Diva Dorothy's Database

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Dorothy King has announced on her PhDiva website that she's concerned about all the looted artefacts that are on the market these days (Looting: Egypt, Libya, The Medici Archive etc) She says she's

been working on a database of looted and potentially looted archaeological material, because none seem to exist and after the problems earlier this year in Egypt, and the potential issues in Libya [...] one is badly needed. Initial conversations seem to be ... well everyone's getting political, and frankly is 'sitting' on their own material without sharing it, which kinda defeats the purpose of having photos as they are not doing any good if others don't know about them. I've dropped a few people emails as a courtesy to let them know I'm starting to put in Freedom of Information requests to get access to the photographs.

Good idea. I'd be interested to see what answer she'd get to a FOI request to the British government to release photographs of all the "looted and potentially looted archaeological material" that has surfaced on the British market in the last decade or so.

Of course the people who really ARE sitting on a lot of information are dealers who refuse to share with each other and their customers where the antiquities they sell actually come from. I'd like to ask what effect her archived photographs will have when dealers refuse to acknowledge that the artefacts they are selling are shown in them? There have been several cases of precisely this recently - surely that tells us something about the trade.

Who is going to finance the long term maintenance of this database? How will PhDiva ensure the information in it does not get into the wrong hands? How much is she insuring herself for in the case of being sued for wrongful claims or one Mafia or another interesting themselves in what she is doing and its effect on their business partnerships?
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Knee-jerk in slow motion: The ACCG and Christopher Metsos

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I wondered how long this would take coming, the coineys are so predictable, but this one took a few days to get through the fog in the synapses caused by too much contact with dug-ups, from the former president of the ACCG Washington lawyer Peter Tompa: 'So Much for Cooperation: Greek Cypriots Let Suspected Russian Spy Escape'.

1) Of course reading the somewhat unbalanced treatment given in the Washington Post article cited there, it apparently never occurs to somebody whether the illegal export of antiquities from the island might not all be in the hands of local organized criminal gangs... Who are these "Russians" who have the Mediterranean villas and offshore banking accounts on the island? Does not the extremely lucrative no-questions-asked international antiquities market hold any temptations for any of them?

One wonders why a US group would be wanting to fight the regulation of the illegal market, with whom would that be collaborating? What business links do ACCG members have in Cyprus? In Communist China, in Bulgaria and Italy? Indeed, what are the business and political links of the many eastern Europeans currently involved both as dealers and middlemen (suppliers) in the US and UK and other countries in Europe selling dugups and fakes indiscriminately? Into whose pockets is the money from the n0-questions-asked antiquities trade going (and if no questions are asked, how can anyone tell)?

2) odd, isn't it ? The US "collectors' rights" lobby loudly protests its "innocence" (of complicity in crimes against cultural property) because it is not actually illegal to buy in the US coins that have been illegally exported from another country since no US laws have been broken". This is their constitutional right they say. This is not even against their so-called "code of ethics". But one of their member thinks an accused man should be locked up in a foreign country on some vague allegations that he might somehow have been involved with people who it is alleged may have broken the law in the US. Surely by the ACCG line of reasoning, there should first be a demonstration that a Cypriot law was broken by this man. I think it has long been clear that there is a signal lack of logic and coherence in the arguments of the no-questions-asked collecting lobby, this is a case in point.

3) How astounding, the US government attempts to STOP American dealers buying illegally exported coins (coins that no ethical or moral businessmen would want to sell anyway) and then its citizens like Mr Tompa apparently expect the foreign country they come from to fall at its feet in gratitude and do anything the US demand of it. ["Jail this man!!" "yes, Uncle Sam, Sir! Can I lick your boots too?"]. Cyprus is a sovereign state, not a US satellite, and has its own laws which are not written in Washington. Its judicial procedure and exercise of human rights cannot be bought with the promise to stop US businesses trading in illegally exported dugup ancient coins which the rest of the civilised world thinks they should not be selling anyway. Especially when a whole group of them say they are not going to stop anyway and are even publicising the fact that they have already illegally imported a batch of them to "challenge" the US government because they want the law overturned. That is hardly likely to make Cyprus think that the "gift" offered by the US was offered with any sincerity or hope of success.

Really, the narrow-minded arrogance of these people !!

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Museum Security, Art, Antiquities and Organized Crime

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On the Museum Security List appeared an online version of an interview with former FBI arts crime agent Robert Wittman published in 'Art & Antiques Magazine' which its author Jonathan Lopez states that "Mr Wittman thoroughly debunked some of the more fanciful theories regarding the methods and motives behind art theft that one sees floated by certain individuals". Ton Cremers remarked that it is:

Very good to read that Wittman demystifies (sic) the role of organized crime and art theft. There are too few instances of involvement of organized crime (apart from the role of Italian organized crime and tombaroli). Yet, again and again one can read in interviews that art theft is an organized crime specialty.

This comes down again to the rather broad scope of this thing called "art crime". Cremers is talking about Museum Security issues, art taken from known collections. It seems to me the clandestine digging over of archaeological sites to "recover" saleable bits and pieces is a different kettle of fish.

Certainly it is not just in the case of the tombaroli that we see a potential connection between archaeological looting and organized crime. In the case of eastern Europe there is a clear coincidence in the rise of the bulk trade of antiquities to foreign markets and the development of organized criminal activity on the collapse of political systems and economies in the wake of the dismantling of the Soviet Bloc. The appearance of this material on the western markets is falsely portrayed by western dealers as due to the "surfacing" of material kept in "old collections" forced underground before 1989 by the old antiquity preservation laws. They fail to acknowledge that the reform of these laws only took place well after the material had begun to appear on external markets. What had changed was the possibilities of those with a certain type of "business connections" to get the stuff out of the country without it being stopped. It is from this group of individuals that the supplies of material have been reaching western markets.

While a seller might get away with putting a few dugup ancient coins in a padded envelope, tucked in a piece of cardboard or otherwise disguised as something else and writing "collectors' supplies" (or whatever) on the customs form, when more than several kilogrammes of metal detected finds are involved, the problems are more acute. They are a little more noticeable. So how to get them through customs when many of the source countries have legislation forbidding such exports? Obviously it helps if the smuggler belongs to some group which has "connections" in the right places to get a blind eye turned.

It provokes thought that a writer for a US arts and antiques magazine might be concerned to dismiss the issue of the connections between the trade and foreign organized crime. Mr Lopez therefore asked Witman:

From time to time I’ve been told that most of the world’s biggest art heists are carried out by organized crime syndicates, who then use the stolen works as collateral to finance drug deals, arms trafficking or even acts of terrorism. I don’t recall seeing this system of underworld finance described in your book.

The answer was that "there are a lot of people who make things up to get their names in the paper". Wittman states that thieves are not stealingpictures (nota bene) to trade them back and forth as some kind of financial leverage to each other, though there may be isolated cases of this happening. The reason why this is the case is that the "street value of a stolen painting is nothing". As Wittman says:

The art of art theft is not in the stealing. It’s in the selling. You can sell cocaine on a street corner. A stolen Brueghel, you can’t [...] The easiest sales occur in cases of pilfering, which is a different category of crime from armed robbery. When you have an insider, someone like a museum guard or a janitor, moving things around in storage cases and pocketing a couple items, in some instances things like that might get sold to a partner in the trade, a dealer, who knows that he has a market to sell into..

With an armed robbery, where the circumstances of the crime are public knowledge and the artworks are immediately recognizable, making a sale is much more difficult.

Wittman: Ransoms and rewards can be one way to profit from a big museum robbery. Also [...], some thieves are smart enough to know that they can use these artworks as a get-out-of-jail-free card for other crimes they’ve committed, bargaining for a reduced sentence. But basically there’s no way to reintroduce these things into the legitimate marketplace. If you bring a stolen Rembrandt to Christie’s or Sotheby’s, it will be seized. So if you’re trying to sell it, you’re limited to the criminal market, where the works will be worth, at best, 10 percent of their open-market value. And that’s only if you can find a buyer...

Of course the sellers of freshly dug-up antiquities which nobody has seen before they "surface" (from "underground") on the market is that much easier. Questions about missing provenance can be brazened out, indeed as we have seen, many collectors really could not care less about where the items come from.

The art of antiquities theft too quite clearly "is in the selling". While there is no buyer, a lump of stone or corroded bronze is just that. Where there are however people willing to part with cash for saleable ancient items without asking too many questions, then the theft of this material from the archaeological record and its illegal export to more lucrative foreign markets will continue to be commercially viable. Wittman is quite clear, in the case of "art crime", it is knowing that there is a market to sell into that encourages the pilfering. In the case of portable antiquities, then, it is the dealers and collectors who indiscrimately buy material, no questions asked, who are co-responsible for the looting that ensues. And, despite the protests of those in the "art trade" in general, there is every reason to think that somewhere along the chain of busibness relationships there are links with law breakers including those involved in organized crime networks.

Blood Antiquities: The Afghan Taliban and the Ancient Artefacts they've Sold

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Fox News: Afghan Taliban Hang 7-Year-Old Boy to Punish Family
June 11, 2010. And which ancient coin collectors have coins in their homes from John Rieske's so-called "Taliban Hoard" allegedly sold by these people to raise revenue for their activities? What "stories" lie behind all those dugup ancient artefacts collected "no-questions-asked" from those supplied by law-breakers and sometimes organized criminal gangs?

Collectors of ancient artefacts do not know where they come from. They shut their eyes to the consequences of not knowing where their artefacts came from, whose hands they passed through, what activities the funds raised were being used to support. They delude themselves that every time they buy an ancient dugup artefact no-questions-asked they are doing everybody a good turn by providing an artefact with a "good home", that their money might be feeding somebody's starving family. That this particular object "most probably/must have" come from an "old collection" and not some criminal-funding archaeological looting spree. That's what they prefer to think. So much so that they "prefer to think" this more than insisting on finding out the true facts before buying.

Nevertheless many collectors today have blood antiquities in their proudly displayed collections. Which ones? They'd rather not know.

Vignette: Antiquity collectors prefer to keep what they call "politics" out of their discussion lists, they want to ignore the social and political context in which collecting exists, it is more comfortable that way. But is is realistic?

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Opposing "Statism" and the Messianic Role of the US Collector

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ACCG member John Pennock from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest of the USA says that if my criticisms of the current status quo of portable antiquity collecting “had any substance” then I would “debate the merits of the points [he had] made”. I actually considered that these "points" were stereotypical and naïve (typical coiney stuff) and felt that in coming up to a thousand posts here (it seems), I have discussed all these points, probably many ways from different angles. Only a total buffoon would say what I have “not discussed” without actually checking what has already been discussed, but then as we have seen checking facts is not Mr Pennock’s strong point (see here for another example).

Anyhow seeing as my failure to dissect the points he made has now been characterised as “cowardly”, I feel more inclined to detail the lack of merit of the points Pennock made. His comments are typical of those of a certain mindset and maybe it would be useful to respond to them. [apologies for the lack of internal links due to lack of time today, due to Internet downtime due to severe flooding over here. I may - or may not - add them later]

Before I start, let me remind that this discussion is all about whether the US ancient coin market should continue to have unrestricted imports of illegally exported coins from Italy.

So let us take the original message, identify the main points and "debate" them in an uncowardly manner. Mr Pennock if he is himself uncowardly [and keeps on-topic and civil] is of course invited to respond here.

John Pennock (“ACCG, ANS, PAN”) writes(1) :

I'm a collector and a strong supporter of the ACCG. They represent my views.

That is very comforting I am sure for people to have a group with whom they can claim shared views and to which they can feel they belong (see the letters Mr Pennock naively inscribes after his name as a badge of 'belonging'). In collectors' cases, it saves I guess making up their own mind by doing their own research. Looking at the Moneta-L “discussion” of the putative Italy MOU extension, it seems Pennock is not alone in this. There are a lot of totally superficial statements passing as considered argument there. There really are just two people making any sort of sensible contribution to that discussion and John Pennock is not one of them.

In the monetan discussion there was a contrasting of just two alternatives, both "extremist", on the one side were the alleged people trying to "stop the trade" (the bogeymen) and the ACCG (the saviours). Some people like Reid Goldsborough were pointing out that the extremist obstructionism of the ACCG may not be the best way for collecting to be going. Pennock was standing up for ACCG extremism, and his main point, I guess is (2):

The argument about the 'middle ground' is an illusion. I see no statist source country even attempting to think about a middle ground.

“Statist”, what a strange word, means everything and nothing [incidentally its wider application ultimately comes from Marxist debate from the beginning of the century]. In what way is this collector defining a “middle ground”? Is he referring to states which allow the collection and sale of antiquities? This interpretation is indicated by the statement in the next paragraph:

There are many source countries that do not respect property rights, do not respect the free market, and do not respect the right of their citizens to collect things that are old.

Later on as bogeymen states he mentions China and Cyprus, both nations which his intellectual equals in the ACCG point out in another context (“anti-American discrimination”) actually do allow buying and collecting of antiquities. We have seen ACCG activists point out elsewhere there is legal collecting in Bulgaria, there is legal collecting in the Ukraine (President Yushchenko is a collector of neolithic pottery), Poland and Russia, all states with what Pennock called “statist” antiquity laws. Despite western mythology, collecting (including of ancient coins) existed legally in these countries in the Communist period.

While people could continue to maintain collections (in the legislation of communist Poland even getting tax relief to do so and help with conservation), what is generally illegal in most places was the digging up of fresh material. Collecting was and is allowed but looting is not. This of course [though few collectors there will actually admit it in their dsiscussions of collecting artefacts from the Old World], the same situation regarding archaeological material from public land in the USA. The archaeological resource is seen as the common good, and its preservation from destruction as a source of information about the past also for the common good. Any significant fresh finds being made surely should be going to museums to be curated so that everybody can benefit – exactly like the UK’s Treasure Act, or more precisely the Scottish Treasure Trove system. Now that seems to me to be a pretty good approximation to the “middle way” which ACCG member Pennock denies exists in any country except Britain. It is unclear why ACCG members like himself do not look into these things themselves to check out the glib generalizations that they so willingly repeat.

Pennock says that “statist” countries

'criminalize' their own citizens with their approach. These countries approach to cultural property is Karl Marx”.(sic)

Well, as I have pointed out Scotland has a pretty “statist” (to use Pennock’s terms) approach to dugup artefacts. Both Northern Ireland and the Irish republic do too. Marxist? Hardly. In Scotland's case it is derived from common law which states quod nullius est fit domini regis asigning such items to the Crown - so embedded in the "property rights" so dear to the heart of every dollar-touting collector of ancient artefacts. Likewise the permit system of both Irelands is analogous to the methods used to prevent (or rather punish) clandestine commercial digging of sites in other source countries. Just as they are willing to even acknowledge that collectors in the USA also have the same restrictions, oddly enough we never hear anything from the US collecting community how “unjust” these “restrictive” Irish or Scottish measures are. [Interestingly I have not yet come across either very much in the way of Irish citizens claiming they are “criminalized” by their country’s antiquity preservation laws, though I have come across statements by them condemning the laissez faire approach of neighbouring England.] Pennock joins the ACCG here in using pars pro toto oversimplification and pejorative labels to obscure rather than enlighten.
We then have a trotting out (3) of the ACCG credo by Mr Pennock:

But as has been proved in many cases, statist approaches eventually fail.

well, hang on a second, I mentioned both Irelands just a moment ago. In fact there is a fair amount of agreement among those who know about Irish archaeology that illegal digging or archaeological sites is not actually occurring on a scale that the ACCG model of “the effects of restrictive legislation” would predict. Poland too has such legislation, and it is clear that damage done to archaeologicdal sites by artefact hunting in Poland [with the kind of (“repressive” “statist”) laws that are the object of ACCG revulsion] is nowhere near as bad as in England with its PAS. The ACCG once again is leading people like Mr Pennock to believe all sorts of things that they are not checking for themselves and just regurgitating as “well-known truths”.

John Pennock also believes (4):

Any criminal element or 'rottenness' that exists in those source countries is the fault of their own draconian attempts to control the basic democratic rights of property.

Well, actually no. I’ve just written an article for HAPPAH on “relics of the past as a commercial commodity in eastern Europe” which made me do some probing and sort out my thoughts on this. The artefact trade here in eastern Europe (that includes Bulgaria where a lot of the coins sold by ACCG dealers have been coming from) is apparently now largely in the hands of organized criminal groups. Their rise in fact has nothing to do with “draconian attempts to control the basic democratic rights of property”. On the contrary, they are the result of a lack of ability of the new democracies of some countries to apply measures to protect the basic democratic rights of property with any degree of success. Again we see a failure to put the narrow coiney arguments in the context of what is really happening in the wider world.

[Let us also note the tacit admission that coins are being bought by dealers and collectors from law-breakers (but that it is the fault of somebody else this market exists, not those who finance it by making it profitable).]

Then we have the "property rights" argument (soundbite 5):

The PAS system used in Britain is predicated on the principles of property rights, free markets, and equality.

As are the legal systems in the new democracies of Bulgaria and other states in the EU for example. What it seems to me the average ACCG member like Mr Pennock however is interested in (though disguising it as altruism) is his own “property rights” to the stuff he buys, the free market in foreign dugups in his own country and an equality with the citizens of other countries to get his hands on the artefacts found in those countries. It seems to me however that this is ignoring the rights of collectors and citizens of those other countries, placing purchasing power ahead of “power of place”. The "internationalist" position represented by ACCG members like Mr Pennock is self-interest disguised as altrism.

Mr Pennock buying no-questions-asked a car stolen in Sofia has of course no “property rights” over it which trump those of the person who lost it to criminals, especially if when buying it Pennock did not demand any documentary proof of its status, and especially if there was reason to believe that it might well be stolen. This is how I see the no-questions-asked purchase of ancient artefacts, there is a high chance that they come from fresh digging, and the ethical buyer should make every effort to verify that this is not the case before buying. Failing to do so is not buying in "good faith" because it does not apply due diligence applicable as has been widely discussed in the case of this class of object.
Now we get to the specious arguments (6):

So, when a 'Karl Marx' cultural property country (sic) attempts to influence my country to criminalize the trade, it is a moral imperative to not support them.

Really? So according to Mr Pennock, it is more OK to buy stolen cultural property if it is stolen from a country you do not like than one you do? I do not understand this concept, if a car is stolen from a Marxist in a country with a Marxist government, would Mr Pennock argue the buyer has a “moral imperative” not to give it back?

What in fact the US is being asked to do is not “criminalise the trade”, but ensure that the US trade is not supplied with goods coming from criminal activity from selected countries. In the same way as childrens’ rights activists might ask the US to help reduce the flow of goods into the US created at the expense of child exploitation by certain countries or firms, and I think it makes no difference whatsoever if the organization or country asking are perceived by Mr Pennock and fellow ACCGites as “Marxists”. Certainly that does not “criminalise” the trade in sports wear or whatever to take such measures. Again glib generalizations and inflammatory words used to produce knee-jerk reactions rather than worthy arguments.

A market which is careful to provide only legally obtained/produced articles has not been by that measure "criminalised". What Mr Pennock means is that in such a 'clean' market, the criminal elements become more visible, but why should a collector careful about what he buys or truly ethical dealers be concerned about the people to avoid becoming easier to distinguish?

Then the ideological element (7):

If the USA enforces these trade restrictions, they by proxy are enabling and abetting an unethical anti-democratic system and lengthen the date out for when they might adopt more enlightened policies.

Oh bollocks. We are talking here about the treatement of antiquities in EU member Italy. This type of statement is American imperialist messianism at its worst; straight out of a Superman comic, “truth, justice, and the American Way”. Shut it, please.

The justification for an American Exclusionist carte-blanche to buy illegally exported antiquities is (8):

Giving in now, takes away our ability to influence and promote the kind of world we dream of and desire.

(Building a brave new world for collecting run by the Americans, very "internationalist"). Holding out and continuing to import illegally exported artefacts to further fuel what is already seen as many as a corrupt and damaging market is certainly not doing anything to allow the United States of America to claim any moral high ground now or in the future. It certainly places America in a position where instead of having an ability to influence, it is increasingly being seen as the rogue bully state that needs to be influenced.

The “moral imperative” Mr Pennock, when offered goods which there is a very good chance were illegally obtained is to ensure they are not, and if the seller will not or cannot allow you to verify that, not to buy them. Period, as they say.

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Vignette: If Superman were alive today he'd no doubt collect ancient coins, but only those with a verifiable licit provenance. I doubt he would join the ACCG.

"Just who did you say you got those artefacts from?"

The shocking reports of a wedding massacre on Monday at Sultankoy in soon-to-be-EU member Turkey were very disturbing. Preliminary reports suggest it was the consequence of an ongoing feud between two families which seems in turn (at least according to the Guardian) to have had its roots in a conflict between the Turkish militia groups. This led me to wonder about the connection between these militia groups and the smuggling of antiquities (etc.). 

I was reminded of Samarkeolog’s post made a year ago “Illicit antiquities trade: source, transit, market, mafia” on the on the “Human rights archaeology: cultural heritage and community” blog. This makes a few interesting connections and really should give pause for thought to all who handle ancient objects (such as coins) coming from this part of the world too. Into whose pockets is the no-questions-asked antiquities market putting money? Even if our various law-enforcement authorities are relatively unconcerned about the heritage issues, perhaps the apparent connections between this type of activity and other illegal (and more socially damaging) activities should, unless dealers and collectors do not 'clean their act up', lead to official concern and action.

Visualisation: The heroin transportation route running through several of the "source countries" for the ancient artefacts currently entering the no-questions-asked market. Its European leg, nicknamed "the Balkan route", passes through Turkey and the Balkans.

PS: You remember the insistence of US antiquities dealers that "Iraqi artefacts are not reaching the US markets"? Well take a look at the map and deduce one of the conclusions one might draw from that statement if true (though for reasons I have stated here, I do not believe it is). To be fair though, the map shows the situation before the US-led invasion which opened up Iraq to all sorts of illegal activity which was not going on before that to the same degree, so perhaps a newer map would show the drug trade routes going through that country now rather than around it.

[The map ultimately comes from here: Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (March 1998). "Europe and Central Asia: continuation, part 3". International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1997. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State. http://www.state.gov/www/global/narcotics_law/1997_narc_report/europ97_part4.html].

In order to find decent coins

Nafez Qanadilo writes Wed Apr 15, 2009 on Moneta-L about the country in which he lives (he does not name it, but searching his name suggests it is likely to be Jordan) about “collectors who destroy the context sometimes, but always preserve the artifact”. He says that in his country “it is illegal to trade ancient artifacts” and “In order to find decent coins, you have to go visit gangsters who control looters, you need to visit black markets controlled by corruption, smuggling and crime.” But that is of course only if you are local and have contacts on the ground there. Foreign dealers of course tell us they do not have any contact with these sellers or people who have dealings with them. They presumably have a hotline to the Elves under the magic mountain that supply them with as many coins as the market needs from the region without having to deal with a single local law-breaker.

Vignette: the new logo of the Ancient Coin Dealers Guiltless lobby group.

This is no April Fool Joke

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“Very Beautiful Roman Silver Ring with Emperor On The Top. Material: Silver, Found In Balkans. Size: 21mm-0,8 inches. Weight: 8,0 Gr. Period: 1-3 A.D. Century”. Sold two weeks ago for $64.18 to a buyer in a private auction on eBay in the section “Antiquities > Roman” by dealer/metal detectorist (?) “Nextgal” from Brentford, in the UK.


I guess the buyer thought they were getting a bargain, a real piece of looted archaeological heritage freshly robbed from some ancient grave or other site in the Balkans and smuggled out to the UK market perhaps by drug-dealing, human trafficking Balkan bandit groups, and all in a private auction so nobody can find out. The epitome of the no-questions asked market. What a crass idiot. I am glad they got stung (look again at the coin and that supposedly 1st-3rd Century AD “countermark” lower right "[...]OPY" it's not Greek).

The number of totally fake "archaeological artefacts" currently coming out of (or represented as coming out of) the Balkans masquerading as metal detector finds is thought provoking. Could it really be that the finite archaeological resource has finally been so depleted by just two decades of metal detecting (since 1989), that there is nothing much left to find and sell? What does that mean for countries like the United Kingdom whose archaeologists think we can go on letting artefact hunters and collectors take the accessible archaeological material from Britains "productive sites" as if there were no tomorrow?

This interesting auction was originally spotted by one of the more colourful characters in the portable antiquity collecting scene Don Ramon Saenz de Heredia Jr. Photos from the eBay auction site.

Luvverly bit o' kultcha m8!

A colleague of mine from an organization which has had a lot of first hand contact with British metal detector using artefact hunters contacted me privately about "detectorist" Richard Lincoln's personal vendetta against this blog, and in connection with the threats that have just appeared on a metal detecting forum (from some "Andy UK" from near Chippenham who I bet has never met me) that I am be endangering my family (sic) by discussing British metal detecting here and elsewhere. My colleague cannot really post here under his own name but said I could quote him anonymously. Discussing the metal detecting milieu he knows so well, he says it is important in any dealings with them or discussion of the topic to realise what sort of people go out detecting. He asks:

Where are the retired bank managers, solicitors, local archaeology society members, teetotallers, people with good teeth, people not in combat gear, the Guardian readers and the non-BNP* voters? What other random sample of ten thousand British people would contain almost no half-intelligent, educated, decent citizens?

I think he was having a bad day, but anyone who has looked over a metal detecting forum can see that there is some basis for this generalisation. This is not restricted to Britain of course. In the States, the connection between drug (meth) abuse and artefact hunting (pot and arrowhead collecting) is frequently stressed by law enforcement agencies. In many countries there are links between the antiquities trade and other criminal activities, who knows what the money supplied by eager no-questions asked collectors is going to finance? They certainly don't - and don't ask themselves.

US dealers try to cast a veil of respectibility over portable antiquity collecting by suggesting it is a cultural activity practiced exclusively by and engendering home-grown polymaths. They simply ignore that large numbers of people who collect portable antiquities are not the kind of person that I would think they would like to invite to their coctail parties. But then, most of the dealers I have come across don't strike me as the sort of people I'd invite to mine.

* BNP British Nationalist Party.

Photo: some "lads" photographed by a roving photographer out and about in the countryside, but certainly not one of Riohard Lincoln's "detecting" snapshots.

Rewarding "finders" to stop looting of archaeological sites?

On the Unidroit-L discussion list appeared the news item Macedonian police seize stolen antiquities

SKOPJE, Macedonia: Authorities have seized dozens of stolen ancient artifacts after raiding the homes of two suspected antiquities smugglers in southern Macedonia. Police confiscated about 70 archaeological items, including coins, terracotta figurines, pieces of silver and bronze jewelry and amphora dating from the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. [...]They are believed to have been stolen from Isar, one of Macedonia's largest archaeological sites in the south [...]The artifacts were found in the homes of two brothers who had previous convictions for antiquities smuggling [...] Macedonia has some 6,000 registered archaeological sites. Experts warn that since the country gained independence from Yugoslavia 17 years ago, the antiquities have become increasingly vulnerable to looters who use sophisticated navigation and excavating equipment.

Discussing this case one of the major contributors to the Unidroit-L discussions antiquities dealer Eftis Paraskevaides added:

This is a typical example of what happens in poor nations in the Near and Middle East. Peasants and the such often have to resort to digging up and selling antiquities to the Black Market, in order to make a living.

This statement is a typical example of the sort of arguments used by collectors to justify their buying artefacts which have been excavated from archaeological sites in disregard of the laws which are established by cultural nations to protect the archaeological heritage from needless destruction. Collectors pretend its an act of charity, they soothe their consciences that they are putting money into the pockets of needy subsistence diggers among the disadvantaged peasantry of the developing world. They are deluding themselves. Studies show that most of their money goes into the pockets of the dealers, and the middlemen and smugglers whose anonymity the former are careful to shield. Some of the latter clearly have close connections with organized crime and are involved in other criminal activity too. These shady middlemen and fat US dealers are in no danger of starving if nobody bought looted antiquities from them.

According to Paraskevaides when these criminals are caught the authorities of the country whose archaeological heritage is being looted "embark on their spectacular punishment of such individuals" which they allegedly do "in order to save face to the outside world.....What a fruitless exercise!". Is punishing law-breakers fruitless? what makes it less effective as a deterrent is that regardless of the punishment of foreigners for such offences, western dealers will buy undocumented and contextless archaeological material from them knowing full well the likely origin of most of it will have been in clandestine digging and illicit export. They do so knowing that careless collectors will continue to buy such dodgy commodities no-questions-asked.

Paraskevaides, along with almost all western dealers in portable antiquities has his own suggestion how the problem of looting can be resolved:

Would it not be more appropriate to provide financial support and renumeration to antiquity finders in particular, thus negating the illicit trade?!

He seems not actually to have read what this so-called typical case involves. What was apparently being traded here were not the odd accidental find made by a toothless Macedonian peasant by the chicken coop in his own backyard and sold in the market in the nearby town alongside free-range eggs. These are alleged to be objects deliberately looted from a known and registered site in southern Macedonia and sold by diggers with "sophisticated navigation and excavating equipment" to two brothers who are known to have been previously involved in supplying theme to the foreign collectors' market. Why would Mr Paraskevaides wish the individuals involved in this case to be rewarded by the cash-strapped Macedonian state? Would this really stop the looting of sites like Isar (or Isin in Iraq)? Would such a system really put an end to the international trade in clandestinely excavated antiquities? Of course not, because if the Macedonian government was buying looted antiquities from the looters at fair prices (market value), like the UK's various Treasure laws it would be so that they could be curated in public collections in that country. It would not be so they could then be bought and sold by Mr Paraskevaides (Bidancient) and his foreign antiquity dealing associates. The legitimate antiquities for which the "finders" received a reward would stay in Macedonian museums, and foreign dealers would have to seek their goods elsewhere. Nothing in fact would change, western collectors would continue to buy artefacts of unverified provenenience just as before but due to a system of rewarding artefact hunters the Macedonian state and the Macedonian archaeological heritage would both be progressively the poorer.