Beatrice Kelly is SAFE’s new intern for summer 2013. She asks "10 Years After: Have We Done Enough?" Among her comments we find her raising the issue:
We like to pigeonhole the destruction of cultural heritage a something that others do (like the Bamiyan Buddhas), when in fact it happens in our own backyard. Furthermore, it will continue to happen unless individuals across disciplines and across geographic boundaries agree to work together to stop it.The question is, who actually wants to get involved? This tends to be the domain still of lone fighters who at best can count on mere token support from a few others. As Beatrice points out, part of the problem is that nobody really wants to face the problems of looting of the archaeological record for collectables for entertainment and profit in their own backyard. It's easy to categorise it as a problem for a far-off "them" to deal with, rather than confronting those involved nearer home. The springboard of Beatrice's comments is the looting of the Iraqi Museum and the 2013 SAFE Candlelight Vigil:
Ten years after the looting of the National Museum of Iraq, less than half of the objects taken have been returned. Why is there not more outrage at this fact? It pains me to see news stories about eye-wateringly steep prices for the latest auctioned antiquity with no discussion of provenance or due diligence. How is it possible for an institution as prestigious as the Smithsonian to still become embroiled in a controversy about illicit excavation in the 21st century? I hope that this Candlelight Vigil will continue to spread the word that looting affects more than just the source country, and that it’s far from a solved problem. Looting destroys our shared global heritage...Meanwhile hundreds, perhaps thousands, of archaeologists sit back and let others get on with trying to raise awareness about these issues. Some of them even consider themselves the "partners" of artefact hunters and collectors , in the hope that they can salvage some scraps of information that happen to slip through the veil of secrecy, misdirection, silence and deceits behind which artefact hunting and collecting hide.
Beatrice Kelly, '10 Years After: Have We Done Enough?' SAFE blog, June 25, 2013.
4 comments:
Of course, those "scraps" are represented to government as full justification for the continued state-funding of the "partnership" and many PhDs and whole conferences are staged (at my expense) to present the data as well worth the money.
But one thing I never see, and would like to is an independent research project into just how reliable the supplied data is. We know it is highly selective and that it comes from people who have a strong incentive to conceal the true find spots from their colleagues and (sometimes) from archaeologists and the police.
In my world, and in industry and commerce, data that is known to be partly falsified but to a degree that can't even be estimated can hardly be held up as valid justification for millions of pounds of expenditure.
Problem is, isn't it, that these people (willingly) live in a world all of their own and - as we have seen time and time again - will do anything they can to prevent any kind of confrontation with the real world of facts and figures which do not fit their comfy self-delusions.
I should have added that perhaps the biggest reason for data falsification is deliberate misleading of farmers.
If you have a 50-50 agreement with one farmer and not with one a hundred miles away and you find a £10,000 object in the first location, well.....
And again, the point is, we have zero knowledge of how often that happens but to deny it does so frequently would be political correctness applied where it shouldn't be.
What is going on goes beyond "political correctness" and is instead intellectual dishonesty on the part of those that unreservedly support the current system.
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