Dealers Called out on Marketing Nonsense by Thinking Collector

  Violity... to Austria,
   and then where?
     

This is a really useful resource from a knowledgeable collector " Questionable ancient brooches at Catawiki in March 2022" (by "Renate" 1.04.2022).

Hi, my thoughts about the Catawiki offers in March are attached (here), 15 are listed in this issue. This issue is focussed on “Slavic” bow brooches, because so many of them are currently showing up. They’re labelled as Viking, Roman, Visigothic, Gothic, Ostrogothic or Merovingian. Some sellers do not know enough to identify "Slavic" brooches or have themselves been deceived, others deliberately use indications of origin that are better received on the market than "Slavic". A chart on the development of the “radial (finger) fibulae” in Eastern Europe is included[...]

I think this is very well written, with some nice explanations of the reasoning, and some useful literature cited. This text (and the others like it) is really significant for two reasons... first of all there is the importance of the correct recognition of material from central and eastern Europe. Since the antiquities trade is primarily (or until now has primarily been) a western affliction, attempts have been made to make items from here more "relevant" to buyers in the West - hence the frequent attribution of almost anything from north and east or the Rhine as "Viking" regardless of what it really is. Secondly, we have here a rare example of a collector actually reading the archaeological literature and thinking for themselves. These are the collectors that will lead to changes in the way things are marketed. Dealers prefer their customers to be passive and subservient. Renate has an ethical problem:

I will continue to read Russian websites despite the war to identify questionable brooches. Moreover, the search engine Yandex is much more helpful than e.g. Google or Bing.

This is a problematic one. In Poland, seven universities, the Warsaw Polytechnic, the Ministry of Education and Science, and the Polish Academy of Science have all broken off all scientific collaboration with Russian academic institutions since the start of the "Special Military Operation" in Ukraine on 24th February this year (actually the Academy of Sciences, but not all of its constituent institutes, earlier). This is significant as there were a lot of joint projects that will be affected. But citing Russian literature? But let us note that the dealers involved seem to have no such qualms about whether by buying these artefacts they are putting money into the pockets of the aggressor state.

If I had the time and better access to the Institute's libary than I do at the moment, I'd have a few things to say about the first two items, sold by "the Julius Collection" as this is far more interesting than what Renate has spotted. Renate notes the number of "Slavic" (for want of a better term) fibulae and that "so many of them are currently showing up". Now why would that be? What is happening in the looting world that is causing this increase? Investigating this is rendered more difficult by the fact the sellers obscure the country of origin (where they were excavated). These fibulae could mostly have come from Ukraine, mostly the western parts, the Balkans, Carpathian Basin... and then not much north of its fringes (on present knowledge) abut then a cluster up on the SE Baltic coast (the "Masurgermanische" /Olsztyn" group). What's happening? Or are these being faked now? 

After all to say that "slavic" items would be "less well received" on the market is a bit odd. Are there no buyers in the West of Slavic origin who'd be interested? Is there no market for them in Slavic countries? And after all it was the Slavs who started off relatively small "somewhere" (a mystery place) and then expanded over a huge expanse of Europe in just 500 or so years. A truly remarkable phenomenon. Mind you, just collecting their brooches will not bring you any closer to understanding how and why.

Anyway, I hope collectors, and who knows, even dealers will be reading these texts and starting to look at the nonsenses dealers use to market goods of this nature and sr=tart asking more questions ("How do you know?" would be a good starter).