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I really have problems understanding how the minds of collectors of dugup antiquities work. Try as I might, it just does not add up. Take the recent discussion about the "repatriation" of some smuggled Bulgarian coins seized at the US border. It seems like a clear cut case of wrongdoing. The importer however gets away without any charges (or even being named and shamed), but loses 546 coins which go back to the place they were smuggled from. One would have thought that normal people would be condemning those behind this dodgy deal.
But collectors and their lobbyists seem not to fall easily into the category of what most of us would regard as 'normal people'. So upon me publishing two texts on the topic of this seizure and its aftermath (
here and
here) one of these people decides to add a comment.
Notable is that it went to my second text on the topic "
What if....?" which poses the question of the relationship of the seized and returned coins to smuggled coins that slip through the net of ICE 'vigilance' at US borders and thus find their way onto the US market. I suppose if one is a lobbyist for such dealers' interest groups as the PNG, IAPN and ACCG, one cannot ignore the fact that this issue was raised. Since however the lobbyist cannot answer the question, nor can they admit that they cannot answer it, a possible way out may seem to deflect attention from the question and the fundamental issue it raises about the way the industry is run. Thus it is that we get an attempt to deflect the discussion onto a second topic. Note that this is another of the dugup antiquity sellers' "two wrongs make a right' argument. So it is that Peter Tompa adds his two wooden cents (sent last night):
The real question for ICE and you for that matter is [...] what differentiates these coins from the hundreds of thousands if not millions openly available for sale in Bulgaria itself?
He then goes on to suggest that collecting ancient artefacts is not illegal in Bulgaria. What differentiates them is of course that the coins collected by Bulgarian collectors are in Bulgaria, while any coins that are smuggled to the US market have been removed from Bulgaria illegally. Mr Tompa is trying to confuse the argument with a comparison of chalk with cheese.
The 1970 UNESCO Convention has a long, but through that pretty comprehensive, title which states that it concerns: the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. It does not concern collecting at all, but in its articles 1 and 2 allows states parties to regulate that as it wishes, the convention concerns the movement of cultural property, such as dugup archaeological artefacts between countries. That is its purpose, that is its ONLY purpose. The American lawmakers who back in Reagan's day tried to put a good face on the US 'art' market could not get their heads around that and took it to mean that it was a Convention to "prevent pillage" of archaeological sites. Anyone who reads its text will discover that it is not. Check it out. This mistake however has persisted among US collectors of and dealers in dugup artefacts and their lobbyists, who apparently cannot read the document itself with any understanding.
What is notable about Tompa's reply is that he raised exactly the same question two days earlier, and I thought I had explained where he was muddling the argument. That concerned what seems to be a large number of coins bought during his period of service abroad by a top US official in Aghanistan which then mysteriously appeared in the US upon his return (and in fact are still circulating in the trade there last time I looked). There
Tompa wrote, just yesterday:
These were openly available for sale at the time. If that is no longer
the case, its because the Taliban chased the antiquties and coin dealers
away to Pakistan, and since, the American Archaeologists moved in with
the US Military and they have told the natives keeping and selling
what they find is a no no.
Leaving aside the last two red herring points, we see here the same mixing of ideas. I was talking about Spengler removing coins from the source country, the lobbyist tries to defect the argument away from the issue of export and suggests that buying the coins within the country was not illegal. Be that as it may, these are
two different issues, as I pointed out in my succinct reply yesterday:
do you not see a difference between buying something IN a country and taking it OUT? I
have several cats quite legally acquired in the Republic of Poland, but
if I wanted to take them to the UK there are procedures to go through.
Same with my car. Two different things.
Does it really need explaining in any more detail to a self-styled "Cultural Property Observer"? Obviously it does, because with a singular lack of observation and single-minded stubborness, the same lobbyist was making the self-same cognitive error in his comments on the "What if ..." post quoted above. The lawyer then posts a similar text to his blog "
Something's Missing from the Discussion About the Repatriation of Some Ancient Coins to Bulgaria" (
CPO, Friday, May 24, 2013)
there is no
allegation the coins in question were "stolen" from Bulgaria. Indeed,
that would be a difficult case to make given Bulgaria's open and legal
trade in the exact same items.
He then gives a link to one of his own posts about the need to regulate metal detecting in Bulgaria and Cyprus (for example by introducing a Portable Antiquities Scheme clone there) which he calls: "
Archaeological Blather Obscures Rational Approaches to Metal Detectors". The only blather is Tompa's own narrow-minded and wholly mistaken approach, and there is no better illustration of the latter's intellectual resistance to the truth of what the 1970 UNESCO covers and propensity to argue chalk is cheese than my reply to that post: "I Will publish no More From You" (posted on Thursday, 29 March 2012, so well over a year he's had to think over the issue). It seems collection of dugup ancient coins is the domain of the slow learners and those challenged by the task of reading black-and-white documents.
Yes, "something is missing" all right, and that is the lack of any spokespeople for the dugup antiquities market with whom one can have a normal, focussed and civilised conversation based in the facts, without the constant dismissive glibness and subject-changing which characterises their side of this painful dialogue of the deaf. If they really have nothing else to say, it seems any calls from outside for dialogue are misplaced, and we should go on without their participation to find ways to deal with their secretive and irresponsibly carefree business practices which are fostering an erosive and damaging clandestine market in illicitly obtained and smuggled artefacts.
The United States of America including Wisconsin and Washington D.C. are a state party of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and
Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of
Cultural Property. Yet we have an authoritative statement from a Washington cultural property lawyer, member of the board of directors of the Cultural Property Research Institute:
There seem to be some misapprehensions developing about what the 1970 UNESCO Convention involves. US antiquity collectors in particular seem to have problems getting their heads around what issues it actually deals with, the title is too long for them maybe. I have urged one of them to re-read it and suggested it might help them understand what it is about to substitute the word "cats" for cultural property and the word "unlicensed kitten farms" for the word "pillage" in Art. 9 and make a few other congruent adjustments to the wording. This should allow even the slowest learner to work out that it is a Convention which regulates movement of objects between countries and not about unlicensed kitten farms, nor is it about documenting their pedigrees. Have a look at the "Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cats". Miaow. 
I really have problems understanding how the minds of collectors of dugup antiquities work. Try as I might, it just does not add up. Take the recent discussion about the "repatriation" of some smuggled Bulgarian coins seized at the US border. It seems like a clear cut case of wrongdoing. The importer however gets away without any charges (or even being named and shamed), but loses 546 coins which go back to the place they were smuggled from. One would have thought that normal people would be condemning those behind this dodgy deal.
But collectors and their lobbyists seem not to fall easily into the category of what most of us would regard as 'normal people'. So upon me publishing two texts on the topic of this seizure and its aftermath (here and here) one of these people decides to add a comment.This July the Cowper and Newton Museum will be getting down and dirty for our two new Archaeology Weekends! Both Saturdays (13th and 27th) we encourage you to bring any of your archaeological objects to be identified by our visiting Finds Liason Officer and her team of metal detectorists. [...] Website: http://www.cowperandnewtonmuseum.org.uk
