Where the Portable Antiquities are Going?

This map shows where members of the Yahoo Ancient Antiquities Group forum are logging in from (it seems to be mapping clusters of individual servers). This would indicate to a large degree where there are people sitting behind computers interested in the market in portable antiquities - mostly one would presume (from the profile of the list itself), in buying them. The breakdown of countries is interesting:

Current Country Totals From 17 Sep 2008 to 16 Mar 2009
United States (US) 2,534
United Kingdom (GB) 1,511
Italy (IT) 231
Spain (ES) 218
Australia (AU) 201
Germany (DE) 184
Canada (CA) 164
Netherlands (NL) 106
Sweden (SE) 96

Chile (CL) 79
France (FR) 60
Israel (IL) 41
South Africa (ZA) 39
Egypt (EG) 33
Brazil (BR) 28
New Zealand (NZ) 25
India (IN) 25
Greece (GR) 23
Belgium (BE) 22
Poland (PL) [Tut tut...] 21
Yemen (YE) 18
Switzerland (CH) 18
Turkey (TR) 16
Hong Kong (HK) 16
Pakistan (PK) 13
Singapore (SG) 12
Philippines (PH) 11
Japan (JP) 10

Less than ten: Portugal 9, Indonesia 8, Finland 8, Czech
Republic 8, Denmark 6, Ireland 6, Saudi Arabia 4, Norway 4, Bulgaria 3, Russian Federation 3, Serbia 3, Iran 3, China 3, Mexico 3, Austria 2, United Arab Emirates 2, Lithuania 2, Peru 2, Slovenia 2, Lebanon 2, Taiwan 2, Croatia 2, Romania 2. One each: Jamaica , Puerto Rico, Estonia, Uruguay, Malaysia,
Thailand, Luxembourg, "Europe" (Eh?), Qatar, Palestinian Territory, Bahamas, Georgia, Macau, Ukraine, Vietnam.

These figures are interesting from several points of view. The dots on the map do not correspond simply with countries where knowledge of English is greatest, though I suspect that some EU countries are underrepresented because its natives tend not to favour English as a means of international communication - preferring French as their ligua franca for example. Above all we see the difference between countries which are the sources of the most commonly collected "portable antiquities" (generally low on the list) and the countries where we have ample evidence from other sources of a large and expanding market for such "commodities" (Britain, the US). It is clear that the pattern to some extent coincides in general terms with the global distribution of disposable wealth. It is tempting to see this map as in some way reflecting the direction of flow of portable antiquities (much of it illegal) from the "source countries" to the major "market countries". If so, the scale and role of the market of Great Britain here is pretty shocking. The truth is the market is such that we really have no idea of the scale or direction of this traffic. I post this map here as a signal, that perhaps we jolly well should.

Metal Detectorist Malarky: Guilty M’lord

Readers of this blog may remember the story I reported here last year of the metal detector using artefact hunter and collector from Nuneaton who was facing trial over some ancient coins he claims to have found and offered UK coin dealers who reported him to the police for attempting to sell what they say are fakes.

As we know, Britain has some totally laissez faire approaches to portable antiquity hunting, digging and collecting which do nothing to curb the abuse of the system by those who would for one reason or another give artefacts false provenances. I discussed a newspaper report of a worrying case here a few weeks ago - which prompted the head of the Portable Antiquities Scheme to threaten to "have the law onto me" for daring to draw attention to it and discuss it... [this is despite the fact that the "Nighthawking report" (page 98, point 9.3.9) also discusses this as a concern of the staff that work for Mr Bland, maybe he needs to listen to their concerns more, or "have the law on" Oxford Archaeology too].

Anyway, there has been a development in the Nuneaton case. It was being reported yesterday on various metal detecting forums that the accused has changed his plea to guilty on five of the seven offences he was charged with. The case has apparently been adjourned for reports to be made prior to sentence being passed, and the metal detectorists' forums report that the accused will be reappearing in court on April 22nd. Interestingly it turns out that the mysterious owner (“Crusader”) of the previously rather moribund “Coldfeet uncovered” blog which has been covering (somewhat vindictively) this case very closely revealed himself on the detectorist.co forum to be somebody who has commented on this blog. It’s a small world.

This is a satisfying outcome for me personally, as I had a run-in with this gentleman and his truculent supporters five years ago when (before he changed his name). He accused a British museum of "losing" (stealing from him) a valuable gold coin which he had lent them for identification. This matter went to court, which found that there was no evidence the coin had been deposited in the museum (which led to all sorts of accusations from various segments of the "metal-detecting" community opposed to co-operation with archaeologists and museums). I was interested to see the basis for these allegations against my colleagues, and obtained copies of the original documentation and was satisfied that the court was right to maintain that the claim that what was documented as being loaned to the museum was anything different from what was returned was not tenable. It was clear that the conspiracy theory about the museum employees stealing this coin had no basis in fact, but equally clear that certain metal detector users were utilising this imagined scandal to justify their own and fellow "detectorists"' non-cooperation with archaeological institutions. The accuser then produced what he said was a photo of both sides of the coin which the museum had "lost". It was a relatively rare type, a 'Celtic' trefoil stater. Interestingly - and impossibly - the obverse was struck on a different shaped flan than the reverse. Canadian celtic coin buff John Hooker suggested - and I am inclined to agree with him - that what had happened was that somebody had faked the photo with a computer graphics program by manipulating photos of other known examples. This of course did not go down well in the metal detecting community. This latest court case and reported guilty plea suggests that we were right to question the evidential value of this photo. Its all on Britarch, if anyone wants to follow it up (June 2004 "Museum loses coin" and related threads, though I believe the relevant threads on the metal detecting forums with have since gone - a shame because the tenor of the "discussion" was rather telling).

I note that a day after these revelations, the record of his "find" of a controversial coin (though apparently validated by detectorist-database coin expert Rod Blunt) is still in the UKDFD database as I reported earlier. I would like to ask whether in the light of these five reported 'guilty pleas', and the fact that two of the coins involved were said to be from a hoard reported to the BM as "Treasure", any records of finds made by this metal detectorist and incorporated in the PAS database will now be verified. Unlike the UKDFD records, the PAS records are for some reason anonymous, so there is no way for the observer unaided to determine which records in it were made of finds from a particular finder who, if yesterday's reports are true, it now turns out was less than trustworthy in reporting where some of the items he was claiming to have found had actually come from.

UPDATE March 2010: I see that on the UKDFD website there is this statement:

UKDFD STATEMENT Removal of Records from Database

The recent conviction of David Hutchings ('Coldfeet') for selling fake coins inevitably raises doubts about the reliability of information he provided for the finds that he recorded on the UKDFD.

The decision has therefore been taken to remove all the records of his finds from the public database.

I do not recall seeing a similar announcement from the PAS.

A Portable Antiquities Charter

Heritage Action announces on its new blog:

We have searched in vain for a clear expression of opinion by an official body relating to the moral issues which recreational and entrepreneurial digging for archaeological artefacts raise. We suspect that in Britain at least no such formal opinion has been published since the activity is legally sanctioned but also subject to recommended but purely voluntary preferred parameters, both implying a toleration of multiple and conflicting behaviours, this being a logical absurdity that cannot be expressed as a single moral position.To fill the gap, and to provide a basis for discussion, we have produced our own. We should be pleased to receive comments or suggestions for amendments.

The text is here. I expect they will be getting lots of congratulatory messages from artefact hunters and collectors and the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

Loot or not loot - Who can tell? Who cares?

Museum Surplus Antiquities (Ken Martins, Laguna Niguel, CA 92607) like a number of other US dealers in portable antiquities is currently selling some nine cuneiform tablets and a foundation cone, but they reassure their potential customers “Since the looting of the Iraqi Museum, all of our Mesopotamian or Babylonian material purchased has been checked against the Interpol Database of Iraqi Museum looted materials”… But then, surely if the objects can be checked in the database, it means the objects concerned have a photographic record and a link to provenance information in the museums accession registers.

Surely the more important type of looting is the tablets that have been illegally dug since the 1990s out of archaeological sites of Iraq and without any records put by various means on the market. Surely customers can only be satisfied that they are buying legitimate items if the seller can produce verifiable documentation that those particular items were already in old collections outside Iraq before the current spate of exploitive and destructive digging started. Only those items can be regarded as legitimate, all the rest are in the eyes of the world totally suspect.

No special pleading, no excuses. I don't know about you, gentle reader, but I would not buy meat from a shopkeeper or stallholder who cannot determine exactly where it came from and whether it has all the requisite papers; why should the peddlars of portable antiquities feel they can ignore the same type of trading standards and proof of legitimate origin as other suppliers have to maintain in order to maintain our custom? What kind of customers do they have? The kind that would put on their table uncertified meat of unknown origin perhaps.

Photo: Isin, waving looters, SAFE website, photo: John Russel.

US Ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention

On 13 March 2009 the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, expressed his great pleasure on receiving the instrument of ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict from Mr Stephen Engelken, Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the United States of America to UNESCO. This ratification brings the number of States Parties to 123. About time too.

The UK Government publicly announced its "intention to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention and accede to both its Protocols" on 14 May 2004, the 50th anniversary of the Convention. That that seems to be as far as it got. There was some consultation process in 2005-6 but then... more foot dragging. Poland ratified it in 1956.

Dimmi quando, quando, quando

Art dealer Robert Hecht in correspondence cited at his trial with Copenhagen’s Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek about some objects he had “acquired” in Switzerland and was selling to the Danish Museum, is reported to have said that he supposes “everything came from Etruria but” — and here he teasingly broke into song — “dimmi quando, quando, quando” (“tell me when, when, when”). It seems to me that this is a question an ethical dealer would be answering rather than requiring a potential client to find an answer. What kind of a museum would not walk away from such a deal? Well, not the Glyptotek, they bought the stuff without it seems finding the answer to the sing-song riddle, and are now having problems it seems admitting to the significance of their oversight (Elisabetta Povoledo Danish Museum Resists Return of Disputed Artifacts, New York Times, March 16th 2009).

Daniela Rizzo, an archaeologist and witness for the prosecution at the trial pointed out that a group of objects from an Etruscan tomb in a Colle del Forno necropolis that were part of the deal should never have been bought in the first place. “They were visibly the result of a traumatic action [...] It would have been impossible not to know that it had been illegally excavated".

[I must say I like the term "traumatic action". I think we will need to look at that cover-all term "looting" archaeological resource protection advocates and the media alike tend to use for everything - including theft from existing museum collections down to metal detecting, pot hunting and grave-robbing. The fuzziness of the concept only allows scope for confusion and weasel-wording on the part of the pro-collecting lobby. We need to thrash out and agree some new terms and definitions of what it is we are talking about to make the issues clearer].

Thinking about cultural property

The Cultural Property Observer suggests that the Cuno interview in Science magazine discussed here yesterday about the UNESCO “treaty on the looting of archaeological sites” (sic) was „thoughtful” - when it was anything but (see here and here). Obviously we will have to differ with the pro-collecting lobbyites in our definition of what actually constitutes “thinking”. It does not seem to me to be a very well-thought-out strategy to criticise first a non existent "treaty" and then to lay into the invented and non-existent alleged wording of the preface of a UNESCO convention. Perhaps this is another of those pro-collecting tinfoil helmet brigade conspiracy theories about a UNESCO cover-up of their real intentions by making the convention say something other than what it "really" means...

Tompa also notes the recent Al Ahram article 'Hands off, and we mean it' about Egypt's proposed new antiquity laws with harsher penalties for damaging archaeological sites and monuments, looting and smuggling. He comments that:

“the corrupt and authoritarian Egyptian government will likely make its own harsh antiquities laws even more draconian […] One really wonders about the point of confiscating antiquities from registered collectors just so they can be installed in "archaeological storehouses" […].

{Actually, I would like to hear Tompa's explanation why the existing 1983 antiquities laws of Egypt are any more "harsh" than the 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act, NAGPRA and other State and Federal cultural preservation laws of the USA - or when you strip away the facade, the system in Egypt is necessarily more "corrupt" than that of his own country, but that is by the by}.

To answer his comment about native collectors, the "point" is that the Egyptian authorities are aware that the current system is clearly being abused and unreported freshly dug-up artefacts are still reaching outside markets, the new legislation is intended to make this more difficult and increase the penalties. If foreign collectors and dealers had stopped buying Egyptian antiquities no-questions-asked in 1970 or 1983, collectors in Egypt would not now have to be giving up their collections and the other penalties would not be necessary. Foreign collectors and dealers have no intention of doing any such thing so the Egyptians are applying the only means available to them in those circumstances. Making a portable antiquity free-for-all as Tompa suggests is clearly not the answer to the main issue. Neither is increasing penalties for violations of the law necessarily "cutting the Egyptian people off" from their heritage, there are a number of ways of appreciating the heritage which do NOT involve making personal collections of little pieces of it.

People who suggest that countries should for some reason model their antiquities protection systems on the laissez faire one of England and Wales tend not to want to admit that illegal artefact hunting, trade in illicit artefacts and illegal exports of archaeological material occur there - though the Brits don't like to admit it, or are completely unable (and more than a bit unwilling also I'd suggest) to quantify its scope and scale.

I think actually the proposed Egyptian law does have a number of interesting points to it, but prefer to wait and see what parts of it become legislation before discussing it in more detail.

Vignette, tinfoil helmets to stop those unfocussed pro-collecting and anti-SAFE "thoughts" escaping.