SAFE's "Say Yes to Bulgaria" Petition

.SAFE now has a petition on the aptly-named "Change.org" website which people can use to show their support for measures to prevent antiquities smuggling from Bulgaria. So far it has about a third as many signatories as the supporters of buying smuggled artefacts have comments on the Regulations.gov website, which is odd. The petition allows comments, I wrote this:

The US is a state party of the 1970 UNESCO Convention and as should do its part to prevent the illicit trade in antiquities from other states parties (irrespective of article 9). What is happening now under everyone's noses on the US antiquities market (in which artefacts removed from archaeological sites in Bulgaria have figured prominently) fills me with disgust. It is well past time for the US to step in and do something about this.

And it is. It is telling that it needs Bulgaria to actually ask and SAFE start a petition before anyone over there will lift a finger to do anything about this totally open trade in looted archaeological artefacts.

SAFE also has a poll on its webpage which poses a question "Are all nations obligated to protect one another's cultural heritage?". There are four choices, one especially for the naysaying extremists.

PAS to the Rescue?

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On looking through the next batch of texts from US coineys opposed to smuggling-curb measures (gruesome), it strikes me that with the frequency that these people mention on an open access website which anyone anywhere can read the good ol' PAS over in England, it really behoves that organization as part of its outreach (even to the citizens of the good ol' United K.) to submit a comment. It COULD point out that what the PAS does has absolutely nothing to do with export controls (which is what the US' CCPIA is about). There really does seem an awful lot of misapprehension going around the international coin collecting community about that. If PAS wants to be a real "Friend of Numismatics", it should (I think) spend a few minutes for one member of outreach staff to try and correct that damaging misapprehension. Should it not?

So does the PAS think the US should apply import controls on dugup artefacts coming to the US borders with no documentation of legal import? Would it like to see the same measures applied to artefacts dug up in the UK and exported illegally without following the correct export licensing procedure? Or would it side with the ACCG over this?

Dr Bland was over in Dublin talking to CPAC Chair Patty Gerstenblith about this a week or so ago, a comment from him reminding her of the main points about the British position over export licensing might well be appreciated by the CPAC in their deliberations. It'd make a change from them having to plough through the irritating coiney whingeing.

Dotty Database of Dodgy Dugups

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A few weeks ago and quite out of the blue London archaeologist Dorothy King (aka PhDiva) announced something which seems to me to be extraordinarily rash:

Looting: Egypt, Libya, The Medici Archive etc: I've 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.

Let's come back to that - particularly with regard whether this one is needed. Dr King's rationale for hers is:

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.

"Initial conversations" with whom? Obviously setting up something of this magnitude requires a considerable amount of planning and wider consultation, so who has been involved in this? Well of course, heritage is indeed an intensely political issue, why should it not be?

I suspect the reference to "people" "sitting" on material refers to that long-going collectors' whine about the Medici (etc.) archives. These archives allow antiquities-market-watchdogs to reveal that items coming onto the market at this or that sale in fact "look awfully like" a polaroid of something that in a dirtier state passed through the hands of specific dealers which suggests that they are 'tainted' goods. Collectors, dealers and their advocates accuse such public-spirited individuals as "playing gottcha" and it looks to me very much like Dr King is playing along with these supporters of the no-questions-asked market. For what reason, only she can tell.

So she's going to be submitting Freedom of Information requests to whom, precisely? She might have a problem for example with Italy, Israel, Greece (there is a nice Wikipedia article that gives a brief summary of FOI legislation across the world) though the Swiss legislation is not mentioned there. Also in some countries the legislation only applies to citizens of that country. The information is not supplied free of charge in all cases, Dr King will have to pay for copies of documents and photographs from countries like Greece - who is meeting these costs with her? If at some stage Dr King attempts to recoup some of the costs by making her database available only by subscription, then there are problems with making information taken from public records available for commercial gain. Are all of the institutions which hold data on objects (which for example contain information on ownership - so personal data - as well as ongoing criminal investigations) obliged to share this with a lone British archaeologist out on an undefined personal mission? One which in addition could threaten to undermine certain ongoing investigations of people involved in teh trade of the items shown on the photos she seeks?

One serious drawback for this enterprise is (as I have mentioned here before) that at least some of the material withheld from public view is evidence in ongoing criminal investigations and judicial processes. It is hard to imagine Dr King getting her hands on all of that (or the problems that could arise if she did).

It seems to me Dr King has not really identified the legal issues involved. True enough she notes:

Another issue is not to defame so, for example, I'm looking at getting a strong disclaimer prominently framed. For example: Polaroids of items that passed through Giacomo Medici; many items he handled were looted, but not all were and one wouldn't want to besmirch innocent collectors.

Eh? I suspect we have different ideas about what "innocence" means here, King seems to equate ignorance with innocence. I think a collector buying this sort of stuff needs to control where it is coming from or not buy. This collector - if they are careful enough in verifying that information - will not be caught with looted stuff on their hands. Those who are not careful enough most likely will - but that is not "innocence", it is wilful ignorance.

So, if I understand Ms King correctly, this DKLM (Database of Known Looted Material as another blogger called it) will have some photos of objects which may or may not be looted. What's the point of that? So a collector who bought no-questions-asked a Greek vase for the living room and paid x00 000 green ones for it, when she wants to redecorate and get the cash back, finds she cannot because some Dorothy King has made a public archive available on the Internet in which is a picture that looks awfully like their vase and it says its "looted" - making the only person who'll take it an ebay dealer for a two day private auction starting at $9.99. What are they going to do? I suppose it depends who their contacts are. They might know Doug and Dinsdale Piranha, who might go and have a word with Ms King (always a danger in this line of work). They might employ IT specialists to launch a DOS attack on Ms King's servers until they've sold it on, they might sue her - despite her "disclaimer". I'd say that if she gets this up and running, Ms King is going to be stepping on a lot of toes of people involved in a very lucrative business, some of whom potentially have a wide range of contacts ranging from those with contacts in the criminal underworld to those with contacts in the judicial world and government circles (not only across the northern hemisphere).

The opposite also applies, a wealthy collector fancies a Greek vase for the bathroom, sees one in an auction, checks it out on the DKLM database, does not find it, buys it. Ten years later they find it has become known that it was figured in a part of the Medici archive DK had not put on her database and the vase is unsaleable. Again, I think they and their lawyers might think (depending how the disclaimer is phrased and the resource presented) they'd have grounds for court action, or sending Doug and Dinsdale round to her mews flat.

Alternatively, since she seems to be thinking of some kind of interactive format, dealer A might post up a few pictures of something dealer B has just snatched from under his nose to render it unsaleable - whether or not it actually is looted or not. Then dealer B has a word with Ms King and her lawyers.

Ms King has provided an update on further developments (Tuesday, July 5, 2011 Database: the story so far ...):

Another issue has become the cut-off date for items to include as looted. Most scholars work with 1970 UNESCO as the date, although technically that should be whenever the country in question ratified the Convention.

well, no, technically the date when items illegally removed from the archaeological record become so is the date when legislation was introduced in the source country making it so. The UNESCO Convention merely provides a bridge allowing the international recognition of those local laws and instituting a means of respecting them internationally. It also is concerned with "the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property" and not looting itself. This is a common misunderstanding of its scope. Ms King continues:

I don't want someone trying to load up photos of the Elgin Marbles but I find it frustrating on the other hand that recent prosecutions in Italy failed less because of innocence than the statute of limitations running out. I've also taken the decision to go back to the '30s to include potential Holocaust Era claims. That may be controversial, but since we do it with paintings we should also with Antiquities.

Well, if she is "going back" forty years before the 1970 cutoff date, why not the Parthenon (please not Elgin) Marbles and the Dendera ceiling? Because they are not Jewish? What is this nonsense about Holocaust archaeological material? Archaeological remains of the Holocaust (like suitcases, photos and shoes in the Auschwitz museum)?

So, Washington DC dealer Sands of Time is offering items from the Paul Ilton ("the Bible was my Treasure Map") collection of archaeological finds removed from the Holy Land in the 1930s (like many others) when it was the British Mandate, would they therefore deserve a place on the DKLM? I think such an approach could cause Ms King and her collaborators a lot of headaches, as not all states had antiquity preservation laws covering these issues in the 1930s.

It seems to me that Ms King is trying to overlap with the work being done by others. Over in central Europe, countries like Poland and Latvia, government agencies have created such national databases which are accessible in both paper form and online. They cover losses during the Second World War and thefts from collections, monuments, and where the missing material consists of archaeological finds they are included. Egypt has created a database of material missing from museums and storerooms, which is being made available to (and through?) Interpol. There is the Art Loss Register and other databases of this type (including one for coins). The Jewish Claims Commission is just one of the organizations active in the recovery of "Holocaust objects". What liaison and overlap would there be between the DKLM and the databases of these other existing organizations?

The fault of all of these and Ms King's proposed future one, is that looting is a clandestine activity, done for the most part by silent people with metal detectors and spades out in remote locations, sometimes at night. Some looting groups are armed to make sure their activities are not reported. The only person who knows what these individuals have dug up and taken away are the middlemen who buy the products of this criminal activity from them to sell on. A database of "known looted items" is pretty pointless as a weapon to fight the trade in looted material. A few dealers have been caught with archives of things they have handled in their offices. Other dodgy dealers have been caught who kept no such records. Other dodgy dealers have not ever been investigated. The amount of looted objects known through databases of one type or another is miniscule compared with the number of items "surfacing" (from underground) on the market annually with no record whatsoever of where they were before that. This is the problem that needs to be dealt with.

The Dorothy King Looted Material Database is going to be very big. There are tens of thousands of items from one dealer operating from one warehouse complex alone, it is easy to see that if it is to have any pretensions to adequate coverage and gets all the material Ms King is seeking, the DKLM will soon reach the proportions of the PAS database. This raises the question of how it will be possible to search it, the structure of the database has to be thought out very carefully, perhaps Ms King is already in contact with the PAS to hear what they have to say after all their experiences with this problem. Another source of information perhaps more suitable to the scale of ms King's proposed operation would be the UK Detector Finds Database (UKDFD). This protocol needs to be consulted and in place obviously before the database can take shape.

A more fundamental question however (and obviously relevant to how it is going to be used) is for whose benefit Ms King's database is being created. On the one hand, its potential immense size would make it a wonderful weapon to use against the no-questions-asked market, making the scale of the depredation (and the quality of items/information lost) immediately and very visually clear. This would be something public opinion simply could not ignore. It will also make the archives of looted items available to many many more "gottcha" eyes and a lot more museums and collectors are going to find themselves in embarrassing positions over items they have purchased than they would when there was only a handful of specialists involved in checking these items. On the other hand, I wonder if law enforcement (for example) would use her database in preference to their own resources from which (if I understand DK correctly) her own would be compiled. It seems to me the primary beneficiaries would be dodgy dealers and careless collectors who will be able to see if an item in their hands is in the database or not, thus deciding what they will do with it - whether to send it to Sotheby's or ebay or do some private behind the scenes deal with it. But when it comes down to it "not on the DKLM" is not a guarantor of licit origins. So what is this database for, and for whom?

None of these topics of course can be discussed with the author of the concept as following the links given in this post will reveal she has closed her blog to viewers.

UPDATE 10th June 2011: The 'PhDiva' blog is now (currently) accessible to all and sundry again.

Vignette: PhDiva

Chinese Collectors of Chinoiserie? How Terrible?

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

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

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

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

The Basis for a Rational Public Discussion is... Rationality

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US Antiquity dealer Dave Welsh is apparently miffed that the world did not fall fawning at his feet over his suggestion that "source nations" should be given "quotas" of "redundant artefacts" to fill the market so a controlling clique of licenced dealers can sell them to a clique of licenced collectors. In a post he calls (in jest I hope) "A Rational Public Discussion" he complains:

It is, to say the least, very difficult to have a rational public discussion with anyone who is identified with the radical anticollecting or "archaeology" lobby.[...] Nowhere in the far-out views of that fringe can anything more unrealistic or extreme be found than this.

Well, I do not know if we are looking at the same text here, it seems to me that I took a very realistic hard look at Welsh's pie-in-the sky gimme-gimme "proposal". I think I raised some hard realistic questions that would have to be addressed by its proposer before he submits it to further rational public discussion (a discussion which in its present state I do not exactly see anybody else tripping over their own feet to engage in - even collectors like Candice Jarman consider it unacceptable in its present form). Welsh says:

Any archaeologist who imagines that a solution to archaeology's problems can be unilaterally dictated and enforced without the participation, cooperation and ultimately the consent of the collecting community is significantly detached from reality.

The sooner no-questions-asked collectors and dealers recognise that the ongoing destruction of the past by commercial artefact digging is not just an archaeologists' problem the better for them and everybody else. The reality is that it is not archaeologists that will get laws changed, but public opinion. Welsh goes on:

If archaeologists will engage the collecting community in a good faith discussion of how to do this, they would in my view be pleasantly surprised by the understanding and thoughtfulness of the reception they would receive.

yeah, like from Candice Jarman, and Dave Welsh? The PAS is busily engaged in doing this, and we all know just how much "understanding and thoughtfulness" they are getting from artefact hunters in England...

Dave Welsh presented - he says for discussion - an idea as a panaceum to the problem of commercial looting. If he was at all sincere in his presentation of it as such, and actually believed in it, instead of moaning that somebody engaged with his ideas and suggested that some areas needed clarification and questioning the workability of some bits of it, he could address the issues raised. Iron out the wrinkles. The trouble is that I am perfectly sure that Welsh was not a bit sincere in proposing this. It was a smokescreen tactic, and was simply seeking an opportunity to blame somebody else for the failure for discussion to advance - thus covering up for the failure of the dealers to budge from their no-questions-asked stance. This is what is demonstrated by his reaction. But he'd have written the same if his proposal was met with silence wouldn't he? What is it he wants?

Mr Welsh then adopts a threatening tone:

Those who instead insist upon a totally confrontational, one-sided, irrational, and accusatory condemnation of [no-questions-asked] private collecting as the root of all evils are instead likely to be unpleasantly surprised by the strength and effectiveness of the opposition they encounter.

Nah, I don't think we'll be at all surprised, we all know what the nasties look like. The collecting blogs, especially the coiney ones, are full of nastiness: confrontational, provocative, one-sided, antisocial and wholly irrational junk written in accusatory tone. Its the good side of responsible collectors that tends to be lost in all this opposition to the perfectly common sense approach to no-questions-asked collecting of antiquities. Perhaps however it is collectors and dealers who have been allowing the ACCG to lead them by the nose and act as the spokesmen of the whole milieu who are in for an "unpleasant surprise" in coming months. I hope so.

The last day of public submissions the CPAC about the Greek Cultural Property Request

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Well, the number of public submissions especially by coineys has been mushrooming since ACCG's John Hooker started waving his pompoms. My eyes start to glaze over now I open the next one so I've not been reading them all. Most of the time stop reading when I get as far as: "as a coll...". I was interested in a couple though. We've discussed John Rieske here a number of times, he tells me that he once studied and worked in archaeology but is now a collector. So I was intrigued to see what he might have written. Here it is (I'll stick it up here as there is no way of telling how long the public submissions will remain visible to the public) after the submission process has closed:

To Whom It May Concern: The Greek MOU has a great potential impact upon millions of US collectors and Dealers, who, for the very vast majority have been law abiding citizens and residents of the nation. America is a nation built upon laws preserving individual rights and property. These rights are now endangered by a foreign state based upon the premise that the United States Government should be responsible to enforce laws that they themselves are unwilling or unable to enforce. If you pass the MOU on in its present form, you will turn a large population of the citizens and residents of this nation into de facto criminals without the benefit of courts or juries, nor even the opportunity of defence. The truth is that Ancient Greek coins, were minted in many lands beyond the borders of the present state and circulated even more widely. the vague nature of the MOU request from Greece does not even clearly state exactly what are the limits of their request. Such requirements mean that should this be forwarded, that one would never truly know what is covered and as a result the Greek government could apply their laws arbitrarily in our country. Suppose they decide that a memento that was an heirloom in your family came under the letter of their law and thus demand its return to Greece without compensation to you or your family and then they turn it over to a merchant or dealer from their country to sell for his and the their government's profit? Suppose as well that you be arrested here for the violation of a law in Greece, that did not exist at the time this memento was removed from Greece. That is exactly what these laws imply and as such are a violation of everything that has been guaranteed to us as US citizens. Say NO to these countries asking our country to enforce their laws for them. They are corrupt, they are wrong, and if you agree with them you will be guilty of the same unjust actions as they.

Oh yuk! I guess the guy has not read the CCPIA and failed to note what s. 307 actually imposes. Neither does he seem to have registered that the designation is clearly published, and it is on that basis that the act is implemented. Greece is only too willing to "enforce laws" about export of antiquities (that's why dealers want to skip round them), but of course if something is clandestinely removed, the victim perforce does not see it, but the customs offices at the other end of the journey should. The two "memento" arguments will immediately show the CPAC that the author has not the foggiest what he is writing about, we are talking about export documentation of objects freshly entering the US, not items that have been there for generations. Note then that before the author gets ratty with the State Department, he says "this is what these laws imply" when of course everybody in the CPAC and State Department knows that this is not at all the case. Once again a coiney has been made to look a fool by believing the ACCG propaganda and not checking the CCPIA out for himself... Sad, but true.

Then there was the reverend who warned that if the US agreed to Greece's request something called "Biblical Numismatics" would be wiped out. Do Bible readers also buy illegally exported coins in such quantity then? What IS "Biblical" numismatics anyway? Coins of Solomon and David anyone? Is there a Koranic numismatics, a RigVedan numismatics, Book of Mormon numismatics maybe? What a weird notion.

Some guy called Dr Robert G. Gage informs "To Whom It May Concern" that he opposes any "restrictions on imports of foreign coins from Greece":

I oppose such a ban largely on the grounds that if not for American collectors, a vast amount of these ancient treasures would not have been cared for properly and might be lost to generations to come. Please consider who collects and cares for these coins properly. Without the American market many of these items would remain unearthed and eventually decay and be of no use whatsoever. Please do not enact this ban.

"Ban"? There, and we all thought that American collectors buying up loads of coins without taking any care that they are not looted is damaging, when in fact they are SAVING them from lying there in their archaeological layers where they've been safely preserved two thousand years and they'd be remaining UNEARTHED !! The horror of it, leaving archaeological sites undamaged for future generations, eh, Dr Gage? How could we? [Of course we all know that there are NO Greek collectors or numismatic museums are there who can look after these coins, it's up to the Americans again to 'save the world'..]. I am sure that like all collectyors, Dr Gage will protest that like archaeologists and conservationists he is "opposed to looting" and would never condone it - but then statements like this make one wonder just what these collectors mean when they say that, and what they think the purpose of 'opposing looting" of archaeological sites is. Weird.

Arne Kirsch is a "Sworn expert in court for numismatic" (sic). He reckons that:

These discussed restrictions are unfair and discriminatory to Americans. Collectors in the EU--including Greece-- have no similar limitations on their ability to import ancient coins. Coins -- which exist in many multiples-- do not meet that particular statutory criteria, which is a “term of art. (sic) I deal in many cases in court and in private cases as a sworn expert and these restriction policy has nothing to do with the reality and is just supporting a minor group of archeologists.

Greek ones at that, foreigners. Greek ones that are concerned about the number of sites that are being plundered for artefacts of all types which are then illegally exported. By the way Mr Arne as a court official, you should know that it is not actually true that here in the EU you can legally buy ancient artefacts illegally removed from another EU country.

Another bloke we've come across before is Wayne Sayles' business partner John C. Lavender of Moneta Numismatic Services, Inc. (as in coin dealers Sayles and Lavender). Compared to the effort Mr Sayles has been putting into retaining the "right" to buy illegally exported coins from Greece without US Customs poking their noses in, Mr Lavender's contribution to the effort looks decidedly half-hearted:

I am writing to oppose the extension of the MOU with the Hellenic Republic if coins have been added to the list of items prohibited as I do not believe the Hellenic Republic has met the criteria established by the governing statute requiring non-discrimination against American coin collectors and dealers.

And if not? To which "governing statute" is he referring the CPIA? Where does it talk about "non-discrimination against American coin collectors and dealers"? Surely US coin collectors and dealers are not going to be "discriminated against" if they are penalised for buying illegally exported ancient artefacts like the rest of us.

I loved the one by a George L. Beke representing "Urskola" (can't work out what that is...). He pleads:

Please do NOT impose import restriction on coins of Greek type. Currently, I'm doing research on ancient Greek and Roman religion and cosmology. Without access to Greek coins, such research would become almost impossible.

Ah a "researcher", we've heard those arguments before. Now is it impossible to study Greek and Roman cosmology and religion without coins? Is it possible to study them solely on the basis of privately owned coins? I would have thought that given the number and quality of the written sources that survive, not to mention the archaeological evidence (such as temples etc.) that coins were only a relatively minor part of the evidence (and mainly illustrative of the written sources rather than being our main source of information). Then I found a webpage where George L. Beke presents some of his results. That's what some of this coiney research looks like, huh? That is what archaeological sites are being trashed to enable? Can't he write this sort of nonsense without clutching a coin in his hand then?

In contrast to these sorry examples of coiney dullness, the contribution by Patty Gerstenblith is a fascinating and thought-provoking document and well makes the case why the US would be placing itself in an awkward situation if it refused the to agree an MOU with Greece after signing the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Required reading for those that can cope with big words - the US coineys of course will not bother.

FURTHER UPDATE (28/9/10): John Hooker later commented on the characteristics of the submissions of the two opposing groups. He says: "The difficulty, with these submissions, is that they were not for a single issue. The majority of those who supported the MOU seemed unaware that there was such an issue over the inclusion of coins". Well, there is not, coins are archaeological artefacts as much as Greek arrowheads, finger rings, earrings, etc. and were lost and dropped at the saame sort of locations. If people are supporting an MOU against looting of Greek artefacts then it will include coins, which are one of the main artefact types men with metal detectors are looking for. There should be no "issue" with this at all - the only problem is that no-questions-asked dealers and collectors will not accept this.

Hooker concludes that what the submissions of the supporters of the MOU did not include "virtually to a person -- was any consideration of a valid opposing view"; this is of course entirely the case with the submissions of the coineys who rarely strayed betyond the six points laid down for them by the dealers' lobby.

Hooker, while pretending to have adopted an objective approach, misleads his readers he says of the supporters of the Greek request: "A lesser number of them, gave personal accounts of seeing the effects of looting..." which is true, and then sneaks in: "... or said something to the effect that they would like to continue doing archaeological work in Greece..." which is totally untrue and has been inserted to support the "only doing it out of fear" postulate explaining why archaeologists oppose looting and the illicit trade in antiquities. Many of the supporters said their observations were made while they had taken part in fieldwork in Greece, but no mention was made, "in effect" or otherwise to support the "scared of withdrawal of excavation licence" thesis. This is typical coiney misrepresentation

The Crosby Garrett Helmet Leaves the Country

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Well, who wants to bet that the British Museum and the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle will be in the bidding for the stunning-now-reconstructed Roman parade helmet from Crosby Garrett? Along with a few other museums and collectors one suspects. When the hammer falls, who will get it? But then after the temporary export deferral takes effect and trhe buyer has the British people over a barrel, what will the final price be? We've recently seen a number of cases of (upward of course) manipulations of the price of an object once an export licence deferral is in place, forcing the Brits to pay out even more to keep in the country items like this which should never be available for purchase abroad. There was the Coenwulf mancus bought by a US dealer Allan Davisson and then "resold" on paper to a collector before he even had the coin in hand. Then there was the Cambridgeshire Rider, found by Duncan Pangbourn, the price of which almost doubled between its original sale and repurchase by the British people. Such cases (and I believe there are others) well illustrate that our current antiquity protection laws urgently need revision. Current policies are costing the British people a fortune and the money is going into the pockets of those that trade in the heritage.

I say let the Crosby Garrett helmet go abroad. Let it be an easily understood symbol for the people of the British Isles just how their archaeological heritage is being squandered by those who should be protecting it. Furthermore, I hope it goes to the furthest ends of the Earth so that any Brits who want to see it can put themselves for a moment in the place of all those citizens from "antiquities' source countries" who have difficuulty seeing their own region's archaeological heritage because it is hoarded away as (oh-so-culchural) trophies in western museums and personal collections.

Anyway, why does it matter? We have a one-page description of the object with seven zoomable piccies on the PAS database, which is more than most of the millions of archaeological finds hoiked out of archaeological assemblages and whipped away to scattered ephemeral private collections for entertainment and profit get. Why should the Crosby Garrett helmet stay in the country? Let Britain save the money and spend it on something more useful than 'saving for the cvountry' a now-contextless geegaw to be gaped at. Do I hear any objections? Why in this case and not in that of other archaeological artefacts? Because this one is "prettier" than other pieces of Roman military equipment ? What makes an isolated archaeological artefact "important"? (Not a rhetorical question).
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Patrimony Policy Not Affecting Coins: Coins and the ICE

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Coiney journalist and Ohio coin dealer Richard Giedroyc has decided to attempt to prove in an article in the US magazine Numismatic News that (US) Patrimony Policy is Not Affecting Coins . This is of course at odds with the ACCG standpoint which is that it does and will affect the imports of ancient coins into the US in addition to the huge numbers already there in existing collections. Giedroyć notes:

Since both Italy and Bulgaria are countries on the short list that the US State Department has been listening to as the State Department decides if it will honor the demands of certain vocal archaeologists and several foreign governments curbing the import of world coins deemed to be cultural patrimony by foreign governments, it is appropriate for readers to learn about the coins that have been recently forcibly repatriated from the United States. More specifically it is the recent activities of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement that are examined here.

Well, first of all, it is not clear what (or whose) short-list Giedroyć is discussing, and why Bulgaria is on it. Bulgaria is of course (or has been before they started running out) a major source of ancient coins for the US market we know that huge shipments of them have been coming to the country for well over a decade to wholesalers of eastern European origin settled in the USA who then supply other dealers and sell direct to collectors too. It would be interesting to learn that the State Department has been "listening to" Bulgaria asking US authorities to step in and stop the imports of any antiquities that have not been legally exported.

Is the sole source of the concern about illegal exports of cultural property "certain vocal archaeologists" and "several foreign governments"? I rather think that when it comes to cultural property as a whole (paintings, furniture, manuscripts and incunabula, ethnographic material) it is not just archaeologists that would be getting "vocal". I think a lot of people (including local collectors and history enthusiasts) would be concerned about the drain of such objects from any individual country abroad. What the archaeologists would be urging however is that archaeological material is included on the lists of cultural property protected from destructive exploitation and illegal export. I would say that it is the duty of every government, among other things, to take care of the cultural and natural assets of the territory under their direct and indirect control. Not to do so as fully as possible would in my opinion (and not only mine I am sure) be failing in one of their duties as a responsible government.

Worth noting is Mr G.'s little manipulation talking of "world coins". In collecting parlance this term refers to things like 2004 commemorative rubels, recent small change from the Andaman Islands and 1920s coins of Tibet. The curbs on illegal exports which so concern the ACCG are ancient coins which are dug up on ancient sites in ancient lands outside the USA. The use of the term "world coins" in Krause's "Coin News" by Giedroyć is an attempt to manipulate collectors of so-called world coinage that the ACCG's concerns affect them too. They do not.

A little reflection would reveal that any "coins that have been recently forcibly repatriated from the United States" will have been stopped from entering the US market because of the lack of documentation showing they had been legally exported or due to some other import infringements which prevent them legally entering the US. What is wrong with that?

The ACCG, as Giedroyć notes, argues that

"coins are a mass-produced item, not something that is unique as is a single piece of art. The more current problem, as far as coin collectors are concerned, may be what constitutes “ancient art”.

Nonsense. The problem is what constitutes cultural property, and the archaeological remains of a territory are cultural property, as they are in the USA itself. Not all the items seized in Operation Cerberus (the Four Corners/Blanding artifacts case) were "ancient art", old blankets, menstrual pads, utilitarian knives etc. Yet they were and are cultural property. The ACCG is misrepresenting what the object of protection of the archaeological resources of a source country are, the knowledge of the past of the region that can be recvovered from the proper investigation (and not mere commercial mining) of the archaeological record is the cultural property of the region, and of all of us. This is intellecttual property which is destroyed by the commercial mining for selected items which have a commercial value on the collectors' market. Whether or not the objects in those archaeological assemblages were mass produced (like pots for example were) or not makes no difference to the amount of destruction caused by getting them out of the ground and into the Wisconsin collector's back room.

Giedroyć then shows that there have been only three ICE press releases in Feb 2010, 2006 and 2005 which mention the "forcibly repatriated coins". His point is that unless ("world coin") collectors support the ACCG, it will get worse. Somehow he misses the seizure ACCG Baltimore Illegal Coin Import Stunt of the upcoming (amended and revised) test-case. He misses the cases currently being discussed in two threads on the closed access Yahoo Ancient Artifacts and Moneta-L discussion list where coin dealer Cameron Day had some coins seized by US customs. There are in fact a lot of ancient coins and other antiquities being seized by US customs which are not being trumpeted in individual ICE press releases. In a recent post to one of the lists (I forget which one) Wayne Sayles boasts how he has a number of times been called in by the ICE to give an expert opinion about the coins seized in a number of cases. There are therefore many cases not mentioned by Giedroyć of coins being seized and investigated by the ICE.

There are however also enormous numbers getting through the barrier of bubbles that separates the US antiquities market from the pool of illegal dugups. Like the ACCG, dealer Richard Giedroyć of HCC Inc. & Krause Publications would apparently like to see to see this barrier weaker still and ancient artefact imports not controlled at all. I think the rest of us would like to see the US doing its bit to help curb the international market in illegally obtained antiquities.

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Dont just Secure the Goods, Investigate the Crimes

David Gill has a new piece on the Miami seizure of a 21st dynasty coffin lid. On reading this I realised where the idea that the object might have left Egypt in the 1880s had originated, it was initially assumed for some reason to have come from one of the Deir El Bahari caches because it had been misuidentified as a royal coffin. More to the point, Gill notes pointedly:

The case is a reminder that there appear to be dealers and others associated with the movement of cultural property who still persist in bringing antiquities into the USA without the appropriate documentation. The case should also encourage the resolve of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as they seek to protect the world's cultural heritage.

I would say protecting the heritage is one thing, punishing those who knowingly defy the law in this regard thus encouraging the damage should be the aim. A series of dawn raids on the homes and offices of dealers and others associated with the movement of cultural property who still persist in bringing antiquities into the any country without the appropriate documentation might bring these laws to the attention of the dealers and importers.

Don't just Secure the Goods, Investigate the Crimes
Don't just Seize the Antiquities, Seize the Culture Criminals.

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Failing once again to face up to the issue

“Not known” is the magic veil that has been relied upon since time immemorial to hide difficult details by the dubious, the criminal, the lazy, the greedy and the morally illiterate in many a field of commerce

writes heritage Journal about some new eBayUK moves to try and sort out the fact that it has acquired the reputation of somewhat of an antiquity sales cesspit. In actual fact however all that has happened is that:

"EBay has drafted words to make it seem otherwise and the British archaeological establishment has said this is all a very welcome development! Hence our thesis: official coyness about the reality of the severe negative impact of legal metal detecting facilitates major heritage damage".

Hear hear. The British archaeological establishment really has a lot to answer for (not only in this regard of course). At times the milieu as a whole comes over as a group of ineffectual wimps and hand-wringing jobsworths when it comes to facing real challenges to the still-buried archaeological heritage. Of course it would be too much to expect more than a handful of folk of such a calibre to speak out against the official doctrine of "outreach" (whatever that really is) to and "partnership" with collectors and despoilers (or simply to continue ignoring the problem) - which is what time and time again we observe from the British archaeological milieu in the area of dealing with artefact hunters, collectors and dealers. Goodness knows how they face up to the developers and other mass earth-movers. Or do they?

Vignette: A RESCUE slogan - can archaeology in Britain do better than voice mere slogans? Like standing firm on an issue like the despoiling of the archaeological record for mere entertainment and profit?




Postscript. What the.... ? I posted a picture of the slogan, and then had a glance at the website when posting a link to Rescue. Just look at what is the top of the RESCUE (let's put that in BIG letters) webpage at the moment? What on earth do they think they are representing here?

Which (in)famous hoard found and then hoovered up unreported for the next ten days by a metal detector using artefact hunter (and then dug atrociously badly by a team of people who should know better) does this glittering piece of Gollum's gold come from? Clue: look back at earlier posts on this blog. Does RESCUE regard this as the essence of archaeology? Is this an example of conserving the archaeological resource (what actually RESCUE set out to press for when it was set up by a lost breed of British archaeologists all those years back), targetting it in an uncontrolled manner by artefact hunters? I say no. RESCUE apparently are of another opinion. You can see there rather wishy washy statement of position on "metal detecting" (ugh) in issue 99 (I think, it might have been 100) of Rescue News. Just what kind of "British archaeology" is RESCUE a "trust" and "independent voice" for these days: the potsherd, posthole and environmental sample type, or the tawdry get-on-the-TV-quick glittery golden Treasure goodies type? This rate, they will not be getting any subscription money from me in 2010.

Roger Bland is not coming into this list telling collectors what they must do to collect "ethically".

ACCG agitator and dugup antiquity dealer Dave Welsh wants to use the Near Shrewsbury (England) hoard as some kind of test case and “and inquire (sic) into whether Mr. Barford's perspective regarding provenance is reasonable or sensible”. Of course it is.

It makes no difference that “coins such as these are likely (in most cases) to sell for £10 each or less on the average”. So do some meteorite chunks, and collectors of those manage to keep their provenance intact (some like Polish Pułtusk going back to the 1800s).

What actually is the significance of the “cost” here? Firstly a dealer sets the cost of an ancient coin or object. Its just a lump of (corroded) metal so if he wants to cost in another 25p for printing out a copy of the export licence and another 35p for the documentation of provenance, then the coin costs a 60p more. So what?

I think this has relevance also to Welsh’s insistence that any provenance registration be impervious to “counterfeiting or misrepresentation”. He maintains it is “not worth a dealer’s time” to place on record the provenance of a ten-pound coin. Obviously then replacing a less-than-ten-pound coin recorded as 1-GB-X-AJK 2139-0876 with the little nick in the flan between the M and P of “...TEMP” and the slight scuffing by the emperor’s nose by another illicitly obtained coin that looks roughly the same would be so much less cost effective. In any case, is Mr Welsh suggesting that a fellow dealer or a fellow collector would falsify such documentation? Why would they do that if the coin was from a legitimate source? Obviously this kind of manipulation and falsification is a matter for the trade associations who monitor the behaviour of their members (do they not?) it is not a problem that archaeologists should have to deal with.

Far from it being the case that “Mr. Barford has consistently refused to engage in any meaningful discussion of practical details” as Welsh alleges, there are numerous posts on various forums where in the past I have rashly attempted to do precisely that. As an example we might turn to Welsh’s own Unidroit-L forum where on a rainy Sunday Sept 30, 2007 I answered his “challenge” to present some practical details of such a record. Welsh obviously has a short memory, for at the time he obsequiously announced: "The detail is instead commendable, and is exactly the sort of thing needed for serious review and discussion”. I invite the reader to scroll down to the rest of the thread to follow how it quickly got out of hand with talk of soil acidity and other totally unrelated topics. This is always the way with the collectors and dealers when you try to talk to them sensibly and openly about difficult issues. Always the sidetracking. It certainly is not my fault that this discussion on the list Dave Welsh moderates (and of which he is the chief contributor) did not get anywhere meaningful.

But of course for coin dealer Mr Welsh, the practical details are not actually as important a problem as something else entirely. The only reason such discussions have got nowhere is the refusal of antiquity dealers and collectors to budge from the position that they have NO responsibility for the objects they trade in and collect. So, for them, the problem is that Barford’s:

approach has instead always been to attempt to thrust the entire burden of proving provenance back upon the collector and the trade that supplies collectors.

Welsh's standpoint is that since it’s the “archaeologists” who want this documentation of provenance, then its archaeologists who must provide the mechanism by which that provenance is recorded. Of course his clients the collectors agree with him, as he claims merely keeping track of where the items in his stockroom came from will make his prices skyrocket. (nota bene: my local grocer can tell me where the onions I bought were grown with no additional cost - can Mr Welsh's?). Anyhow Welsh concludes:

It seems to me that if the archaeological community cannot propose a sensible and practical approach to proving provenance that collectors and dealers should follow, which is economically feasible in the case of coins valued at £10 or less, they really have no right to criticize the collecting community for not being able to prove provenance.

This ignores one fundamental fact. This is that the ancient artifacts (in his case coins) coming onto the market pass through the hands of dealers and collectors, and not of archaeologists. It is usually the dealer that has first contact with fresh dugups from metal detecting.

It is also plain nonsense to say that the archaeological community have no right to criticize the collecting community for not being able to prove provenance. The global community as a whole, not just archaeologists, has every right to criticise the current no-questions-asked trade in antiquities which shields the trade in illicitly obtained artifacts. Every right Mr Welsh.

I mentioned that I wanted to ask Roger Bland, head of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, about what Welsh had said earlier. The coin dealer retorts crossly:

I do not believe the reason is that it is Roger Bland's responsibility to make such recommendations. Roger Bland is not coming into this list telling collectors what they must do to collect "ethically." Paul Barford is doing that.

Yes, I am. I think many of my colleagues simply don’t have the time for (or want the bother of) tangling with the likes of David Welsh in interminable word juggling all aiming to show that the no-questions-asked dealer in antiquities is the innocent victim of a nasty archaeological conspiracy against "collectors" ("out to ban them" of course).

Actually, making recommendations to artefact hunters and collectors about best practice is indeed one of the tasks of the PAS and has been since its inception. The PAS is not concerned about portable antiquities divorced from their context, but their value in their context, which is why in recording them, findspot is so important. I think if Roger Bland, busy though he is, were to come on any artefact hunting list and give recommendations about best practice in collecting, he would concentrate on exactly the same issues I raise. That is the issues of where the objects come from, establishing the vendor’s title to sell, and the legality of the transaction (see the PAS Advice for people buying archaeological objects from the UK and his advice would concern labelling and cataloguing the individual finds in a collection. Here is a fragment of the PAS website with such recommendations about labelling and recording provenance.

Everything in your collection should be labelled in some way, so you know when and where it was found. […] catalogue your collection, either in a loose-leaf file or using a computer database. Whichever you use, it is important to include a good photo or two. Then you can add notes on identification, find spot, conservation details, other examples etc. If you want to learn more, speak to your local FLO.

Any finds that have been through the PAS system have been registered (and by archaeologists), there is a unique number, at least one, often several photos and a description of the object. There seems to be no reason why a responsible collector should not give priority to acquiring such an object with documentation that it was disposed of only after responsibly reporting it to the relevant authorities. There seems to be no reason why a responsible collector acquiring such an object should not want that information to be retained in the documentation of their collection, and accompany the object in any future sale. The information is documented in two places, a secure database, and a printout in ‘certificate/report’ form of the details.

The suggestions I made two years ago in the posts that Welsh denies exist envisage just such a system of paper records deriving from a secure database of a similar nature to the PAS one, the entries of which would be made as an object newly enters the market from an old collection or is recorded in a registered collection, or is a documented (eg by the PAS) find. That seems a perfectly reasonable proposition, not inconsistent with standards accepted by organizations such as the PAS and not inconsistent with responsible and ethical trading. So where are the objections coming from?

Cultural Property Research Institute to “Link People and Culture”

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The Cultural Property Research Institute (CPRI), run from a downtown New Mexico lawyer's office and apparently the offspring of the defunct ACCP, has announced that in 2009 it will “initiate research into a number of important cultural policy issues” which it claims will “Link People and Culture”. These include:

“Exploring ways to harmonize US laws and regulations that apply to transfer and ownership of antiquities”. This will explore the use of the different U.S. domestic laws in the protection of the archaeological heritage. Many of our archaeological colleagues in the States argue that the current system is fragmentary and inconsistent and loopholes and inconsistencies mean that it fails to offer holistic protection to the archaeological heritage of the US. The CPRI will "provide summaries and analyses useful to museums, educational institutions and the general public". Perhaps it will highlight some of the inconsistencies in a way which will ease the process of beneficial change to provide stronger protection. Let’s hope so.

Exploring the effect of various national preservation policies on damage to archaeological sites and objects.National policies “toward development, private ownership, enforcement and export, among other matters, can have profound consequences for the integrity of archaeological sites and the preservation of individual objects”. The CPRI intends to gather and collate information on such policies in “a small, selected group” of countries to determine “their effect on site damage (sic), and possible remedies (sic)”. It makes one wonder by what criteria they will be “selecting” that small group of countries to cover a globally representative range of legal and social contexts. Let us hope the USA is one of them. Just how well are US policies protecting the archaeological heritage against development, private ownership enforcement and export and how that compares with other countries?

“Developing different models for a registry that can be applied to privately-owned objects”. It is good to see that the Institute recognizes that the main problem with the current status quo of the antiquities market is the total lack of transparency about (and lack of real interest among most collectors in) where antiquities on the market are coming from. This means that illicitly obtained artefacts can be peddled undetected alongside those of legitimate provenience. Some means of properly registering collections and objects in them allowing the tracing of proveniences of objects coming onto the market is clearly a way forward. Portable antiquity dealers are adamant that they will not themselves adopt such a system, so it is good to see the lawyers taking a more amenable stance towards such ideas. “The CPRI will pull together, explain and compare the models that have been proposed and others that may also serve the purpose of inclusive registry. A draft report will be published on the CPRI website by the end of 2009”. That’s something to look forward to. A register beginning with the location of legitimately-obtained artifacts on 31st Dec 2010 would be a neater and more practical watershed than the 1970 date of the UNESCO convention, and better than nothing.

A fourth topic the CPRI intends to examine is “Determining the number of artistically and academically significant, privately-owned objects in the United States” that because of ethical considerations are currently excluded from acquisition by US museums.
The CPRI uses the euphemism “orphan objects” to refer to items that have no documented provenance (“those that cannot by self-rule be acquired or accepted as loans by US museums”) [“self rule”?]. That in itself speaks volumes. They say that the number of such items in private collections and on the US market “continues to grow”, now wait a minute… surely a research institute of this nature might here – before it addresses ANY other topic – ask and answer for the public just why that is so. Passing over that question in silence would be a meaningful omission. Nevertheless at present that is what the CPRI website does. The CPRI merely see the need to compile “accurate data on the nature and volume” of artistically and academically significant material in private hands. This research aim however is unclearly formulated. Quite apart from defining what (and for whom) is "artistically and academically significant" the scope of this survey is left undefined. While initially it is stated that it will cover US private and commercial holdings, it then goes on to say it will look at the scale of the phenomenon “in a particular cultural/historical area, with a view toward establishing credible order-of-magnitude figures, over time, for all cultural/historical areas”. Areas of the USA? Perhaps all will become clear when “initial conclusions" are "published on the CPRI website by the end of 2009”.

Now sadly, I personally see nothing in the proposals for the first four research topics of this "Institute" which really would in their own right actually go any way to "linking people with culture". 380 km away in Blanding in the next state there has been a major action by the authorities to counter the destruction of archaeological contexts of significance by antiquity collectors and dealers, this would seem to be a useful place for an institute concerned with researching and educating about cultural property and its significance to begin its outreach. Why all the attention paid to the legislations of foreign "source countries" when there is so much to do and so much scope for useful work at home?

These CPRI projects have also been commented on by David Gill. [I thought the question about the donation by US private collectors of objects to museums in the "source countries" they had been taken from rather than the United States was a particularly apt one].

Photo: The Institute's headquarters, 215 W. San Francisco St. Suite 202c.

Archaeologist Urges More Transparency

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The ACCG shows signs of exasperation in their efforts to win minds and hearts and overthrow the law with their illegal coin import stunt. Readers will know that Missouri coin dealer Wayne Sayles, the unelected executive director of said lobby group, has an “Ancient Coin Collecting” blog (which has just undergone a facelift from that morbid black - maybe now we'll even have some posts on it about ancient coin collecting). On it he frequently discusses matters connected with maintaining the status quo in the no-questions-asked ancient coin market. Thus it was that this morning I woke up to find there another attack on the writer of these words - this seems to be becoming rather a tradition among US coin collectors and British "metal detectorists".

Mr Sayles' new post is called “Archaeologist defends State Department Secrecy” and it is the usual stuff. Its author justifies its tone by pointing out that “the controversial Barford paints” ancient coin collectors and dealers,”as looters and criminals”. I rather think he is simplifying my arguments somewhat. Apparently:

hot on the heels of Obama administration guidance that transparency is the new order of the day, archaeologist Paul Barford has defended DOS refusal to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.

have I? Frankly, I do not care a bit what documents the State Department show Mr Sayles and his coin collecting mates or the Belgian coin dealers’ association, or the big auction houses and petty dealers financing this FOI suit. I think their lawyers and employees are obviously having great fun leading them a merry dance for their members' misspent money. What I find ironic is what this is all ultimately about.

It is about transparency. The coin dealers do not want to have to show US customs one of two types of pieces of paper when bringing ancient coins from certain source countries into the US. They do not want to have to reveal to their customers where the objects they are selling come from. The whole global antiquities trade is built on secrecy, on the right of the dealer to withold information when a specific commodity (antiquities) is concerned. In other words on a lack of transparency. This is important as it is under such conditions that looted and smuggled material can easily enter the market and generate revenue for those involved in the looting process. Having more transparency and accountability in the antiquities trade would greatly reduce the possibilities for this to happen.

The introduction of import restrictions which requires demonstrating licit origins of selected types of artefact is obviously perceived by those opposed to these measures as threatening the introduction of transparency into the trade, and so one may deduce that this is the reason why coin dealers are particularly concerned. They presumably see this as the thin end of the wedge which could lead (together with public concern about its place in encouraging looting) to the end of the no-questions-asked buying and selling of archaeological artefacts.

ACCG Executive Director Wayne Sayles has a business selling ancient coins. It can be found by going to ACCG president Bill Puetz’s V-coins portal described as the "ethical alternative to ebay". There we see that Mr Sayles currently has several thousand items on sale. Clicking on the majority of the items being sold on V-Coins by Mr Sayles will not reveal any information whatsoever on their provenance or pedigree. Why not? Where is this transparency Mr Sayles is so concerned about? Mote and beam come to mind here. Why is he acquiring for resale ancient artefacts which he transparently cannot state frankly and openly where they come from? Why the secrecy (which one might say is similar to that attributed by him to the US State Department) over this? If we demanded "Freedom of Information" from Mr Sayles, I wonder how much information would be forthcoming about where those items came from and in what circumstances they left the source countries?

What is interesting in all this is that the ACCG and PNG are not by any means the only North American trade associations involved in the dealing in items covered by the implementation of the CPIA. There are a number of antique and antiquity dealers’ associations for example. How have their members reacted to the requirements that in importing certain types of art objects into the US [such as ethnographic objects and certain paintings like Cypriot icons], they have to show a piece of paper? Are they too trying to overturn the law? Are they too attacking people for saying it is a good thing that there is a bit of transparency in the trade of such items? Well (I am sure Mr Sayles will correct me if I am wrong), there does not seem to be a parallel move from US dealers in these types of material to the actions being taken by US coin dealers. Why not? So what makes coin dealers think they are in any way special?

Predictably, Mr Sayles applies the "Petrarch collected coins" argument in summing up what he'd like his readers to believe this is about:

Representing the views of a venerable 600-year-old hobby and its modern adherents, the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild is challenging what it sees as bias leading to arbitrary and capricious actions on the part of the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

This has nothing to do with any altruistic challenge to "arbitrary and capricious actions", it is about defending the no-questions-asked market in antiquities. It is about defending the lack of transparency in this particular segment of the market. The question is, is this whole action ultimately to the benefit of ethical collectors or merely the less-than-fastidious importers?

Mr Sayles provided a link to a Google search for "State+Department+secrecy". Here are the corresponding results for "antiquity+collecting+secrecy" and "antiquity+dealing+secrecy". The vignette shows the ACCG defending the non-transparency of the no-questions-asked antiquities trade .

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Documenting the origin of archaeological collectables in the US

We have seen here several times how collectors of portable antiquities in the United States advocate other countries abandoning their current "restrictive" archaeological heritage protection legislation. They demand that they adopt the current laissez faire approach of England and Wales to the collecting of so-called "portable antiquities" with a voluntary reporting of finds and an unregulated market. These advocates fail to recognise that the United States has itself in fact just such a "restrictive" system of archaeological resources protection legislation in the case of sites and artefacts from "federal and indian lands", which is in fact the greater part of the land area of the country. Nevertheless such legislation offers next to little protection to sites on private land. This means that US artefact hunters can legally dig up and sell almost what they want from private land, but cannot touch sites on public land without a permit. From the collectors' point of view, the US system embodies the "best of both worlds".

It does not however work that way, because in the milieu of portable antiquity collectors the world over are greedy self-centred individuals who care little about where the items they covet come from. The "best" Native American sites (richest, easier to find and dig) in the US are often on public land.

We saw an example of this in southern Utah, where 24 people were recently arrested for illegal activities concerning Native American antiquities. This case has received wide publicity pour encourager les autres and there has been some reaction on the associated forums. This material is useful to give those of us not from rural Utah an insight into the collecting mentality and what has been going on in portable antiquity collecting circles. In particular, the affadavit to the search warrant issued in the case of schoolteacher Dave Lacy published online by two US news media organizations gives us the information based on the investigating officer’s “knowledge, experience and information provided by other law enforcement officers” concerning artefact hunting and the antiquities trade in the area.

Given the discussion that has been going on with US collectors of ancient coins removed from foreign archaeological sites on documenting provenance of the ancient items being offered for sale, my attention was caught by the issue of documentation of provenance in this milieu. It is, however, a complex matter. Apparently, in this milieu in the US engaged in the collecting of this sort of portable antiquity:

“objects typically are sold with a letter or provenance which acts as a sort of title document. Letters of provenance usually list the individual who found the item, usually the location where it as found, and include assurances that the item was not illegally collected from public or Indian lands.” (Affadavit point
13).

This is interesting, it suggests that in one part of the portable antiquity collecting community in the US due to the structure of the legislation the maintenance of documentation for the legal origin of objects in the collection is standard practice for law abiding collectors and dealers, which makes even more incomprehensible the refusal of collectors of other types of portable antiquity prone to contamination with illicitly obtained material (like ancient coins) to maintain such documentation.

The problem is not so straightforward however, since - depite the abundant opportunities to collect archaeological material without any conflict with the law - in the collecting of archaeological material from the US there are unscrupulous law-breakers too. The same text notes that

“Individuals who deal in stolen archaeological objects are usually very careful to disguise the site of origin. This is usually done by identifying the site of origin as leased and/or private property” (Affadavit points 13 and 17).

The affadavit goes on to describe how in some cases a blank letter of provenance form may be supplied by the buyer for the seller to complete with false provenance details. This is what allegedly happened in a transaction which reportedly occurred in December 2007 in Blanding, Utah, when the accused man Dave Lacy offered the individual (“the Source”) working undercover for the FBI several items from his collection. The deal was made (over six thousand dollars were paid for four groups of artifacts) and

“Lacy asked the source if he had something for him to sign. The Source provided Lacy with a Letter of Provenience. The source stated that lacy needed to put private property as the location where the artifacts were found. Lacy then listed a private property location, Eugene Guyman’s land Mustang Mesa and signed the false letter of provenience”.

The problem is that when he indicated the true origin of the items, a blanket, a digging stick and knife, they had come from other sites, including public land.

The document alleges that in a second sale of artefact by the same person took place in the middle of January involved organic finds from several different sites (loincloth, menstrual pad, basket, sandals) and a pot. Two of the sandals came from a burial in Cottonwood Wash (an area mentioned in a previous prosecution case), while the pot was in fact from a piece of private property and was thus a licitly obtained find. The affadavit alleges:

Lacy filled out a letter of provenance stating that all the above items were found on “Preston Nielsons property (Westwater) ”. Lacy then signed this fraudulent Letter of Provenience.

It should be noted that one of the items in this group (the pot) could apparently have been sold under its real provenence, but it was given a false one at the time of the sale by the digger (Affadavit points 24-28). This means that as it passes throught successive private collections, it will perpetuate the deceit that it comes from to an archaeological site which in fact does not exist.

If these sorts of practice are at all prevalent in US pot-digging circles, it means that even here any letters of provenience indicating which cannot be independently verified are suspect. What can be done to prevent liars and cheats misrepresenting archaeological material in the United States? Perhaps they need to introduce some form of Portable Antiquities Scheme there before insisting that other countries adopt something like it.

Vignette: Some of the sites mentioned in the case (source Salt Lake Tribune)

Arrests Made In Utah over Sale of Native American Artefacts

A two-year major undercover sting operation aimed at gathering information on part of the flourishing illegal market in ancient American Indian artefacts in the United States has led to federal indictments in Utah naming 24 people (Howard Berkes, 'Arrests Made In Sale Of American Indian Artifacts' NPR News June 10, 2009; Nicholas Riccardi and Jim Tankersley, 24 charged in crackdown on Native American artifact looting, Los Angeles Times 11th June 2009). This was what authorities have called the largest investigation ever into the looting of Native American artifacts on public lands in the United States. On Wednesday, about 150 federal agents, sheriffs' deputies and local and tribal police served arrest and search warrants in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. Most of those targeted by Wednesday's early morning raids live in southeastern Utah, most of them took place in Blanding, which is a centre of both legitimate and illegal artefact markets, while other arrests took place in Moab and Monticello (Utah), and in neighboring Colorado and New Mexico. The region has a rich archaeological heritage and contains thousands of archaeological sites, settlements, dwellings and burial grounds and cliff paintings and engravings of ancient groups who 'mysteriously vanished' before modern tribes appeared. Many of these sites are rich in collectable 'portable antiquities' including beautifuilly painted pottery.

It was in this region in the late 1800s that rancher Richard Wetherill and his family discovered the cliff dwellings (now Mese Verde National Park) burial sites containing clay pots, reed sandals and religious items of a 'lost culture' colloquially referred to as the Anasazi. That attracted the interest of collectors and museums. Since the early 20th century, settlers were even encouraged to dig up arrowheads, pottery and other remains. In the 1920s the University of Utah paid Blanding residents $2 per ancient pot. A lucrative trade in Native American artefacts developed that continues in both legal and black market forms today. It was the destruction to sites in this region by indiscriminate collecting that was behind the creation of the 1906 'Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities' (16 USC 431-433), see the very interesting website ' The Story of the Antiquities Act ', by Ronald F. Lee. Currently the Archaeological Resource Protection Act (ARPA) prohibits among other things the digging and selling of centuries-old pots, bowls, baskets, mugs, sandals, pipes, religious items and other artefacts left by ancient Native Americans on what is now federal and tribal land. Federal law does not however prohibit the digging and removal of artefacts from private land.

Collecting and trade in Native American artefacts of the Anasazi and related cultures in the region has been going on, legally and illegally, in this region for generations, the collectors forming a sort of artefact hunting subculture. Craig Childs, who is writing a book ("Finders Keepers") on artefact theft emphasises that as with all artefact hunting, not all US "pothunters," are motivated by profit: "The stronger focus is finding the thing … and figuring out the puzzle and getting your treasure, It is definitely a treasure hunter's sport". Protecting archaeological sites of the region from artefact theft is extremely difficult, enforcing the laws is hindered by the vast size of the region and the remoteness of many of the sites. Pothunters are rarely caught in the act, and they often claim that the items they sell were found on private land. Federal authorities estimate that 90% of the 20,000 archaeological sites in San Juan County, where Blanding is located, have already been plundered.

Archaeologists, Native American groups and preservationists have long argued that the government has not moved aggressively enough to stamp out the plundering of artifacts. There had last been an antiquities raid in Utah in the 1980s, and it is reported that the execution of the search warrants in collectors' homes caused much anti-government feeling and a 'cold dead hands' attitude among collectors in the region, especially as in the event nobody was actually prosecuted. One of President George W. Bush's final pardons was granted to the first Utah man convicted of stealing artifacts from public lands. This time authorities seem to have taken action and been concerned to make a watertight case.

Wednesday's sting involved the purchase of 256 artefacts by an undercover informant for $335,685. Interestingly, According to a search warrant affidavit, the FBI and Bureau of Land Management in October 2006 persuaded a person described as "a major dealer of archaeological artifacts for 10 years" to work with the authorities to help them unravel the informal network of pot hunters illicitly profiting off the land's history. The dealer was 'wired' and the transactions were recorded, and the informant managed to get information on where the artefacts in question had been found, some of the suspects indicated by pointing to spots on a map that they had been taken from federal and tribal land. The charges allege:

... theft of government property, theft from tribal lands and depredation of government property. Both felony and misdemeanor counts are involved. Penalties upon conviction range up to 10 years in prison.

The accused are named in several sources. In December 2007, for example, David Lacy, 55 (who another source suggests is the brother of San Juan County Sheriff Mike Lacy); and another defendant allegedly came to the dealer with a wide range of artifacts that they indicated had been found on public land, but asking that they be listed as coming from private land. The asking price was $6,000. Another person indicted was Harold Lyman, 78, who is accused of selling the source an ancient pipe bowl. Jeanne Redd, 59, was indicted for allegedly selling a tribal bird pendant. A woman with that name had been charged previously with desecrating Native American grave sites in southern Utah. No doubt in coming weeks we will be hearing more about the progress of this case.

At a Salt Lake City news conference about the arrests, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar described thse events as "a sad reminder that the stealing and destruction of archaeological and American Indian treasures from public lands is a highly lucrative business [...] We will not tolerate that kind of activity in the United States".

It is a shame though that the United States not only tolerates but does not more frequently take similar action against those of its citizens who ignore heritage protection laws of other countries to accumulate collections of portable antiquities such as pots coins and artworks looted from archaeological sites overseas and which are the basis of a massive no-questions-asked trade in the States which is just as damaging to the archaeological heritage as the pot-diggers they prosecute at home, and for precisely the same reasons.

(basic text largely based on the article Howard Berkes, 'Arrests Made In Sale Of American Indian Artifacts' NPR News June 10, 2009 - listen to a broadcast: map from the LA Times).