The Threat of the UK Tekkies: What do Their Partners the PAS Say?

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Over the past couple of days I and others have been receiving some revealing fan mail about this blog from metal detectorists Norman and Linda Kennedy. This couple claims to run a personal coaching and career consultancy agency (Personal Development Top Earner) based in Papamoa New Zealand. But he is using all his diplomatic skills and professional eloquence to defend UK artefact hunting from criticism. Mr Kennedy says that during the creation of the 1996 Treasure Act (he calls it the Treasure Trove law) "we had to put all the arguments to the government including ways of getting rid of you guys" - that's archaeologists. He asserts that this has "been contemplated for years, as you cost me the taxpayer so much money". He says that the British government is looking for ways of cutting public expenditure and he threatens that he will personally "be first in the Que put you archaeologist name forward first". He points out that English Heritage have had their financing cut and "the next cuts will be the Archaeological department's just watch and see". He says "i may be semi illiterate but this does not stop me from sending letters to my local government and councilors or creating blogs or websites" to undermine the archaeologists' case.

Are you listening to this PAS? These are your "partners" speaking here. The ones you were supposed to be doing outreach to. By their own account, they were trying to abolish archaeology in the mid 1990s and are still adamant on doing it. The difference being now after thirteen years of PAS propaganda, the policy makers and public now see archaeology as a search for glittering goodies, and well, metal detectorists can do that as well as, or better than "archaeologists", and for free, so what IS the justification for keeping archaeologists? After thirteen years of presenting the entire British public with one particular picture of what archaeology is about, how long will it take the to undo that damage?

Over on Heritage Journal what seems from the inimitable written style to be the same person has just made the following comment on my writings on the relationship between the preservation of the archaeological record and the current form of policies on artefact hunting and collecting:

this guy is 90% Bullshit and 10% glorified grave digger full untruths wind and piss so to speak. So please do not take any notice of anything he says,as he is big lier,Norm

Well, if the PAS was any kind of a real "partner" to artefact hunters they'd be over here and by trenchant comments indicating where what I say about artefact collecting is"untruths, wind and piss so to speak". Is it justified to call somebody a "liar" (please note spelling Norm) just because what he says about something contains some uncomfortable truths? Its all out here in black and white, take it or leave it, this is my blog and I am entitled to express my own opinions on it. Please Mr "Norm" instead of launching personal attacks full of dropped prepositions and four-letter crudities, if you feel that it is a false picture, start your own blog and set out what you feel to be the true state of things. Of course you would be saved all the bother if the metal detecting forums and artefact collecting were open access and members of the public could read for themselves what goes on over there. Until they are, they will just have to take other people's word for it. I say all is not well and am prepared to justify it using concrete facts and concrete examples. Are artefact hunters and collectors and their PAS "partners" able to rebuff all of those criticisms using the same methods? Or do they think a dialogue of the deaf is the only way forward available to them?

It seems that Mr and Mrs Kennedy's business is really called "Polaris Media Group" which apparently until a year ago was called "Liberty League International" and both are widely discussed in the Internet - they seem not to have very good reputations (try googling them). Here is Norman Kennedy calling somebody else a "lier" in relation to some of this criticism.

Freedom of Information and Online "Education" American Style

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1) Wayne Sayles has a new post on his blog about the ACCG's faltering Freedom of Information request about intergovernmental negotiations on cultural property movement across trands-national borders. Mr Sayles seems however not really to be aware that there is another (real) world outside the frontiers of his own country. He writes that:

The Freedom of Information Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, was born from the notion that "the people" (as in each individual citizen) have a constitutional right to know how the government acts in their behalf. This is of course a democratic notion that nationalist governments do not share.

Well, two mouse clicks away on Wikipedia (a resource not unknown to Mr Sayles I wist), we find an article listing all those other (62) non-nationalist governments that have passed Freedom of Information legislation. Apart from the European Union and the United States itself, they are (alphabetically) Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cayman, Chile, People's Republic of China, Colombia, Cook Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Macedonia, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Republic of China, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Zimbabwe. Three of them, Colombia, Paraguay and Finland had such legislation before the US. (The same source asserts that equivalent legislation is "pending" in another sixteen countries.) Such a list really casts some doubt on what the coin dealer lobbyist means by the term "nationalist". What nonsense is this?

2) Sayles' blog now has a logo indicating that an organization called "online schooling" has selected it (and Dave Welsh's blog) as among the "top 40 coin collecting blogs" ["these experts can tell you everything tyou need to know"]. I was going to congratulate him, but then began trying to find out what this award was and who "online schooling" were. When I did it all looked a bit pathetic.

"Awards candidates are found by one method: Anonymous nominations that are open to the internet community. This allows us to generate a candidate list that is based upon what the internet determines as being good, original content. We stay away from a voting system because the only information that gives us is how well a site's readership can click a button.

So a pal can nominate any site they like and the judges look at it. As for the "educational resources" claim, the Sayles blog is up there alongside: Top Alcohol Blogs, Top Marijuana Blogs, Top Perfume Blogs, Top Piercing Blogs, Top Disney Blogs, Top Skateboarding Blogs, Top Surfing Blogs, Top Extreme Sports Blogs, Top Baseball Card Collecting Blogs, Top Mom & Dad Blogs, Top Comic Blogs, Top Clubbing Blogs, Top Star Wars Blogs... you get the idea. Have a look at the "infographics" it offers and calls education.

Mr Sayles attacked my credibility the other day, his advertisement of the inclusion of his blog as an educational resource in such company is an interesting comment on his own idea of credibility.

Scotus capitus is in the list too. But quite a few coin collector's sites that are indeed educational are missing.

AIA Urges Public Support of a US-Greek Cultural Property Agreement

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The Archaeological Institute of America is the closest that country gets to a central national archaeological institution, not quite what the 1970 UNESCO Convention Art. 5 had in mind, but a stop-gap. It has launched an informative website urging archaeologists, students and the general public to send in letters commenting on the proposals to agree to check incoming ancient artefacts from Greece to see that requisite export procedures have been followed. US dealers in these ancient artefacts do not appreciate US customs looking too closely at where the items they sell come from, and are busily persuading collectors too that export licences are in some way an "evil" concept and the very idea is in some way threatening their (collectors') "rights".

Please take some time to read the dealers' arguments and some of the counterarguments easily available in the Internet in places like "Looting Matters", SAFEcorner (and if you have a stomach for it, this blog) and then take a few moments to shoot off a letter to the State Department, either on the side of the Philistine Wreckers or the Preservationists.

Please note that most of the 87 public submissions currently up on the website assume that this agreement will only cover coins and not other artefacts. This means they have not actually read the summary of the request. These are superficial knee-jerk reactions caused by shock-horror rabble rousing tactics by lobby groups such as the ACCG and also dealers such as CNG (see earlier post on this). Note the number of them that assert that the plans are allegedly to make ALL Greek coins the subject of the agreement and not just those being exported to the USA from Greece and they are expressing their opposition to moves that are not being contemplated at all. These two characteristics will presumably lead to the CPAC rejecting all these comments, because they do not actually address the questions asked. The collectors seem to think bombing the State Department with repetative but irrelevant opinion will get them an ear.

By the way, the online form allows people not living in the US to comment, obviously the US is very concerned about its image in the world, bad enough at the best of times, so if you are an outside onlooker also let the State Department know what you think about the CCPIA and the current form of the US antiquities market. Myself I would like to urge the people of the US to "say no to Plunder, say yes to bilateral cultural agreements" to curb illegal exports of archaeological material.

See also the SAFE comments on this.

Baltimore: I hope you'll save yourself the embarrassment

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The Executive Director of the Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild last week made a comment on the content of this blog over on Looting matters. He admonished David Gill:

I hope you'll save yourself the embarrassment of ressurecting that ludicrous claim that ACCG itself violated some law by launching a test case in U.S. Federal Court. That charge by one of your colleagues has already spun itself into oblivion along with whatever shred might have been left of the author's credibility.

"Spun into oblivion" eh? Should I be embarrassed that an organization like the ACCG questions the credibility of my arguments?

If US law says that to export certain types of objects from a certain place and after a certain date, they have to be accompanied by certain documents (there is choice of two types laid down by the CCPIA) anyone who imports objects of those types from those places after a certain date without them is illegally importing them. Likewise if they take their car on the road without the documents US law requires the driver to be able to produce, they are driving their car illegally. Or have a gun without having applied for the requisite permits and undergoing the attendant screening. I do not see anything embarrassing about pointing that out.

The ACCG imported a few dozen ancient coins into the US in defiance of the existing legislation in order to precipitate a court case. They could see no way to provoke the desired effect by legally importing the coins. It seems to me that it is the coineys who are getting embarrassed by it being pointing out.

Cultural Property Observatorial Obfuscation

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In a somewhat enigmatic post ('What Do Dated Police Investigations Involving Coins Actually Tell Us?')Peter Tompa attempts to say something coherent about something I wrote here, he even (atypically for him) gives an actual link to the post. Sadly what he says is less than coherent and in one place is downright wrong headed (see post below). He starts off:

Cultural Property crusaders David Gill and Paul Barford have dredged up two somewhat dated investigations by Greek authorities relating to coins on their respective blogs. [...] Gill and Barford suggest these incidents somehow lend support to Greece's request for an MOU with the United States. But do they?

Well of course the Mr Tompa who is a lawyer representing the coin trade concludes they do not... because "the dealers in question fully cooperated with the authorities" and "in each case, the investigations took place in Europe and not in the United States".

Well, firstly neither case is particularly "dated", Tompa himself was writing about the one I mentioned not so long ago (fluffed it of course). Secondly when caught, yes the dealers appear to have given gave up their title to the coin. The one I mentioned had allegedly been on the black market in Greece two years earlier but still a dealer was selling it. In the Eid Mar case some blokes just walked into a shop with a newly surfaced coins and a few hours later were leaving the country with a big wadge of cash. Hardly much time for some due diligence. CNG the buyer of this coin has offices in the US and it is not out of the question that if the coin was not investigated by the police, the coin may have been passed to the latter for sale. (CNG by the way seems to be one of the major supporters of the ACCG.)

The "relevance" which Tompa questions is that in neither of these cases did the dealers have any problem with getting their hands on illegally obtained coins with the aim of putting them on the market, alongside any number of totally unprovenanced ancient coins and nobody, seller, buyer collector or lawyer is asking any questions. In among those that genuinely DO come, I have no doubt, from collections formed in the 1820s, others like the two discussed here have entirely questionable origins.

Tompa suggests that import restrictions on illegally exported coins:

be used to return artifacts traced back to illicit excavations in modern nation states like Greece through good police work.

I'd go further, let's use these measures to make their illegal excavation and illegal export less profitable. Let us see ethical collectors and ethical dealers asking their suppliers far more nuanced questions about where items came from. In themeanwhile let us see a lot more checking of antiquities as they cross international borders to see if the paperwork is in order, or whether the items are 'tainted' by their lack.

Cultural Property Observatory Confusion

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In his post 'What Do Dated Police Investigations Involving Coins Actually Tell Us?', Peter Tompa really gets himself confused. He mentions the case of the Eid Mar denarius apparently illegally excported from Greece and seized from the London office of CNG discussed recently by David Gill in the context of the request of the Greek government to the US to take steps to curb imports of antiquities which have been illegally exported from Greece. Tompa asserts (my emphasis), without giving any authority for the statement:

Those who support import restrictions claim such coins should be treated as presumptively Italian and not presumptively Greek.

Eh? Likewise the coin which I discussed recently in a related context was a Thracian type which apparently had been previously on sale within Greece, but Tompa says:

Thrace encompassed the borders of present day Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. It would be interesting to learn whether Gill, Barford and friends believe Thacian coins should therefore be considered presumptively Greek, presumptively Bulgarian or presumptively Turkish.

An American-made car stolen from Hamburg and being sold in Burnham obviously should go back to the person from whom it had been stolen and not the factory in Detroit. "Barford believes" that Thracian coins are Thracian coins, but ("coins travelled widely in the ancient world" as they say) if found in a hoard in Komotini in Greece, were stolen from the archaeological record of Komotini Greece. That really stands to reason.

Likewise the suggestion that the Italians have asked the United States of America to consider anything of Roman type or origin to be Italian cultural heritage wherever it was found is pure fantasy. In fact I am on record here suggesting it is ACCG mendacity, but perhaps (now we see the ACCG's Washington lawyer stating it as fact) it is shown to be sheer ACCG stupidity.

UPDATE 2.09.10. There really must be something in the corrosion products of old dugup coins that clogs the synapses.

Washington lawyer Peter Tompa returns (A Question of Presumptions) to the matter of the CNG Eid Mar denarius with a stubborness which should be reserved for more worthy matters. That is because he gets it completely round his neck. This is the beginning of what he wrote:

There were several responses to my last post that suggest that the AIA and archaeologists do not support treating Roman Denarii as presumptively Italian, but at the same time it was also suggested that it is okay to presume that an unprovenanced Roman denarius is indeed presumptively Italian because, not surprisingly, such coins can be found in Italy.

Well, there are two things to note here, now he's given up giving the link to these "several responses", one of them is the post above. Secondly who on earth said that the Eid Mar coin was "Italian" cultural property? This is a totally invented argument. CNG is a close pal with the ACCG and Mr Tompa (being a "Cultural property Observer") surely knows the story. As reported by Leo Worden in COINage magazine Vol. 42, No. 11 (November 2006, so not that long ago), and as I wrote quite clearly, the coin was returned to Greece.

In any case, unlike many Republican denarii, these were not struck in Rome, but by Brutus' army on the march and it is believed that the mint for this group of denarii was precisely ... Greece (Drama and one other place I've forgotten). But the point is that this particular coin was offered to the London buyer by an anonymous Greek guy who it later turned out already had a record for trafficking ancient Greek artefacts (but the London dealer did not bother about checking that). Nobody even suggested in 2005 or later that this was an "Italian" object. I really cannot think where Tompa got that from.

But Mr Tompa's thought processes get even more difficult to follow when his pal PhDiva ventured her (rather wide of the mark) thoughts on the matter, Tompa declared solemly Hi Dorothy- Late Roman coins frequently do have mint marks, but not earlier denarii. Hmmm. The one we are discussing does not, but I have a big fat book about the Warsaw collection of republican denarii, and most of them have the letters R.O.M.A. in the exergue.
Perhaps Mr Tompa would like us to believe this does not indicate where these coins were issued, but it meant Radix Omnium MAlorum - or something like that?

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Summing up, and compounding the confusion, Tompa suggests that "If, on the other hand, the AIA and other responsible archaeological bodies would abandon supporting such presumptions [that is the made-up ones it never crossed their minds to support] and instead limit their support for [to?] the repatriation of artifacts proven to be taken from illicit investigations, that would be a major step forward to bridging the gap between collectors and archaeologists.

Well, that is nonsense, but on the other hand: If responsible US dealers and collectors of archaeological material would abandon supporting the no-questions-asked trade [in particular stopped buying items which have no documentary proof of licit export from the source country] and instead showed their active support for the quashing of the trade in artefacts likely to have been recently derived from illicit exploitation of the archaeological record, that would be a major step forward to bridging the gap between collectors and archaeologists.

Photo: the Wikipedian image of an Eid Mar denarius (unprovenanced of course)

UK Antiquities Dealer Convicted of Dealing in Stolen Greek Artefacts

Where's the Scandal?

Malcolm Hay runs an "antiques" business from his home in Kensington. In 1999, he sold "hundreds of broken pottery pieces" to a visiting dealer from Athens with whom he had previously done other business. The invoice shows that:

on July 15, 1999, he sold a female trader from Athens 582 potsherds and other small items for £1,800. He said he bought them at fairs and described the artefacts as “junk”. But at the same time, Greek police were investigating the female trader, who ran a shop in Athens. She was found to have more than £100,000 worth of unbroken pots and figurines from around 4-6BC, which by national law belonged to the Greek state. She then claimed she bought them from Mr Hay.

The upshot of all this is that there was a trial concerning these stolen antiquities bought at which both Hays and the Athens dealer were defendants and...

To Mr Hay’s “complete shock”, he was found guilty and jailed for four years. He has appealed against the verdict and is awaiting a hearing later this year. If he loses the appeal, the extradition process will begin again.

Hays maintains he is innocent. Apparently he is claiming that the objects about which the Athens court were concerned were not bought from him and he has been framed by his client. He implies she had received the artefacts from somebody else.

But then, somebody who buys loose items like this from individuals at "fairs" and is unable to show that he took any steps to verify that those particular items were not stolen from archaeological sites and illegally removed from the source country is surely asking for trouble in the antiquities trade. If he had such documentation on file it would be an easy matter to show this to the Athens court, quashing the accusation that the items were illegally obtained. Likewise if he cannot actually document what objects were actually packed up in his place of business and on their way to an Athens shop, more fool him. It is becoming increasingly the case that to fend off such doubts, the collecting history of artefacts on the market is indispensible. The no-questions-asked market is (all too) slowly becoming a market where ethical collectors and dealers are asking for this vital information in order precisely to avoid situations where they can be later accused of handling stolen material.

This is precisely what is needed. A group of apparently stolen items is identified and the chain of ownership followed back to the person who cannot document that they came by them by legal means. The more smuggling cases that do not end in mere "repatriation" but actually tracing the paper trail back, the sooner this market will be cleaned up. Mr Hay should have kept better records, as all dealers in ancient artefacts know (since the 1970 UNESCO Convention showed the way things were going) they should, he did not and may end up having a long stay in jail for it.

A lawyer for the US coin dealers says on his blog that

Greece's heavy handed approach to these issues suggest that our own government should resist excessive Greek demands as to the scope of any MOU.

Well, as far as I can see what the paper he quotes (the Daily Torygraph) is on about are those nasty Europeans who want to arrest Brits. The "heavy hands" complained about are the British. [The Telegraph suggests that The apparent crime, “illicit appropriation of an antique object”, is not even an offence under British law. Well, it is, see the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003, in particular Art 2 (3). ]

Some artefacts which an Athens court has determined are stolen surface and it is determined that the supplier of some of them was Mr Hay, and Mr Hay cannot show (a) where precisely the items he sold came from and (b) that he took any steps to avoid buying stolen property or (c) indicate precisely who sold the material to him whom the Greeks could prosecute as well. Is it ACTUALLY so difficult for dealers in portable antiquities to keep proper records of what they handle like dealers in other commodities (such as eggs)?

The Greeks have asked the US to instruct its customs officials to make sure no illegally exported items comes onto the US market, this will protect US dealers from suffering the same fate as Mr Hay when buying material now "surfacing" on the US market.


For more on the case see:
Greek courts use anti-terror rules in bid to have dealer extradited, Antiques Trade Gazette 18 February 2008.
European Arrest Warrant sees dealer taken into custody again Antiques Trade Gazette 22 February 2010.
Greek court gives UK dealer three years in prison, Antiques Trade Gazette 23 March 2009.

Marc Glendening Beware of Greeks Bearing Warrants; What exactly does the EAW do for us?

Richard Edwards and Jackie Williams, Antique dealer attacks 'scandalous' European extradition laws , Daily Telegraph.

British antiques dealer sentenced to four years in prison for something not even a crime in UK on the Fuckfrance nationalists' blog - note the comment near the bottom from a US-spelling UncleBernie: "ownership of ancient artifacts is a right...".