French metal detectorists seek archaeological asylum in Britain!

Heritage Action has a few well-chosen words on a recent disturbing story on "metal detecting" that has been discussed on UK and other "metal detecting" forums, and an archaeological one. Apparently "a group of French metal detectorists (from ANDL, the National Association for the Metal Detection of Leisure) has started sending details of their finds for recording at the Roman Legion Museum of Caerleon, in Wales, asking for an “archaeological asylum”. That’s the details of their finds, note, not the objects themselves - they are keeping those for themselves not giving them to the museum." Apparently the French artefact hunters have chosen this course of action due to "the issues we face in France" and "to practice our hobby, we decided to force the French authorities to take a clear position". Actually the French have already taken a clear position which is embodied in their heritage protection legislation which makes grubbing up archaeological artefacts from archaeological sites in France for entertainment and profit illgal if done without a permit. A perfectly clear and perfectly reasonable position.

What is not clear is why the French "detectorists" chose to involve this particular British institution in this stunt. Do they already have the Museum's agreement that it will "record" their finds? On what basis? Given the current legal situation concerning this kind of artefact hunting in France (as HA quite correctly noted), this is illegal. Will therefore Caerleon Museum (part of the National Museum of Wales) "pick up the phone" to the right people over the Channel? Certainly that is precisely what several international documents to which the UK is party, not to mention two at least codes of archaeological ethics, would require them to do. I would like to think they would, though seeing what kind of an "asylum" Britain has become when it concerns portable antiquity collecting and collecting.....

If the National Museum of Wales really is going along with this scheme, then what on earth do they think they are playing at? After all it's one thing when dealers and collectors of portable antiquities pick and choose which antiquity protection laws they regard as "bad laws" which they will disregard to "get their hands on the stuff", it is another thing when it is a national museum doing it. I think we and, indeed in particular, the French public deserve a statement from the museum (a French version would not go amiss in the circumstances).

The privately-run pirate "recording database" for UK metal detected finds, the UKDFD has also got involved in the antisocial behaviour of their French counterparts. Heritage Action has a few well-chosen words about them too:

In the circumstances one might have expected UKDFD to advise these people that if French law tells them not to put leurs patts grossières on French heritage they should simply do what they are told. Sadly, that is not the case since UKDFD, which constantly complains it has been branded “irresponsible” by
all of Britain’s archaeological and heritage organisations is proposing to aid, abet and host a database of looted artefacts supplied by French criminals! This revelation may not change the opinion of UKDFD in the minds of the British establishment any time soon.

It might also give them pause for thought on a wider level: if foreign heritage criminals see Britain as a sort of lawless
banana republic where they can escape the consequences of their illegal activities in their home countries, maybe Britain needs to consider who is out of step, Britain or the rest of the world?

Vignettes, above: carrefour avec priorité à droite, below: the British Hatter and Hare give the Dormouse asylum by hiding the problem...

When on Google Earth 17

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Here’s the latest one in the When on Google Earth series after I managed (after an embarrassing false start) to get WOGE 16 on Dan Pett's Portable Antiquities Scheme blog - Dambulla cave temple in Sri Lanka.

This one is in a way related to the topic of this blog, the site may even have been mentioned here. It turns out that most of the trickier sites I thought of occurred in areas where Google Earth was annoyingly low resolution (yes, even in the USA). As a result I think this one is going to be relatively easy. The colours were very dreary so I tweaked them a bit (it does not say anything in the rules about that).

The Rules of When on Google Earth are as follows:

Q: What is When on Google Earth?
A: It’s a game for archaeologists, or anybody else willing to have a go!

Q: How do you play it?
A: Simple, you try to identify the site in the picture.

Q: Who wins?
A: The first person to correctly identify the site, including its major period of occupation, wins the game.

Q: What does the winner get?
A: The winner gets bragging rights and the chance to host the next When on Google Earth on his/her own blog!

The early history of this game is here, somewhere I saw a fuller list of previous ones, but lost sight of it again, if I find it I'll post a link here.

UPDATE: 14th April 2009

Since in my efforts to make it more entertaining, I seem to have cropped the last photo a bit too much, here is another view of the same place. To make it a little easier, since someone was looking for this site in Cyprus, this oblique view is taken looking in the general direction of Nicosia, several hundred kilometres away.

The definition's not too brilliant here, but its the topography that is important. I've made it a bit more contrasty and brightened the colours a little as the original is pretty dreary. The width of the photo at is about six kilometres in the middle distance.

Photos: courtesy Google Earth

Keep Better Records, Keep Out of Jail

London antiquities dealer Malcolm Hays has been sentenced in absentia to three years in prison by a Greek court for allegedly handling stolen Greek antiquities. (Ivan McQuisten, ‘Greek court gives UK dealer three years in prison’ Antiquities Trade Gazette 23 March 2009). Hays says he is innocent and his London business was unwittingly caught up in a case of stolen Greek artefacts by doing business in July 1999 with a regular customer, a registered antiques dealer based in Athens.

It appears that the Greek dealer was raided in 2000 and “a large number of important but stolen artefacts in her possession” was seized. The dealer, Hays said, tried to explain away her possession of these items by producing the invoice she had obtained from one of the purchases she had made from Hays in London. This was for the sale of what Hays referred to as “a small number of minor artefacts and broken pieces” and not the items which were subsequently seized, though it is not clear what precisely was written on the document. Since, however, the document produced by the Athens dealer seemed to indicate that the objects deemed to be stolen had been obtained from Mr Hays, not surprisingly the Greek authorities wanted to speak with the London antiquities dealer, so they issued a European Arrest Warrant for him (which is the main topic of the Antiquities Trade Gazette article, see also The Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (LCCHP).

Now it seems pretty self evident that anyone dealing in items which are liable at any moment to be questioned – and precisely from the point of view of their origins - needs to keep careful records of the movement of material through their hands. This applies to whether you are handling goods like firearms, explosives, pharmecutical products, or fresh meat. No mention is made in the article of Mr Hays’ ability to present to the Athens court proper documentation of precisely what he had sold the Athens dealer and of its legitimate provenance. This would appear to be the source of his trouble.

The whole matter as presented in the Antiquities Trade Gazette hinges on the very lack of proper documentation of the provenance of artifacts moving through the market which is regarded by most archaeological resource preservationists as the root of the problem with the illegal trade.

Mr Hays is going to appeal, perhaps we will see some of the missing documentation being presented in court, and maybe this will give the no-questions-asked dealers and collectors pause for thought about cleaning up their act and maintaining proper records of their transactions involving archaeological goods in order to avoid facing similar accusations themselves. I cannot help but feel that the effects of this would be beneficial all round.

Presumably there is another side to this story, if Mr Hays has indeed been sentenced it was presumably as (alleged) accessory to another offence for which we may presume a conviction was obtained; we might wonder who the Greek dealer involved was and what "stolen" artefacts are involved? How do the Greek authorities know they are stolen despite the dealer having what she says is an invoice for their legitimate purchase in London?

Vignette: jail for not being to document your answer to a simple question?

Daniela Rizzo Identifies the Real Issue

In remarks made in a Rome court, Marion True, the former curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, defended herself last week against accusations that she knowingly bought antiquities that had been illegally excavated (Elisabetta Povoledo, ‘Getty Ex-Curator Testifies in Rome Antiquities Trial’, New York Times 20th March 2009.
In this stage of the long-running trial, the defence lawyers plan an object-by-object rebuttal of the prosecution’s case for each of the 35 artifacts that Ms. True approved for acquisition by the Getty which the Italians say were looted. This should prove interesting. The defence lawyers have begun their first day of questioning of archaeologist Daniela Rizzo, from the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell'Etruria Meridionale, a prosecution witness who has been on the stand for about a dozen hearings over the past two years.

Responding to her remarks in the cross-examination, True said on Friday in court that “if ever there was an indication (sic) of proof” of an object coming from an illegal excavation, the Getty would eventually deaccession it and return the object. Ms. Rizzo pointed out in court that the issue here is not one of “repatriation” or “whose past” is being collected by foreign museums patronising the international no-questions-asked antiquities market. She remonstrated that Ms. True could have, and indeed should have, done more to prevent the trade in looted antiquities. “You are an archaeologist, a scholar and a great expert, and you had the knowledge to recognize objects that could have come from Etruria.” Perhaps “a closer, more direct collaboration with Italian archaeologists would have been more useful than to return objects over time,” Ms. Rizzo said. Absolutely true, this is the real issue here.

"Give us the stuff in the museums and storerooms and we will stop the looting of archaeological sites"

On his blog, Nathan Elkins ("Commodification of Antiquities as a Means of Protection?" ) discusses the portable antiquity collectors’ fantasy that state-employed archaeologists and governments ought to facilitate the commodification of collectable which they consistently present as “the only way to stop looting” while ensuring “the preservation of antiquities” in a way they claim public institutions are not doing. The persistence and frequency with which this argument is trundled out by the pro-collecting lobby is profoundly irritating. I've discussed a couple of cases here and here, but the whole "give every nation a PAS and it'll stop the looting" claptrap is another irritating and equally flawed variant.

The phenomenon really does raise questions about the awareness of the proponents of such arguments of what it is we are trying to conserve and how, what kind of material modern excavations of archaeological sites produce, and the function of museums and excavation archive storerooms. They also fail to take into account that most objects passing through private collections very soon lose any kind of documentation of provenance (I know of material in museums in England which has the provenance and associations recorded for finds of the 1850s and 1860s, while it seems US private collectors cannot find any documentation for objects they claim were “bought in Maceys” in the 1950s and 1960s or even later). That is no guarantee that anything going from a museum into such private collections will not almost immediately lose even the information that it had been in a museum and is not another looted and smuggled find. So what is the point? There is also the matter which Nathan raises of conservation and archiving facilities in domestic contexts.

Clemency C. Coggins (1995, ‘A Licit International Traffic in Ancient Art: Let there be Light’ International Journal of Cultural Property 4, 61-80) writes “one must conclude that talk of ‘duplicates’ which will supply, even satiate, the market is a smoke screen for inaction”. Personally, until collectors and dealers can sort out their problems with documenting the origins of the collectables as they move from hand to hand, from home to home, I think that is basically all we need to hear about these arguments.

Also since collectors strongly deny that there is any link between their no-questions-asked buying of artefacts of totally undocumentable origins and the clandestine movement of illegally excavated items to feed the commercial market... who spots the inconsistency in their other "argument" that IF public museum collections were split up to feed the antquities market, the looting would somehow stop? The only way that could be a logical argument would be to admit that it is the demand for looted objects that is the motor for creating the supply - which is of course what most people are not portable antiquity collectors can see at a glance is likely to be the case.

Anyway, please read what Nathan has to say.

"Reams of pointless documents, codes and guidelines"

While on the topic of the missing Strategy Report on Illegal Artefact Hunting in the UK, and who might be interested in it being hidden from view, I am reminded of calls to stop producing such reports altogether. Four years ago, David Barwell until July 2005 chairman of the National Council of Metal Detectorists gave a paper at the March 2005 PAS conference in the British Museum about “empowering finders” (in a gross misinterpretation of the aims of the PAS he took this to mean metal detector using artefact hunters). What he says is still on the PAS website and is quite revealing:

Since it’s (sic) inception, the Portable Antiquities Scheme has been instrumental in awakening the general public and the media to our hobby of metal detecting, it has also woken up English Heritage, the Forestry Commission, English Nature, DEFRA, ALGAO, Tony Robinson and Uncle Tom Cobley and all, and not to be gazumped by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, they are all producing reams of documents, codes and guidelines, some have been threatening, some pointless. Not only have the NCMD been deluged with mountains of paper but it has been very counter productive to the mission of the Portable Antiquities Scheme and has at times served only as a threat to the success of the scheme! Today I want to send a clear message to all these bureaucrats - GET OFF OF (sic) OUR CASE - leave the responsible hobby alone, go and do something you think you understand, like managing sheep or planting trees. You are preventing empowerment by trying to inflict archaeological controls; matters that relate to the detecting hobby should be channelled through the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The Scheme had already succeeded in gaining our confidence while you were messing about formulating rulebooks!

So according to the NCMD, creating heritage conservation policy guidelines and strategic reports is “threatening” and “pointless” when we have the PAS in partnership with metal detectorists (what about the other “finders” Mr Barwell?). Creating policy is furthermore “counter productive to the mission of the Portable Antiquities Scheme” – which Mr Barwell presumably sees as an autonomous body divorced from Britain’s cultural heritage policy. I wonder what kind of "empowerment" is threatened by the UK looking at conservation policies?

It is worthy of note that David Barwell acts as a consultant for Jimmy Sierra’s [James (Jimmy Sierra) Normandi from Forest Knolls California] “Discovery Tours” metal detecting holiday company. I suppose anybody who makes money from finding “productive” sites for US “metal detectorists” to come on paying trips (c. 3500 dollars a head) to take away little pieces of Britain’s archaeological record as keepsakes,* might be more than a little bit interested in policy makers “getting off the case” and leaving "metal detectorists" alone.

The NCMD spokesman tells English Heritage, the public body responsible for heritage policy in England and other conservation organizations to “get off the case” of the effects of artefact hunting and collecting on the finite resources of archaeological record still surviving in the soil of Britain. I say to English Heritage and all the rest of the British heritage management organizations, GET ON THE CASE of the actual long term effects on the exploitation of the archaeological record for entertainment and profit and public perceptions of archaeology as a discipline and an asset.

* The website makes a great play of how "responsibly" they are taking away pieces of the archaeological record. A reader of the 2009 update of their webpage might take note what it indicates that they do NOT comply with. More about these businesses offering artefact hunting holidays maybe another time.

On the trail of the missing strategic report

Writing yesterday I idly clicked on a link in one of my own old posts here, broken. It happens sometimes, so I set about fixing it. I hit a snag.

Am I the only one who cannot get the links to the recently virtually- published "Nighthawking Report" to open? It was available online on English Heritage's HELM (Historic Environment Local Management) website and the PAS website. Both links are currently inactive. A web search suggests that all who have discussed it used the same links, there seems to be no other. Well, I thought, maybe English Heritage has moved it. I used the site's own search engine to look for the term "Nighthawking" - no results. "Aha", think I, "they've moved it to their own perennially not-terribly-user-friendly site, maybe". That has a search engine. No results. If it's out there on the web, it's been sneakily tucked away somewhere that is more difficult to find. Maybe somebody can tell us where.

So its a bit like one of those "find Wally" pictures. Where has EH hidden the strategic report on illegal artefact hunting, and why is it not accessible where it used to be? We may recall no sooner was it out than a certain central institution in partnership with artefact hunters and collectors was busy contradicting what other central institutions were saying about the results of the report, then a pirate recording scheme added its own storm-in-a-teacup "statement" to the fuss. So it would be helpful if we could refer to the source document which should be permanently accessible somewhere where we can all find it easily. So why isn't it? Why was it not produced in paper form? No wonder there's not much proper debate in Britain about artefact hunting if people keep losing sight of the evidence.