SLAM Bumper Sticker

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The  Malibu office of the Association for Museum Professional Excellence  (AMPE) has brought out a bumper sticker to publicise the damaging effects of museums retaining artefacts which they know are of dodgy provenance.

The St Louis city fathers evidently see it as a source of pride to exhibit stolen objects in their art museum. This ignores the feelings of good decent folk having the stigma attached to admitting that they are a citizen of such a place. This campaign will hopefully lead to the Museum Trustees becoming more aware of the damage they are doing to the image of their city by refusing for so long to do the right thing. In the coming weeks, these bumper stickers will be available from a AMPE office near you, except in St Louis of course (SLAM does not belong to the AMPE).

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.

ANS: Heath Tries to Persuade

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The next contribution to the American Numismatic Society (ANS) discussion about "Ancient Coins and the Cultural Property Debate" (see the post above this) is a text by archaeologist ("lifetime ANS member") Sebastian Heath who is there to present the archaeological view ( Peter Tompa is the next contributor invited ). I must admit I found Heath's text disagreeably smarmy in tone and lacking somewhat in content (the first two paragraphs are solely about the author - repeating to some extent Witschonke's introduction - so a slow start).

The archaeological content is missing because like coiney Witschonke in the preceding piece, Heath inexplicably presents an object-centred view. In his all-too brief presentation, a hoard (the Frome Hoard from England) is contrasted with coins the selling of which somehow (not really explained) "leads to further destruction of knowledge about the ancient world" because "the coins found by a detectorist and his mates could have been of great cultural importance". Well obviously they are not, I discuss this case in some detail on this blog (Wednesday, 6 October 2010, Wisconsin Reverend has Metal Detecting Friends in the UK and here, 20 October 2010 More Coins Fresh from the English Archaeological Record on Sale in Wisconsin ) and list the sort of coins involved.* Its not the coins that are important here, but the fact that they were ripped from an unknown site or sites without any form of documentation, which is information that can never be put back into the archaeological record. The archaeological information contained in those sites has been damaged or destroyed just so that somebody across the sea can have a few more coins to fondle.

Sadly, Heath gives his readers not an inkling of the fact that what is of importance is not that "the coins are taken" to fuel the expanding no-questions asked market, but "what they are taken from" and the damage caused when this occurs. That is what the archaeologist invited to contribute to this debate should surely be getting over here.

Perhaps he cannot do that for two reasons. The first is that the USA where this debate is taking place has no archaeological sites of its own producing these ancient coins. The looting the market for "minor" (sic) metal artefacts from Antiquity causes is perhaps not so much in-your-face over there as it is on this side of the Atlantic. The American collector is divorced from it somewhat, these apparently are wholly abstract concepts for them - but this should not apply to Dr Heath who has worked over here if I am not mistaken. Also this is just a result of the narrow focus of such people, looting of other artefactual material does take place in the US and the destruction to the archaeological record is just as great if it is Anasazi pots or Attic pots and coins being dug out.

Perhaps a more significant reason is that Heath chose the British Isles as his example, and as we all know, "metal detecting" is not there in any way (we are asked to believe) "damaging", but instead the British artefact collectors plundering British sites for collectables some of which are destined for the international market are (we are asked to believe) British archaeology's "partners". It would have been better if Heath had taken Bulgaria as his example - for that is clearly where very many of the coins on the US market are coming from, and the issues are far clearer. The photos from Archar for example are really shocking.

[*Far more apposite as a contrast to Heath's hoard example would have been the comparison with another dodgy deal of the same seller: Monday, 8 March 2010 Wisconsin Clergyman Sells Unprovenanced Augustan Coin hoard on eBay].

Vignette: this should be about conservation, not saving numismatic information.
Threatened heathland at Hawley Common, Rushmore England.
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UK Detectorists' Supporter's Mixed Loyalties Over Illicit Antiquities

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Candice Jarman, the supporter of UK artefact hunters against what he terms the "lies and distortions of the radical archaeologists", is adamant that the international antiquities trade is "largely licit" ("and laws to punish illicit trafficking exist already") [where have we heard all this before?]. Having stressed earlier that collectors buying from this trade are mainly interested in acquiring licit, well-provenanced antiquities, it is therefore odd to see him now attacking US antiquity dealer Dave Welsh's ideas about how the market can be supplied with more licit, well-provenanced antiquities. Candice is of the opinion that this type of scheme "has no place in a free society".

Mr Jarman's profile announces he is interested in "freedom" (capitalised). It is interesting to note the kind of freedom he promotes. After commenting on the "decline of the West" with "the balance of power and wealth now moving eastwards", Candice seeks symptoms of that in:

the treatment of Marion True, Getty Curator, and the continual repatriation of objects to Italy (whose museums and store-rooms must be over-flowing with stuff already!). Would a confident and assertive country act like this? If I was in the White House - I would have told Italy where to go - Italy needs America far more than America needs Italy surely.

(Besides the fact that I am sorely puzzled by what logic someone in the UK sees Italy as somehow "the East")... Marion True was being tried for her alleged involvement in the purchase of illicit antiquities (the antiquities were illicitly obtained, what was in question in her trial was her personal involvement and knowledge of that). The objects recently returned to Italy from US museums were not licitly exported, not a single valid export licence was produced for any of them. What Italy is now asking is for the USA to put import restrictions on (and ONLY on) antiquities illegally exported from Italy in the period covered by the CCPIA. I really cannot see why the USA (voluntarily a state party to the 1970 UNESCO Convention after all) should exert its "confidence and assertiveness" by "telling Italy where to go". What kind of talk is that from a self-proclaimed responsible collector? That's pirate talk.

More pirate talk - if the people labelled (falsely) "anti-collecting" succeed in curbing the no-questions-asked trade in illicit antiquities:

The anti's true legacy will be our cultural decline and impoverishment.

As if building collections of stolen and smuggled artefacts was in some way a symbol of cultural superiority and richness for this apostrophe-abusing British artefact collector. Candice reveals himself by this to be a collector no less the crypto-imperialist and neocolonialist than his US "Cultural Internationalist" counterparts.

So if Italy asked Britain for some freshly surfaced (from underground) recently stolen artefacts to be investigated and returned, antiquity collector Candice would expect Her Majesty's Government to exert its "confidence and assertiveness" by "telling Italy where to go"?


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Vignette: is antiquity collector Candice Jarman a British bulldog lover?

Reflections on Yet Another CPAC Written Submission from a Coiney on the Greek/US Illegally Exported Artefacts MOU

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Rick Witschonke wrote to me yesterday about my earlier comments on his contribution to the CPAC meeting on the Greek/US Illegally Exported Artefacts MOU as reported by Peter Tompa. He says the full richness of his ideas was not represented by the lawyer and sent me the text of his written submission which had not been submitted electronically. It is over 2600 words in length, he said he only summarised the "key points" in his CPAC oral presentation, and invites me to comment on his text here but says "But I would prefer it if you would post the entire document, and not just quote snippets".

Having thought about that option, I decided it would be best if Witschonke made his own arrangements for the dissemination of the text of his ideas in full, maybe on one of the collectors' forums. I'll therefore share a few thoughts on the text as a whole and citing one "snippet". [UPDATE: well, of course I should have guessed who would be asked to host this text, Tompa called it " A Rational Proposal for the Hellenic Republic". How "rational" it is, the non-coiney reader can decide after reading it].

My feeling is this letter is wholly typical of the milieu, very similar in intent to all the other coiney submissions to the CPAC. The style in which it was written, like that of many of the others, did not seem to me appropriate to the occasion. It also immediately shifted the focus of the discussion - claiming (despite its name) that the purpose of the CCPIA is to "stop looting" [in Greece] and NOT "implement the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property" (note the word "looting" does not occur in that overly-long title). So then he discusses ways that Greece could stop the looting without increased vigilance at US borders preventing the import of illegally exported material (Witschonke like the rest of the coineys argues that this would not help anyway - though to his credit he at least did not winge about "discrimination against US collectors"). What he avoids discussing are any other benefits that would accrue from stopping the import into the US of illegally exported archaeological artefacts (or any other cultural property).

In effect Witschonke argues that the US should make US compliance with the spirit of the 1970 UNESCO Convention dependent on Greece first altering its conceptions about what is and is not significant [archaeological] material, urging that it should adopt criteria more similar to those applied in the UK (he means England and Wales I guess). In the process he presents a warped picture of what the UK legislation consists of (which is a source of amazement to me as I know he has had it explained to him in great detail by his pal Roger Bland as well as myself - now why is this?). He hypothesises that until Greece does this, it may be considered by CPAC as having NOT taken measures consistent with the Convention to protect its cultural patrimony (and so- he carefully argues - the MOU request should be refused).

A moment's thought shows this is deceptive nonsense. The measures referred to in CCPIA are concerned with the "illegal import, export and transfer of ownership" of the Convention, aren't they? Also by what right would the US have to say a country is "not looking after its heritage" if the US itself does not apply the legislation to which Witschonke refers? There is no Treasure Act in the USA with a market-value reward system to ensure important finds are reported and preserved. There is no Portable Antiquities Scheme for finds made by artefact hunters, pot-diggers arrowhead collectors, Civil War Battlefield searching metal detectorists. So why should Greece be penalised by America on these grounds? That is just insulting and ureasonable. Mr Witschonke, you and your fellows set up a nation-wide PAS system and Treasure Act in the US first, before you try to coerce other countries into adopting one. The very idea!

I'm going to quote this snippet,

Why do archeologists oppose the UK approach? [...] In fact, even Paul Barford, one of the most rabid critics of the UK TA/PAS, admits that “the vast majority of British archeologists are ‘quite comfortable, thanks’ that they have PAS to ‘deal with’ the collecting problem” (see: http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2010/09/is-for-apathy-and-archaeology.html). Perhaps this is because they view it as a reasonable compromise, and the best way to maximize the preservation of archeological context.

"Rabid", eh? It is probably one of the symptoms of my madness that it seems to me that my criticism of the PAS as a means of preserving the archaeological record from looting is a wholly rational consequence of examining it from that angle.

I suspect the problem here is that in general Americans "don't do irony", and Witsconke has failed utterly to grasp the thought behind the words. I may be accused of many things, but failing to spell out in black and white in my own words what I think about the way British archaeology is dealing with artefact collectors is surely not one of them ! If Mr Witschonke were to look a little deeper he would know what I meant about the nature of the "collecting problem" the PAS shields English and Welsh archaeologists from. So is this deliberate coiney misrepresentation, or coiney superficiality and misapprehension? How can any archaeologist consider that encouraging artefact collecting (whether "responsible" or not) is the "best way to maximize the preservation of archaeological context"? Beats me, but then I'm not wearing any coiney-view-of-the-world glasses.

In general as far as Witschonke is concerned, his government should stipulate that those foreigners that have requested the US honour the spirit of the 1970 UNESCO Convention can have what they want ONLY AFTER they push a substantial number of collectables onto the US market, and while they fail to do so, should allow artefacts illegally exported from Greece to pass freely through US borders without any additional ICE scrutiny. That is basically what his letter to the CPAC, however he may want to dress it up in carefully-constructed lengthy arguments, is saying.

To my eyes, the approach American collectors like Witschonke adopt is extraordinarily arrogant and neo-colonial. Treating other states as so-called "source countries" for a raw material the US needs to import in growing quantities while giving back very little in return is pure colonialism. To deceive, coineys call it "internationalism" but at its basis is good old fashioned American exclusionism and chauvinism, and indeed "cultural nationalism" (in the proper sense of the use of the word). This is not entirely his own fault; this seems to be a fairly general attitude among US collectors of somebody else's dug up archaeological finds. They see the Manifest Destiny of the US is to be a world-police in cultural property matters, ordering all the lesser nations about concerning what they can and cannot consider as their own cultural property, the only arbiter of what is good and proper in foreign sovereign states (whose own policies and opinions on the matter are to be overridden as mistaken and 'unenlightened'). If the foreigners will not play ball with US collectors and give them everything they want, then - these people are saying - they cannot count on any US support in their efforts to preserve their heritage. If they will not play ball, US collectors and dealers will continue to treat it all as 'up for grabs' for their unfettered use in identity-building or whatever they use this stuff for. That is basically the message that is continually pumped out by this milieu, including Witschonke's letter to the CPAC.

This is wholly contrary to the spirit of the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Article 1 states that each nation has the right to decide what it considers as its cultural property and embody that in legislation, within the limits set down by that article. Coineys frequently misrepresent the meaning of Art. 1 but here Witschonke is ignoring its presence in the Convention totally. What Greece considers is cultural property falling under the 1970 Convention is for Greece and Greece alone to decide, not some distant eleven-member CPAC in some wannabe-Welthaupstadt-Washington. The states party to the 1970 UNESCO Convention have all agreed (by the act of acceding to it) to help each other deal with instances of illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property.

All, that is, except the United States of America, where each nation wanting that help from the US has to 'ask nicely please', satisfy some committee - meeting in Washington who listens to dealers and collectors and their lobbyists, and after long deliberation and reporting to Congress and all that - decides whether or not to graciously agree to do 'just for now' what the 1970 Convention says we all should be doing all the time. This is craziness gone mad.

Let the United States do the decent thing and get out of the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Let it admit that many of its antiquity dealers prefer to be cowboys, that the US government cannot regulate against this because the cowboys kick up too much of a fuss and even congressmen join in with opposing measures intended to stop imports of illegally exported material. Let the world see the US antiquity market for what it is, what it itself actually does not shrink from showing the rest of the world. Let the US continue "helping" the worldwide effort to prevent illegal exports of antiquities through its limiting 1983 CCPIA (merely renaming it), but let it stop pretending that the US trade in antiquities as a whole complies with the 1970 Convention as a whole, because in its current form it does not. After all, the US has nothing to lose, the country has very little archaeological material (or anything old much) that finds as large a market outside the country as artefacts from just about any region of the ancient world (including other American countries) have in the US. The US is not really in a position to demonstrate that its being "in" the Convention actually makes a lot of difference to what is traded by US dealers on a daily basis.

A final thought. While the sort of attitudes we see among collectors, dealers et al. in that country persist, should the day come when we all sit down and redraft the 1970 Convention more in line with the needs of dealing with the antiquities market of the 21st century (as we must), heaven forbid that the '1983' generation of Americans get anywhere near the table.

Alternatively they could have a look at their law written in the early 1980s and consider whether it really is a suitable US response to the form of global trade in antiquities which exists in 2010. After all it seems a bit dumb for the US collector to be calling on Greece to follow Britain's modern legislation (1996 and 2003) based on an outdated law from the times of Reagan.

Twelve Wisconsin Philistines in Congress

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Well this has to be the oddest piece of news ever to leave the shores of the United States. We all remember the infamous 2006 Wisconsin Declaration, its poison influence is now spreading even as far as Texas. The ACCG has just posted on its website a facsimile of a letter on US Congress letterhead dated Sept 27th 2010, addressed to Secretary of State Clinton.

This is what it says:

Dear Madam Secretary,
we write today to express concern with certain actions of the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural affairs ("ECA") that appear to undermine the legislative intent of Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act ("CPIA"), 19 U.S.C. Section 2601 et seq. This legislation which was drafted by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, furthers our national interest in promoting cultural access and trade which is central to our nation's values.

Recently, the ECA imposed restrictions on the importation of coins from Cyprus and China that clearly are contrary to the intent of the enabling legislation. In particular, we understand that the past Chairman of the President's Cultural property Advisory Committee stated in a declaration filed in federal court that his committee recommended against import restrictions on coins. However, ECA imposed them anyway. We also understand that Freedom of Information Act requests have confirmed that China never asked for import restrictions on coins, but that ECA provided them to China anyway.

The CPIA, "concerted international response" requirement is meant to ensure the comity and effectiveness of such import restrictions, but the rules on Cypriot and Chinese coins only discriminate against American collectors, and represent a taking of their private property. Foreigners - including collectors in Cyprus and China - continue to import coins without any restrictions. We request that you initiate a review of these two actions, and if it is concluded that the law or any procedures have been broken, that the State Department suspend these restrictions promptly.

We also understand that ECA is considering a renewal of the current MOU with Italy, which expires in January 2011 and possible expansion to include import restrictions on ancient Greek and Roman artefacts for another five years. Rules about import restrictions on cultural artefacts from Italy were first promulgated in 2001 and 2006. As a quid pro quo, Italy promised to increase long term loans to all US museums to facilitate the issuance of export permits for cultural goods legitimately sold within Italy, and to increase Italy's efforts against looters. We further understand that of these requirements, only the last related to Italy's enforcement efforts has been realised.

We hope that before any action is taken on renewing the MOU the State Department conduct a full review of Italian compliance with the current MOU's provisions concerning long term loans and the facilitation of export permits for legally acquired cultural items. Italian non-compliance with the current MOU should not be rewarded as that would only serve to deny Americans' promised cultural opportunities. Even more specifically, there should be no expansion of the MOU to include coins, commonplace items that stand outside the scope of the legislative intent behind CPIA.

We look forward to hearing your actions in support of our above requests to strengthen CPIA
Sincerly.

The 12 Signatories are, to their shame:
Paul Ryan (R-WI), Thomas Petri (R-WI), John Culberson (R-TX), Michael Burgess (R-TX), Sam Johnson (R-TX), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Ciro Rodriguez (D-TX), John Campbell (R-CA), Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) , Rob Wittman (R-VA), John Spratt (D-SC) and Joe Courtney (D-CT).

Ryan, Petrie and Culberson are recipients of ACCG Friends of Numismatics Awards. The ACCG notes that the lead in the preparation of this text was Ryan, so let's call them the 'Wisconsin 12'.



So it looks like the ACCG are going after Hilary Clinton now. If her Department does not find any law or procedure broken by its staff with regard to the China and Cyprus ancient coin import restrictions, but the Baltimore illegal coin import stunt case says otherwise, then will the ACCG press for her dismissal?

So checking Italy's "compliance", is that not the task of the CPAC?

Now, I really am puzzled by what the Wisconsin12 Congresspeople think is the "legislative intent" of an act called the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act. Surely it is intended to implement the measures laid down in the Convention mentioned in its preamble, in other words the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property. Is that not so?

Now surely the aim of the Convention as its name implies is Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property between and within the territories of the various States Party, and not "furthering US national interest in promoting cultural access and trade" (whether or not making money from such trade is or is not "central to our nation's values"). Certainly the intent of the Convention is the trade in illegally exported cultural property should not become "central" to the national values of any of the States party. It seems to me that in their haste to prove themselves Friends of Numismatics by reducing the scope of the implementation of the 1970 Convention, the Wisconsin Twelve seem to lost sight of some of those key national values.

'Implementing the Convention' means implementing the Convention surely and not implementing a law which says the convention is all very fine but if we actually prohibit and prevent our citizens from being involved in the illicit import and transfer of cultural property certain key national values are going to suffer. I wonder what those key values could be?

The illicit import and transfer of cultural property involves stealing. Is theft from others a key national value of the Wisconsin 12's United States?
The illicit import and transfer of cultural property involves dishonourable trade practices, lies on the customs declaration forms, is dishonesty and dishonour now a key American value?
The illicit import and transfer of cultural property taken from other countries is a deep disregard and disrespect for the rights of the citizens of the countries from which they are illegally removed, since when was disregard and disrespect for others a key US national value?

"Our nation's values", what does the Wisconsin Twelve's letter to Secretary Hilary Clinton say about them? What message is the United States Congress giving out to the rest of the world here? Take a good look everybody at how the US democratic process works, apparently all you have to do is give out a few wall plaques made on the cheap in Turkey to a few congressmen and it seems from this letter that you can get twelve of them in your pocket. Nice.

I wonder to what extent the twelve signatories of this letter are aware that restrictions only apply to coins without documentation of legal export which can be supplied by two types of pieces of paper? There is no restriction on the movement through US borders of coins of the designated categories with the proper paperwork, nor of coins from those countries which do not fall in the designated categories. There is no sign in the letter that the Congressmen were appraised of this. On the contrary, it looks very much like from the wording of what they wrote that they had allowed themselves to be misinformed about the nature of the restrictions.

As for what they write about China, I fail to see why when a nation whose archaeological material includes ancient coins asks for archaeological artefacts to be protected it has to add "and coins". That's like saying legislation about canine vaccination must included the words "and chihuahuas and poodles". Coins ARE artefacts, unless they were made by the coin elves, maybe the Wisconsin12 believe in the coin elves and therefore think looting is quite unrelated to the trade in illegally exported artefacts? Who knows what they think? But I am of the opinion that they should be asked.

The Congress12 claim that American collectors are discriminated against by American laws, note that they fail to mention dealers. Why? Of course it is not just American collectors is it? Mexican coin collectors in the US will also have to comply with US law on this matter. It is of course true that collectors of the source countries have no restriction on "import" of these coins, they come from the soil there. Duh.

How can restricting the import of improperly exported coins "represent a taking of the private property" of collectors ? (Note again dealers are not mentioned.) How can a US citizen own something knowingly acquired in disregard of the relevant laws?

As for the Wisconsin12 saying that their letter is merely an attempt "to strengthen CPIA", they must think Secretary of State Clinton is a nine-year old to fall for that one. They are not only attempting to undermine the CCPIA, but also the intent of the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Look on world, see how these 12 Congressmen value accession to an international Convention.

I do not understand why on the second page bearing the signatures (several of which give the impression have being done using the same pen) there are four empty lines. Were there initially supposed to have been four other Congressmen who had initially agreed to sign but had second thoughts when they realised what was going on? If so, good for them - may we know their names?

The ACCG urges "Ancient coin collectors who are represented in Washington by any of these Members of Congress are encouraged to contact the local or national offices and thank them for their support". There are, I firmly believe, large numbers of people who care for the protection of the world's archaeological record from commercial exploitation by looters to fuel the US no-questions-asked market in ancient coins (V-coins alone today 147 dealers in ancient dugups, 111,096 items, value: 22,341,929 dollars). If any of them are represented in Washington by any of these twelve Members of Congress signatory to this disgraceful letter I'd encourage them to contact the local or national offices and ask them just what they think they are doing. Is that how they represent the DECENT folk of their nation?

Photos of the Friends of Numismatics receiving tinny ACCG wall plaques from the ACCG website.

Tom Flynn on the Colonial Disembodiment of Voices

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Tom Flynn speaks of the colonial disembodiment of voices as represented by the British Museum's collections. Worth a read.

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)

Charles Karukstis and the Opponents of No-Questions-Asked Collecting

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Charles Karukstis (Life Fellow and a Director of the American Numismatic
Society) says that collectors of ancient artefacts should not be mistaken, they are "under assault" (he is of course referring to the request by Greece to the US goverment to prevent US dealers and collectors importing ancient artefacts that have been illegally exported from Greece). He says:

Our adversaries may include zealots and eccentrics among them, but they are led by elites with a shrewd and formidable strategy. Those adversaries may distract us with various slogans about cultural heritage, but their clear motivation is control of all artifacts - aiding and abetting the source countries, and encouraging their rank and file to prattle on with political epithets, are simply practicalities of achieving their goal. The fact that millions of coins are caught up in the debate about singular artifacts which might be considered of "cultural" importance is of no concern to them. It is imperative for us to understand that these adversaries will not listen to reason, they will not compromise, they will not "work out a deal", and most important, they will not desist, ever. [...] This is not a battle over looting (which all of us oppose) - this is a struggle for control of all artifacts, by source countries for their propaganda and monetary value, and by academics for publication rights.

Mr Karukstis does not explain how no-questions-asked buyers of ancient dugup artefacts "oppose" looting rather than abet it. Nor does he explain what these opponents are going to DO with all the artefacts once they've controlled them. In denying that what is being opposed is the destruction of archaeological information by collector-induced looting, he does not seem to recognise that the whole point is that there should not be new artefacts "surfacing" all the time, the opponents of the no-questions-asked market want to see them preserved in their archaeological contexts.

Mr Karukstis either does not understand or is deliberately misleading his readers. The aim of this is to protect archaeological sites for being trashed in the hunt for saleable collectable artefacts, it makes not a difference if the digging results in a bucketfull of coins and brooch feet or some 'artifacts which might be considered of especial cultural importance', a hole in an archaeological site is a hole in an archaeological site and millions of holes (for Mr K's "millions of coins") are millions of holes in archaeological sites.

Finally how awful it is that all these opponents of the unregulated market aiding the source countries to look after their archaeological heritage while collectors want it all dug up and sold off to them through the Internet. Actually I thought there was only one archaeological heritage even Mr Karukstis refers to "objects of our common heritage" (though I would broaden that notion to more than just "objects" fresh-out-of-the-ground).

Mr Karukstis seems to think the artefact hunters and collectors achieved something with their fax bombing of the State Department over the imagined threat of the extension of the Italy/US cultural property MOU:

The number of responses caught CPAC off guard, and the current implementation of restricting communication to a web form is a result of our efforts.

Well, I think far from "restricting" communication, the new form of communication (not of course restricted to State Department initiatives, there being a lot of environmental issues discussed on other parts of the site) actually allows everybody to see and judge the arguments being offered and opinions being expressed. Rather than be restricted to hidden faxes, the collectors' and dealers' points of view are laid open for everybody to see.

Of course the whole point of Mr K's long message to coin collectors is wholly predictable:

I urge anyone who cares even the slightest about preserving access to our common heritage to take three minutes to express their views. The direct link to
the comment page is here....

Yes go on you simple-minded dugup coin guzzlers, tell the CPAC to oppose the opponents of no-questions-asked collecting in their attempts to "control all artifacts and gain control of everybody's private property", expose their idealistic attempts to "aid and abet the source countries" which are asking the US to aid them, expose their political epithets with your Shakespearian prose. Tell the CPAC the way to preserve access to our common heritage is to allow the looters to carry on trashing the archaeological sites of Greece so Mr Karukstis and his fellow US ancient dugup coin fondlers can buy them and pretend they are "doing science".

I rather think that it is becoming completely clear that it is the dealers in ancient dugup coins and their collectors who will not listen to reason, will not compromise, will not "work out a deal", and will not willingly desist from their bad practices.

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The "My Especial Heritage" Argument

Alfredo de La Fe continues on the Moneta-L discussion list:

The biggest issue as far as I am concerned is that Italy has no right to "own" the cultural heritage of the Roman Empire and even less of a right to consider coins as cultural heritage/property. A coin struck at Rome, Ostia, etc. can be found from one end of the the ancient world to the other. Many of my ancestors (3 or 4 generations ago) were from Spain and I consider the Roman Empire as part of MY cultural heritage/ identity.

So this means that he claims the "right" to be able to ignore export licencing which "restricts his right" to that heritage. This seems a common argument among US collectors, they ascribe themselves the "right to" particular groups of cultural material as the inheritors of these cultural traditions. I drew attention for example a few days ago to the two guys claiming to be of "Assyrian" descent - whatever that means - who felt it gave them personally some kind of a "right" to decide what should happen to a gold plaque excavated in an Assyrian archaeological site.
Dan Mancuso writes on the same list:

I say good luck to them [Italy]... it is MY Roman coin, I am of Roman decent, neither me or my coin owe anything to Italy, now or ever (other then perhaps pride of being Italian, and I probably have cousins there... Hi cuz!)

This "my especial heritage" (MEH) argument, like the indiscriminate use of the TRAMP one ("The Right to Access My Past") is a false one if it is linked with the idea "so it should be my personal right to collect as much of it whatever the circumstances". This is the case when the circumstances ignored are those of the rights of others equally (or perhaps more) entitled to the use of the same limited resource. Being a citizen of the US (or other prosperous country) with more purchasing power does not automatically bestow rights over others.

The scramble for Africa’s treasures

From Nigeria Daily News Sun, 21 Mar 2010:

"The history of the African continent is littered with the exploits of plunderers. Slave traders - local and foreign - held sway for centuries, carting multitudes of Africans across the Atlantic, to plantations in the Americas and elsewhere. When the slave trade went out of fashion, the land grab followed. In Berlin in 1885, the colonial warriors carved Africa up into bits - represented on the map as brightly coloured slices - which they then proceeded to administer and exploit, until the wave of independence that arrived with the 1950s. Following that phase, the scramble has largely taken on an economic dimension, with Africa’s oil and minerals and farmlands up for grabs. Less overt, is another kind of plunder - involving the relocation of hundreds of valuable pieces of artwork - sculptures, pottery, from Africa to museums and private collections in the West. Take Benin’s bronze heads for example. In 1897, the British attacked and destroyed the Benin Kingdom. In the process they gained access to the Kingdom’s rich trove of extraordinary artwork, which they wasted no time looting. And the plunder has continued to the present day. Over the last few decades, hundreds of vigango (ancestral totems used to mark burial sites) have disappeared from Kenyan villages, ending up in museums and private collections in the United States. In 1994, the National Museum in Ile-Ife was broken into three times, with the vandals carting away some of the finest heads in the collection.

It is estimated that the global illicit trade in artifacts is currently worth billions of dollars. It would also not be farfetched to say that the West’s thriving exhibition circuit is propped up to a significant extent by artifacts illegally acquired from Africa. An exhibition, currently going on in London at the moment, is showing the finest of Ife’s terracotta and brass heads. At the moment, there are no plans to host the exhibition in Nigeria.

It would not be true, or fair, however, to lay the blame solely at the feet of Europe and America. The West would find it extremely difficult to gain possession of African artifacts, especially in contemporary times, without the collusion of Africans themselves, within and outside the government bureaucracy. Unscrupulous Western businessmen and art dealers may pay for Kenya’s vigango, but the actual stealing is done by unscrupulous Kenyan youth, who loot burial sites".

The rest is here.

Vignettes: Vigango in the gallery and in context (SAFE). Heads-up from Museum Security Network.

Going too Far?

Californian coin dealer Dave Welsh reposts the entire text of David Gill's discussion "Looting matters" of the Baltimore Illegal Coin Import stunt on his blog ("Going too far...")! In his reply he trots out the same old stuff the ACG has been saying all along, but does not explain why dealers in other types of antiquities from China and Cyprus are not taking part in this court action.

Neither does he actually answer the question posed about what dealers in ancient dugups are doing to show they "care if archaeological sites on Cyprus are being looted to provide archaeological material for the market". Welsh answers that the position of the ACCG is that "the right to collect and to own antiquities is a far more important and ultimately transcendent legal principle". Also

In the absence of anything approaching any actual factual evidence that archaeological sites on Cyprus are really being looted to provide coins for US collectors, there is every reason to object to and legally challenge these far-reaching import restrictions.

But then it is beyond dispute that the CPAC agreed that the restricting of imports of Cypriot artefacts into the USA would have a positive effect on reducing looting. it is in their report released by the FOI claim. The same one that it is planned to present as "evidence" in the upcomuing trial if it allowed.

Welsh comments on David Gill's attitudes to this coin stunt: "raises a significant question, as to whether he views the narrow and parochial interests of archaeology being so transcendent that they necessarily trump all British and US common law, and also essential human rights of US citizens". And what of the attitudes of US coin dealers and collectors, do they not raises a significant question, as to whether they views the selfish, narrow and parochial interests of the trade in archaeological artefacts being so transcendent that they necessarily trump all attempts to protect the archaeological and cultural heritage of other nations by international cooperation and legislative measure and also essential human rights of the citizens of the countries affected by the destructive exploitation of their cultural heritage for commercial ends? Should this not be seen as a grassroots attempt of American citizens to claim the right to exercise their own colonialist ideologies at the expense of others?

In a situation when it turns out that over a half of the ancient coins currently in private hands in the US according to a recent report are demonstrably recently and illicitly imported looted archaeological artefacts and not from the recirculation of material from old collections as so frequently claimed, then the attitudes of the coin dealers to mild measures intended to decrease the flow of illicitly exported coins from two countries affected by looting really raises a whole load of questions about the nature of this sorr trade.