PAS Staff Problems

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Metal detectorist "leeds747" is not going to do any recording because of what they call a "FLO Timewaster!!!!" Thu Nov 01, 2012. 

I went too (sic) the Leeds Museum several weeks ago to arrange to meet up with the FLO but the person stationed at the desk informed me that he or she only turn up every six months or so and the next time they would be here would be on the 1st of November so i said thanks and left. So last Friday i phoned to make sure they would be there they said yes Thursday the 1st November between 2-4? I arrived in good time with a few artifacts and coins to be recorded and identified, I went to the counter and i asked a member of staff where the FLO was set up she replied oh they cancelled today and wont be back till the 24th of November So after after a few choice words!! with a manager of sorts i left the building. I wont be wasting my time again

So they are going to carry on hoiking without recording because he cannot find a FLO? The person he failed to meet, I imagine, would be Amy Downes, based in Wakefield, 13km south of Leeds. I bet the detectorist would think nothing of travelling 13 km (it's even a bike ride) to a site to do some detecting, but cannot be bothered to go to Wakefield.
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Wall Street Journal: Market Causes Looting

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One of the more tiresome of the mantras of the dealers and collectors of dugup antiquities is that no-questions asked trade in and collecting of such items is somehow not responsible for the continuance of looting. That this is nonsense is clear to most of us who see the operation of the principles of supply and demand in other areas of daily life, but dealers stand fast and stubbornly insist, we are all "wrong", and they are "right" (and we "do not understand how the market - a market unlike any other - functions"). Nevertheless now the Wall Street Journal joins the ranks of those who dealers say have it all wrong (Justin Scheck, 'Artifact Prices Draw Looters' Wall Street Journal November 2, 2012). "Despite Crackdown, Thefts of Indian Antiquities Continue West of the Rockies Artifact Prices Draw Looters" the article (subscribers only) begins.

Across the West, authorities are struggling to stop the looting of Indian antiquities. The thefts have continued despite a 2009 federal crackdown that resulted in more than 20 people being indicted in Utah. The case generated headlines due to the large number of charges, as well as the suicides of two defendants and a third man who reportedly was an informant in the case. Steep prices for artifacts and high rural unemployment have made digging for antiquities a popular pastime in places like eastern California, Nevada and Utah, where deserts have preserved painted pots for thousands of years. 

In the USA, figures on artefact thefts are rather unclear, most incidents never get reported and in the West of the country for example, Federal agencies frequently have "only one or two criminal investigators to cover areas approaching a million square miles". The latest year for which any data are available is 2010:

 the National Park Service tallied about 400 instances of artifact-looting in its parks nationwide, up from fewer than 300 in 2009, Mr. Swain said. The Forest Service in 2010 tallied about 50 incidents, down from about 150 the year before. [Todd Swain, a National Park Service investigator who specializes in looting cases] said the number of reported incidents can vary widely from year to year, and he estimated that as few as 20% of such thefts are reported. 

The article cites Eric Keefer (an agent with the Bureau of Land Management near Bishop, Calif.), who said he receives about 10 looting reports a year in just one area alone.  An archaeologist in Montana who has been performing damage assessments of looting sites for state and federal agencies for over a decade, said he believes looting is up. Martin McAllister says the looting is "worse now than it ever was because the economy is depressed".

There is a strong demand in the USA for archaeological artefacts of Native American origin. A California dealer (Terry Baxter who specializes in Western arrowheads) was interviewed. Apparently while there are many that sell for far less, some artefacts sell for $10,000 or more. The dealer is careful to point out that he and his fellows "are careful not to sell artifacts from federal land and that they refuse questionable items". Another dealer (Steve Lee from Missouri who deals in artefacts from east of the Rockies) is quoted as saying that he "declines one or two emailed offers a week to sell him Western arrowheads, out of concern they came from public land". Both however presumably would be happy to accept items from archaeological sites (a common heritage) that are trashed on land that happens to have a modern private owner. The Wall Street Journal notes:

online outlets that specialize in artifacts make it easy to sell just about anything, creating an incentive to dig. 

And there is of course no check on what is passing through them. 

Looting Them and US

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The Wall Street Journal article discussed in the post above (Justin Scheck, 'Artifact Prices Draw Looters' Wall Street Journal November 2, 2012) also mentions the case of a California collector Norman Starks who had been accused of disturbing Indian artefacts on Federal land though he was in the end not convicted. The newspaper explains that the looting of ancient sites for collectables: 

troubles tribal members, who generally say that Indian artifacts should remain where they are. "This is our identity," said Darrel Cruz, cultural-resources director for the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California. [...]  In recent years, his tribe has encountered disturbed graves and stolen petroglyphs, he said. 

 There is an interesting "them and us" thread running through this. Here the ancient artefacts in US soil are being preserved not for "us all", but for a "them living among us who are disturbed by it". This might go some way to explaining some of the (to us Europeans) odder opinions one comes across in a US milieu about cultural property and who it "belongs to", which seem at odds with other US statements and opinions about everybody's place in the world.

Come, be Impressed by My Papyri

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If you follow the feedback to some of dealer Mixantik's papyrus sales, you can find out what happened to some of them. At least one guy appears to have bought several as-yet-unread fragments as a job lot and then gone to a local craft shop or home funishings store and bought some cheap  frames. He then put a fragment in each and then flogged them individually through eBay as "framed manuscript fragments, look good in your den" - in other words cool geegaws that look good on the wall. He made a profit and the buyer thinks he will look terribly eroodyte (a different slant on the "let me show you my etchings" come-on). When the owner tires of pretending to be erudite, or dies, whichever happens first, how many of these tatty yellowing fragments in a cheap 99-cent frame get deposited in a museum, and how many end up in the trash, or car-boot sale?

Is this really the correct way to treat a precious manuscript heritage?  Laws exist to prevent this happening, but private collectors - and buyers generally - have no interest in abiding by them (or even finding out what they are). Thus it is that information is lost, object disappear into private collections, and we are all the poorer for the loss.

Vignette: The ignoble fate of some dugup antiquities - to be sold for a few dozen dollars to thoughtless nerds who want some cool interior decoration accessories (photomontage from ebay pages).  A decent photograph would be just as decorative and atmosphere-forming. Meanwhile, evidence and associations are destroyed. And nobody gives a damn.

Antiquities trade in Nigeria: Looting in the midst of crisis

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Samarkeolog has a post on 'Antiquities trade in Nigeria: Looting in the midst of crisis', November 1, 2012. Good stuff as usual, not sure about this bit though:

African nations’ cultural objects have been harvested by foreign powers; attacked by religious movements and political factions; and, sometimes under duress, reduced to commodities and sacrificed for subsistence or survival [...] In addition to these activities, communities have been gouged by economic forces; they have been forced to tear their archaeological heritage out of the ground and sell it in order to subsist.

So why looting and not prostitution, nicking cellphones or selling kidneys? I do not think anyone is "forced" to sell knocked-off Nok heads or dugup pots, it surely is a choice. We too easily impose our own ideas of "heritage" on people to whom it is basically a foreign concept - see C.A. Folorunso, 'The Practice of Archaeology in Nigeria' pp 807-826 in L. Lozny 'Comparative Archaeologies: A Sociological View of the Science of the Past' (Springer 2011:ISBN:9781441982247), a book I recently had the misfortune to review.

Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Wounding Raunds

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Central Searchers Metal Detecting Club ("Organising Club Digs and Metal Detecting Rallies") is organizing another one:

We have permission to search 140 acres of land, now all rolled and drilled flat, the land has all been ploughed since we visited last year. The site records host, a Bronze Age Henge which was excavated back in the 90’s as part of “The Raunds Area Project” there is (sic) also Iron Age round houses and ring ditches recorded from air photography, the site sits next to an old Roman track which we park on, this track was later used to link the deserted village of Mallows Cotton to the deserted village of West Cotton which then linked to Raunds (or Rants as it was in the Doomsday Book). [...] There are references to a small hoard of Republican Denari being found on the land by Victorian Antiquarians. [...] The snack van will be in attendance for those that wish to use it.

Who knows if any archaeologists will?

The Raunds Project (see here):

Raunds area survey, an archaeological study of the landscape of Raunds, Northamptonshire 1985-94 [Stephen Parry, 2006]

The present volume gathers the results of a detailed fieldwalking survey, cropmark analysis, magnetometer surveys and excavations, accompanied by allied environmental and documentary researches to provide a dynamic picture of landscape development. The study considers the distribution of worked flint scatters and has identified favoured locations for prehistoric activity. A model for the gradual intensification of settlement and land-use throughout the Iron Age and Roman period including greater exploitation of the Boulder Clay plateau is suggested. 

Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscape in Northamptonshire: Volume 1 – The Raunds Area Project [Jan Harding, Frances Healy, 2008]

Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscape in Northamptonshire: Volume 2 - Supplementary studies [Jan Harding, Frances Healy (Editors). 2011]

The Raunds Area Project Field Survey: A GIS Analysis on the Pottery Distribution  [Frederica A. Massagrande, 1991]

Raunds : the origin and growth of a midland village, AD 450-1500 : excavations in north Raunds, Northamptonshire 1977-87 [Michel Audouy, Paul Blinkhorn , 2009]

West Cotton, Raunds: a study of medieval settlement dynamics, AD 450-1450 : Excavation of a Deserted Medieval Hamlet in Northamptonshire, 1985-89  [Andy Chapman, Umberto Albarella, Marion Archibald -2010]

So archaeologists spent over a decade doing fieldwork and then more than a decade analysing and publishing the results, and coming up with a lot of new information about the development of the landscape. That there is something for artefact hunters to find shows that there is stuill evidence preserved in the field from which the project could be revisited at a future date and its resuilts verified by new techniques, new questions asked. It should be noted that a very important element of the project was the examination of SURFACE evidence - the very evidence that is the first to be remobved when artefact hunters hoover the area in a random search for geegaws to collect. And that is exactly what they are doing, no amount of reporting and recording of finds made in such a loose manner can ever produce the kind of evidence recovered at Raunds through systematic survey, metal detecting the sites in this complex (sites, be it noted that can be pinpointed by artefact hunters because of the publication of the archaeological survey). Anything less is destruction of evidence for future study. When a Central Searcher pops his clogs, he may leave behind a few boxes of finds, some scribbled "it wuz there" notes, but that is no substitute for properly conducted and adequately documented survey. Central Searching these sites will produce little useful new information about new sites (thus removing the usual PAS-supporter prop), little useful information about known sites, but will instead be ereoding the evidence content of both.

What do you reckon? How many Central Searchers will have read (and understood) the publications listed above to provide an informed background to their own activities on these sites? 

What actually have we all learnt from several years intensive "metal detecting" by Central Searchers of the Raunds Project area? Maybe the PAS would like to tell us what their "partners" have achieved here.

Vignette: English Heritage's "Metal Detectorists' Guide to the Raunds Area, in the Facilitating Plundering the PASt Series - ("Where to Search, and Where Not To Bother"). 

Turkish Seller Offers Erdfrisch papyri on EBay

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The Scripture blogs are now discussing freshly-surfaced papyri, this time a sale on eBay. The current threads seem to begin with a post on The Quaternion (An Academic Blog about the New Testament and Early Christianity: Manuscripts, Texts, and Contexts, run by Brice Jones):

 Just today (29 October 2012), a seller on eBay posted an auction with the title, “Greek-Coptic Roman Rare Egyptian Uncial PapyrusFragments.” This seller (“mixantik”), who is from Turkey, has been auctioning hundreds of ancient Coptic and Greek papyrus fragments in lots on eBay for at least a year. I have contacted this seller on several different occasions to inquire about some of his papyri. He tells me that all of his papyri come from Egypt, although it is not clear precisely where in Egypt. But it is clear that someone has discovered a very large quantity of papyri. A colleague has suggested to me that perhaps the locals are continuing to find papyri in Oxyrhynchus, which is a possible scenario. The papyri that are sold by this dealer are 100% authentic; this can be verified by an analysis of the handwriting from the images the seller posts on eBay—usually very good images. I check eBay daily, with the search phrase “papyrus fragment,” to see if this seller (or any other) is auctioning off papyri. This seller's previous lots have sold for pennies, anywhere from $20 to $300.

Yes, and I see from his feedback that the owner of a certain "responsible antiquities collectors" discussion list has recently been one of his customers (#320890937385), I wonder whether he applied his own list's "Code of Ethics" to these purchases? Yes I mean Tim Haines. Other dealers are also recognisable in the list of those leaving feedback.

In the comments we read:

Most of his fragments are in fact Greek. It would seem that, given the quantity of Greek fragments that he has sold over the last year or so, someone has made a big find. In the images he posts, there is dirt all over the papyri, which tells me these are coming straight from the ground.

Anyway "Mixantik" is (despite the claim to be based in the USA) based in Istanbul, and formerly traded under the name of "Yasasgroup" (on eBay Jan-Oct 2008), but as "Mixantik" since Oct 2008. Both in his former incarnation, as well as the first months of operation under the new name is eBay sales consisted mainly of Ottoman antiques, but also Coptic antiques (including pages ripped from 11th and 14th century Bibles), so potentially originally coming from Egypt (less likely Sudan) - so how are they coming on the market? From January 2009 alongside these items, the first pieces of Coptic textiles start to appear in the descriptions attached to the feedback, some clearly labelled "Roman Egypt". From February 2009 the first papyrus fragments started coming onto the market. So they've been sold for three years right under everybody's noses, along with all sorts of other stuff, with a marked Egyptian bias. The current spate of the increased participation of 'dugups' in this dealer's offer dates back to June 1010. This dealer has also sold a fossil or two (one to Tim Haines). A few days ago he sold something which he described as "Oxyrhynchus papyri fragments" - dealer's blague or the actual provenance?

There is a firm called "Yasasgroup" in Istanbul, this imports and exports building materials, stone, marble, fibreglass mat etc. One wonders whether any of their products come from Egypt. Notably a "Yasasgroup" has a series of Photobucket pics of papyrus fragments here (cached). What, if any, is the connection between the building supplies firm and the antiques/antiquities dealer?

Very probably 'Mixantik', whoever he is, is doing nothing contrary to current Turkish law. Turkey however loudly demands its antiquities back from other countries, one might legitimately ask what Turkey is doing to prevent Turkish dealers selling off the antiquities from other countries (like dismembered medieval Coptic bibles and dugup antiquities from Egypt), and sending them out of the country further afield, to the USA to Britain (Mr Haines) and others. "Mixantik" has been selling masses of what look very much like freshly surfaced archaeological material for three years at least - and are the Turks doing anything about it? If they are not, then why do they expect others to listen to their demands to send back stuff which is not-exactly-freshly-surfaced?

UPDATE Thursday evening:
several "mixantik" auctions have just disappeared, they were of tightly-rolled muddy papyrus scrolls with some letters (?) visible on the outside he called them "dead books".  The scale used in the photos was a CD, better - I suppose - than the fag packet in other of his photos.

UPDATE 4th Nov 2012
Now "Mixantik" has disappeared. 

Vignette: EBay Pappy fragment, going for a song.