More Antiquities Looted from Italy Leave the Hands of US Collectors and Dealers

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There seem to be huge quantities of looted Classical antiquities in US hands. A January 20 press announcement by Italian authorities summarises recent results in the fight with unlawfully exported items in US hands. This time we learn of the return of more than 200 antiquities of various sizes from US museums, companies, collectors and dealers — all the product of illegal excavation or theft. The Chasing Aphrodite blog has a lengthy article on it.

The article discusses some of the returned objects. The two biggest items were statues relinquished by the health insurance provider Humana, which had stood apparently for over 20 years in the lobby of its Louisville headquarters. They illustrate very well the problem of stolen and looted artefacts being offered to uncritical buyers on the no-questions-asked market. The company had in good faith "acquired the statues in 1984 from a New York Gallery". It turns out on investigation that one of them, a first century marble statue, had been illegally excavated in Lazio, Italy and apparently had passed through the hands of the convicted antiquities trafficker Giacomo Medici. The other, a second century sculpture of Fortuna, had been stolen in October 1986 from an opera house in Rome.

The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s former antiquities curator Dietrich von Bothner was known to have a large private collection of antiquities. Some of the vase fragments in his possession reportedly match vases already returned by American museums. The next batch of items returned recently was a group of forty pieces which the Met had obtained as "the property of a deceased private collector" which it is being reported had been a small part of this collection. What happened to the rest?

Of potentially greater significance was the third batch. This was reportedly of 170 objects and fragments returned by the Princeton University Art Museum. According to the Chasing Aphrodite blog these included:

an askos-shaped talus; two statues of women, including one playing a tambourine and the other a lyre; a white pithos with red figures representing animals; and 166 fragments from vases and architectural elements. The returns appear to be related to the investigation of Edoardo Almagià, the Princeton alum and antiquities dealer who, along with Princeton antiquities curator Michael Padgett, are targets of an investigation by Italian authorities.

As the Chasing Aphrodite bloggers explain, the release states that these objects:

“were identified in previous surveys conducted by the [Carabinieri] of the possessions of an Italian-American citizen, resident of New York, who has been the subject of the seizure of numerous archaeological finds, in New York and Rome, and copious documentation with photographic material pertaining to sales and loans made ​​by him.” These seized documents have allowed investigators to trace looted antiquities to prestigious American museums like the Met and Princeton, the release says, adding that the Carabinieri “have thus established, irrefutably, the origin of the objects from illicit excavations made ​​in Italy.”

The authors go on to remark that works that have passed through Almagia's hands have according to researchers also been traced to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Tampa Museum of Art and the Indiana University Art Museum.

In addition, New York antiquities dealer Jerome Eisenberg (he of Royal-Athena Gallery) has reportedly returned to Italy a bronze statue being sold for $22,500 known as the Venus of St. John Perareto, which he had bought from an unnamed dealer in Freiburg, Germany in 1982. This on further investigation turns out to have been stolen from a museum in Rimini in 1962.

As the authors note, in the hands of Italian authorities are now a series of archives of individuals involved in the antiquities trade. The Almagia Archive joins the "trove of documents, photographs and objects that Italian investigators have seized from antiquities dealers Robin Symes, Robert Hecht, Gianfranco Becchina and Giacomo Medici". They raise the question of what to do with this vast amount of information about certain sectors of the antiquities trade.

Hat-Tip: David Gill

Vignette: The Pantheon and Pheonix, the badge of the Cultural Property Protection Carabinieri, Photo: Culture cop (nice uniform now I look at it, what's the hat-badge?)

The Disappearing ANS Weiss Collection

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I see, despite all his current worries, Arnold-Peter Weiss has been nominated for the Board of Trustees of the American Numismatic Society. Good for him.

"A donor to the Society, he is a generous contributor to the ANS collections, Gala, annual appeals, and is one of the founding members of the ANS’ Augustus B. Sage Society".

I am a bit puzzled though, did the ANS have as this Dec 3rd Google Cache suggests an Arnold-Peter Weiss collection? If so, where has it gone? Here's one of his coins in the ANS Collection. It still says: "Gift of Arnold-Peter Weiss". These are his too, according to Google cache (notably made on 3 Jan 2012 23:51:07 GMT), but look at the page NOW. They've already deleted his name. Oh, that is not very nice of the ANS is it? Nor, would I say very transparent or ethical. What does that mean? That only now the Trustees have some "reasonable doubts" about something? What and why? Or what? What's going on?

But they have not nobbled the 2007 story of ANS Trustee Dr. Arnold-Peter C. Weiss donating a (complete?) "Celtic" hacksilver hoard from Spain "dating circa the fourth to third century BC. It consists of 135 pieces of coins and cut jewelry used as money (Fig. 1). This exceedingly rare donation continues Dr. Weiss’s interest in adding to the ANS cabinet items related to alternative money and bullion sources used in early trade". Sadly the newsletter does not say where the object was found, by whom and how it left Spain and entered the USA (see now here). The link in the article now goes to a coin from a hacksilver hoard - without any mention of whose donation it was. There's gratitude for you.

There is slightly more information about the previous history of another of his donations though, this one in early 2005:

A donation of historical importance came from one of the ANS Trustees, Dr. Arnold-Peter C. Weiss: a group of 19 items comprising a fifth-century BC hoard from Egypt which includes a large silver cake ingot (fig. 1). The provenance of this group, which represents one of the few known examples in the United States, is a private collection (from Valais, Switzerland) purchased in the 1950s.

See also the account of a later 2005 donation by Dr Weiss which may be related, or the same. Despite the assurances that this is a pre-1970 UNESCO Convention export from Egypt, the links here too go to catalogue entries of items without (now) any public information who generously donated it to the ANS collection.

Then there is the "group of sixty-six Eastern European Celtic coins" Dr Weiss donated in 2006. If you click on the link in this article, you find the donor's name appears to have been removed by the ANS from the entry here too. Wallachia, Transylvania, and to some extent Banat are all in modern Romania - which has legislation making such coin finds state property, when did these 36 items leave southeastern Europe and how?

It seems the absence of Dr Weiss' name from the online records of the ANS collection is due to deletions which have taken place very recently (the dates of the Google caches) and it seems not unlikely that the ANS has been engaged in what they might see as "damage control", for example that they now have some kind of "reasonable doubts" about the propriety of accepting some of the objects donated in the past by this ANS member. If so it is notable that of less importance is the actual state of hygiene of their collections than the appearance that they are sqeaky-clean. But then, on the other hand, it is also worth drawing attention to the fact that as things stand today, Dr Weiss has not been convicted of any wrong-doing whatsoever.

Readers of this blog who have followed the links I give will be well aware of the frequency with which US coineys apply the notion of "innocent until proven guilty" to their collecting, saying it is up to the accusers to prove guilt. We have seen though that this principle is not always applied by their associations. In July 2011 Salem Alshdaifat (Holyland Numismatics) and Morris Khouli (Windsor Antiquities) were summarily removed from the list ("suspended") of sponsors and members of the Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild because they were in the news as accused of customs irregularities (the case has yet to come to trial). It seems the ANS is reacting in a similar way just days after vague and rather (at the moment) low-profile accusations about Dr Weiss' acquisition of two coins (actually only one of them) appeared in the press. Where is the justice in that? Dr Weiss has been an extremely generous donor to the ANS but the moment a grey cloud appears, they turn their backs on him? If the reason for the deletions is that the ANS is now having "reasonable doubts" about the origins of the coins he gave them, why were those doubts not expressed earlier, when the donations were accepted? This is down to due diligence. What has changed about what the ANS now knows about the origins of Dr Weiss' coins (as opposed to any other coins donated by other ANS members at the same time)?

If they are deleting his name from the acquisition records because of unproven allegations and an impending court case, I think the ANS reaction here is shabby and disgraceful. If I were an ANS member, I'd be cancelling my subscription right now and would be reconsidering any decision to donate them research material if that is the way they treat their sponsors to maintain a facade.

It is also quite interesting in the light of recent events to read Dr Weiss' Sept 2009 comments on the Art Newspaper article 'Hispanic Society to sell historic coin collection?'. He describes the intention to sell this "irreplaceable cultural collection of historical coins related to Spanish history" as "truly despicable" and an expression of "greed".

This type of asset for the US academic community and public can never be replaced. The arguments of context of cultural property are so powerful in this matter that to see the collection broken up and distributed is a sad remark on what a non-profit organization should stand for. Even if the Spanish government buys the collection intact, the issue of transferring legally acquired cultural material from the shores of the USA forever, is problematic. Is this country just going to continue to sell all our cultural assets and material abroad? We could learn some lessons from the British, Austrians, Germans and French in this regard.

Eh? and not the Italians and Greeks, who fight to keep their country's cultural property from going to foreign collectors and do not shrink from getting help from other states to get it back when it does?

Note how these coins, and in particular their arrangement into a collection, has become "our" (ie US) cultural assets. Note also how agitated the American gets here about them being "sold abroad", yet US collectors apparently have no compunction whatsoever about buying other peoples' cultural assets for their own personal entertainment and profit.

[Despite ANS opposition, the Hispanic Society's coins are now up for sale]

UPDATE 3rd Feb: On checking the links, I find that about 22nd Jan the Google cache page containing the details of Dr Weiss' donations to the ANS was deleted too, so no longer works. "Phew", eh, ANS? Several other of the links I gave here now do not work either. My readers will just have to decide whether this blog is a more reliable source of information about what the online sources had to say about the contents of the ANS collection on 12th January than what the ANS now seems concerned to keep from the public. ("DOWN the memory hole with him!") What was it the coineys were campaigning for recently? More transparency ? Surely they'd better start in their own back yard and their own coiney organizations. Ask: what (else) has the ANS got to hide here?

Vignette: ANS "un-person" Dr Weiss (after Chasing Aphrodite, edited)

Looted Pots in Smithsonian Magazine?

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David Gill ('Publishing recently surfaced Mayan pots') draws attention to a recent article in the Smithsonian Magazine (Chip Brown, "El Mirador, the Lost City of the Maya", May 2011) which is illustrated by photos of what seem to be looted ceramic vessels

(see Michael E. Smith, 'Smithsonian magazine published looted artifacts', Publishing Archaeology May 26th 2011).

UPDATE 7th June 2011: Peter Tompa says:

[A]s a subscriber, I'm happy Smithsonian does not limit its illustrations only to artifacts from documented archaeological excavations.

That follows. If those complete pots had been looted from native American graves on US soil, would the subscriber be equally "happy"? Is looting OK for these people when it happens in somebody else's country?

In his haste to get the boot into "archaeobloggers Gill and Barford" Tompa misses that the point was originally made by US archaeologist Michael Smith on his "Publishing Archaeology" blog where, if he'd looked at it, Tompa would have found some interesting comments. The Smithsonian replies to Smith, rather feebly. Karen Olsen Bruhns adds:

my point was, and is, that NO journal should tart up articles with looted artifact. This is an appalling lapse of intelligence and ethics. These pieces are looted. Hence they were acquired by illegal actions. To publish such pieces is to tacitly acquiesce to looting, smuggling, and the vending of stolen goods. That Smithsonian should do it, and offer such puerile excuses, is not defensible.

But Peter Tompa - retained by international numismatic trade associations - openly states that he is "happy" that an institution like the Smithsonian ignores such notions and has lower expectations of his local museum.
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Due Diligence at the Eleventh Hour?

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Lot# 45 Attica. Athens. Decadrachm, Estimate: US$875000

Attica. Athens. c. 465-460 BC. Decadrachm, 41.86g. (2h). Obv: Head of Athena right, wearing crested Attic helmet decorated with three olive leaves over spiral palmette and three-piece drop earrings. Rx: A - Θ - Ε Owl standing facing, wings spread; olive sprig at upper left; all within incuse square. Fischer-Bossert, unlisted dies. In itself, this coin is one of the finest of all Greek coins in existence. It is, according to Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert, one of three coins tied for the finest known, with only one of the other two being in private hands and the second in a museum, and it is one of the most significant issues ever struck by the Greeks. The head of Athena is struck in high relief. The smile produces an apple-cheek face, which blends with a slightly elliptical archaic eye. A fair amount of the crest is present and all of the pearls along the neck and under the helmet are complete, as well as full detail on all of the leaves, the helmet and the complete hairline and complete ear. The owl, which normally has large planchet defects in the chest, in this case is completely and fully struck, including the chest, the tail, and even the feet which are absolutely sharp. Only the very top of the A is off the flan and there is a tiny bit of corrosion in the right wing and an even smaller miniscule spot in the lower part of the left wing. Near Mint State. This coin was graded by NGC with a photo certificate, but not encapsulated. If the buyer requests the coin encapsulated, NGC will oblige. When NGC does register sets of ancient coins, the person owning this coin would no doubt have the number one register set. NGC Cert. #3443360-001. NGC Grade is Choice AU*, Fine Style, Strike 5/5, Surface 4/5.

The coin is proudly displayed on the cover of the catalogue of the US numismatic auction house that is selling this artefact:


But just recently (but not until after bidding had reached at least 700 000 dollars), this has appeared on the seller's website:

Lot# 45 Lot Withdrawn - This lot has been withdrawn from the auction. Recent new information has come to light which points to the possibility that the coin is not authentic. Further investigation and research is needed. Both Heritage and Gemini have the utmost responsibility to ensure the authenticity of every lot sold and our decision to withdraw this lot is in line with that policy. We regret this new information was only discovered at the eleventh hour and apologize for any inconvenience resulting from the withdrawal of this lot. We remain committed to only offering the very best coins, in which our clients can have full confidence when it comes to quality, authenticity and value.

They would have even more confidence if the coin could be traced back by a collecting history to the point when (and where) it left the ground, removing any uncertainty whether it was a genuine coin found in the ground, or one that had been knocked up in some workshop recently and passed off as one. As one collector has noted:

In the last few years a few mint examples of the Athenian Decadrachm have come to market. Interestingly, and alarmingly, they have all been mint examples and with no previously known die examples. And all have a lack of provenance. Red flags abound.[...] Be careful out there

( ...; otherwise you might end up buying looted stuff unawares". He might have added that last bit himself, but he did not).

So where did this coin "surface"? Why did the auctioneers not raise this question with the seller earlier, rather than waiting until the "eleventh hour"?

There are several mentions in the very long text about this coin in the seller's catalogue of Dr Wolfgang Fischer-Bossert's, The Athenian Decadrachm (NNM 168, New York 2008) and his 'More Athenian Decadrachms' (SNR 88 2009)" but not a single mention of this, the finest example above ground, being actually mentioned in those works... Did Fischer Bossert not know of its existence even though it had been (presumably) sitting in some "old collection" somewhere or other? The long text is about the "hubbing" method used to produce the dies of this coin "produced in an amazing way reminiscent of modern industrial procedures". Yes.

So, this person who was willing to pay upwards of 700 000 dollars to purchase this coin, did he do so only after extensive correspondence with the seller convinced him that the object really had been obtained licitly and had a perfectly good pedigree going back decades, or did he put forward the money regardless of where the object came from - only to be able to have "the number one register set" of ancient coins all to himself?
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Collectors' "Rights" Lobbying Guild Rewords their Code of Ethics

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After over five years of criticism, the ACCG Board of Directors has altered the text of its Code of Ethics "to clarify the guild's position in regard to illicit trade". The initial text of the first paragraph was:

"1. Coin Collectors and Sellers will not knowingly purchase coins illegally removed from scheduled archaeological sites or stolen from museum or personal collections, and will comply with all cultural property laws of their own country".

This was criticised by David Gill on at least one occasion, and myself. It took them five years however to see that the text really did not present the dealers organizing the "Guild" in the best of lights, so "by a formal decision of the Board of Directors on June 6, 2010" the first paragraph of the code was "updated" (sic). It now reads: "

1. Coin collectors and sellers will not knowingly purchase coins stolen from private or public collections or reasonably suspected to be the direct products of illicit excavations in contravention of national patrimony laws. Coin collectors and sellers will also comply with all applicable customs laws".

The Guild explains:

This revision was felt necessary in order to clarify the position of the guild in regard to illicit excavations in countries where patrimony laws make such excavation products stolen property. It also recognizes the responsibility of importers and exporters to accurately describe and value objects being transported or shipped and to comply with any customs laws that may be applicable.

Well, that rather puts their own Baltimore illegal coin import stunt in a bad light. The clarification of the "position of the guild in regard to illicit excavations in countries where patrimony laws make such excavation products stolen property" is a dramatic turnaround. As we have seen here, ACCG associated dealers have said defiantly all along that they consider that the fact that something is regarded as "stolen" in some foreign land does not make them so by US law. A position that did them and the collectors they claim to represent no credit whatsoever. It is good to see at last a recognition that the bounds of ethics are not merely limited to what a law does and does not determine is merely legal. It remains to be seen how this affects the trading practices of ACCG-associated dealers and collectors.

Spot the weasel words. There are now three parts here. (a) "Coin collectors and sellers will not knowingly purchase coins stolen from private or public collections". Note the word "knowingly". There is however still nothing here about due diligence in ascertaining that coins are not stolen - for example checking on published lists of stolen items. In fact this point of this "code of ethics" does no more than assert that collectors and sellers will not handle stolen goods, which is what the law says. So how far do these "changes" extend? A separate explanation (Guidance notes) would be helpful here to actually "clarify the position of the guild" on this matter.

The third part "Coin collectors and sellers will also comply with all applicable customs laws", interestingly dropping the "of their own country". So dealers importing ancient coins from Bulgaria are obliged by this "code of ethics" to have Bulgarian export licences in the case of coins to which such licencing applies. On the one hand this merely reinforces the existing law, but on the other hand, given the general and frequently expressed attitude of the Guild's membership, that the US collector is somehow "outside" these laws, this is an interesting change. Provided, that is, that we all interpret that word "applicable" in the same way. Again, a separate explanation (Guidance notes) would be helpful here to actually "clarify the position of the guild" on this matter.


In the middle is the central point. "Coin collectors and sellers will not knowingly purchase coins [...] reasonably suspected to be the direct products of illicit excavations in contravention of national patrimony laws". Once again we have the dichotomy between "knowingly purchasing" and "ascertaining that they are not purchasing". If you don't ask the question, you do not know the answer. As long as you keep your trading within the no-questions-asked framework, then you cannot be accused of doing anything "knowingly". But is that the direction ethical collecting and dealing should be heading? The rest of us say no, the ACCG apparently (from the wording of this text) says yes, so really nothing has changed.

Illicit excavations are defined as those "in contravention of national patrimony laws", hardly a very revolutionary definition, but a significant one from a group whose board members have been heard loudly calling for these "restrictive" ("nationalist") "retentionist" laws to be ignored. One presumes that this phrase means the laws applicable in the source countries from which the items come, and it would have been helpful if the revised text had said that explicitly. Also there is no time limit stated (pre-1970/post 1970 for example). But then note the weasel wording, it is ethical to handle coins that are not the "direct products of illicit excavations". What does the ACCG mean by that? Does it mean that they consider items not to be the "direct products" if they lie stockpiled in a collection or warehouse for a few weeks, months or years before they are bought by the ACCG dealer? If they are smuggled out of the Balkans to a Swiss, German, Austrian or British auction and bought there no questions asked by a US dealer or collector? Looted objects are the direct products of illicit and illegal activities however many hands they pass through, they are tainted from origin, and no amount of laundering can change that. "In contravention of national patrimony laws" means in contravention of national patrimony laws. That is like saying that buying articles from a fence is not actually buying the direct products of a theft, because not bought directly from the burglar. Again, a separate explanation (Guidance notes) would be helpful here to actually "clarify the position of the Guild" on this matter.

Californian coin dealer Dave Welsh comments with hidden irony that:

This revision to the published code does not reflect any change in the ethical approach of the numismatic trade.

He claims that the dealers and collectors routinely avoid what he calls "suspicious material", though again there is a lack of clarity what is meant by that term, as I have pointed out here on this blog, there is much that I find suspicious about the items his own firm "Classical Coins" offers.

The reworded code is now in discord with that of the supposedly "ethical" V-Coins (whose owner is currently ACCG President Bill Puetz) the corresponding element of the later's code of ethics is "I will not knowingly deal in stolen numismatic items. I will report such items to the proper authorities if they are offered to me". No mention of illcit excavations or their definition (or a definition therefore of the word "stolen"). No mention of customs regulations. There are other differences more applicable to dealers than collectors. Which Code therefore is a dealer who is both a member of the ACCG and operating through V-coins to apply? By which is he more bound? It seems to me that being chucked off V-Coins has more economic clout thjan being expelled from the ACCG for mispractice (see below) which rather suggests that it is the lower-threshold V-coins "Code" which would win here.

In the case of the ACCG Code, there is no sign here that the changes to the established code of ethics were made after consultation with the collectors which the Guild claims to represent. Maybe collectors could have suggested, for example, forms in which the adherence to this code by dealers is demonstrated (up-front declarations that the buyer will receive a copy of the export licence for example). This would be in the spirit of the second principle (unchanged) of the ACCG Code of ethics ("Coin Collectors and Sellers will protect, preserve and share knowledge about coins in their collections", knowledge could in this case be documentation of licit provenance). Was there any collector input into this revision? Perhaps "transparency" requires that this is revealed and why any suggestions that were rejected were ignored. After all that is precisely what the ACCG is fighting for against the US government, so they should show their members that they too can apply the standards they expect from others.

Finally, there is no mention here of what happens to collectors and dealers who do not adhere to the principles of the ACCG Code of Ethics, whose shipments are seized by customs, who are found to be knowingly dealing in material which any idiot can see is the "direct product of illicit excavations". Is there some kind of a disciplinary procedure? To whom should infringements be reported? Would the offending dealer or collector be expelled from the Guild, or can they continue to flaunt the Code and claim to be a fully-paid-up member of the Guild? Or, due to a lack of ability to ensure they are abided by, are these just so many utterly meaningless words? Again, let us have some transparency on the intentions here.

Vignette: ACCG Code of Ethics, no more than just empty words?

Jackie and Wayne Comment on the Christies' Sale

The comments of simple art-loving Jackie (that's "Jackie@plus size lingerie") on the piece in the New York Observer about today's Christie's auction probably make about as much sense to the average reader in the context of the article as antiquity dealer Wayne Sayles'. Both miss the mark and both concentrate on their author's own commercial interests.

Under the guise of "protection", state politics and special interests have taken culture and its heritage away from the very people who create it and rightly cherish it. The laws and administrative processes designed to prevent genuine travesties are indiscriminately and capriciously being applied by bureaucrats, in nationalist countries and in the U.S., to some of the most innocuous and incidental types of objects from the past. This returns us to the cloistered elitism of the Middle Ages, where the common man is fed only institutional propaganda.

duh? What has that to do with Christie's or Medici? I see that Jackie has not got her act together and her website is not finished yet, and we've already seen that Sayle's "Internationalist" ideas are only half-baked, so they make a matched couple of commentators for this issue.

Jackie can be found in many places on the web commenting vacuously on a number of topics, from fishing to Firefox, salads to art and supporting her business activities...

Scientific Proof: Show Me the Coin Fairies

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In the last (?) of a consecutive series of four posts on "ancient coins" on his so-called "Ancient Coin" blog called, notably "Looting: The Essence of the Lie", vindictive Californian coin dealer Dave Welsh accuses me of deceit:

it is in every respect justifiable to declare that the whole attack upon private collecting is nothing more than a lie.

I suggest that the ACCG should buy each of the people who write on their behalf a dictionary and encourage them to use it. Welsh is illogical here. A lie is of course the deliberate use of a falsehood. Welsh claims there is no "scientific proof" of the connection between indiscriminate collecting (which is what I am writing about here) and looting. He himself argues that to say there is - as I clearly do - is therefore a belief; a belief he does not share. A devout Catholic may tell an atheist that when a Catholic dies, they will go to Heaven and sit among the angels singing "gloria gloria in eccelsis", or when they pray they are talking to an invisible all-knowing being who lives in the sky. Would it be a correct use of English for the atheist to accuse the Catholic of telling a "lie"?
(answer for those who - in ex-Minister Lammy's words - "feel challenged by formal education": No)

Welsh boldly asserts that I am a "liar" because:

No one has ever advanced scientifically valid evidence demonstrating that private collecting of antiquities actually causes looting. If Mr. Barford desires to establish that point, he would be well advised to adopt an approach that demonstrates that his views are sustained by evidence conforming to the scientific method and by arguments conforming to the rules of logic.

Well, I prefer to see this in terms of the argumentation which predicts that up there in the sky, between us and the Divine, are things called 'black holes'. So down here on earth in "Corner A" we have holes dug in archaeological sites and the physical evidence shows observers that they are the traces left by artefact hunting (looting). The evidence from those caught red-handed shows that the items being sought are things like cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, flint tools, statues, knocked off bits of figures and figurines (heads especially). Over in "Corner B" are dealers and collectors anxious to get their hands on artefacts precisely like those dug up by the looters and not terribly bothered about asking for the collecting histories or provenance of items that they are offered by the middlemen who supply them.

Mr Welsh would have us believe that between "Corner A" and "Corner B" is something that acts as a black hole. This means that any looted artefacts are sucked into it without a trace and none of them reach the other side to the people waiting in Corner B. Being an engineer, maybe Welsh can construct some kind of scientific model that explains the nature of the Black Hole between corners A and B of the Looting-Collecting continuum. Also we need some kind of a (parallel Universe?) explanation of the materialisation of artefacts in Corner B, despite the proximity of an artefact-attracting black hole. Why are they too not sucked into the Black Hole? Why do they behave differently in the presence of the Black Hole from the artefacts obtained by illicit means that are disappearing into it without a trace? Do they have some metaphysical qualities that prevent this, some aura that we can measure?

This is a great mystery, and I think we all look forward to the antiquity dealers' further elucidation of the Black Hole phenomenon. I hope it's a better one than the Coin Fairies which is the model that has been employed since Petrarch's day. Let us see a proper explanation of what happens to all those looted artefacts, commensurate with the realities of the twenty-first century in which we live today.

If however the dealers of the ACCG are incapable of advancing "scientifically valid evidence" demonstrating that the indiscriminate private collecting of antiquities does not in fact cause the digging over of "productive" sites to obtain them, then I would say that they are just playing on the emotions of collectors who want to shut their eyes to the implications of accepting the other point of view to avoid accepting responsibility for their own actions.

If ACCG dealers desire to establish that indiscriminate private collecting of antiquities does not in fact cause the digging over of "productive" sites to obtain them, they would do well to take to heart the advice of their own representative, Mr Welsh. They would be well advised to adopt an approach that demonstrates that such views are refuted (falsified in Popperian terms) by evidence obtained conforming to the scientific method and by arguments conforming to the rules of logic. No unexplained "black holes", no "it was not me, it was them miss", no "coin fairies". Where are the looted artefacts, if not secreted away behind the scenes in a multitude of scattered ephemeral personal collections of no-questions-asked collectors? Where are they Mr Welsh?

Well of course the lack of openness, accountability and transparency in the trade and among secretive collectors is not going to help collectors' lobbyists rebuff the accusations, maybe the ACCG should start by urging more transparency so that the public in general (the real stakeholders in the heritage) can verify that what is said about indiscriminate collecting is (or is not) true. Hiding things away can only reinforce the impression that dealers and collectors have something to hide, even if it is only reprehensible indifference to matters of the collecting history and origins of objects on the trade.

Vignette: an artist's impression of the coin fairy postulated by collectors to explain the otherwise inexplicable disappearance of looted artefacts in the "it was not me" model (by IceMaiden71)

The Big Lie in Action

A Californian coin dealer who has had ample occasion to learn my actual opinion, even if he apparently has a regrettably short attention span and capacity for absorbing and remembering information writes:

Mr. Barford would, consistently with his past excesses, portray such a result as supporting his view that no one should be allowed to collect unprovenanced artifacts.

I suppose it will come as no surprise to anyone that the ideology of "Internationalist coin collecting" incorporates the Big Lie premise (if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough the gullible hoi polloi will come to believe it). But that in itself indicates to whom Welsh and all the rest see themselves as addressing; the intelligent and critical reader will see through the big lies they tell and try to get to the bottom of the issue.

Why would, despite all I write here (and elsewhere) the Big Lie-spreading coin dealers want uncritical collectors to think that what I am saying is that "no one should be allowed to collect unprovenanced artifacts" rather than what I am saying is that an ethical collector would only buy antiquities which have a verifiable collecting history showing they were licitly obtained? A moment's thought will inevitably suggest at least one reason why a certain type of dealer might be concerned to scare collectors off from listening to such talk, to shut such ideas from their minds. To cover up their own shortcomings by distorting what the proponents of ethical collecting are saying to make it sound "radical", when in fact it is nothing of the sort.

Oddly enough Welsh's post is called "Looting: the essence of the lie".

Looting Matters: Avoiding Toxic Antiquities

A reflection on how auction houses can avoid offering "toxic antiquities" for sale by adopting 1970 as their benchmark for collecting histories - Looting Matters: Toxic Antiquities in the Market Place.

The pressure is on to find antiquities with well-documented collecting histories or "provenances." Dealers want to avoid the adverse publicity of offering material that may be subject to seizure. Potential buyers want to know that there have been rigorous checks before they "invest" in a piece of ancient art.

Museums in the United Kingdom have long-taken a firm ethical stand on the acquisition of antiquities. More recently the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) adopted 1970 - the date of the UNESCO Convention - as its benchmark. Will dealers start to use it as well?

I suppose they will if they want among their clients responsible collectors who realise that the integrity of their collections cannot be compromised by acquiring the cast-offs that museums do not want on account of the lack of evidence of licit origins. Leaving the sale of them to the cowboys who never cared anyway about documenting provenance.

Buying and Selling Tainted Antiquities

Marc Fehlmann commented "I totally agree that the main objective should be to protect the sites. Making tainted antiquities "unsalable" may be a solution and it surely is an admirable goal". The problem with making laws work is of course, he admits, "individual greed" in the face of the existence of a market currently perfectly willing to buy any number of less-than-legally-acquired artefacts no-questions-asked. While museums and certain large dealers now may be trending towards more ethical acquisition policies, it is "the trade of tainted antiquities in private hands" which is the problem with which "national laws and international agreements are not enough to stop".

International drug trafficking organizations have never respected nor accepted national boundaries or laws. So why should those trafficking antiquities be any different?

This highlights the basic problem, in a secretive trade permeated by illegally obtained artefacts, the potential of suppliers dealing with criminal elements is obviously very high. Certainly high enough to make this a problem that nobody buying antiquities these days should ignore. But they do.

Misidentification of Bead Found on Metal Detecting Rally

An "ANGLO SAXON DECORATED BEAD 55mm LONG" was bid for by eleven bidders on eBay, and went for £44.56. The seller (rarest-objects from Stanstead, Suffolk, UK) says it was "FOUND ON METAL DETECTING RALLY FIELD WALKING". The seller does not always sell the rarest of his metal detecting finds, we see that over the past few months he or she has offloaded a fair amount of items including coins etc to indiscriminate buyers, mostly in private sales like this one. The feedback also gives an interesting insight into one metal detectorist's musical preferences. The problem is that this bead is misrepresented, it is not an Anglo-Saxon type. Far from it, it is a Tibetan type, a so-called dzi bead (spotted by Tim Haines). Now this rally, if it was in Suffolk (the seller does not say), was in all probability one attended by the PAS. So is this "Anglo-Saxon bead" an identification supplied to the finder by the PAS? or was this a rally find the finder pocketed and did not declare to the PAS? Or was it a rally which was not PAS-serviced? Did his fellow metal detectorists identify the find as "Anglo-Saxon" for him, 0r is the whole thing a scam from start to finish? Or is the bead a find dropped in an English field by an antiquary/traveller? In reality, finds like this made by artefact hunters can add nothing to the archaeological record unless we know the circumstances in which they were deposited and found.

Today at the Mineral Show

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On Sunday I was looking round the International Mineral Fair in Warsaw when I saw the following scene enacted at the table next to me:

Collector: "Good day good sir, that's a fine display of bits of calcite you have there."
Dealer: "Thank you, maybe you'd like to buy some, look at this one for example".
Collector: "how much are they?"
Dealer: "One for five zloties, three for ten."
Collector: "Hmmm, nice price. I'll have this one... this and... this".
Dealer: "Nice choice, Sir, that'll be ten zloties. I'll just wrap them in tissue and pop them in a bag. Will that be all?"
Collector: "Yes, can you write on a label where they're from...."
The hall immediately fell silent. An audible indrawing of breath could be heard.
The dealer paused in wrapping the specimens and looked at the man over the top of his glasses.
"What?", he asked curtly.
"Where they come from, where they were dug up".
The dealer stood up and glared at the man. He opened and shut his mouth.
"Why do you want to know?" he asked suspiciously.
All around me I felt necks craning as other tried to catch the man's words.
"I just want to know where they came from, are they all from the same locality?"
"I cannot tell you that"
"Why not?"
"I can't. Ten zloties please". He held out the bag, clasping it tightly.
"Well, is it from Poland or another country?" the customer asked plaintively.
The dealer looked the man in the eyes: "TEN zloties please - Sir".
"but...".
An older man standing behind the customer sidled closer and barely audibly gave him some paternalistic advice, "leave it sir, we don't want any trouble here, do we?" At this he motioned with his eyes to two young men in denim jackets watching the scene intently from the edge of the hall by the exit.
The customer reflected, nodded, meekly handed over the cash, crumpling the note into the dealer's hand, turned and walked away from his table, with the other customers staring at him. The customer who had asked.

Actually, it was not like that at all.
I had amused myself for a couple of hours wandering round with a lady friend picking up bits of rock priced at five to ten zloties (to give an idea of price a 660 ml bottle of beer is four zloties) and asking where precisely they were from. Oddly enough, not a single dealer I asked was at all surprised that I had asked. Most of them actually had printed labels with the name of the specimen, and the place it was from ready to put in with even common specimens taken from a grab-box when somebody bought one. I saw others writing them by hand upon a purchase. The (only) three dealers who only knew the country a mineral had come from were apologetic about not knowing any more details. At the other extreme were the dealers who not only knew the name of the place, but could tell you something about it if you asked, about where the minerals or fossils come from, who digs them out sometimes. The people who sell these items are obviously not in it for the money, but passionate about what they do and take an interest in all its aspects.

Of course a variety of people go to such shows. Nine year olds who want a "really cool real shark's tooth" or a piece of "fossil dinosaur poo- eeeuww" are not going to ask where they are from. Neither are the huge numbers of people there (usually large heavily made-up females) who believe stroking crystals of certain minerals is good for their health. Even so, the dealers are prepared with the details for those who want to know, and for mineral collectors, information about provenance is regarded as important.

How much of a contrast this is with what antiquity currently dealers do. Antiquity dealers claim that "many of my items are so cheap that it is too much trouble to keep check of where they are coming from". Collectors in turn obviously do not ask enough times to make it worthwhile for dealers to keep documentation. But the specimens I was looking at today were deliberately chosen to be the cheapest there, and certainly they were a lot cheaper than many "minor antiquities". I do admit however to some bias, like most customers in the know, I would have kept well away from the tables where the blood diamonds and fossils stolen from Sites of Special Scientific Interest protected by law were being sold by representatives of Russian and Serbian mafia. Perhaps if I'd asked them, I might not have learnt the sources of the items on sale so easily. But fortunately I did not see any of them.

It is interesting to do a search on "collecting rocks and minerals". Here are a few random examples that came up at the top of my Google search.

Rocks for kids: "Remember to keep a label with it which tells you where you collected the rock and the date".
Beginners' Guide to Collecting Rocks and minerals "it is suggested that the collector permanently label his or her specimens".
Collecting rocks: "A good rock collection consists of selected, representative, properly labeled specimens".
Collect & Identify Rocks & Minerals "As you identify each specimen, make a label for it. If possible, write down the location and the date when the rock or mineral was collected".
"Rockhounding Arkansas": "the importance of labels"

There are probably lots more, but we get the point. There were none that said, "shove them in an unlabelled heap on a shelf and pick them up when you want to imagine what it was like in olden times". In order to merit the term "collector", collectors of geological specimens are careful about labelling and provenance. The damaging no-questions-asked trade of antiquities thrives on the fact that collectors of archaeological material like coins and Roman geegaws bought from dealers seldom are. Like the touchy-feely crystal fondlers.

Photo: A previous year's Międzynarodowe Wystawy i Giełdy Minerałów, Skamieniałości i Wyrobów Jubilerskich

How do Dug Up Antiquities Lose their Provenance?

In the same post as the statement that “"Some ancient coins undoubtedly have not been dug up at all”, Californian coin dealer and no-questions-asked-antiquities-dealing apologist Dave Welsh writes:

When I prepare a certificate of authenticity, I state provenance and if it seems appropriate to do so, may also state it in a listing [...]

In fact if one looks at the Classical coins website, the number of coins listed in his shop are given any kind of provenance that can demonstrate they were excavated and left the source country legally is minimal.
In the "Greek" section, only 13% have any sort of mention where they came from, but in most cases this refers to them coming from the collections of persons apparently still alive with no information on how and when they entered those collections. This of course tells us nothing about their origins, and how and when they left te shores of the Mediterranean to end up in a US dealers' tray. Likewise in the new listings section, the Roman provincials and the "Persian" coins (he has an awful lot of these, including the Orodes II coins I discussed earlier here)

It seems that about 90% of the ancient coins currently on offer by Mr Welsh have no provenance. Some of course will have come from some old collection made in the nineteenth century and taken across the States in a waggon train bound for California. Others however will have been dug up more recently and found their way to the US in various ways and at various times. To judge by Welsh's site, collectors are not at all interested in the stories of these coins. Information on this is routinely (Welsh says "traditionally") erased as the commodities passs from hand to hand. In other cases, the information is deliberately suppressed by the dealers for various reasons.

Mr Welsh is guilty of this too. A while back I drew attention (first on Unidroit-L, possibly on Moneta-L and more recently on this blog) to some special lots he was selling of "Roman provincial" coins.

I see that "Classical Coins" currently has job lots of uncleaned coins "from Thrace and Lower Moesia" (ie the regions which roughly speaking are now the modern state of Bulgaria with its antiquity laws).... http://www.classicalcoins.com/product845.html;
http://www.classicalcoins.com/product846.html

The first link is broken, the second still works at the moment. I have subsequently mentioned these coins ("coins that we were able to acquire in quantity and can offer to the collector at particularly attractive prices") a couple of times here and here.
So I was interested to see today that the description of where the coins in these special lots come from has been edited out. Why? Is the dealer trying to hide an uncomfortable truth when the looting of coins and artefacts from precisely Bulgaria was the subject of wider discussion? Why does he feel he can he not now tell his customers from which region of the Roman Empire these coins came from ,when earlier he was doing this on his website?

Nine Fallacies of the Portable Antiquity Dealers' Lobby

Note from the author: Artefact hunters and collectors have a number of prefabricated justifications for their hobby and why it should be left alone and not asked to change its ways. A veritable crop of them appeared last night on the Ancient Artifacts forum, where coin dealer and ACCG agitator Dave Welsh is still trying to rabble raise in the shadow of earlier comments about the Near Shrewsbury hoard discussed here earlier. I do not know how many of the two thosand portable antiquyity collectors gathered there can see the fallacies embedded in his texts, so far only two of them have tried to query what he says. Either the rest of them are totally taken in by these weasel words, or they don't want to listen to the coiney. Anyway here is my answer. Normally I'd provide hyperlinks to where the things I mention have been discussed, but today I have a lot of work to catch up on, regular readers will know to what I am referring, incidental ones are probaly not going to follow them up anyway.It's a bit long - story of my life, "no time to write less".

Nine Fallacies of Dave Welsh,

a reply to AncientArtifacts message #49955

The Fallacy of Labels

Dave Welsh says: "I do not advocate legalizing looting". What he advocates is calling the process of exploitive and archaeologically destructive mining of archaeological sites as a source of collectables by another name.

Whether we call it "looting" or "artefact searching and recovery”, the effects on the ground are the same, a site is trashed. That is the sole effect that should be of interest to those who genuinely care about the past and its study.

The Banning Fallacy
Again Welsh trots out the tired myth that what is being proposed is "preventing ancient artefacts reaching western collectors". That is a total fallacy and he knows it. What people are requiring is to stop freshly looted material reaching these markets. There is a huge difference.

We Have Petrarch’s Coins Fallacy
The lobby to which Welsh belongs never tire of telling us that people have been collecting antiquities for a long while. This means that on the market there are hundreds of thousands of artefacts "recovered" in the past, and the destruction caused by this is water under the bridge, we can do nothing about that. I do not know anybody who feels that collecting this material is wrong - as LONG as you can document that it really was dug up in Grandpa's day, and is not something merely masquerading as "from an old collection" which is in fact from last month's fresh assault on Isin or Archar with a bulldozer.

The differentiation of these two classes of artifacts can ONLY come from the collecting and dealing community, through whose hands the material passes.

The collecting and dealing community have two choices, take responsibility and do something, or ignore the problem. Obviously what the lobby to which Welsh belongs is doing is advocating the second - hiding it under the pretence that its not a problem caused by dodgy dealers selling material which has indeed come from looted sites and illegal exports - but its a problem that "somebody else" must deal with, and dealers and collectors are not going to lift a finger to help. No, it is something they have to deal with. Only they have the opportunity, and they have the responsibility.

The Eternal Looter Fallacy
This lobby constantly refers to the fact that “looting has always been going on (so why should we bother about it now?)”. Matters are not s simple are they? Yes, we have reports of looting of Royal graves in the Theban necropolis in the twentieth dynasty, yes you can see ancient silver coins in heaps in Middle Eastern markets. But for example you do not see it in England, Germany, Spain, France, or North America (Utah for example), places where sites too are looted to fuel the market in illegal antiquities. Also in many countries we can document an increase in such digging for antiquities along with the expansion of the global market in antiquities, in Central America for example, Nigeria, Iran (Jiroft). It is utterly simplistic to say it has always been going on and collectors are just saving things from being melted down by ignorant brown-skinned oriental peasants who just see the scrap metal value.

The fallacy of this is of course that it does not apply to those who collect things like shabtis, cylinder seals, coptic textiles, Dead Sea scroll fragments, cuneiform tablets, and Anasazi pots. A moment's thought reveals that this is another of those little verbal tricks used to justify "not doing anything".

Also, one thought: if looters have always been with us, why is there anything at all left in the surface layers of sites such as tells anywhere in the world for people to dig out in such quantities today that (lobbyists like Welsh allege) people can live of the proceeds. What Welsh ignores is that I published a challenge to the scrap digger model proponents on my blog to test the validity of these claims, to actually show us (and the person proposing it) how this would work. It is actually far too simplistic of them to just say "well, you just go out and dig stuff up to sell". Let us see them do it before using this as a global argument.

I have no doubt some people do did up scrap on abandoned sites. I question whether the phenomenon affects archaeological sites on such a scale as to be used as a justification for a policy of inaction for the whole world. Logic says that it cannot - though if Mr Welsh would like to prove me wrong by taking up my challenge, then we can talk about it further. At the moment it is just an unsubstantiated generalisation of the dealers' lobby to justify taking no action on illicit artefacts entering the antiquities market.

By falsely representing themselves as “rescuers” of “things that would be dug up anyway”, lobbyists like Welsh open the way for their next fallacy.

The Laws are Made to Be Broken Fallacy
Hardly a discussion on this issue gets going than the US collectors-rights lobby invokes the Volstead laws and the failure of prohibition. This again however builds on the fallacy that what is being discussed is the prohibition of all antiquity collecting. Invoking this dubious parallel allows them to argue that legal restraints do not work. Welsh states:

So long as it remains profitable to dig up old artifacts, people will continue to do so. The only laws that can control this are the laws of economics.

Quite so, as long as it remains profitable to dig up old artefacts and sell them to people who will, knowing it is illegal, buy them because there is a market for them, people will continue to do so. The moment that market for looted goods dries up (because ethical collectors worldwide refuse to buy them), the damage this type of exploitation causes to archaeological sites will drop.

The Archaeologists must Supply us with Goods Fallacy
Lobbyists such as Welsh insist that since archaeologists want the market to contain provenanced artifacts to cut down looting, they themselves must supply them, these people periodically propose that duplicate objects archived in public collections (such as museum reserve collections) should be released onto the market. Or that any legal restrictions on digging of individuals into archaeological sites should be lifted to allow an artefactual free-for-all, which they propose could be “regulated” (sic) by instituting something like England and Wales’ Portable Antiquities Scheme. Welsh says:

The ultimate solution to the antiquities looting problem can only be to establish a regulated licit market in provenanced antiquities. That will ensure that antiquities go into the licit market, rather than into the black market.

No, that does not stop the treatment of archaeological sites merely as a source of collectables, it just gives it another name, but its prime function would to help keep the people who trade in them out of jail. To the archaeological record it makes no difference whatsoever if the saleable collectable geegaws ripped from the ground by a peasant's shovel go to dealers like Mr Welsh via the European black market, red market or green one(without plastic carrier bags). The far away peasant still dug some holes in a site to find it and any stratigraphic information there is gone for ever. As I say, that is the important issue. The archaeological record of the world is threatened enough by factors we can do little about, the illegal digging of sites for profit however is something we can aspire to do something about.

But yes, a regulated market that stops items circulating without documentation of licit origins is a fine idea - but let us note that even a rudimentary form of this is immediately challenged by Mr Welsh and his ACCG pals, in their Baltimore Illegal Coin Import Stunt. I wonder why? (Rhetorical question Mr Welsh).

The Quis Custodiet Fallacy
Behind this is the argument that in general, archaeologists “don’t look after” the finds they curate, and they would be given a better home in a private collection in a Wisconsin back bedroom. Every opportunity is taken by these lobbyists to highlight when a museum storeroom has been flooded or robbed. Interestingly primarily when they are in countries where the inhabitants have brown skins. When a (white) Long Island museum curator was accused of selling items from that collection, the lobbyists’ blogs were silent. It is of course very easy by such a pars pro toto approach to convince fellow collectors that their domestic accumulations of decontextualised “pieces of the past” are given a “better home” than in museums. I sincerely doubt however that across the whole extent of portable antiquity collecting that is any more true than “all museums are bad”. Once again superficiality of thinking in this milieu triumps over reason.

The Good Collector Fallacy
The fallacy therefore develops that the collecting of antiquities is in some way socially beneficial, it has nothing to do with personal acquisitive needs. The dealers who sell relics to collectors (wherever they come from) are supplying a public service. Their clients are all Good Collectors. Nobody knows, or at least has any dealings with real crooks. Welsh says:

This is my reason for opposing the efforts of Paul Barford and others (beginning with Colin Renfrew and Ricardo Elia) to portray collectors as being ultimately responsible for looting. That simply isn't true.

Collectors that buy looted objects are ultimately responsible for looting. There is absolutely nothing illogical in that. It is the laws of economics, if there is a market for a particular commodity, the opportunity exists to make a profit supplying that commodity. The bigger the market, the greater the opportunity, the more intensively the commodity can be produced without oversaturating the market. Simple. Ergo, the smaller the market for looted archaeological finds (because some day in the future under the influence of the efforts of the Portable Antiquities Scheme and other such organizations, collectors have woken up and started to apply strict ethics to what they do), the less demand there will be for looted artefacts.
Now whether the collectors that strenuously avoid buying looted or potentially looted objects are in any way distinguishable to a dealer on today's market is an interesting question. I have already drawn attention a number of times that the way sales offers are phrased seems to indicate that the dealers on the whole anticipate few detailed questions on the precise origins of finds from their clients as whole. They obviuously perceive the total lack of any provenance information time after time on their objects as being no hindrance to their marketability. The reader can draw their own conclusions from that vis-a-vis what proportion of the collecting community they regard as responsible for the continuation of the illicit trade.

The Archaeologists Must Sort This Out Fallacy
Again we find in Welsh's lobby a misrepresentation of the case. Welsh reckons that pointing out the relationship between no-questions-asked collecting and the current scale of looting is in some way a "mistaken concept" (though actually has failed to say how) which is "causing significant social damage" (while no-questions-asked collecting is merely causing archaeological damage he forgot to say). He alleges that it distracts "our attention from sensible and realistic approaches that would have a much better chance of solving the problem".

Well, as I have pointed out that "the problem" that dealers like Welsh are interested in is how to make money selling these bits and pieces without worrying too much about their origins being scrutinised. They want "the archaeologists" and lawmakers to establish (for them) a "a regulated licit market in provenanced antiquities", in fact ones that they put on the market for him to sell.

This is Not a Fallacy
In fact what this lobby is doing with all this verbal juggling is himself trying to distract the attention of the artefact collecting community "from sensible and realistic approaches that would have a much better chance of solving the problem", which are to stop selling and collecting antiquities which cannot be verified as not-looted.

I would imagine that for most people who are not collectors, there is nothing ridiculous or unrealistic about such a simple proposal. Given the amount of looted material entering the global antiquities market, the only sensible and realistic approach to curbing the damage this is causing to the archaeological record is to stop selling and collecting artefacts which cannot be verified as non-looted". To only sell clean goods.

Professional Numismatists Group also Finances the Assault on the CPIA

PNG and IAPN officials are concerned about efforts by the Archaeological Institute of America to train Customs inspectors to detect and seize coins suspected of being imported in violation of the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act. “The use of trainers from the archaeological community with ‘an axe to grind’ against professional numismatists and collectors carries with it the danger that unfair enforcement will actually result,” said attorney Peter K. Tompa of the Washington, D.C. law firm of Bailey & Ehrenberg PLLC.

Well, of course what the Cyprus and China MOUs regulate is the undocumented trade in archaeological artefacts. These coins are just one category of the material involved. I suppose Mr Tompa would rather that archaeologists show customs officers what square, triangular and spheroid archaeological artefacts look like leaving showing the round flat ones to the coineys. Of course none of the dealers and collectors approached would have any 'axe to grind' about import legislation. Nevertheless, if all they have to do is show the customs officers "this is an old coin", it seems not to be an impediment to training - but then, what is the point in employing a whole army of trainers when one group will do?

Anyhow it has just been announced that the PNG will provide $12,000 towards the costs of opposing the urrent means of implementation of the US's Cultural Property Implementation Act - but interestingly paid to the IAPN, and not the more ranty ACCG currently involved in a controversial and provocative attempt to import undocumented coins.

“The PNG Board of Directors unanimously agreed to contribute the funds to assist IAPN in its lobbying efforts to combat unfair import restrictions. We are concerned that overzealous Customs Bureau agents may unfairly misconstrue even well-meaning regulations by mistakenly claiming that any undocumented ancient coin is a stolen cultural property artifact of another country,” said PNG Executive Director Robert Brueggeman.

Well, that is not exactly the case, the CPIA acuses nobody of anything, it actually only requires the import of certain groups of artefacts into the USA to be accompanied by certain types of documentation, providing alternative manners in which this requirement can be met. Either a particular group of coins have this, or they do not. If they have not, ethical dealers would not be attempting to import them into a country which has restrictions on the movements across its border of coins without such documentation. It is as simple as that. Why, actually do US coin dealers think that they alone should be above the law?

I think there should be more transparency here, are the IAPN and PNG behind the ACCG coin import stunt? Yes or No?

See now David Gill's comments: Numismatic dealers raise concerns about the AIA (I appreciated Nathan Elkins' trenchant comment at the bottom)

Photo: Robert Bruegman fourteen years executive director of PNG.

Utah Crackdown Puts Artefact Dealers on Edge

The ongoing federal investigation into the sale of Native American artefacts has:

cloaked the market in a fog of fear and uncertainty. Wealthy collectors are more cautious about buying artifacts for fear of criminal liability, and reputable dealers say they're working double-time to prove their legitimacy after being wrongly lumped together with looters and gravediggers. Amid grumbling about government meddling, the tension was evident Tuesday at one of the nation's largest and longest-running Indian artifact shows

(Susan Montoya Bryan, Fed crackdown puts tribal artifact dealers on edge, Salt Lake Tribune/AP, 19th Aug 2009).

Apparently the dealers participating in the 31st annual Whitehawk Antique Show in Santa Fe:

said they were concerned about their reputations because of a growing public perception that anyone involved in the trade could be involved with the criminal element that's being targeted by federal agents.

Jeff Hammond, a private collector and dealer insisted that there is no reason for a collector to consider a shady deal or illegal activity when there are so many legitimate Indian artifacts on the market. "If you really want to do this and not look over your shoulder and always have to watch your back and worry about things, you just need to stay on the right side," he said.

Walter Knox, a dealer who runs Fort Knox Antiquities in Scottsdale, Ariz. said that "despite the picture federal investigators have painted of the trade, he and his fellow dealers are not camouflage-wearing felons who loot sites under the cover of darkness. "We're the ones who love this stuff, who clean it and care for it," he said. "That's what people are doing, preserving history. And there's a right way and a wrong way to do it"".

Quite. It is pretty obvious that buying unprovenanced objects no-questions-asked as the antiquity collecting advocacy groups are insisting is the "collectors' rights" is not one of the right ways to do it. Any object without a proper legitimate provenance these days can only be considered as suspect by the ethical collector (or at best culpable and irresponsible carelessness on the part of previous owners).

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.

Antiquity Seller Claims "Bulgarian Bonanza is over"

A few weeks ago I discussed here the eBay seller „the oddest thing” who said he’d been a US Navy Journalist aboard the USS Springfield (CLG-7) based in Villefranche-Sur-Mer on the southern coast of France in 1966-8. He was selling antiquities he claimed he’d bought while in the region alongside objects which were in fact for the large part imported more recently from Bulgaria. These included a large number of what seemed to be fake antiquities. See my discussion here.

Since then, the gentleman has had a change of heart and the merchandise he is currently offering is of a different nature (well, some of it is the same as before, but he has changed his description of where he gets it). Now he writes:

About Bulgarian artifacts: While Bulgarian law does not consider treasure hunting a crime, they also don't consider the manufacture of artifact reproductions as a crime either! The Bulgarian Bonanza, as I used to call it, is apparently over! The question of authenticity has placed a black cloud over all
Bulgarian imports, so I will no longer offer artifacts imported from Bulgaria.

Now, the first part of the quotation is as untrue now as it was when he claimed it earlier. While objects are represented and sold as “reproductions”, they are legal more or less throughout the world, the moment they are sold as authentic originals problems start, as it seems Mr Oddest-Thing was experiencing.

What however is more interesting is the term “Bulgarian bonanza”. By this the seller obviously means the flow of bulk lots of metal-detected antiquities from ancient sites in the Balkans, principally exported through Bulgaria along the same routes as other illicit commodities. The archaeological record is however a finite and fragile resource, it would seem that even this eBay seller has realized that one cannot keep taking multiple kilogrammes of metal artefacts annually from that resource without it ultimately becoming depleted to the extent that there is hardly anything left in the more accessible places. This is when the faking began. As far as I am concerned, it is not the “question of authenticity” which “has placed a black cloud over all Bulgarian imports” of portable antiquities, it is the destruction that has been caused to the archaeological record in the name of a particularly odious form of commerce.

A further point may be added. As Nathan Elkins has shown in a number of papers and blog/forum posts, a large part of the US ancient coin trade is based on illicit exports from the same Bulgarian suppliers that are providing the metal detected artefacts to eBay sellers like "the Oddest Thing". If these supplers are having the same problems then we may soon be seeing signs of a severe destabilisation of the ancient coin trade, and a search for new sources of saleable material. As this process goes on coin dealers' lobby groups such as the ACCG, PNG and IAPN are likely to get louder in their protesting of the innocence of the o-questions-asked market in antiquities and that "in any case coins are not archaeological artefacts".

UPDATE 12.07.09
Now "the-Oddest-Thing" is listed on eBay as "not a registered user"