Another Coiney Misleads the CPAC

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It seems that there was a veritable gabblefest of coiney misinformation at Thursday's CPAC hearing in Washington. Rick Witschonke, collector of Republican coins and staff member of the American Numismatic Society posted on Moneta-L just now the text he himself delivered at the CPAC public consultation. He's another one who thinks Italy should scrap her laws and institute something like Britain's limp-wristed nineteenth century measures. That would no doubt benefit artefact collectors, but would it strengthen archaeological site protection? (No).

Anyway in order to persuade the CPAC to recommend the US not to heed Italian requests for help protecting its archaeological heritage from being bundled up and clandestinely sold off abroad, he feels it germane to give the CPAC a lecture on the British legislation. Sadly, he obviously has no idea how it works. According to him the British Treasure Act of 1996:

provided that finders of ancient objects who had the permission of the landowner to search would receive a full market value reward for any finds determined to be Treasure, and retained by the Government. Non-treasure finds, and Treasure not retained by the Government are returned to the landowner and finder, who are then free to sell them on the licit market. In addition, the UK also passed legislation establishing a Portable Antiquities Scheme, under which finders would be encouraged to formally report non-Treasure finds so that they could be properly recorded. PAS also established a network of Finds Liaison Officers who work with metal-detectorists, museums, and other groups in each area of the country; it is their relationship with the local communities which makes the Scheme work.

Despite the fact that he is a bosom buddy of Head of Treasure Roger Bland and further parts of his text show Witschonke to be a keen consumer of PAS propaganda, it might be observed that there are as many as six errors of fact in that short passage. Witschonke also takes an optimistic approach to other factors claimed to be the effects of PAS successes, when they are capable of a totally different interpretation (such as numbers and types of Treasure reported and the Nighthawking Report both discussed here). Witschonke says that in other countries, systems:

involving market-based rewards and outreach tended to be successful in encouraging the reporting of found objects, while programs lacking those elements were largely failures.

But then the coiney has not thought through that it is not actually in the CPAC brief to recommend to foreign countries ways of increasing "reporting of found objects", but to advise the US government whether the US is in a position to help cut down on the looting and illicit trade. To those whose minds have not yet been clouded by coin fondling, this is quite a different topic. Witschonke also presumes to deny that preservation in situ - on which modern heritage management and developer funding are based - is a useful concept. The only thing he suggests replacing it with is "dig it all up now", and let the diggers be metal detectorists serving the antiquities market.

Witschonke is certainly guilty of foggy thinking when he then intones in all seriousness:

"One could argue that such a program might change the behavior of “innocent” finders of antiquities, but would do little to stop the illegal digging of professional looters. But most of this digging in Italy is done on private land, often with the concurrence of the landowner (in return for some consideration). If, instead, the landowner saw the prospect of a market-based reward for any antiquities found on his land, he would have a strong incentive to cease dealing with the illegal diggers, and protect his land from them.

Umm, and... what? Protect the site from ever being disturbed, or go over it a couple of times with deep ploughing and then get a few mates with metal detectors (in full daylight and with the landowner's full knowledge, permission and encouragement) to claim the market rewards for objects "found" on his land? Like for example organizing a commercial metal detecting rally on his land maybe? How does paying people to dig things out of them protect archaeological sites Mr Witschonke?

Witschonke concludes:

I would suggest that Italy should be strongly encouraged, if it wishes the US to continue import restrictions on Italian antiquities, to modify its antiquities legislation to: 1) provide for prompt market value rewards for reported finds; 2) support a robust, licit market for objects that are not claimed by the state; and 3) establish an effective outreach program, with representatives in each of the regions, to encourage the reporting of finds. [...] I urge the Committee to strongly encourage Italy to adopt the later course.

Well once again, Witschonke seems to think that preventing looting is all about "reporting finds" - presumably after looting. But as for the idea of urging Italy to change its legislation, just who do these people think they are? Collectors urging a US governmental advisory body to apply pressure (blackmail even: "if it wishes the US to..." it must...) to a sovereign foreign state? To do what? To make it easier for collectors to buy archaeological material taken from archaeological sites?

But Witschonke has thought of that, he asks: "how can the US justify interference in Italy’s national antiquities policies in response to an MOU renewal request?". Unfortunately that is not a rhetorical question of a culturally-sensitive someone aware of how that sounds outside the US. He instructs the CPAC (in case they have not actually read the CPIA which set up the committee):

Under CCPIA, one of the determinations which the US must make is that the requesting “State Party has taken measures . . . to protect its cultural property”. I would suggest that the measures proposed here are reasonable and necessary if looting is to be reduced. And there is clear precedent for the US to require certain actions on the part of Italy (e.g. paragraphs II.B , C, and F of the revised MOU). Italy faces a clear choice with respect to its archeological heritage. It can continue with its present policies, and have virtually all objects found in other than official excavations leave the country illicitly, with their contextual information lost forever and with little prospect of return, or it can adopt policies which will positively encourage finders to report their finds, and preserve at least some of the objects and information now being lost. I urge the Committee to strongly encourage Italy to adopt the later course.

But surely the idea of checking if objects entering the US have been legally exported is the measure that prevents illegal export to the US from being viable. Not that "finders" report or do not report finds back home before putting them in a padded envelope addressed to ANS headquarters or wherever. This is simply insulting. The Italian state has a national antiquities service, the US has not, Italy has a well-equipped specialist antiquities and art police force, the US has not. We have seen how BLM men are too thinly spread on the ground in the US to make any difference, whole petroglyphs are reportedly being stolen out there. The judiciary does not uphold the ARPA, the first sentence in the very costly Action Cerberus trials in Blanding was six months probation because the judge was of the view in effect that "stuff happens". It really is very insulting of the US to consider it has the moral right to dictate to Italy the measures it should take to protect its cultural property when the response of the US to looting at home is so pathetically inadequate and whose culture scavenging collectors (and now we see numismatic associations like the ANS and ANA) are currently screaming blue murder because somebody suggested that US collectors should be made to buy only legally exported material from Italy. The very idea !

Mr Witschonke, FIRST get your own country to adopt such a system to apply to the artefacts such as those which are currently the subject of trials in Blanding because "finders" found them on public land (public, Mr Witschonke). Why should Italy abandon state ownership at the behest ("encouragement") of US collectors when the US claims state ownership of artefacts found in the deserts of the West on public land? Look to your own house before you start dictating what others should do in theirs. [For an application of the Witschonke/ANS arguments to the US situation see the post below this].

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Witschonke Advises the Federal Government

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It seems that US coineys have a bit of difficulty doing joined-up thinking. Rick Witschonke of the American Numismatic Society has been given the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (which advises the US government on cultural property issues) some advice how it should respond to Italy's request for US aid to combat illegal trade in artefacts. Through the CPAC, Witschonke gives Italy a whole load of reasons why they need to do this. A really homogeneous approach would require the US adopting such a "superior" system itself.

The US has, as we have seen on this blog, its own problems illegal trade of artefacts which have been clandestinely dug up out in the desert by "finders" and not reported. The collecting of antiquities in the area has a tradition going back many generations, collecting gave the beginnings to archaeological research in the area and many museums have material collected by private individuals at their core. Nevertheless, at some stage archaeologists forgot these roots and in the last century tried to place legislative restrictions on the activities of collectors in much of the US. In technical terms if the law were to be followed to the letter, this makes the many collectors passionately interested in the past of the land they live in busily finding the artefacts of past civilizations in places where few other people ever go into "looters" ("tweakers"). Instead of trying to stop this group of people and rendering the finds they make illicit, Witschonke advises modification of antiquities legislation as a remedy for looting. Obviously the advice he is giving the CPAC should be equally applicable to the US.

Quite clearly recent reports show that the legislation like the Archaeological Resources Protection Act is not enough, and policing all sites and all markets is too difficult to achieve. The United States "is now in a similar situation to that of the UK fifteen years ago: looting is endemic, irreplaceable contextual information is being lost at an appalling rate, and the energetic enforcement of legal sanctions has proven ineffective in controlling the looting". For Mr Witschonke the answer to this problem would be to modify antiquities legislation to:
1) provide for prompt market value rewards for reported finds;
2) support a robust, licit market for objects that are not claimed as Treasure by the state; and
3) establish an effective outreach program, with representatives in each of the regions, to encourage the reporting of finds.

"Such a change would not mean adopting the UK TA/PAS approach wholesale – a program should certainly be tailored to the specific situation [of the US]", and the US "would not even have to renounce state ownership of antiquities found in its soil; the UK still claims ownership of Treasure, but voluntarily offers a reward for it". So that is it, the US should reward finders digging up artefacts from sites lost in the desert and bringing them in for recording before they are sold on eBay.

As Witschonke notes, some ("radical") archaeologists would object to a US approach like the Treasure Act and PAS system as in England and Wales, they would see it as a situation that "constitutes government- subsidized looting":

These archeologists would prefer a situation where all ancient objects remain in the ground until they can be stratigraphically excavated by professional archeologists, and then be professionally conserved, studied, published, stored and curated indefinitely in a secure repository where they will be conveniently available to future researchers. While this ideal scenario would certainly maximize the information extracted from the objects, it represents a false choice, for two reasons. First, it is clear that objects will be excavated by amateurs; the only choices are to allow them to continue to enter the trade unrecorded, or to provide incentives for reporting. And second, even as wealthy a nation as the US has implicitly recognized that the massive funds required to store and curate every archeological artifact, regardless of its significance, are simply not forthcoming. Thus, in reality, the pragmatic choice is between the status quo of unrestrained looting, where few objects are ever recorded, versus a compromise solution where most objects are at least recorded, and the most important are preserved in public collections while the rest go into the market.

Witschonke argues that signing of a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding with another country means that both sides have to oblige themselves to the protection of the world's cultural (and in this case archaeological) heritage. Under CCPIA,the states party must have "taken measures [...] to protect its cultural property”. Witschonke suggests that "the measures proposed here are reasonable and necessary if looting is to be reduced".

The United States of America thus according to Mr Witschonke:

faces a clear choice with respect to its archeological heritage. It can continue with its present policies, and have virtually all objects found in other than official excavations leave the country illicitly, with their contextual information lost forever and with little prospect of return, or it can adopt policies which will positively encourage finders to report their finds, and preserve at least some of the objects and information now being lost. I urge the Committee to strongly encourage [the US government] to adopt the later course.

This would then make it easier for collectors to buy archaeological material found on US archaeological sites on public land. It would provide a ready source of finance for the meth-using "twiggers" who "find" these objects and would allow their recording to the benefit of science, rather than leaving them there buried in the stratigraphy of the settlements and graves unknown and uncollected.

When are we going to see the Ozark Mountains Chapter of the Ancient Pot Collectors Guild set up by Mr Sayles to fight for collectors' rights and protect the trade in dugup Native American artefacts from public land in the US? Maybe Mr Witschonke would like to start the New York branch?

Mr Witschonke, before urging it puts pressure on foreign governments, FIRST get the government of your own country to adopt such a system to apply to all collectable artefacts from US soil (such as those which are currently the subject of trials in Blanding because "finders" found them on public land). Why should Italy abandon state ownership at the behest ("encouragement") of US collectors when the US claims state ownership of artefacts found in the deserts of the West? If US collectors are so concerned about "collectors rights" to archaeological material excavated from archaeological sites in foreign lands, let them first establish analagous collectors' rights in their own land. And if they cannot do that, then let them shut up and stop telling other nations how they "should" let US collectors walk all over their heritage protection legislation.



Vignette: US Collectors of this sort of material from public land demand their "rights". Why are the collectors rights' activists of the US ignoring them?

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm going to quote this snippet,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Credible Market-value Rewards and Outreach"

There has been very little discussion in British archaeological circles of the latest PAS conference (though, tellingly, there was some on the detecting forums). Rick Witschonke, longtime friend and behind-your-back-informant of the PAS was however at their conference and via Peter Tompa has produced a "report" which concludes (quelle surprise):

Clearly, if the proper recording of finds is the objective, those systems which most closely follow the TA/PAS approach of credible market-value rewards and outreach are the most successful.

Well, first of all of course one is bound to ask whether conservation of a finite resource is only about "recording of finds", or whether there is a bit more to it than that. Would that not be like making sure we have digital records of all the illuminated initials of the manus cripts in a library while we let the roof leak and allow mice to make nests out of the books themselves?

Witschonke notes that "the UK metal-detecting establishment was well represented and quite supportive. The anti-detecting/collecting lobby did not seem to be present". It is quite unremarkable that the tekkies filled the conference room, PAS conferences are their traditional get-together venue, what is interesting is that the American thinks there would be an "anti-detecting/collecting lobby" in the UK and they would be there in their "I hate tekkies" scarves throwing bottles at the metal detectorists seated in the front rows. Would Mr Witschonke recognise an opponent of current UK policies of metal detecting by the colour of their skin or what? What I assume he means is nobody spoke about the problems involved in British policies. Perhaps they simply felt, given the venue, there was no point. Or perhaps they couldn't be bothered to come to a conference where it was clear from the outset what would be said by whom. We've heard it all so many times before.

Anyway Roger Bland's talk was supposed to be: The English and Welsh approach to portable antiquities: a perfect system or fundamentally flawed? Was it? I do not get the impression from Witschonke's account that he was listening when Bland delivered the bit about the "flaws" of his PAS. His presentation of the Scottish system is somewhat superficial, presumably he was not familiar with the copious literature the TTU has produced which the UK audience would have been more familiar with. I was however struck by his account of "the Northern Ireland (sic) approach". In particular in that I have myself had enormous problems getting any information out of those people who have ignored every single polite letter I have sent them asking for statistics on metal detecting there. It seems I am not the only one (below).

Cormac Bourke (Ulster Museum) explained [....] There is no state ownership of finds, but, by law, all excavators must be licensed, all finds reported, and metal detecting is illegal. Not surprisingly, illegal metal-detecting is prevalent, and only c. 2 finds per year are reported.

Now leaving aside how one defines "state ownership of finds", just compare that with what the multi-kilo-quid national "Nighthawking Report" said about illegal metal detecting in Northern Irelend. That there is none. None. Yet here we have a guy from Ulster Museum saying quite the opposite. Those of us who say that the Nighthawking Report is not worth the paper it is not printed on (and I am one of them) could I think find no more telling indictment of the conclusions.

Moving on, Witschonke is sceptical of Eamonn Kelly's claims that the Republic of Ireland does not have a significant problem with artefact hunting and collecting by observing "the presence of Irish material on eBay calls this into question". I am not quite sure how he can recognise "Irish materal" and whether it is from Northern Ireland or not, but that is by-the-by. Remarks like this interspersed in the text suggest that Mr Wirtschonke came to London determined to hear what he wanted to hear.
Proof of this is in his conclusion. Northern Ireland and Scotland both have "credible market value rewards" - a fact he omits to mention in his account. They do not have a PAS, because the legislation does not require one. They have museums which do archaeological outreach (and much PAS "outreach is done precisely through museums). What they do not have to the same degree as England and Wales are metal detecting clubs and commercial metal detecting rallies. I'd like those who keep plugging compromise with exploitive collectors as per the PAS as the way forward for all other countries to reflect on what this means for the PAS. Sadly you will not get it from PAS statistics just how important rallies and club meetings are for the "number of items recorded", but it clearly is significant. I'd like to ask Mr Witschonke, should archaeological outreach in states such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Laos, Utah set up commercial artefact hunting rallies to "get more finds recorded"? Should we set up "artefact digging clubs" in these countries so people can go along to them and record what people have dug up? We'll get lots more "finds recorded" sure, but then as i asked at the beginning, is that what we are aiming for in our dealing with the exploitation of archaeological sites as a source of collectables?

Our reporter seems to have tired of noting the details in the further parts of his account. I noted though he states, without comment, that in the Netherlands there is no PAS but "there are 5,000 metal-detectorists and 100,000 finds/year", but a lot is not reported and the institution of "outreach" is planned. In Britain, there are ten thousand metal detectorists (so twice the number in the Netherlands), and considerably fewer finds a year are reported. The statistics have only now after eleven years reached 400 000 objects in total.

Poland, I would dispute much of what is reported of what Alek Bursche said, but suspect it's misreported. I'll talk about Poland another time when the material of the conference is published (Mr Witschonke, the co-speaker's name was Rudnicki ['-ski, not -ikky]).

So, all in all, no surprises there. I bet Mr Witschonke was not the only person to leave the conference venue apparently believing firmly that the PAS is the way forward for all countries so that collectorsan continue to enjoy their "rights" to fresh dugups and archaeologists, well, they can have "more finds recorded". Diggers get financial rewards for digging into archaeological sites and finding things. Everybody's happy, yes?

Mr Witschonke, Mr Tompa, if you believe that, get the Arhaeological resources Protection Act and similar legislation abolished, and get a PAS instituted in America as quickly as possible. Starting in Utah, there are lots of finds being dug out of the ground there by members of the public which US archaelogists are "not recording" before they are sold off. Why do the coineys join up with the pot-diggers and send a lobby group along to the AIA to suggest it?

Celator text more revealing

Yesterday I discussed in this blog Reid Goldsborough's presentation of an article written by Rick Witschonke which he had read in the US numismatic magazine "Celator". Goldsborough said "[h]is editorial is so insightful perhaps more than any other reason because he agrees exactly, without any deviation whatsoever, with what I've written here and elsewhere about the subject". Well, I should have known better than to trust the ability of a heap-of-ancient-coins-on-my-table numismophile to read and summarise a simple text. Anyhow, I received the original text from its author which I have posted here in the comments to the original post.

It turns out that seen as a whole, Witschonke's text says something completely the opposite to what Goldsborough writes in the text I discussed yesterday! I therefore owe Mr Witschonke an apology.

Looking back over the past couple of years when I've been engaging with this peculiar milieu (one of the most vociferous in the debate on "collectors' rights") it seems to me that there has been a change in their arguments. When I first started getting interested in what they say, almost unanimously the collectors and dealers over there in the USA were in collective denial. It's nonsense to talk about looted objects on the market, they argued, what is being sold today has been on the market years, decades centuries ("why, Petrarch was a coin collector don't ya know? "). All that has happened (they said) was that they were no longer associated with their 1920s Macey's coin department receipt. This argument still pops up today (mostly from Wayne Sayles when he's being more polite). Today however, there seems a readiness to admit that, yes, looted coins and artefacts from the Balkans and Middle East are, in fact, coming onto the US market, but "it's OK because..." (and then follow a series of "justifications" some of which I discussed yesterday in the context of Reid Goldsborough's text)

Witschonke falls in neither of these camps. He say the coins on the market come from looting and.. its "not OK". He explains why he has reached this conclusion, using coin-centred arguments (see his full text here). He stops short however of saying that collectors should avoid buying material which seems likely to be not kosher (that is cannot be documented as kosher). So in that respect his article is still not a call for more ethical collecting, which is what is (nothing more, nothing less) urged in this blog.

What Rick Witschonke writes seems pretty clear and logical up to the last paragraph, when (after discussing briefly the successes of the Portable Antiquities Scheme) he writes:

Convincing other source nations to adopt a similar approach will be very difficult. But if the collecting and archeological communities come together in support of an enlightened U.S. law which encourages such approaches, we might just reach a resolution that works for both groups. One thing is certain: if we merely maintain the status quo, both groups will be the losers.

I am in total agreement with the last point (though would strengthen it by saying "while" and use the present simple tense), its the intention behind the second sentence which I do not comprehend (and I think it's what misled Reid Goldsborough). How can an "enlightend US law" encourage other countries to change their legislation? Is however Witschonke proposing something that can allow the exploitation of Bulgarian etc. sites to continue, but under a different system? Preserving the archaeological resource as such surely means it has to be curbed (and drastically as well as urgently - otherwise the problem will cease to be a current issue as the sites are emptied). He concludes (I assume this is now the text of his comment sent to this blog, rather than the original text from "Celator"):

And, to respond to Paul's point, I am not suggesting that source countries change their antiquities laws in order to accommodate American collectors, but rather to reduce looting.

We have a lot of fine words from the collecting community about how somebody else could "stop (sic) the looting", lots of cunning plans which usually involve massive (and often self-defeating) compromises on the part of the archaeological resource protection lobby, without which the collectors refuse to budge. This is part of the intention of course, to place the blame on the 'other side' for being "irrational" (ie not sharing the collector's world-view of collecting and its "benefits"). Witschonke has not (presumably partly here for lack of space) presented the reader with any reasoned vision of what kind of "enlightened US laws" would "reduce looting" in the Old World. It remains merely a desideratum, rather than firm proposal. So we really are all in the dark about what he is suggesting, more to the point, what collectors can do to bring this about.

He ends:

T[reasure] A[ct]/PAS has (sic) demonstrably accomplished this in the UK, although Paul refuses to acknowledge it.

That is right. And not just "Paul". Such claims do not take into account the wider context of the facts and (especially) figures used to present the picture of a PAS-collectors'-saviour/partner. Note: to present it rather than examine it. All I have been saying all along is that we need to examine it like any other proposition. I hold that when we do, it turns out to be a somewhat warped picture that is currently being presented and functions in public discourse (I've co-authored a book on it, due out soon). That aside, let us note however that what is at the basis of the PAS is encouraging ethical collectorship, not only in terms of preserving provenance and context but also (aim 4 "promoting best practice") where these things come from. This tends to be ignored by its many portable antiquity-hungry fans over the other side of the Atlantic who seem only too willing to see in it what they want to see in it (rather like Goldsborough's presentation of Witschonke's text on a larger scale).

More Conspiracy Theory: Gill and the Medici Files

ANS Curatorial staff member Rick Witschonke asks David Gill somewhat impertinently:

Why don't you respond to Pearlstein's question? Why doesn't Italy release the Medici photos? If you have them, why don't you release them?

A puzzling challenge, given that William Pearlstein addressed no such "question" to David Gill in the post (on Kimberly Alderman's blog) on which Gill and Witschonke were comenting. All very odd. It seems to me that collecting ancient coins muddles the brain and perhaps Witschonke is muddling Pearlstein with somebody else (Fincham Tompa, Sayles?). Or something muddled at any rate.

What the lawyer Pearlstein does urge is however interesting, and is precisely what some of the "clean-up-the-market" preservationists have been arguing for some time:

What’s needed is an on-line registery whereby transparancy is rewarded with repose/quiet title after a reasonable claim period, claims are evaluated fairly and bad faith claims are penalized.

But then this is a suggestion which has been rejected outright by the antiquity collecting milieu as a whole and collectors of ancient coins most vociferously among them. (As Kimberly Alderman notes of the coiney milieu as a whole: "Arguments for transparency do seem disingenuous from [those] who refuse to be transparent themselves".)

IF Mr Gill indeed possessed the entire Medici Archives, Witschonke asks why he does not release them. I wonder if - hypothetically - the American Numismatic Society was shown the same material connected with ongoing investigations by a foreign judiciary organ, would Mr Witschonke assume he personally has the "right" to publish the entire archive? By what "right" would he have to do that? Also what "rights" does Mr Witschonke think other people (clients, fellow dealers and others) mentioned in those business archives have? Privacy maybe?

A moment's consideration reveals that the seized archives are evidence in ongoing investigations into a complex network of deals over a long period of time, and in such cases there may be good operational reasons why this material is not made immediately available in its entirity to the whole world and his dog. In the same way the US ICE does not for operational reasons reveal full details of many of the cases it has been working on, still less those on which it is still working. Is there anything unusual about this?

As I say, it seems to me that prolongued contact with ancient coins and ancient coin collectors fuddles the brain and the perceived need to defend the current status quo of the antiquities trade often makes otherwise reasonable people come out with what seem to be totally unreasoned remarks.

Safe Antiquities: Witschonke Accuses Gill

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US Coiney Rick Witschonke is moaning about the Italian police not letting the general public see all the evidence they have gathered in the course of a complex ongoing investigation. They had posted part of the archive of photos they had discovered in the earlier stages of investigating the "Medici Affair". Collectors and dealers are now complaining that these photos are now unavailable (if they were so concerned, they should have downloaded them when they were). Witschonke reads into that motives that do not exist and - such are coineys - lashes out with an accusation:

The Italians cynically pulled down the Medici images they had posted when they decided they could get more press mileage out of surprising innocent collectors and auction houses who happen to acquire one of the pieces in the photos. And they then provided you with a full set of these images so that you could assist them - a fact you refuse to acknowledge. So now you smugly admonish collectors and dealers to more carefully research the provenance of objects before acquiring them, while hypocritically withholding important information that would facilitate that research.

What an astounding text. What evidence does Witschonke have that Gill physically holds this archive? Where? In Swansea, in his home or office, maybe behind a panel disguised as a bookcase? Given the heavy duties of his teaching programme, who maintains order in and helps sort through this archive for him, two long legged Czech blonde interns maybe? I think Witschonke should pay more attention to what Dr Gill says before coming out with such nonsense.

So, I would like to ask Witschonke, how does one "happen to buy" one of these pieces, and if you have bought one how does that make you an "innocent collector" or "innocent auction house"? Surely the question of due diligence comprises a little more of checking an object is not in a picture of one major antiquities dealer that was by chance caught doing dodgy business, but whether a particular artefact has a verifiable collecting history which excludes it having been involved in any dodgy transactions (at least back to before - say - 1970), those that the police are investigating, and those they may not be. If they've bought things without doing the requisite research into the chain of ownership (collecting history) themselves, why should they be "surprised" to find that some of the objects in their collection turn out to have been of tainted provenance?

There is surely a bit more to safe sex than asking a pickup on the way home if any of their previous partners had died of an HIV-related disease.
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ANS's Witschonke and the Illicit Trade in Antiquities: "It's All THEIR Fault"

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The American Numismatic Society (ANS) is conducting a discussion about "Ancient Coins and the Cultural Property Debate" in their magazine. While of course such a move should be welcomed, it is a shame that the theme is chosen in such a way as to make the ensuing discussion object-centred (and not conservation-based). The reader is immediately misled about the actual concerns that underlie what the American collector labels "the cultural property debate" which pretty soon gets deflected merely into the territory of "ownership" issues. What surely is at issue is the effect of the way antiquities as a whole (coins included) are collected on the looting and destruction of archaeological deposits which are a fragile and finite resource. Also one cannot help wondering about the commitment displayed and the effectiveness of a debate on such complex topics which apparently assigns each author just two pages (short attention span of coineys?). The discussion is also typically amerocentric rather than internationalist. Anyway, lets see how it is presented.

The beginning is not very encouraging. In the brief introductory article, Rick Witschonke trots out the same old tired arguments we have seen in the US context over and over again. His is an object-centred view. The problem for him is not that sites are damaged to produce fresh items for the expanding no-questions-asked numismatic trade (a problem he does not even mention), but how numismatic data (findspot details and associations) are lost through this market. He places the blame for this on "increased vigilance" and "national patrimony laws" which "drove the [...] trade in ancient coins underground" (which is why dealers don't like to talk about where coins actually come from).

But one might remark that it takes two to tango. Criminal sellers have to find buyers willing to do illicit deals with criminals, and these can do so sure that they will encounter no less morally challenged people who will in turn buy the goods from them. Witschonke is admitting that anyone who buys coins from these source countries in such a manner are participating in this underground illicit trade.

I find it odd that the problem is presented here as due to the "increased vigilance" of the archaeological protection authorities of these "source countries". This is because elsewhere US dugup antiquity collectors are saying (see yesterday's discussion here of what Tompa said about Bulgaria) that the way to resolve the problem is provide more vigilance, guards on all the sites. Witschonke raises an issue of the existence of "national patrimony laws", alleging that they are to blame for the problem with cultural property, nowhere does he address the issue of whether countries with antiquities in their soil "should" have them. What does the coiney think: should the USA have an Archaeological Resources Protection Act? Should Bulgaria or India? And who says they should not, or what they should contain, and on what grounds?

Anyway to continue with what Witschonke writes; he remarks that the main concern of the American Institute of Archaeology (apparently the only archaeological body in the world) is to "suppress the illicit trade" and "therefore end illicit excavation". This means that "they are opposed by dealer and collector groups who wish to maintain the trade in ancient coins". There is an interesting logical jump there. That the AIA wants to curb the illicit trade is presented as a threat to the entire industry. So what proportion of the coin supply to the trade is of illicit origin if the threat it might be curtailed rouses such alarm?

The ANS membership apparently (that is what Witschonke says) wish to engage in "responsible" collection of ancient coins. It seems to me therefore there is a need within the ANS to have some kind of a discussion what that means as part of their contribution to the "cultural property debate". Now, there is a document on the "Collection Policies of the American Numismatic Society" ("Acquisition and Disposal of Numismatic and Library Material") which states that:

The Society will not purchase or exhibit numismatic objects or other items that the Society reasonably suspects to have been unlawfully removed from archeological sites, stolen from public or private collections, removed from their country of origin in contravention of that country's laws declaring them state property or otherwise imported in contravention of the laws of the United States.

[That latter bit ("otherwise") is a bit puzzling as of course as dealers and collectors will tell you importing stuff illegally exported from most source countries "no US law was broken"]. It would be useful if the ANS was to make such a principle fundamental in a code of ethics for responsible coin collecting which it would expect its members to uphold in all cases, but especially in the case of those that purchase and collect dugup archaeological material (ancient coins). It would be even more useful is the word "suspect" (in itself a useful advance on weasel-worded "have no reason to believe") were replaced by the notion that the responsible collector takes "active steps to ascertain and document that individual items were not..." and seeks out responsible dealers who can supply such material. If that were applied on a large enough scale, that would do a lot to reduce the demand for illegally dug and illicitly exported archaeological material. It is clear that it is the failure of collectors to collect responsibly that is the cause of the looting. Irresponsible collectors are the looters of the past.
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CPAC Hearing on the Proposed US-Greek Bilateral Cultural property Agreement

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Peter Tompa has presented his report of the October 12, 2010 CPAC Hearing on the Proposed Greek MOU which is far more detailed, and has to be said apparently a good deal more objective, than the ACCG's Executive Director's version discussed earlier here.

Tompa paid especial attention any time the word "coins" was used, it seems a fair number of people supported including coins as archaeological artefacts and thus as such items which should be protected from illegal export. Coins are small artefacts, easily concealed for smuggling, and there is a large market that asks no questions, making it very easy to obtain money for their resale once they are out of the source country. Figures were quoted that some 61% of seizures of illegally exported artefacts from Greece were numismatic items. So, I really cannot see how it is possible for coin collectors and dealers to pretend there is no looting of sites to find coins and that there is no trade of illegally exported coins into the US. What does it tell you about the "integrity" of the US market that it is in denial about this and refusing to allow the US government to attempt to take steps to remedy the situation?

It is interesting to compare Tompa's account of what AIA president Brian Rose said with Sayles' scandal-raising account. Sayles says that Rose had asserted that "he was not aware of any schism between the collector community and the archaeological community", and I remarked that it would be useful to see the context of this. Here is what Tompa says about that:

Rose then agreed with trade representative Korver’s comment that what we know about coins is the product of a close collaboration between numismatists and archaeologists. When asked by Korver about why a schism between numismatists and archaeologist now exists, Rose disagreed that there is such a schism.

I suppose the question is now who Brian Rose considers a numismatist, is it Sad Sammy with his collection of 'zapped' Constantinian metal detected Balkan bronze coins from kilogramme bulk buys of the leavings of East Coast middlemen? Sayles uses the term inclusively, Rose well may have been using it exclusively to refer to published scholars engaged in numismatic research and curatorship. At any rate Tompa's account makes more sense than Sayles' - obviously present in the latter text to contrast with the opinion(s) he wanted to write about.

In contrast to the assertions contained in the "five points to mention to the CPAC" which Tompa drafted for dugup coin dealers to send to their clients, Tompa at last concedes that the Greek request for a BIlateral agreement - quelle surprise - only seeks restrictions on artefacts that were found on Greek territory. This was a point reiterated by Patty Gerstenblith of DePaul University and the Lawyers Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation. She indicated that

the “first discovery” requirement is implicit in any designated list, in that an artifact must be found in a country for which restrictions are granted rather than produced there. She also indicated as more MOU’s are entered into, the first discovery issue will disappear [...] She acknowledged that the place of modern discovery is the country of origin for purposes of the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (“CPIA”).

It seems to me that the result of all the fog-screens thrown up by the coin collecting community in this debate seems to be making a farce of the CPAC deliberations, requiring a hammer to crack a nut. Then the bit the ancient coin collecting world had been waiting for.

Wayne Sayles spoke next on behalf of the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild. Given the lateness of the hour, he departed from his prepared remarks to make a few points.

That is a shame he backed down, he was going to tell a State Department-supported committee about the coins a former State Department employee brought back from his period of government service in Afghanistan. That might have been entertaining - anyway he sent the text as a written comment too, so you can read all about it and imagine what questions the CPAC might have had for him. Anyhow, the comedy relief was supplied by Rick Witschonke who "spoke next on his own behalf", Mr Tompa does not record if he and later speakers departed from their original text due to "the lateness of the hour", but says:

Like he did at the Italian MOU hearing, he suggested that Greece adopt a program similar to the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme in Britain and Wales.

Britain's lax heritage protection laws and the cop-out compromise continue to wreak havoc in the international debate. Witschonke presumably told the CPAC how he thinks having a programme where people can show what they have previously looted will STOP LOOTING and illegal export. Witschonke is a pal of US numismatists' Friend Roger Bland. Maybe since he keeps coming out with this "why don't you copy the Brits?" nonsense, might also like to explain in the context of the discussion on the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (which nota bene is about regulating imports with reference to export approval by the source country and NOT "recording finds") what he thinks is the connection between the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme in Britain and Wales and the mechanisms for applying for an export licence in the UK. There actually is NO connection at all, these are two entirely different procedures and guided by entirely different principles.

Also it should be noted that the people trotting out this argument (and Witschonke here has been no exception) persist in calling the people by whose agency the coins leave the ground "finders" - never "seekers". The idea is that - quite independently of what they want or desire - people going about their everyday lives "find" ancient artefacts by total accident and then have a decision to make about what to do with them. Is this in fact the case? Well, since coin collectors and dealers actually have absolutely no interest in (and therefore no information on) how and where the coins they buy and collect were found, I doubt that Witschonke can tell us. But since he is deeply enamoured with the PAS he'll know that in Britain accidental finds are a very small proportion of the artefacts coming in to be reported (in 2005/6 - the later reports are down in my cellar - there were 3700 accidental finds found by "finders" but 39002 found by people who were out there looking for them ("seekers"). In Greece we'd call them looters. So if these figures are extrapolated (and I'd really like to hear from Witschonke why he'd think they cannot be), ninety percent of the coins the Greek authorities would be looking at, if such a scheme was instituted like he suggests, would be looted coins. I really would be interested to know how the ANS numismatist thinks that this would stop looting.

More unintentional comedy with Michael McCullough, an "attorney who practices customs law" who "first questioned whether the art market is contributing to looting in Greece". This would be on legal grounds, archaeological, or his idea of "common sense"? I'd like to see him add the adjectival phrase "no-questions-asked" to his statement - and then ask himself what part of the US market in antiquities that would cover. But of course if you look at what is written, he actually said "art market". The US art market covers all sorts of things, and antiquities-as-art is indeed only a small proportion of the total trade, which includes even Bill ("ink-stained hands") Donnovan's paintings. It this attorney's statement not like Clinton's famous 'Monica' denial - that it depends what words you use?

He then explained that US Customs has difficulty understanding that the country of origin of an antiquity under the CPIA is the modern find spot, not the country of manufacture.

The unfamiliarity of US Customs with the law of their own country seems hardly relevant to what the CPAC were supposed to be debating. It would seem that Chair was allowing the presentation throughout of irrelevant "evidence" and not being firm enough with speakers - which may give a clue to why the hour was already "late". With regards to what he said, I cannot see how a customs officer can identify a Guatamalan (as opposed to Honduran) pot imported from Munich by eye easier than he could see that a package containing a pot was dispatched from Guatamala or Honduras.

Vignette: re: "Art market" (Ricardo Ponce). I don't know who this artist is, but it looks like a depiction of the "internationalist" coin dealers' lobbyists after chair refused to let them pass round their coins for fondling at the CPAC meeting.

The Witschonke Vision: Putting it into action

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Several times in recent days in coiney discussions the 2009 "Celator" editorial by Rick Witschonke of the American Numismatic Society has been raised. I have therefore had to remind myself what this was all about and here collect links to some of the discussion of his ideas on this blog.

Here is the first after it had been published, I was at this stage discussing what Reid Goldsborough had said about the ideas it contained.

The second was after its author sent me the text.

There is some discussion of it here on 22nd January 2009 when a discussion on Moneta-L was abruptly terminated and I was asked not to make any more posts there. I tried to explore where the digging up of ancient coins in "source countries" was "different" from the digging up of any other types of archaeological artefacts anywhere else in the world, including the US. This is a topic which since that date I have raised a number of times, and has so far been met with a total stony silence from the US coineys. None of them seem willing or able to take up that subject - which seems to me to be a fundamental question about the place of what these people are suggesting in the wider scheme of things. I think they believe that if they ignore the question, it will go away. {Witschonke wrote to me off-list the day before yesterday about a recent blog post thanking me for "the publicity", and I asked him the same questions but he's not replied}

Then there is this one about credible market rewards.

US collectors do not want to acknowledge that other nations have legislation concerning the antiquities they want to collect in disregard of it. They claim that the legislation "does not work" because they (actually they will all say "other collectors") are able to buy in the US black market goods from these countries. US collectors therefore want other nations to adopt new legislation which suits them.

These collectors however do not want to acknowledge that their own country has exactly the same type of legislation as those awkward "source countries" and that the US has a huge problem with the looting of archaeological sites for collectables.

They will not acknowledge that if they (US collectors) are proposing to other nations a "solution" which they say would "guarantee" a stop to looting, then first they should be proposing the same thing to their own government. If it works in the US, then, and only then, could the US government hold it up as an example to other nations and this would encourage them to consider applying it. Certainly it cannot be proposed, still less demanded, of foreign governments if the US itself is not willing to change its legislation and put up the resources to create a system analogous to Britain's Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme if that is the way that members of the American public think is the "only way" to protect the archaeological heritage.

So it is a great surprise to see that US coineys are jumping up and down until they are blue in the face insisting (at the CPAC hearing last week) that Italy be required by the US CPAC (and presumably then Department of State) to adopt the "British system", but we hear nothing of any attempts to first reform the Archaeological Resources Preservation Act in the US itself. Now, why would that be? Why do they not start a press campaign to convince the American public that the archaeological record is not actually part of any kind of national heritage (as two ACCG officers said a while ago as reported here) and should be subject to being dug up, collected away and exported willy nilly, unless it is a Treasure (gold and silver) or from a "scheduled" site? Merely claiming all finds from public lands (public - so belonging to all) state property, these "restrictive" "statist" laws should be replaced by more liberal ones. This would even be in line with a lot of the current criticism of the current US ("socialist" sic) government, and I see Glenn Beck is opposing the use of the 1906 Antiquities Act to make national parks in the desert.

I think we need to see the ACCG, which claims it operates in the interests of US collectors, putting the Witschonke vision into action, in their own land, and in the interests of US collectors. Otherwise we may get the impression that collectors of dugup artefacts, and those who claim to represent them, are aware that they are holding out for changes which they know are impossible, while presenting them as "the only reasonable solution" to a problem they then imagine they are absolved from trying to do anything else about. Like taking active steps to get black market goods off their market.

US collectors calling for collector-friendly legislative reform in the "source countries" without calling for similar reform of similar systems at home is not any kind of "middle road". It is extremism, it is American Imperialism of the most blatant kind. The US government is attempting to clean up the US antiquities market so that it does not play such a significant role in the global trade in illicitly obtained cultural property, to establish its moral leadership. Attacking these policies and their implementation is undermining these efforts. This is damaging to US foreign relations. The only patriotic solution is that if they want foreign countries to comply with their demands, for US collectors to band together and shift public opinion at home to get Twigging and other forms of currently illegal artefact hunting made legal in the US. The "Internationalist" collectors' slogan might well be:

"Screw National Heritage, Collectors Want There Rights"

Now are Mr Sayles, Mr Tompa and Mr Witschonke going to sign up to this movement or not? If not, why not?

Not me, but collectors (whose views the ACCG claims to represent), deserve an answer. If the US "collectors' rights" lobby cannot answer that relatively simple question, which is a consequence of their own actions and positions, and which puts US collectors as a whole in a somewhat awkward situation, then how can they presume to be representing "collectors"? Somehow I do not see this as very likely to be discussed on Moneta-L.

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Vignette: (1) in some parts of the world, even a box of rusty screws can legitimately be treated as part of the cultural heritage.(2) America has its beady eye and sharp claws on the world's archaeological heritage, but the world is also watching America with some suspicion here (image from the drMyers blog). The spelling mistake in my "slogan" is one of the many on this blog, but one of the few that is deliberate.

Witschonke, "Make the Medici Archive Public"

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The letters to the Editor section of the "Art Newspaper" contains a letter from Roger Bland's good pal Rick Witschonke referring to an October article, “Medici ‘loot’ for sale?” about the withdrawal of another object from auction because of the appearance of what seems to be an identical item in the Medici archive.

Such images, from the 1995 Medici raid or the 2002 Becchina confiscation, appear periodically in the press when a similar object comes up for sale. The stigma of association with one of these convicted antiquities traffickers is often enough to result in its withdrawal. The larger issue, however, is that US collectors, dealers, auction houses, and museums are compelled to research the provenance of any prospective purchase to ensure it is not recently looted, and yet Italy has not published the Medici and Becchina photo archives that they hold, which would make vetting much easier. Furthermore, it appears that certain individuals (like David Gill and your Fabio Isman) are granted access, with the intent of periodically embarrassing the trade. This strikes me as cynical and counterproductive if the objective is to make the antiquities trade more transparent, and looted antiquities unsaleable. If a collector could go to a public archive (the Art Loss Register, for example), and determine whether a prospective purchase was questionable, the object would likely remain unsold.
—Rick Witschonke, Califon, New Jersey

Surely the embarrassment is not whether an item is sold on the US market or not, but who has been buying objects which are not of licit provenance. And who has been selling them - knowing that. As such therefore, the Medici archive is evidence in a series of ongoing investigations as each of these finds comes to light again. If the archive was published, any stolen goods it figures would remain underground and the links between the present owner and the looter more difficult to research. I doubt whether there are many ongoing FBI investigations where all the basic evidence is displayed online for amateur sleuths to puzzle over (and publish their conspiracy theories on the websites which are devoted to solving this or that crime). Like the full files accumulated as a result of the ongoing 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum thefts: full texts of staff interviews, review of security arrangements and flaws, fingerprints, DNA, inside informers' reports and so on. Make sense? Of course not, it would compromise the investigation.

Who should make the antiquities market transparent? Antiquity dealers selling the stuff they have in their stocks, or the Italian police? Somewhere down the chain of ownership of all those objects is somebody who knows full well that they originated with Medici et al. A whole series of people have sold them on (or may be in the process of selling them on) who are hiding that fact. That's where the transparency is needed. Of course it is not just US collectors who need to know, who need to find out what precisely it is they are buying and where in fact they came from.

That is what the PAS guidelines for buyers of antiquities recommends, that buyers themselves establish the vendor's title to sell.

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Cunning US Plan to Solve Collectors' Problem with Ethics

I do not subscribe to the "Celator", a US numismatic magazine but on a forum Reid Goldsborough summarised a recent guest editorial by Rick Witschonke of the American Numismatic Society (my emphasis in bold):

Rick addresses head on the main issue: Collectors (and numismatists and archeologists and historians and etc., etc., etc.) would benefit from the greater context of new finds being routinely documented, and they lose out from all the information that's lost from the current system, a system that -- my point -- is centered on the black market. The solution isn't some tangential photo stamping system that's as impractical as it's silly or some even sillier system of embedding identifying microchips in coins. (!) The solution is changing irrational laws in source countries, to do what's needed to move in this direction. This is where the focus should be, all of it, not maintaining the current "Hear no evil, see no evil, smell no evil"system where nobody knows nuthin' about where new finds come from ...a system that benefits only dealers.

Hmm. So all the "source countries" should change their entire archaeological heritage laws to accomodate the US collector of ancient coins, so the poor mites do not have to keep records themselves of provenance for example by some "tangental" (sic) system? For example solve the "looting" problem in Iraq by liberalising the laws so digging deep holes in stratified sites for saleable cuneiform and cylinder seals is totally legal? I think we've heard all this before. From American collectors that is.

I wonder how all those US collectors would feel about the global community enforcing on their homeland a few legislation changes to make our world a better place. I think we can all identify a few things we'd like to change over there. I bet they would not appreciate it too much if we were able to enforce a change of their laws from the outside (I rather think that's why they fought a war of independence).

In any case, let us note that what Witschonke proposes apparently does not actually "address the main issue head-on", since his suggestion would achieve nothing to curb the exploitation of the archaeological resource merely as a source of collectables for foreign markets, just makes it easier for the collector. The destruction of archaeological evidence will go on, just legalised and under a different name. Like it does in the United Kingdom where the archaeologists of the "NuPAS" are now "partners" with artefact hunters in the dismantling of the archaeological record of England and Wales.

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PS The comments here would mean that Reid Goldsborough only summarised part of Witschonke's arguments, the ones that fitted his own.

Scrap ARPA and set up a Portable Antiquities Scheme for the USA?

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Over in the US collectors and dealers somewhat repetitively assert some such nonsense as the Witschonke premise which is the US should do nothing to help nations whose archaeological heritage (I think he means "coins") is threatened by looting until they adopt measures to protect that heritage approved by the USA. In his opinion, that is the adoption of the "British system" of a Treasure Act and a voluntary 'portable antiquities scheme'. Yesterday we saw the same proposal again being put out by an ACCG coin dealer:

The Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme which prevail in the United Kingdom are the best (and almost the only) existing example of intelligently devised, successful antiquities laws, and in my view something resembling this should be universally adopted. Although the existing political climate does not favor such a sensible and practically motivated resolution of differences, I believe that the adoption of a global Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme, with appropriate adjustments for the individual concerns of States presently restricting private ownership of and export of archaeological antiquities, would do far more to control looting of archaeological sites than any possible combination of repressive and punitive measures.

It is really quite tiresome to have these Americans attempting to dictate to the whole world how they 'should' run their affairs, or they will not get the Uncle-Sam-Seal-of-Approval. Instead of telling everybody else what to do and expecting them to jump when ordered to jump, maybe they could lead the way by example. Set the moral lead. Quite obviously before dictating what others 'should' do, they should first set up such a system in their own country before encouraging others to do the same. The USA has considerable problems with looting of archaeological sites by artefact collectors. The undocumented exploitation of otherwise unthreatened archaeological sites by lithics collectors and pot diggers is a source of damage to the archaeological record in the USA. While it is restricted by law on public and 'Indian' lands which vests control of archaeological material there to the state (just as much as in Egypt, Greece or any other source countries), this does not stop the looting, and the losses to the archaeological record due to site exploitation on private land to serve the expanding collector market are also considerable. I read an account of a US archaeologist who said that in many regions of the USA there is not a single ancient site within walking distance of a means of access which had not been visited and searched by arrowhead hunters. According to him, they are being collected away just as surely as the sites in the Sahara. So US legislation is not protecting the archaeological record there from undocumented damage by collectors and looters.

Perhaps then US antiquity dealers would like to draft a proposal to change US legislation to take into account the proposal that state ownership of archaeological remains is not stopping looting in places like the Four Corners area and does nothing to stop the destruction of sites on land not owned or administered by the state. Let them propose a system like the British one which they insist is the "only intelligent way forward" for OTHER countries. Let them first apply it at home. Why don't they?

How would 'Treasure' be defined in terms of native American and Early Colonial artefacts? In order to make sense and selectively get archaeologically significant items vested in the state it would have to cover archaeologically significant artefacts and assemblages of all the ancient cultures of the country, from Archaic campsites, western pueblos and caves, Woodland and Moundbuilder sites of the east, as well as artefacts from early colonial forts, settlement and trade routes. Once a list of such items has been drawn up and agreed, all that is needed is for the dealers and collectors force the scrapping of scrap the Archaeological Resources Protection Act and related measures and institute their new National Treasures Act which defines state ownership of the designated artefact types, and lays down the process of an inquest and museum acquisition, with the full market value being split between finder and landowner (where the latter is the state, the finder only getting his due share). Just like the British model they want OTHER countries to adopt.

Then to set up a US Portable antiquities Scheme state-wide to cover all the thousands of non-Treasure items found annually by artefact hunters and members of the public, arrowheads, baskets, potsherds, colonial artefacts. How would that be organized to give equivalent coverage to that in the UK? How many Finds Liaison Officers would there have to be to cover the entire USA? What is the optimum distance between them, where would they be based (museums, academic institutions, parks services)? Who would finance it and co-ordinate its activities, and how much would it actually cost?

It seems to me that unless US collectors and dealers are willing to take steps to introduce such a system into the administrative system of their own country and iron out all the problems that would arise from doing this (making the "appropriate adjustments for the individual concerns of States" in the case of their own), then they really should refrain from making comments about what they think other ('source') nations should be doing to accommodate the US market in dugup antiquities. The Witschonke Premise is a bankrupt premise while US dealers and collectors steadfastly refuse to even consider putting it into action in the case of their own country. It is just the epitome of US hypocrisy.

The US antiquities market has a turnover of millions of dollars annually, their lobbyists have access to considerable resources. If they really believe in the Witschonke Premise, let them commission a feasibility study from the Cultural Property Research Institute, or a real academic institution such as the Capitol Archaeological Institute (CAI) at George Washington University, or maybe the Getty Institute to scrap the ARPA and replace it by a system modelled on the 'exemplary' and 'intelligent' British legislation and then submit it to public consultation. Let us see some honest and transparent debate developing in place of the hypocrisy and glibness that characterises the position of the US no-questions-asked-marketeers.

PAS Supported up to the Hilt by the No-Questions-Asked Dealers Lobby

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

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

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

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

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

"Italy's Heritage Crumbles, so Let's Stop Helping Them"

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Californian coin dealer Dave Welsh has reactivated his moribund preservationist-bashing blog with a post called "Italy's heritage crumbles". The thesis of this is that "the Italian Government isn't taking anything resembling proper care of its ancient heritage" and this "is very much relevant to our struggle to prevent collecting ancient coins in the United States from being strangled by import restrictions requested under the 1970 UNESCO Convention". (Is the trade really being "strangled" by attempts to stop it being based on illegal exports? Hmmm)

The reasoning behind this is:

The 1970 UNESCO Convention requires that the governments of States parties to the Convention shall take adequate measures to preserve and care for their cultural heritage"

(that's laid down in Article 5 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention) The US implementation of this Convention is governed by the 1983 CCPIA ("Public Law 97-446 [H.R. 4566], 96 Stat. 2329, approved January 12, 1983; as amended by Public Law 100-204 [H.R. 1777], 101 Stat. 1331, approved December 22, 1987): "SECTION 303. [3]") which determines that the President may decide to help a petitioning country by imposing import controls on illegally exported cultural property from that country, provided

(B) that the State Party has taken measures consistent with the Convention to protect its cultural patrimony

US dealers therefore consider on these grounds that because a building fell down in Pompeii, for example, the US should not accede to requests by the Italians to stop US dealers buying illegally exported artefacts from Italy. That is basically what the ACCG is saying: Tompa here, Witschonke here. There are several others among the advocates of no-questions-asked collecting who feel the US should have a bigger place in bossing other nations about (insisting they look after their cultural heritage the way that best suits US collectors on the basis of the CCPIA).

There is just one snag. Their logic is faulty (again). What does the phrase in the CCPIA "measures consistent with the Convention" mean? The cultural patrimony which the Convention covers is defined quite explicitly by Article 1 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention, from which it is immediately clear (as if anyone doubted it) that this convention applies to MOVABLE cultural property and not upstanding buildings, churches, rock formations, urban layouts, railway viaducts or anything else. These are of course covered by other international documents. "Measures consistent with the Convention" in CCPIA means those laid down in articles 2-22 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention. The matters to which Welsh and all those like-minded collectors and dealers refer are therefore completely extraneous to the matters considered by the CPAC working in terms of the CCPIA. The US legislation is called the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act" not the "Protection of the World's Whole Historical Heritage Convention Implementation Act" (or, Mr Witschonke, "Whole World Archaeological Find Documentation Convention Implementation Act"). Are things like this so difficult for antiquity collectors to comprehend?