Sunday, 15 February 2009
Nighthawking Survey Report UPDATE
Udate 20th March 2009: The links in the posts that follow to the location of the Nighthawking Survey are broken. They worked when I made the posts. At the time of writing, the following link http://www.helm.org.uk/upload/pdf/NIGHTHAWKS.pdf actually works, but who knows how long?
UK Artefact Hunters Leak Illegal "Metal Detecting" Survey Results
Most of us have to wait until tomorrow to learn about the results of the survey into illegal metal detecting in the UK. Over on the UKDN metal detecting forum however one of the artefact hunters (jcmaloney, an NHS worker from Gloucester) has somehow managed to get his hands on the press release (from whom he does not say) and although it's supposed to be embargoed until tomorrow,on Friday afternoon posted it up for discusion, calling it a " devisive (sic) wedge that achieves nothing". Far from it, if the press release is anything to go by, it is rather more revealing than we were led to believe from the PAS-centred leaks earlier. I'll discuss it tomorrow.
Friday, 13 February 2009
Good Collectors Under the Sea
The 'political archaeology' blog The Assemblage has a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the exploits of Odyssey and its "let's-empty-the-site-onto-the-market-now" arguments for the Victory called a hint for the good collectors of the sea - which I could not resist drawing attention to.
With a compliant British government, Odyssey can expect none of the lawsuits or bad press caused by those pesky Spaniards. [...] Since Britain’s archaeological resource is officially up for grabs to whoever looks for it (as long as they’re not an archaeologist), perhaps Odyssey should establish an onshore operation.Using its massive budget to invest in cutting edge technology that can detect metal over many acres and far beneath the ploughsoil, it could set to work across the countryside, scanning every inch of the nation, revealing to us the wonders of the past, delighting in the hoards of context-less antiquities, and then selling them to us for a profit.I am sure portable antiquity collectors would be only too happy.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
The Saga of the Uncleaned Coin
A few years ago Susan Headley wrote a text "The Saga of the Uncleaned Coin" which tells ancient coin collectors and afficionados of Balkan 'partifacts' precisely where the things they collect come from and how they get to the USA. Her point is actually to offset the claims of US sellers that what they are selling is "unsorted" and what rarities the buyer "might" find. It illustrates two things very clearly the first is how the hand picked artefacts at the "high end" of this lowdown dirty trade relate to the other offerings of US dealers and wholesale indiscriminate illegal metal detecting of archaeological sites in the source country. She also coyly hints at the nature of the groups involved in the trade which US collectors are financing by their indiscriminate purchases. The second thing it illustrates (since I know this is a well-known text) is that since its first publication, US collectors have had ample opportunity to find out where the objects on internet auction sites and in dealers' 'job lots' actually come from. Do they care? Obviously not. Not a bit.
Susan Headley is the founder of Uncleaned Ancient Coins Discussion Group and Ancient Bulk Marketplace, so I guess she knows something about where they come from. Of course she could not resist romanticising that her "reparatio" had been deposited in a hoard, though it is clear from her text that she envisages that having been deposited on a site where there are other archaeological settlement finds.
The text disappeared I think from the internet for a time, so it is good to see that the link posted in Nov 2005 still works.
Nefertiti in the news again
The controversy about the famous bust of Nefertiti found in 1912 in the sculptor Djetmose's workshop at Tel el-Armana continues. The BBC now reports (following Spiegel) that newly published documents discovered recently in the archives of the German Oriental Institute (DOG) suggest that Ludwig Borchardt, German archaeologist and Director of the "Imperial German Institute for Egyptian Archaeology" perhaps had not been totally forthright with the representative of the Egyptian authorities to secure the fabulous sculpture of the Egyptian queen, Nefertiti for Germany during a division of finds. This has led to new calls to review the allocation of this find.
The excavations 1907-14 were carried out by the DOG - and for the period the standard of work was very high. Egypt and Germany had an agreement to split antiquities found by the German team "à moitié exacte" (or 50-50). The partage of the finds was agreed at a meeting on Jan. 20, 1913 between Borchardt and Gustave Lefebre (the Inspector for Middle Egypt from the Department of Antiquities).
The newly discovered document was written in 1924 by the secretary of the German Oriental Institute (DOG) and contains an account of what had happened at this meeting at which he had been present. Borchardt, the witness noted, "wanted to save the bust for us" and therefore had played down its significance.
The 1924 text apparently suggests that although Borchardt had listed the bust among his finds (in fact it was at the top of the list), in the inventory shown to the inspector, it was described as of gypsum (like other examples discovered in the same workshop). In addition, the photograph of her that Mr Borchardt showed the inspector was reportedly "deliberately unflattering." Furthermore the bust was "tightly wrapped, placed in a box in a poorly-lit chamber and kept hidden". It is unclear whether Lefebre went to the trouble of lifting the bust out of the box to examine it more carefully.
After looking over the excavated material, in accordance with the collecting policy of the institution he represented, Lefebre chose the half share of the excavated material that contained the inscriptions and stelae, and the other items were perfectly legally exported.
Already a year later a perfectly adequate photo was published of the bust, and Egyptologists knew what had made its way from Armarna to Germany, but it seems that at the time there was no reaction from the Egyptian authorities. It was only when ten years later the excavation permit holder transferred the finds to the Prussian State and the Nefertiti bust went on public display that the Egyptian authorities took a more serious interest in this sculpture and started regretting that Lefebre (who by then had advanced to curator in the Cairo Museum) had not taken a closer interest at the time.
The affair is discussed in some detail by Urice, S. K. (2006): The beautiful one has come - to stay pp. 135-192 [in:] J.H. Merryman (ed.) Imperialism, art and restitution, Cambridge.
The authorship of the 1924 document nor the context of (motivation for) its writing have not been reported yet.
The excavations 1907-14 were carried out by the DOG - and for the period the standard of work was very high. Egypt and Germany had an agreement to split antiquities found by the German team "à moitié exacte" (or 50-50). The partage of the finds was agreed at a meeting on Jan. 20, 1913 between Borchardt and Gustave Lefebre (the Inspector for Middle Egypt from the Department of Antiquities).
The newly discovered document was written in 1924 by the secretary of the German Oriental Institute (DOG) and contains an account of what had happened at this meeting at which he had been present. Borchardt, the witness noted, "wanted to save the bust for us" and therefore had played down its significance.
The 1924 text apparently suggests that although Borchardt had listed the bust among his finds (in fact it was at the top of the list), in the inventory shown to the inspector, it was described as of gypsum (like other examples discovered in the same workshop). In addition, the photograph of her that Mr Borchardt showed the inspector was reportedly "deliberately unflattering." Furthermore the bust was "tightly wrapped, placed in a box in a poorly-lit chamber and kept hidden". It is unclear whether Lefebre went to the trouble of lifting the bust out of the box to examine it more carefully.
After looking over the excavated material, in accordance with the collecting policy of the institution he represented, Lefebre chose the half share of the excavated material that contained the inscriptions and stelae, and the other items were perfectly legally exported.
Already a year later a perfectly adequate photo was published of the bust, and Egyptologists knew what had made its way from Armarna to Germany, but it seems that at the time there was no reaction from the Egyptian authorities. It was only when ten years later the excavation permit holder transferred the finds to the Prussian State and the Nefertiti bust went on public display that the Egyptian authorities took a more serious interest in this sculpture and started regretting that Lefebre (who by then had advanced to curator in the Cairo Museum) had not taken a closer interest at the time.
The affair is discussed in some detail by Urice, S. K. (2006): The beautiful one has come - to stay pp. 135-192 [in:] J.H. Merryman (ed.) Imperialism, art and restitution, Cambridge.
The authorship of the 1924 document nor the context of (motivation for) its writing have not been reported yet.
photo: BBC
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Wenneb on the Bay
On this blog I’ve recently been discussing the 'Wenneb.. shabtis' which several top UK dealers are now refusing to handle because they are of highly dubious origin, and there is at the moment a strong suggestion that they are possibly from a recently-looted tomb. But that is just one part of the trade in portable antiquities. At the other end of the scale are petty and often ephemeral dealers who offload through internet auction sites various real and pseudo antiquities, primarily nowadays those that come from metal detecting. Nobody these days blinks an eyelid as Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are emptied onto eBay alongside material shipped (smuggled) en masse from the Balkans and Edwardian watch fobs. The trade in locally derived artefacts however acts as a cover for various types of abuse.
One seller (his first name is “Rob”) with a veritable Aladdin’s cave of varied metal detected tat (who buys this stuff?) and artfacts calls himself “ antiquebottledigger”. He has an online store called “digthatbottle” and he hails from Nottingham in the United Kingdom. Among the 473 “misc antiquities” he is offering today is a Wenneb… shabti, still with some soil on it. Two members of the AncientArtifacts Forum asked where he got it, apparently he replied: “I bought this about 6 months ago from a dealer who I believe bought it in France from a French auction of Ushbtis but I don't have further details of when and where it was held”.
This is a good illustration of one of the totally undesirable effects of treating the commercial exploitation of the archaeological resource by artefact hunters as in some way a socially beneficial phenomenon carried out by "unsung heroes of the UK heritage" and "partners" of archaeology. It is in fact none of these things (and it beats me why my colleagues over in Britain say such things, it must be something in the water).
Whatever the actual status of the 'wenneb-shabtis', we see here clearly the problem with (or for) the small dealer who is not bound by any professional codes of ethics and so do not have the need (and anyway do not have the resources) to do a proper due diligence check on this sort of item. He bought it from a bloke who got it from a guy and where he got it from... well, he does not seem to have been too interested. Now if the suspicion that these come from a freshly-looted tomb are correct, Mr Rob Bottle-digger could be in breach of the Dealing in Cultural Property (Offences) Act of 2003, but that need not worry him, as from past history that turns out to be about as effective as a dead haddock in fighting culture crime in the UK .
One seller (his first name is “Rob”) with a veritable Aladdin’s cave of varied metal detected tat (who buys this stuff?) and artfacts calls himself “ antiquebottledigger”. He has an online store called “digthatbottle” and he hails from Nottingham in the United Kingdom. Among the 473 “misc antiquities” he is offering today is a Wenneb… shabti, still with some soil on it. Two members of the AncientArtifacts Forum asked where he got it, apparently he replied: “I bought this about 6 months ago from a dealer who I believe bought it in France from a French auction of Ushbtis but I don't have further details of when and where it was held”.
This is a good illustration of one of the totally undesirable effects of treating the commercial exploitation of the archaeological resource by artefact hunters as in some way a socially beneficial phenomenon carried out by "unsung heroes of the UK heritage" and "partners" of archaeology. It is in fact none of these things (and it beats me why my colleagues over in Britain say such things, it must be something in the water).
Whatever the actual status of the 'wenneb-shabtis', we see here clearly the problem with (or for) the small dealer who is not bound by any professional codes of ethics and so do not have the need (and anyway do not have the resources) to do a proper due diligence check on this sort of item. He bought it from a bloke who got it from a guy and where he got it from... well, he does not seem to have been too interested. Now if the suspicion that these come from a freshly-looted tomb are correct, Mr Rob Bottle-digger could be in breach of the Dealing in Cultural Property (Offences) Act of 2003, but that need not worry him, as from past history that turns out to be about as effective as a dead haddock in fighting culture crime in the UK .
Whatever the actual status of the Wenneb-shabtis, this well illustrates how looted stuff will be moving through the UK market alongside masses of other antiquities generated by the exploitation of the British archaeological resource for pleasure and profit. There is no reason why this gentleman should be too concerned about establishing provenance and legitimacy of the items he is selling, in a few days the auction will end, by which time he might find someone who will give him 85 quid for it (it is quite unusual and collectable), and he’ll go back to selling old bottles, knocked-about flint flakes and metal detected tat.
While there is absolutely no regulation of the market in antiquities in the UK, it will continue to serve as the laundry for illicit antiquities that it is... while British archaeologists largely just watch on.
While there is absolutely no regulation of the market in antiquities in the UK, it will continue to serve as the laundry for illicit antiquities that it is... while British archaeologists largely just watch on.
.
Nighthawking survey: all will be revealed soon
The launch of the delayed and long, long awaited report from the survey on the scale and effects of illegal metal detecting in Britain is due on Monday 16th February. Hooray.
I have touched on this survey here before. It was recently leaked, first by Kate Clark and then by Roger Bland that the report will say that the survey revealed that "illegal metal detecting is down" in Britain since the last attempt to gather statistics. It will also apparently say that this is ascribable to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. On Monday we will at last have an opportunity to examine the basis of these conclusions.
There will be a major press conference at the Society of Antiquaries of London. There will be three speakers: Barry Cunliffe (English Heritage Interim Chairman), John Browning (a Suffolk landowner from whose land the Icklingham Bronzes were stolen and who is constantly plagued by trespassing metal detectorists) and Mike Heyworth (Director of the Council for British Archaeology). As far as I know, nobody from the PAS will be expanding on how they single-handedly slew the monster of illegal metal detecting.
I am absolutely sure that the general mood in the media, forums and blogs on Monday is going to be that the looting problem in Britain has been solved. Once again, we will hear from the pro-collecting lobby that all we need to do to solve the global looting problem is institute officially-sanctioned free-for-all artefact hunting like the English have. The world's looting problem will disappear, we will no doubt again be told, by legalising it.
What the report itself says beyond the "summary and conclusions" page however is another matter. I think this is a text which will require careful scrutiny and analysis before we can use it as a basis for construction of global models of how to protect the archaeological heritage.
I have touched on this survey here before. It was recently leaked, first by Kate Clark and then by Roger Bland that the report will say that the survey revealed that "illegal metal detecting is down" in Britain since the last attempt to gather statistics. It will also apparently say that this is ascribable to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. On Monday we will at last have an opportunity to examine the basis of these conclusions.
There will be a major press conference at the Society of Antiquaries of London. There will be three speakers: Barry Cunliffe (English Heritage Interim Chairman), John Browning (a Suffolk landowner from whose land the Icklingham Bronzes were stolen and who is constantly plagued by trespassing metal detectorists) and Mike Heyworth (Director of the Council for British Archaeology). As far as I know, nobody from the PAS will be expanding on how they single-handedly slew the monster of illegal metal detecting.
I am absolutely sure that the general mood in the media, forums and blogs on Monday is going to be that the looting problem in Britain has been solved. Once again, we will hear from the pro-collecting lobby that all we need to do to solve the global looting problem is institute officially-sanctioned free-for-all artefact hunting like the English have. The world's looting problem will disappear, we will no doubt again be told, by legalising it.
What the report itself says beyond the "summary and conclusions" page however is another matter. I think this is a text which will require careful scrutiny and analysis before we can use it as a basis for construction of global models of how to protect the archaeological heritage.
.
Photo: Newark metal detectorists Mark Longdon and Dean Wright after conviction for daylight illegal metal detecting on the scheduled Roman site of Margidunum in 2007. They look really unhappy at the severity with which they were punished, don't they? A real deterrent - phew, its a good job we have the PAS. (Photo: Newark Advertiser)
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