where is the "truth"?

Welsh calls his post "[Paul] Barford Attacks Wayne Sayles" and alleges that: "Mr. Barford attacks [...] Wayne Sayles [as though he] were some sort of criminal". Do I? Only in Welsh's over-productive imagination. What I say is that in the short text I was analysing, Sayles uses false arguments to justify no-questions-asked collecting of what he regards as "minor antiquities". I point out that seen from the point of view of the preservation of the archaeological record, there is no such thing. I consider that in his comment in Forbes magazine, Sayles was guilty of either ignorance or spin (or perhaps both), but not a "crime".

The next bit of Welsh's tirade is priceless. Before remarking - without any justifying arguments to counter those I presented against such a notion - that this was a "rational point of view":

The "silent majority" of archaeologists know very well that coin collectors and the dealers who support them are not any significant threat to archaeology. They instead perceive antiquities collectors and dealers who seek major objects such as statues, fine ceramic art and other very valuable collectibles as being those whose activities tend to support a view that the collecting of such objects creates a market that motivates looting of archaeological sites.

Do they? Where does this come from? Could the ACCG get their "friends" in the PAS for example to substantiate that view? That the only nighthawks worth bothering about are those that go out with crowbars looking for statues in the Roman villas of England? Where is this evidence that there is any "silent majority" in archaeology anywhere who does not consider the current form of the antiquities trade to be a significant threat to archaeology? There are individuals who say such things that is true (I think they are wrong), but I would like to see any evidence that such views are a majority one in archaeology, silent or not. For all my scepticism about British archaeologists and their love for the PAS I do not think that is what they would say about the current form of the antiquities market - indeed many artefact hunters collaborating with the PAS will say the same thing about the market to which Mr Welsh is referring. What self-deceiving nonsense Welsh is pumping out here!

Anyway coin dealer Welsh reckons my blog "drives yet another nail in the already very securely fastened coffin of the long since exploded myth that "collecting equals looting"..." and exhorts me to continue blogging about these issues. Yes, yes I expect I will. But what I actually say - please note Mr W. - is that "no-questions-asked collecting supports looting", please note the difference. I have yet to see anything that the dealers in freshly surfaced artefacts in the US have written which actually comes anywhere near even addressing the point (actually being) made, let alone "exploding" it. I rather think the consistent failure to address this issue and continual fight by the ACCG against efforts to clean up the market (the MOUs, the minimalist measures of the CCPIA, whipping up unthinking mob indignation among collectors in pursuit of its "aims") are driving the nails into a completely different coffin. That of the no-questions-asked antiquities trade which it is becoming clear to ever more people has flourished in its current damaging could-not-care-less form for far too long.
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Putting Away the Dodgy Dealers is "Anti-Collecting"?

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Coin dealer Dave Welsh in a message cross-posted, as is his wont, to sundry antiquitist discussion lists takes a chunk of my post about "Wagsant" out of context and then solemnly intones:

It's hardly surprising to learn that Mr. Barford would "like to see a few US coin dealers in a Turkish or Bulgarian jail for knowingly handling stolen property)." Those who have read what he has to say over the years can hardly have any illusions regarding how he views anyone who deals in antiquities. From Mr. Barford's one-sided anticollecting perspective, dealing in or collecting unprovenanced portable antiquities such as ancient coins is a crime, and such objects are by definition "stolen property".

Golly, another sleight of hand. Let it be noted the word "a few" does not mean (in my vocabulary at least) "anyone who does something". If somebody has been knowingly handling stolen goods and this has been contributing to destruction of the archaeological record, I would like to see them face the consequences. No matter how unfashionable that might seem to be to a 'Merkin, well aware of the Four Corners sentencing fiasco in their own "Land of The Free".

Mr Welsh seems not to want to notice the link I gave that part of my text - to the US authorities luring a German dealer who'd been smuggling (spiders) into the US and locking him up. We know too of the poor lady who suffered an agonising death in an American jail when she too was arrested for alleged indirect involvement in an antiquity smuggling case. From a chance remark of Zahi Hawass it looks very much like they were trying to do the same to an antiquities dealer based in Dubai earlier on this year. Why cannot a US dealer dealing in stolen goods not have to face a penalty abroad for what they've been doing? Because they are American?

If a dodgy dealer is brought before a court and convicted of having knowingly handled stolen goods (for example their computer hard discs and other business records contain information unequivocally pointing to that), then I would like to ask fellow dealer Welsh, what is "anti-collecting" about saying they should pay the penalty? Surely is that not what all truly responsible dealers and collectors would say? Or not? If not, then to what degree is their "responsibility" only declarative?

Mr Welsh gives the impression here that he thinks US dealers caught handling stolen antiquities should NOT go to jail, and that it is "anti-collecting" to suggest they should. Is that really his position as an officer of the ACCG and a dealer in dug up antiquities?

The dealer furthermore - and wholly provocatively - suggests to his readers that:

From Mr. Barford's one-sided anticollecting perspective, dealing in or collecting unprovenanced portable antiquities such as ancient coins is a crime, and such objects are by definition "stolen property".

No. Actually I think (that among other places) my position on that is adequately enough explained in the VERY SAME POST from which Welsh extracts his "shock-horror" story - he just has not read into it deeply enough. Why don't you learn to read (with understanding) Mr Welsh before you presume to tell others what I mean to say? What a sad farce and total indictment of the US higher education system this is turning out to be.

Sadly, if putting away dodgy dealers is considered by dealers' lobbyists as "anti-collecting" and signing MOUs to prevent illegally exported coins from being imported into the USA is considered by dealers' lobbyists as "anti-collecting", what does that say about the current state of antiquity collecting in the USA? Or perhaps (truly) responsible collectors might wish to distance themselves from the way certain dealers' lobbyists are speaking for them. Do US collectors really want to see dodgy dealers walk free and buy illegally exported and looted archaeological material?

Wagsant on "Antiquities control"

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In the comments under the recent Forbes article about antiquities collecting there are currently two comments, one by Larry Rothfield about establishing a registration system to identify material already on the established market (making it possible to spot freshly-surfaced looted items). The idea is a no-brainer [as are the REAL reasons why antiquities dealers oppose it so vehemently]. The other comment - apparently from just such a dealer - is telling. It is obvious that behind the screen name "wgsant" is the pen of Wayne Gerald Sayles, veteran antiquities dealer from Missouri. Commenting on the Forbes article titled "There's Big Money And The Need For Reform In The Antiquities Trade" he concentrates on the first aspect and clumsily skips the second. [Sayles] writes:

Big $ values always stimulate interest and commentary about cultural property and its control. The resulting laws and mindset unfortunately extend down-chain to the most common of utilitarian objects like clay pots and coins that survive in huge quantities. As a result, many collectors of relatively insignificant objects are characterized as supporters of looting and pillaging. They are not, and the failure to make this distinction is a travesty in itself.

What is in fact a travesty is the utter refusal of those involved in this trade to admit what the real problems is. What Sayles depicts lightly as "cultural property control" is of course not exercised for its own sake, any more than kiddie porn control is exercised because the cops and customs officers want to be the only people who can look at the stuff (during their investigations) legally. Whatever both paedophiles and collectors on their closed access forums may assert, the laws governing the passage of this material from hand to hand are in reality there to protect other things, other rights.

Is the trade in these so-called "minor artefacts" like "clay pots and coins" really so "insignificant"? Today on just ONE internet portal selling precisely one of these categories of so-called "minor" artefacts in just ONE country where they are sold, we finds there are "159 Ancient [dugup antiquities] Dealers" offering 107,679 Items with a total value of $23,418,999. Twenty-three point four million dollars is not an "insignificant" sum (enough to buy a combat-ready Chinook helicopter, or - to put the scale of this in a more proper context - keep the PAS running for 12 years at current costs). More to the point, 107 000 holes in the archaeological record just to put this week's coins on offer in one venue in one country is not "insignificant damage" when it is an ongoing erosive process. This one portal selling coins of undocumented provenance represents very major damage to the archaeological record. V-coins was set up in 2008, but ebay through which hundreds of thousands of similarly undocumented antiquities pass annually has been going since 1995. The scale of items passing undocumented from the (finite and fragile) archaeological record onto the global antiquities market (and the history-gobbling US one in particular) is incontrovertibly MASSIVE. Holes are being dug all over the place to keep the market which Mr Sayles represents supplied with fresh commodities, of major saleability and minor 'potboiler' status.

It is this damage that is the problem. It is this issue from which Wayne Sayles
wishes to detract the attention of "Forbes" readers in his comment above. The issue is not about in which country portable antiquities should be, which borders they cross, it is about a far more fundamental issue, the origins of the portable antiquities and what was done to the place they came from and how they came on the market which are the subject of scrutiny.

Yes Mr Sayles (who claims to have done an archaeology 101 course at a Wisconsin university), the "resulting laws and mindset" do indeed apply to all "portable antiquities" which are looted from archaeological sites to supply the collectors market. For the "most common of utilitarian objects like clay pots and coins that survive in huge quantities" are archaeological evidence while they are in the archaeological record (ground) and cease to be the moment they are hoiked out to join many thousands others of undocumented and freshly-surfaced dugups in a dealer's stockroom. Like that of Sayles and Lavender - where DID all that stuff come from, really? It is the "most common of utilitarian objects like clay pots and coins that survive in huge quantities" which keep the market ticking over, keep dealers like Mr Sayles in business. It is the affordability in the era of large scale commercial looting of archaeological sites of the "most common of utilitarian objects like clay pots and coins that survive in huge quantities" which allows the market to expand, persuading more and more individuals that they too an afford a "piece of history" in their homes and emulate and get the kudos in a small way of being collectors like Levy and White. What Sayles is arguing is that the vast bulk of the transactions on the no-questions-asked market should remain unregulatable, should remain no-questions-asked. That is precisely what he set up the ACCG to fight for.

Sayles bemoans the situation that [as a result of the fact that archaeological evidence and the objects of conservationists' efforts are not defined by the commercial value of the elements traded]: "many collectors of relatively insignificant objects are characterized as supporters of looting and pillaging". Note the sleight of hand. Sayles likes to pretend (note the name of the dealers' lobbying group he set up in 2004) that it is just collectors who are allegedly "victimised" thus. The DEALERS are as guilty as collectors, if not more so; who buys the stuff with undocumented provenances on a dodgy market? Who will not declare their sources, or reveal what process was used to ascertain (and verify) kosher provenance? Who actively discourages any discussion of these issues (even on the closed coiney forums)? Dealers, dealers, dealers.

There is absolutely no doubt, given the current state of the no-questions-asked antiquities market, collectors who buy freshly surfaced material without ascertaining and verifying it has a clean collecting history are indeed guilty of supporting the looting, pillaging and smuggling and trading of looted and pillaged artefacts. That is irrespective of whether the items concerned are the "most common of utilitarian objects like clay pots and coins" that are looted "in huge quantities" or whether it is a one-off pot like the Euphranios krater (pulled from the same tomb by a robber as many other more "utilitarian" vessels which also end up on the clandestine market). Or an Athenian deka that might (arguably) be found in a Turkish hoard with many thousand other more "mundane" issues. It is not the coin that matters, it is the context; once separated from the rest and smuggled into the US its just a chunk of metal (which is not to say that those handling it all down the chain of illegal activity should not be punished - they all should end up in jail, I'd like to see a few US coin dealers in a Turkish or Bulgarian jail for knowingly handling stolen property).

Sayles assures the readers of "Forbes" that, as long as the portable antiquities traded no-questions-asked are bulk lots of "relatively insignificant objects", neither collectors [and, by extension, the dealers who supply them] are guilty of being "supporters of looting and pillaging [or I, presume, illicit transactions in antiquities and smuggling]". He says the failure to make a distinction between these peddlars of plundered history and those dealing in "significant" objects is some kind of a "travesty". I rather think that word applies to the veteran antiquity dealer's arguments here.

Feeble-Minded Ramblings on "Cultural Justice"

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Not everybody professing to be "interested in preserving the past" is happy about the Italians offering the benefit of their experience in museum design and management of the cultural resource to the Iraqis. Veteran antiquity dealer and moaner Wayne Sayles uses the announcement to ask "Where is Cultural Justice?". He chides that - in his opinion - the Italians are "unable to do the most basic forms of preservation in their own country — where it seems that everything is disintegrating". This seems an unjust criticism from somebody in a country where the Washington Monument in the centre of the capital is now closed because - like Pompeii - it has cracks in the walls. I think every country in the world (including my own) has problems finding the resources (financial and human) enough to conserve and protect everything that needs conserving and protecting - which applies equally to archaeological remains. To say that Italy, one of the world leaders in cultural property conservation is "unable" to conduct "basic conservation" is simply an unjust insult and expression of ignorance.

Conveniently forgetting that the agreement was for the Islamic gallery as well as the Assyrian one, Sayles postulates:

These efforts are reported as Italian assistance to Iraq's national heritage, ironically the present national government in Iraq has no cultural connection whatever with the Assyrian artifacts that are being preserved. Any heritage from that ancient civilization is diffused in the bloodlines of millions of people who inhabit virtually every corner of the earth today. If anything, the Assyrian heritage is global today, just as most cultural heritage is.

As indeed is the Islamic culture in the other gallery, an equal underpinning of the European renaissance as the 'Classical' civilization Sayles and his coiney mates adulate. "Bloodlines" Mr Sayles? One wonders what "Ahnenerbe" this writer understands by the notion "cultural connections". Have I as a fair-haired blue-eyed Brit no "cultural connections" with the Roman remains of my country or the legends of king Arthur because my "bloodline" (as the White supremacists of sites like "Stormfront" would have it) is most likely Teutonic? Am I from the wrong "bloodline" to feel Stonehenge is part of the landscape of the common past of my nation/people? What kind of talk is that? Where's "power of place", "heimat", "local homelands", "places of memory" in any of this antiquitist-fetish nonsense of the collectors?

Iraq has a duty to protect and exploit wisely the archaeological heritage that is buried or curated in and on its territory. Just the same as Mr Sayles' has towards the archaeological remains of the communities of Red Men (and women) that inhabited the land long before the White Man came and tried to exterminate them all. And the place for that is NOT natural history museums along with the stuffed birds, geological curiosities, pinned butterflies and shells. Its part of the world heritage, yes, but also part of the heritage of the land on which the modern state exists. One to be cherished and sustainably managed for common benefit and not squandered for extempore reasons or individual profit. That includes antiquity dealers like Mr Sayles.

Sayles reckons:

The UNESCO construct that led to its 1970 convention and resolution was already antiquated when it was adopted and becomes more and more irrational with each passing day and with each new birth in a world where cultures are homogenized. Yet, emerging governments try desperately to attach themselves, like parasites, to a distant and more stable past. This "nationalist" view is, of course, a feeble attempt to solidify their manifest destiny to rule and history is replete with failed examples.

Wow. the guy actually seems to think that "cultural homogenization' is a good thing. I suppose if you live in a country that presents itself as a cultural "melting pot", stubbornly ignoring the deep (and perhaps deepening) divisions which persist beneath the veneer within that society on racial and ethnic grounds (including between the native population and the immigrants with outside roots). Frankly from a European perspective the prospect is appalling. What creates a culture and national identity is the individual aspects of the past of the territory on which the state now exists as part of the cultural mosaic which is the heritage of humanity. That may be difficult for somebody to comprehend if they come from a society which sees its past as going back to some piece of paper signed by some rebellious gents in funny wigs in July 1776 defining it as not-a-colony.

The enshrined Holy Relic of a New Nation

It is against that background that I find laughable the phrasing about "emerging governments" who "try desperately to attach themselves, like parasites, to a distant and more stable past". Is that not precisely what US collectors of antiquities taken from the soil of the old world are trying to do? Is the attempt to claim the cultural heritage of foreign soil as their "own" by collectors of dugup Classical antiquities nothing more than a "feeble attempt to solidify" their identity as separate from the ancient heritage of the land which they now inhabit?

I'd be interested to know how many collectors of Greek, Roman and other ancient coins, Egyptian scarabs, Mesopotamian seals, chinese arrowheads and all the other stuff of the eBay antiquities market in the United States also collect arrowheads picked up on private land in the fields and creeks of the US itself?

Coming back to the theme of "cultural justice", it would seem from what he writes Missouri antiquities dealer Sayles thinks that it would be if the Italians would refrain from helping other nations look after antiquities in their museums or manage the archaeological resource better. It seems his idea of "cultural justice' would be to allow the stuff to come onto the open market where US collectors can claim the antiquities that take their fancy as bits of "their heritage" to be bought and sold no-questions-asked like potatoes.

The United States government will do everything within its power to make sure that the nationalist interests of both these countries are protected. The rights and interests of our own citizens are irrelevant. We will impose controls on the transfer of anything that might be imagined as "cultural property" under the ridiculous guidelines of UNESCO 1970 and we will disenfranchise natural descendants of a vanished cultural group just because they happen to live in the USA. This, we do in favor of the political ambitions and aspirations of an unrelated nationalist successor state. Where is the cultural justice in that?

Where is the cultural injustice in asking US dealers and collectors to respect the existence of laws governing the manner in which material like this circulates on the international market? Who is doing whom the injustice in the no-questions-asked, could-not-care-less global market in which US dealers and collectors all too willingly participate?

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.

The "Rights" that are Relegated to Insignificance

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Coin dealer Wayne Sayles moans now about the US Treasury for not supporting what he calls "collectors' rights" (Relegated to Insignificance, 3 April 2011). Let us be clear that what he sees as an attack on those "rights" is a measure introduced which restricts ancient artefacts (including coins) being imported from Italy into the United States to those which have been legally exported. Is "cultural property internationalist" coin dealer Sayles really campaigning for the "right" to buy illegally exported artefacts?

Another little gem of information he let slip yesterday was that somebody told him that in considering the 2011 renewal of the MOU, the President's Cultural Property Advisory Committee actually voted against considering dugup coins as archaeological material. One wonders why they would do such a thing, and how it is that information like this is leaked (Bradley Manning, move over, you might be getting a cell-mate soon if much more of this sort of thing goes on in US government committee circles). Is this new leak anything to do with Robert Korver's recent resignation from the Committee?

Vignette: exactly what "rights" does this dealer claim to have? The right to buy artefacts illegally exported from other countries? Why DO so many antiquity dealers in the US oppose so vehemently the legislation which only really affects those attempting to obtain illegally exported artefacts and other cultural property from other countries?

Christmas Truths About the Built Heritage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Vignette: The Adams House, US cultural icon notable for its bad state of preservation.
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Coineyleaks: US State Department Transparency and Coin Dealers

.The no-questions asked coin collectors and dealers' lobby group the ACCG together with the PNG and IAPN are currently engaged in a court case with the US government to force the US State Department to be more "transparent" about its dealings with foreign governments in policy matters concerning cultural property.

Wikileaks also has begun making State Department transparency a reality by releasing documents about its dealings with foreign governments in a whole series of matters. Suddenly the Constitutional right to free speech becomes a double-edged sword. Calls have reportedly been made by US politicians for one of the people who created wikileaks to be assassinated.

Citizens of foreign countries are learning what has been going on behind their backs, what US diplomats are reporting back to Washington and what directions they are receiving, some of which involve deceitsignificant matters.

The Polish missile affair is a case in point. I think there are some things we, and the people these officials claim to represent, do have a right to know despite the efforts now being made to shut Wikileaks down by fair means or foul. (Are the US government really involved in the DDoS attacks on the site? - what implications does that have for the computer owners whose machines are involved?)

I hope the US collectors now hounding the State Department to reveal the ins and outs of what China and Cyprus actually asked for and what was done with that request are seen in the context of that other fight for State Department transparency.

It seems to me that whether the phrase "and coins" is or is not in a document and whether it matters pales into insignificance compared with certain other doings of the US government in the wider world. Are those now clamouring for the State Department to show the world what foreign governments sent them in trust any better than Mr Assange?

In the light of the severe difficulties ahead of the US to retain its credibility on the international diplomatic scene now, we may look differently at the erosive and destructive efforts of the international antiquity dealing community to expose the activities of the State Department even further and bog it down in a time-consuming court case when it has other more pressing matters to deal with - matters which some argue concern national security. Are these activities in the long term interests of the American people or are the dealers' and coin collectors' activities anti-American?

Coineyleaks began here.
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PAS Supported up to the Hilt by the No-Questions-Asked Dealers Lobby

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The PAS has a Friend in the no-questions-asked coin trade lobby, the ACCG. Its "Culture Property Internationalist" Executive Director chides Rick Witschonke:

How could Rick, in all seriousness, make such a statement? Has he forgotten the jointly sponsored ANS/ACCG presentation on PAS accomplishments by Dr. Roger Bland in Washington DC, and the jointly sponsored Field Museum/ACCG presentation by Dr. Bland in Chicago? Has he forgotten the ACCG letter to the British Parliament in support of PAS funding? Has he forgotten the ACCG participation in the Council for British Archaeology conference on PAS at Newcastle, England earlier this year. Is he unaware of all the past ACCG comments to CPAC that lauded the PAS and Treasure Act as models to emulate?

I'm not really sure they would be delighted to be perceived as so closely associated with this group. It could work against them.

"Has he forgotten the ACCG participation in the Council for British Archaeology conference on PAS at Newcastle, England earlier this year.", Eh? The Conference of course was NOT "about the Portable Antiquities Scheme"... And as far as the ACCG presentation there goes, that IS indeed best forgotten.

[I find it quite amusing that Witschonke too tries in his CPAC letter to distance himself from the bland platitudes of the ACCG loonies, but in the comment quoted above, Wayne Sayles is having none of that. Independent thinking is not allowed in coineydom, everybody must be seen as singing from the ACCG songsheet].

Cultural Property Concern: a "Cancer"?

US Antiquities dealer Wayne Sayles claims that what he calls "cultural property nationalism" is like a cancer - "abnormal and malignant". That does not prevent him from making money selling ancient artefacts though. He likens the idea of people wanting the cultural property of their country being available in that country for study and appreciation in being a "cult-like fanaticism" to "the Spanish Inquisition, Bolshevism and the National Socialist movements". I think Mr Sayles has not quite grasped the issue - seeing it only from his own purely commercial viewpoint as a dealer in the cultural property taken, perforce, from other countries. For him there is something perverse in the idea that modern states have some form of control and responsibilities towards expressions of culture within their territory, including "all of the tangible elements of the land's cultural history—even when it has no demonstrable link to the present". His prose gets even more colourful, at the expense of clarity:

Like the nationalist movements of earlier ages, Cultural Property Nationalism relies on government oppression to achieve its aim of domination and control. Consequently, a process of infiltration and manipulation lies at the heart of its agenda. This oppression, as historically has been the case, is masterfully couched in egalitarian terms — even though the objectives are anything but. It is often accompanied by historical revisionism. The actions of nationalist government, when they inevitably run counter to the will and interests of the majority, are typically defended by a non-government group that is perceived as trustworthy and benevolent. These surrogates are often brought into the nationalist fold as "stewards" of the associated tangible property. [...] The proponents of this [cultural property nationalist] view have, with great skill and cunning, chipped away at age-old private property rights and have graduated from a subtle ideology to a controlling force. The process that has worked throughout time is working for Cultural Property Nationalists today.

But how can the dealer portray protecting and restoring the cultural heritage as "counter to the will and interests of the majority"? In what modern country is that the case? On the contrary it is the will of the people of countries deprived of important parts of their cultural heritage (Greece with its Parthenon Marbles, Nigeria with the Benin Bronzes, Egypt and Iraq robbed of thousands of antiquities) to get them back, and it is "enlightened countries" like Britain and the USA which are refusing to acknowledge those claims. From where do we need to excise the "cancer"?

The cases of nationalist excess that history preserves for us have all been reversed by a cataclysmic event. While the domination of nationalism comes slowly and insidiously, it is typically expunged in rapid fashion when the masses refuse to accept it. Cultural Property Nationalism is doomed to the same fate...

only when culture and cultural identity cease to exist, Mr Sayles, but then nobody will need dealers and the antiquities they sell, or museums that house them. I suspect that for a good while dealers like Mr Sayles seeing little in cultural property than how much they can make on selling it, reducing it to a mere commodity, like potatoes, will be a sad anachronism, a throwback to the world of colonialism and disregard for the inhabitants of other lands and regions. Before insultingly labelling those concerned about the future of a region's cultural heritage as a "cancer", perhaps Mr Sayles and others who treat it in a purely exploitive - trophy-hunting - fashion need to place themselves in the position of those their deeds deprive of their cultural heritage and the means to understand it in their own lands.

The Spengler Collection at the CPAC

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Wayne Sayles has made three public submissions to the CPAC deliberations of the Greek request to impose import controls on illegally-exported items of cultural property from Greece. In one of them he presents a totally unrelated anecdote about the activities of dealers in Afghanistan which however raises a question of direct relevance to the issue being discussed:

The late William F. Spengler was, during his career with the U.S. State Department, the highest ranking U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan. During his tenure in Kabul, Mr. Spengler became aware of a section in the local bazaar where scrap metals were traded. Among the various shops were some that accumulated coins that were then melted and sold as bullion. A few were sold as curios in local shops. Being a collector, interested in coins and their history, Mr. Spengler regularly visited the bazaar and selected individual pieces of interest that he typically purchased at the prevailing scrap or precious metal rate. Although countless thousands of specimens have been lost forever, some of these coins and their historical messages were literally saved from oblivion because of the interest of this collector. Due to the benevolence of Mr. Spengler, many of these coins are preserved today in institutions here and abroad. In fact, the sole Athenian decadrachm in the U.S. National Coin Collection at the Smithsonian was acquired in this way and donated by Mr. Spengler. [...] This anecdote is remarkable mainly because it happens all too frequently and historical coins are being lost every day due to repressive laws that make them valueless to the finder in any way other than to destroy them for their intrinsic metal value.

Well, of course Greece (the subject of the CPAC's upcoming discussion) has no such laws, as I have pointed out earlier these coin collectors are consistently ignoring the fact that current Greek legislation means that finders of items like this receive a reward.

But that is not the point. But before passing to that, let us first note how Sayles presents this; coins on the oriental market are being merely "sold for scrap" by brown-skinned peasants with simian mentalities and it is the enlightened American who like a heritage hero "saves" them by buying them from the ignorant dealers at scrap value, well below their market value at home. According to this account there are no dealers in antiquities in Kabul at the time, a few coins were sold in local shops, but only "as curios". This entire narrative framework is wholly typical of the neo-colonialist attitudes which underlie this whole brand of antiquity collecting. The enlightened American single-handedly saving civilization from a sea of Oriental ignorance.

I have already pointed out a number of times that this "melting for scrap" model is a persistent feature of the collectors' mythology. The reality is that collectors are saving the best (the most collectable) coins from nothing else than falling into the hands of other collectors (including museums) and these days, given the voracity of the market, it is the heavily worn and defaced which may be melted - in the same way as UK metal detectorists now sell off for melting down the "rubbish" finds that they do not want to collect and are unlikely to be able to sell.

Now, what was the "the highest ranking U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan" doing regularly visiting the local bazaar buying up freshly dug up ancient artefacts? We are not told when Mr Spengler was stationed in Afghanistan, so what laws applied at the time. Did he ever report any of the vendors to the authorities for having these objects so local museums (Kabul Museum had an extensive numismatic collection in those days) could acquire them, and find out where they were coming from? More to the point, does the US State Department encourage its employees to engage in the purchase and collection of ancient artefacts from the cultures of the countries where they are stationed? (Actually that is not a rhetorical question, it seems to me that since this matter has been raised by Mr Sayles, an official statement is called-for).

Sayles says that "countless thousands of specimens have been lost forever", but countless thousands of coins from hoards like the second Mir Zakah hoard (which I discussed here earlier) were indeed lost, through being scattered in thousands of ephemeral personal collections "sold to Japanese, British and American collectors for millions of dollars" (Osmund Bopearachchi, Vandalised Afghanistan, Frontline Volume 19 - Issue 06, Mar. 16 - 29, 2002 - please read the whole article, it tells a depressingly familiar story).

But Spengler seems to have gone further and did not restrict himself to "saving" (for his own collection) local finds. He is the author with Wayne Sayles of a three volume publication based partly on this collection which he presumably he made by buying up coins in Kabul. The book is on "Turkoman Figural Bronze Coins and Their Iconography" (first volume in 1992). Well, whether or not two American authors have done a good job of studying the pictures on the Turkoman coins [I have not read it], the source of these coins is somewhat questionable, were they not being brought to the Kabul market from outside Afghanistan?

Another matter however interests me even more than the above, and I think - since Sayles raises it in public in a sitting held by the State Department itself in a session debating whether or not collectors in the US should have the "right" to buy dugup antiquities which have no documentation of legal export - also requires a State Department statement. This concerns how the coins which Mr Spengler accumulated during his diplomatic service in Afghanistan reached the US? When and how were they exported out of Kabul? As 'diplomatic baggage'? Were any Afghan antiquity and cultural property laws ignored when this happened? This is not an unimportant question in the present context. Is this not an example of neo-colonialist exploitation by American diplomats of a type and scale only seen at the beginning of the last century? What is going on?

The American Numismatic Society claims it has "probably has the world's best collection of Kushano-Sasanian coins", and admits that to a great degree this is thanks to recent gifts from William F. Spengler, presumably including material obtained in Afghanistan in the manner described. Why should the world's greatest collection of such material be in the ANS collections in New York acquired in this manner and not in the country where they were dug up? To what degree do the policies of the ANS on the acquisition of material apply to the material which arrived as coming from the Spengler collection? Not all of the Spengler collection went to US institutions, some of it (originally we are told bought for scrap metal prices) is now turning a tidy profit being sold on the open market. But I think we would all like some clarification when and how it left Kabul.

Since many American lives are being lost to bring law and order to Afghanistan, should not any cultural property now held in US collections which was removed illegally from Afghanistan be returned there? What justification is there for squirrelling it away in America? Is that what America is fighting for over there?

Note too that it was precisely as a result of (ultimately unsuccessful) US attempts to block the illegal movement of material out of Afghanistan that (the so-called HR 915) that the ACCG began its activities to prevent curbs being applied to the movement of illegally exported material onto the US market. Given the association between Spengler and Sayles, it might be interesting to look at the relationship between Mr Spengler's activities and the rise of opposition to a transparent and regulated antiquities trade by groups like the ACCG.

The two 'numismatic' obituaries of W.F. Spengler which I found (here and here) omit the dates when he was in Afghanistan or details about the export of his coin collection from that country or any other where he may have served. Perhaps somebody else would like to explain how this substantial collection of ancient dugup coins left Afghanistan as the personal property of a US diplomat.

I think also when Wayne Sayles stands up at a meeting at the State Department on October 12th there are one or two searching questions the CPAC might ask him about his oral presentation. I hope they do.

Photo: Kabul Market (National Geographic)

Freedom of Information and Online "Education" American Style

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1) Wayne Sayles has a new post on his blog about the ACCG's faltering Freedom of Information request about intergovernmental negotiations on cultural property movement across trands-national borders. Mr Sayles seems however not really to be aware that there is another (real) world outside the frontiers of his own country. He writes that:

The Freedom of Information Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, was born from the notion that "the people" (as in each individual citizen) have a constitutional right to know how the government acts in their behalf. This is of course a democratic notion that nationalist governments do not share.

Well, two mouse clicks away on Wikipedia (a resource not unknown to Mr Sayles I wist), we find an article listing all those other (62) non-nationalist governments that have passed Freedom of Information legislation. Apart from the European Union and the United States itself, they are (alphabetically) Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cayman, Chile, People's Republic of China, Colombia, Cook Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Macedonia, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Republic of China, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Zimbabwe. Three of them, Colombia, Paraguay and Finland had such legislation before the US. (The same source asserts that equivalent legislation is "pending" in another sixteen countries.) Such a list really casts some doubt on what the coin dealer lobbyist means by the term "nationalist". What nonsense is this?

2) Sayles' blog now has a logo indicating that an organization called "online schooling" has selected it (and Dave Welsh's blog) as among the "top 40 coin collecting blogs" ["these experts can tell you everything tyou need to know"]. I was going to congratulate him, but then began trying to find out what this award was and who "online schooling" were. When I did it all looked a bit pathetic.

"Awards candidates are found by one method: Anonymous nominations that are open to the internet community. This allows us to generate a candidate list that is based upon what the internet determines as being good, original content. We stay away from a voting system because the only information that gives us is how well a site's readership can click a button.

So a pal can nominate any site they like and the judges look at it. As for the "educational resources" claim, the Sayles blog is up there alongside: Top Alcohol Blogs, Top Marijuana Blogs, Top Perfume Blogs, Top Piercing Blogs, Top Disney Blogs, Top Skateboarding Blogs, Top Surfing Blogs, Top Extreme Sports Blogs, Top Baseball Card Collecting Blogs, Top Mom & Dad Blogs, Top Comic Blogs, Top Clubbing Blogs, Top Star Wars Blogs... you get the idea. Have a look at the "infographics" it offers and calls education.

Mr Sayles attacked my credibility the other day, his advertisement of the inclusion of his blog as an educational resource in such company is an interesting comment on his own idea of credibility.

Scotus capitus is in the list too. But quite a few coin collector's sites that are indeed educational are missing.

"Balanced"? Bibibliographies, the "Looting Question" from the Collectors' viewpoint

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Since he labelled Hugh Jarvis' extensive online bibliography on the "Looting Question" a "disgrace to academic research" which "does not even attempt to address the vast published scope of private and public collector thought on the subject", Wayne Sayles offered to put up a "more balanced" bibliography on the topic to supplement that of Jarvis. He has now carried out that intent:

There are many bibliographies online that highlight the archaeological perspective in the cultural property debate. The bibliography that follows is supplemental to those as it focuses on resources with a more balanced perspective.

More balanced? Judged as a reading list from a US "collectors' rights" lobby group opposed to “archeologie uber alles” as they put it, there is very little here about collecting in the US of archaeological artefacts. There are three or so references to metal detecting in the UK, but nothing about metal detecting in the US (and there is a debate on this over there). Nothing about the debates on pot-digging in the US (such as those emerging from the Blanding case) or arrowheads. So much then for a large part of US "collector thought" on the subject. In fact one learns more about this from Jarvis' bibliography than Sayles'.

It may be argued that the ACCG is all about coin collecting, and elsewhere has a lot to say about the "public benefits of coin collecting". So where is "collector thought" on this reflected in the bibliography? In fact very few of the listed items refer to coins at all (I counted just five), which is rich as this was one of Sayles' specific criticisms of Jarvis.

A dominant theme is texts on the broad theme of how jolly silly US customs regulations on antiquities imports are and a series of legalistic articles, but while - revealingly - this is almost the entire focus of the ACCG's activity, this is actually getting well away from the topic of "looting" isn't it?

There are also an awful lot of "who owns..." texts (presumably referring to the 'other end' of the collectors' supply chain in the 'source countries'). Well, the answer is obvious, we all do, but the key to the argument is how dealers and collectors (private and institutional) come into posession of what they have. The issue here is not ownership per se, but chain of legitimate ownership. There is not a word about any of this in Sayles' bibliography, which perpetuates the manner in which collectors misrepresent the topic of major concern. And I really cannot believe that this means there is NO "collector thought" on this topic.

Also as I predicted earlier Sayles in his bibliography equates museum collecting with private collecting, which is by no means as valid as it might have been a few decades ago.

Then there's the inevitable thread represented by a few works on "the current market is not doing any harm and is good for artefacts" and the somewhat unneccessary what a lot of idiots archaeologists, anthroplogists and all the rest are as they don't know what "culture is" and they are all radical nationalists thread.

Not a single work by ACCG mouthpieces Dave Welsh or John Hooker or the current ACCG President referenced I note. Nor anything on or emerging from the ACE. David Gill notes other obvious omissions. I would add my favourite piece of antiquitist special pleading, Tokely -Parry's Rescuing the Past: The Cultural Heritage Crusade, why is THAT not on Sayles' list (is it because he was put in prison?). Tokely says exactly the same things as the ACCG dealers. I am sure it would not be so difficult to find other notable omissions.

And all but one of the references Sayles cited are in English, as if there were no "collector thought" on the international market anywhere else in the world .I find it very odd that some of the entries in Sayles bibliography make reference to the online versions, while others do not even though I know that many other references he cites are in fact accessible online. Did he want to hide this, or did he simply not check?

Jarvis' bibliography incorporates a number of online resources including blogs, forums and webpages. Sayles omits use of any of these, which is odd because it is precisely through forums like the Yahoo "Ancient Artifacts" forum, or in coin collecting terms "Moneta-L" as well as for example UK "Metal detecting" forums that those interested in the issues can find "collectors' thoughts" on them, written down by the collectors themselves. It is symptomatic though that virtually all of these resources are kept as closed access media, preventing outsiders from learning those "thoughts". As a result, the outside reader is unlikely to be able to penetrate very far into the issues. There is a "vast body of private and public collector thought on the subject" which is thus inaccessible to the public - the public who is the beneficiary of the "who owns..." questions. The compulsive need for secrecy in the antiquities market is not - to my knowledge - addressed in any detail in any of the bibliographic items Sayles cites. Why not?

It would have been nice also to see mentioned T.J. Buggey's webpage "Ethics and Coin collecting", even though it is both dated and superficial, it is notable as one of the few accounts I have come across in this milieu which even acknowledges that there is an ethical (rather than merely legal) issue. Perhaps that is why Sayles ignores it. He does not like reid oldsborough, so that's probably the reason his page on the topic (which, whether you agree with what he writes, is "collectors' thought" too) is also ignored.

Also since the 'rival' bibliography to which this is intended as a supplement (allegedly - because I do not think it is true) considers "the archaeological viewpoint" and in the works there cited some quite specific accusations are made about collecting and the effects of the current trade and current modes of collecting on the long-term survival of archaeological sites and assemblages, it is surprising that there are very few items ciited in Sayles list which actually refute those arguments in any detail. In particular ACCG mouthpiece Welsh has several times stated the collectors' view that "there is no scientific proof that collecting causes looting" (what he mis-terms "the Renfrew Hypothesis - it is in fact Elia's). There is not a single work cited by Sayles in his balanced bibliography which sets out the views of this school of thought and the argumentation behind it. Neither is there a single work cited setting out the details of the stupid argument that the coins collected by collectors do not come from archaeological sites because they all come from hoards buried in the middle of a campaign by soldiers on the edge of battlefields. There is a whole load of collector lore which is bandied about in the literature (and especially these days the coiney literature and 'discussions') which is simply not represented in Sayles' bibliography. Why not?

Perhaps Sayles, calling Jarvis' efforts a "disgrace" did not have much of a concept of how difficult compiling a resource like this actually is, let alone making it reflect all possible points of view. Now I suspect he does. As Tom Flynn noted, the cultural heritage field is "divided and polemical enough without those divisive and entrenched positions being brought into the classroom", perhaps now the ideologues of the collecting world could take a cold look at Sayles' bibliography and work out what is missing - or more importantly what has not yet been written and published in a formal form.

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