A Must-Read: Fugitive Ink reflects on Archaeological Heritage Under the Hammer

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Barendina Smedley on her 'Fugitive Ink' blog has another beautifully written piece. This one ('Heritage under the hammer: the Crosby Garrett Helmet (re)visited'), is about the context of yesterday's sale of a heavily restored metal detected cavalry helmet within the broader experience of buying art at auctions and collecting in general. This is a fantastic piece of writing; she has captured so much of great import in her words. Please read her whole piece which has much food for thought about antiquity collecting in general (note the comments on the "necklaces"). It is interesting to note that the collectors of dugup antiquities themselves are seldom so able to articulate this type of reflection on the 'experience of collecting'.

After describing her own approach to art buying in the past the author then takes us through her thoughts on visiting Christie's yesterday morning to see the object she had earlier discussed so cogently on her blog.

[T]hese auction-house background assumptions surely played their part in engendering the strange sensation I experienced, standing in front of the Crosby Garrett helmet itself, just after 9 am on a rainy Monday morning, in the dimness of that eerily unpeopled gallery.[...]

One point in particular started to trouble me with increasing urgency. The Crosby Garrett helmet, like so much else in that antiquities sale, looks as fresh and flawless as if it had been made yesterday. Unfortunately, in the case of the Crosby Garret helmet, this may well be because it was, in fact, made yesterday — or at any rate, a few months ago. For all its present perfection, and despite the air of mystery surrounding aspects of its discovery and origins, we know at least that it put together by the staff of Christie’s from 33 large fragments and 34 small fragments of metal — fragments recovered from pastureland in Cumbria by an unemployed metal detector[ist]. [...] In suggesting that the Crosby Garrett helmet was made yesterday, I should perhaps emphasise that I am not trying to say that it’s a fake, exactly. After all, two British Museum experts have authenticated it, and who am I to disagree with them? But what I am saying is this — that when it comes to whatever the ‘restorers’ at Christie’s did in piecing together 67 scraps of old metal, [...] the resulting object unarguably owes its appearance, its overall shape and its surface patina, even whatever aesthetic merit it possesses more or less entirely to their efforts.[...] [I]s the charisma of this work not in fact entirely attributable to the creative efforts and aesthetic judgement of the ‘restorers’? [...]

Leaving aside right now all the serious ethical questions regarding the way in which the Crosby Garrett helmet has been treated from the moment it was found right up until the moment the hammer comes down at Christie’s [...] what is the eventual buyer of the Crosby Garrett actually getting for his or her money? And what is are all those very well-intentioned people who want to keep this item in Cumbria — as, in fact, despite it all, I do myself — actually trying to ‘save’?

These are very good questions. I will admit that this was not really an aspect which (from that point of view) had occurred to me. As an archaeologist, and one with some training in this particular field, I was more disturbed by the restoration because it should have been conservation, informed by prior investigative analysis, to not only help preserve what is left of this object (what textile remains of any linings and bindings are/were there inside?) but also to generate knowledge of and information on it. Part of that may well be fitting the pieces together (like a shattered pot before drawing). The fact that the 67 pieces were reconstructed as far as possible into a whole did not particularly worry me. I hope though that there IS somewhere accessible documentation of the whole process and that it is fully reversible in accord with the ethics and methodology of modern conservation.

But yes, Barendina Smedley is right, what was sold yesterday was a pastiche, based on current knowledge. And like the Sutton Hoo helmet we may decide after a while, in the light of new knowledge, that the old reconstruction is faulty and take it apart and redo it. Maybe ad infinitum (within the limits of the durability of the original material) as analytical techniques and our understanding of the object develop. Here obviously there is a difference between an object held in a public collection like a museum (like the BM) with the access to the technical resources on site to do the research and analysis to achieve this without endangering the object, and some collector's Malibu home. If our knowledge of the Sutton Hoo helmet was limited to a one-page PAS database description and a few photos of the hasty reconstruction done soon after the bits came out of wartime storage before it disappeared into some foreign private collection to rarely be seen in public again, we and our knowledge of many aspects of the Anglo-Saxon world (at first sight at least, a pretty important bit of the common heritage for a part of the English speaking world one would have thought) would all be the poorer. In her comments, the author writes:

[...] when one compares this whole ‘gathering’ business to proper, transparent, accessible documentation of the excavation history, conservation methods and presentation strategy available for other archaeological finds of real importance — well, I still think this could have been handled much better.

It would be difficult not to agree with that.

I'd also like to draw attention to the point she made: "two British Museum experts have authenticated it". This I think is an aspect of this whole affair that has received far too little attention. At what stage did they get called in, and from whom did this initiative stem? The finder, or Christie's? Roger Bland told us that the finder had not previously had the urge to show things to the PAS - why now? One obvious reason is that without the PAS being involved, no museum in Britain would really have been too keen to bid for it (OK, more accurately a lot of us would feel that no UK museum should be bidding for it). Christie's at least is savvy enough to realise that, so was it their idea to use the British Museum in this way? (Just as a point of accuracy, the BM 'authenticated' the object while still in pieces, we do not know if they "authenticated" the reconstruction - I hope not).

I am in total agreement over another of her points made in the comments:

It would be nice to think that l’affaire Crosby Garrett might focus enough light on some murky practices regarding metal detecting, the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Christie’s and possibly the Treasure Act of 1996 to make everyone clean up their act. Alas, though, the mainstream media don’t seem interested in moving beyond that well-worn ‘save it for the nation’ script[...]

The media coverage of this is a disgrace, its time we had some proper investigative journalism of what is happening in several huge sectors of British archaeology, and the interaction with artefact collecting is one that in particular cries out for it. Where is it?

Photos: Old and new reconstruction of Sutton Hoo helmet, there are many differences, the most obvious is in the proportions which affects the aesthetic aspect. The old one looks "fiftyish".