A Question for St Louis

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The good people of St Louis have in their city a museum which has a mummy mask from a Ramesside burial at Sakkara, excavated in 1952. The Museum trustees insist the object came onto the market soon after excavation by entirely legitimate means. The Egyptian authorities however say this is not true and allege it came onto the market after a theft from a museum storeroom in the 1980s. So are the citizens of St Louis harbouring a stolen artwork?

There is a question that St Louis Art Museum has not yet answered, and I would like the people of St Louis to ask the Museum's trustees for an answer.At some stage in its collecting history the object has been tampered with and this has led to the concealment of a vital piece of information about its origins and associations.

When the mask was originally found, there was a hieratic inscription in black ink near the thumb on the left hand reading from right to left "Neferu". ie. The name of the owner. This is visible in old pictures of the mask but was apparently rubbed off when the object was sold onto the antiquities market. It is not visible in modern pictures (from K. M. Johnston's wiki page on the Ka Nefer Nefer burial).

Indeed it is not. The inscription could be transcribed into something that looked like this:
It reads "The Osiris, Neferu".

The erasure of this inscription raises an important question, when and by whom was this done and why?

Let us note that the assurance by the dealer who sold it to SLAM that the object was licitly obtained relies on a chain of ownership, each owner being assured that the object was legitimately on the market and passing that assurance on to the next owner.

Secondly most collectors would value an object with an inscription linking it to a particular person (and in this case, since it is published, a particular findspot) over an anonymous, generic, object. Quite apart from any ethical issues, removing the inscription reduces the value of the mask as a collectable, removes a part of the "story" it can tell.

These are two good reasons why a collector who believed the object was legitimately obtained would not remove the inscription naming the person it represents.

There is however a very good reason for removing the inscription. If the object was stolen and somebody was intending to sell it, it would have been rather awkward if the potential buyer did a search for the name in a resource like Porter-Moss and found the Goneim Sakkara "Neferu" mask in the literature and started asking questions. Removing the name makes it more difficult for the average buyer to make the connection (SLAM obviously did not). It reduces the risk that the object will be immediately identified as of illicit origins.

Removing the name makes sense ONLY if the person selling this object knows it has been illicitly-obtained.

So now we have a plausible reason "why", we may ask when and by whom was this done?

- By the dealer in an unnamed Brussels gallery where, according to the Phoenix-SLAM version of the collecting history, it was seen by a Swiss man (Charly Mathez) in the 1950s?

- In the collection of one "Kaloterna" (Kaliterna?) family, according to the Phoenix-SLAM version of the collecting history, until the early 1960s.

- In the early 1960s, according to the Phoenix-SLAM version of the collecting history, when it was bought by a Swiss collector named "Zuzi Jelinek"?

- Four decades later, when it came into the possession of the dealers Phoenix Ancient Art in 1997?

- When the St Louis Art Museum bought it in 1998?

Let the Trustees of St Louis Art Museum answer the question, how would the fact that any of these people would have altered the object in this manner square with their story that the object was checked out by SLAM staff and they found no evidence that the object was not of licit provenance? Is not the erasure of this inscription evidence in itself that somewhere along the line one of the sellers was trying to hide something? Doing proper due diligence before purchase surely would entail finding out what that was, and if that was impossible, walking away from the deal. What is the preferred explanation of the Trustees of St Louis Art Museum for the removal of the inscription, and will we or the people of St Louis ever hear it? Maybe somebody there can ask them outright.

Old Coin Collection Found - under a Road

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One news item, just out, for the Coineys. They are so keen to point out that their hobby ('avocation') of collecting dugup ancient coins and artefacts has its roots in Renaissance and Enlightenment antiquarianism. They therefore want to want to establish a position of prestige with regard to archaeology which they see as a younger (daughter) discipline, but also to point out that dugup ancient coins on the market today "could have been" on the market for centuries and not recently looted items. This of course does not take into account three factors, the growth in numbers of collectors in the days when the population of the western world as a whole was much less than today, the growth in popularity of the hobby, and that artefacts have been dropping out of the 'pool' of those available on the market by mechanisms such as donation to public institutions and destruction or loss.

A recent find by archaeologists from West of Scotland Archaeology Service (WoSAS) draws attention to the later mechanism. Five ancient coins were found in archaeological supervision of landscaping works conducted in Port Glasgow, Scotland in redeposited topsoil mixed with hardcore from the adjacent road surface. They were found along a grassed verge during the removal of turf and seem to have been brought to the site with material that was imported onto the site during road construction. We are not told, but I wonder whether these coins were not found during a metal detector survey of this deposit?

A point of interest is a deposit adhering to one side of each of the coins which appears to be glue or resin. This suggests to the excavator that they may have been mounted at some time, which in turn could suggest that they may represent part of a former private antiquity collection. "Two of the coins appear to be very similar, and while one has a resin deposit on the obverse, on the other the resin is on the reverse, suggesting that the intention may have been to display them side-by-side, which would support the interpretation that they form part of a collection". Three of the coins are "ancient Greek" in type, but the other two are Late Roman in type. The coins have a suspicious look to them however, they are of types that should have been struck in silver (and the corrosion products in the photo do not really look like corroded base silver should look). One of the Macedonian ones has what seems to be a casting flash on the edge while the third "Greek" coin has very flat relief undifferentiated from the background and a soapy look typical of the cast fake. It seems that the collector who acquired these items on the antiquities market at some time (we are not told at what date the soil layer was dumped) did not have a very discerning eye.

The excavators suggest it was part of the scattered collection of an "antiquary", but I think the possibility that they formed part of some teaching material used in a local school cannot be ruled out.

Fun things about crustaceans

One side effect of playing with ways to visualise and integrate biology databases is that you stumble across the weird and wonderful stuff that living organisms get up to. My earliest papers were on crustacean taxonomy, so I thought I'd try my latest toy on them.

What lives on crustaceans?

The "symbiome" graph for crustacea shows a range of associations, including marine bacteria (Vibrio), fungi (microsporidians), and other organisms, including other crustacea (crustaceans are at the top of the circle, I'll work on labelling these diagrams a little better).

What do crustaceans live on?

Crustacea (in addition to parasitising other crustacea) parasitise several vertebrates groups, including fish and whales. But they also occur in terrestrial vertebrates. For example, sequence EF583871 is from the pentastomid worm Porocephalus crotali from a dog. When people think of terrestrial crustacea they usually don't think of parasites. There's also a prominent line from crustaceans to what turns out to be corals, representing coral-living barnacles.

It's instructive to compare this with insects, which similarly parasitise vertebrates. The striking difference is the association between insects and flowering plants.



I guess these really need to be made interactive, so we could click on them and discover more about the association represented by each line in the diagram.

What we can (Maybe) Learn from the Cairo Museum Recovered Items

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There is now a list of the items recovered by the Cairo 'sting' which led to the arrest of three men with items to sell from the looting of the Egyptian Museum. Interestingly, and unlike the previous lists, we are told from which cases the items were taken, and this reveals an interesting pattern.

They come from just two areas of the Museum, the upper (first) floor Room 19, N2, vitrines H, cases 2 and 3 (seven of the objects), and Room 6 on the same floor (at the top of the stairs) Central row vitrine A, and side vitrine C (five objects). I have indicated these two areas with the green arrows on the floor plan.

If we look at the distribution of the cases apparently broken into on the first floor (others are on the ground floor) on that night (red squares on the plan - this is a provisional version based on the evidence I examined in my own poking round) we can see there are two groups. There is a smaller scatter to the north, this is clearly where Mr Ahmed Attia Mahmod and his merry men were operating, and it seems from what we now know that they were more concerned with ripping stuff off than doing the "senseless damage" that I think the whole group of men had orders to create.

Is it possible that the fourth man who was caught - on the night - at the foot of the northwest staircase was in this group too? (That would explain how the police were able to arrest Ahmed Attia Mahmod as I really do not believe the "posting pictures by mobile phone" story).

At the other end of the museum is a scatter of broken cases which were the result (I deduce) of a different process entirely, and probably done by other men in the group.

To reiterate, I do not believe these men came in through any skylight in Room 37. The patterns of breakage and scattering of the objects indicates they probably came onto the second floor via the southeast staircase (take a moment to think about that) and I think they headed straight for the Tutankhamun gallery, Room 40 and the statues which they broke (and then later nicked parts of). If we look at the plan of the trail of destruction, it seems at least likely that the marauders split into at least two groups, one group probably hurried north, raiding Room 19, 13 and 6 on the way, perhaps with the aim of making a quick get away (think about that a moment too). Were these the people who raided the Amarna gallery on the floor below in the middle of the north side? To judge from the objects still not recovered which probably originated in this part of the Museum, there were probably more thieves active here than the three that have just been caught (unless the three have the rest hidden away as security, for a possible plea bargain).

The other group spent a bit more time smashing cases wantonly and moving objects and furniture (I now know what the foreign piece of furniture is in the Al Jazeera shots, it is a wooden waste paper bin from the corridor outside several doors down) from room to room. Fewer objects were stolen in this area, the major ones being the Yuya and Thuya shabtis and heart scarab (and it was probably here that somebody decided to cart off the bits of the Tutankhamun statues that had been brought here from the other side of the museum before being smashed). Possibly this was the same person or group of people that took a handfull of disparate objects from the case under the dome (with the "faience hedgehog").

The updated list of missing items too contains for the first time the information about the original location of the remaining missing objects. It too is interesting, only one item from Room six is now missing (a collar, 16th item on the list). The three Tutankhamun sculptures are listed as missing (but surely it is a mistake that one of them is assigned in the list to a vitrine 43 in Room 30, surely this is the case in room 40), and a fan and trumpet from the empty case in Room 13 (was that all it had held? Surely not). Now we know that the wooden model of a vase and a terracotta bed were what was taken from the case in Room 32 (rather odd items to take I would have thought). We now know what a disparate group of objects had been in the case in Room 48 (under the dome, the one with the "faience hedgehog" six groups of items including one of ten amulets). Despite the seizures, there are still a number of objects (11 in fact) missing from the same cases in Room 19. More of a surprise, instead of the four items missing from the Amarna case downstairs, the final tally is 6 (Nefertiti, princess statue, seated man, bes sculpture, scribe and Thoth, quartzite princess head).

And here are the photos I promised. Don't listen to anyone who tells you that the windows above the case with the blood-stained sticks in Room 37 have been smashed and then replaced, they are as dirty as any windows can be and quite clearly have not been replaced in the last few weeks, even though it is not as clear from these photos as I would have liked.



(With standards of cleanliness like that, no wonder they do not want tourists taking photographs, eh? What is under some of the cases is not a pleasant sight either).

Salima Ikram was adamant (pers comm in a chance meeting in Luxor) that she saw a smashed window above the relevant case, but she was mistaken. There is a missing pane on the other side of the room (odd isn't it that if they replaced one pane of glass in this skylight after the break-in, having got a glazier up there, they did not replace the other one a few metres away too). Certainly I really cannot envisage the possibility of the thieves swinging in Tarzan-like from the pane that is missing to smash into the case that was broken on the other side of the room. There really is no trace whatsoever that a window was broken in (or opened) above the case shown as the point of entry. I think the "they came in through the roof on invisible ropes" story was a convenient way to explain away an inconvenient fact or two about this break-in...

Photos: Plan of first floor of Cairo Museum (adapted from that in the Ancient Egypt Online blog - note: smashed boat and Asyut soldiers are all in the same room, 37): Photos of the indisputably intact skylights of Room 37 taken 19th March 2011 (Author).

Visualising the symbiome: hosts, parasites, and the Tree of Life

Back in 2006 in a short post entitled "Building the encyclopedia of life" I wrote that GenBank is a potentially rich source of information on host-parasite relationships. Often sequences of parasites will include information on the name of the host (the example I used was sequence AF131710 from the platyhelminth Ligophorus mugilinus, which records the host as the Flathead mullet Mugil cephalus).

I've always wanted to explore this idea a bit more, and have finally made a start, in part inspired by the recent VIZBI 2011 meeting. I've grabbed a large chunk of GenBank, mined the sequences for host records, and created some simple visualisations of what I'm terming (with tongue firmly in cheek) the "symbiome". Jonathan Eisen will not be happy, but I need a word that describes the complete set of hosts, mutualists, symbionts with which an organism is associated, and "symbiome" seems appropriate.

Human symbiome
To illustrate the idea, below is the human "symbiome". This diagram shows all the taxa in GenBank arranged in a circle, with lines connecting those organisms that have DNA sequences where humans are recorded as their host.



At a glance, we have a lot of bacteria (the gray bar with E. coli) and fungi (blue bar with Yeast), and a few nematodes and arthropods.

Fig tree symbiome
Next up are organisms collected from fig trees (genus Ficus).


Fig trees have wasp pollinators (the dark line landing near the honey bee Apis), as well as nematodes (dark line landing near Caenorhabditis elegans). There are also some associations with fungi and other arthropods.

Which taxa host insects?
Next up is a plot of all associations involving insects and a host.


The diagram is dominated by insect-flowering plant interactions, followed by insect-vertebrate associations (most likely bird and mammal lice).

Which taxa are hosted by insects?
We can reverse the question and ask what organisms are hosted by insects:


Lots of associations between insects and fungi, as well as bacteria, and a few other organisms, such as nematodes, and Plasmodium (the organism which causes malaria).

Frog symbiome
Lastly, below is the symbiome of frogs. "Worms" feature prominently, as well as the fungus that causes chytridiomycosis.

How the visualisation was made

The symbiome visualisations were made as follows. Firstly DNA sequences were downloaded from EMBL and run through a script that extracted as much metadata as possible, including the contents of the host field (where present). I then took the NCBI taxonomy and generated an ordered list of taxa by walking the tree in postorder, which determines where on the circumference of the circle the taxon lies. Pairs of taxa in an association are connected by a quadratic Bezier curve. The illustration was created using SVG.


Next steps
There are several ways this visualisation could be improved. It's based only only a subset of data (I haven't run all of the sequence databases though the parser yet), and the matching of host taxa is based on exact string matching. All manner of weird and wonderful things get entered in the host field, so we'll need some more sophisticated parsing (see "LINNAEUS: A species name identification system for biomedical literature" doi:10.1186/1471-2105-11-85 for a more general discussion of this issue).

The visualisation is fairly crude at this stage. Circle plots like this are fairly simple to create, and pop up in all sorts of situations (e.g., RNA secondary structure methods, which I did some work on years ago). Of course, Circos would be an obvious tool to use to create the visualisations, but the overhead of installing it and learning how to use it meant I took a shortcut and wrote some SVG from scratch.

Although I've focussed on GenBank as a source of data, this visualisation could also be applied to other data. I briefly touched on this in Tag trees: displaying the taxonomy of names in BHL where a page in the Biodiversity Heritage Library contains the names of a flea and it's mammalian hosts. I think these circle plots would be a great way to highlight possible ecological associations mentioned in a text.

Santa Fe Cultural Policy Research Institute Seminars and Projects

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The list of proposed Santa Fe Cultural Policy Research Institute Seminars and Projects on its homepage makes interesting reading. When it opened two years ago, it promised it would do four things. The first it sort-of achieved (though the actual sources of the information it utilised have never been revealed): Research Study #1: Project on Unprovenanced Ancient Objects in Private US Hands ("Determining the number of artistically and academically significant, privately-owned objects in the United States that are currently excluded from acquisition by US museums") published in November 10, 2009.

It seems the other three proposed research programmes were never brought beyond the planning stage:
2) Developing different models for a registry that can be applied to privately-owned objects.("A draft report will be published on the CPRI website by the end of 2009")

3) Exploring ways to harmonize US laws and regulations that apply to transfer and ownership of antiquities. ("CPRI will gather, cite, and republish these materials on the CPRI website and provide summaries and analyses useful to museums, educational institutions and the general public" - no date cited: where are these?).

4) Exploring the effect of source country policies on damage to archaeological sites and objects.("This will be an ongoing research project with milestones and publication outcomes to be determined before the end of 2009" - no such definitions appear to have been created).

Vignette: Santa Fe has of course its own local cultural heritage issues, will the CPRI be addressing them too?

Chinese Collectors of Chinoiserie? How Terrible?

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In the Kirsten Gillibrand Seminar on the CCPIA organized by the CPRI the "problem" of China was raised. As we know due to a MOU between the USA and China, the import of certain types of dugup antiquities from China is restricted to those that can be documented as having been legally exported from there. But what is this? Shock horror:

As a result, the market in such materials has just been shifted elsewhere. China is a ridiculous case. We have closed our markets to ancient Chinese art when the biggest market for such material is in China itself. State has failed to administer the statute fairly. >[...] A[rthur] H[oughton] also asks how effective the CPIA can be if 90% of the archaeological material sold is done so in a source country like China.

In a country "like" China? Somehow I think our transatlantic friends have lost sight of what the "C" in CCPIA stands for. To remind them it is called the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property. So the fact that cultural property, dugup or otherwise (and 90% of it or not) is staying in China unless legally exported is what the Convention is aiming to achieve, isn't it? Why does that indicate that "State has failed to administer the statute fairly"? It certainly is fair to the Chinese people and Chinese collectors if it true that the antiquities are not now leaking out of the country in an uncontrolled and illegal manner to the world's largest no-questions-asked antiquities market in the USA and this is due to US dealers responsibly adhering to import restrictions which support that.

Vignette: Does the CPRI want to see Chinese artefacts kept away from Chinese collectors?

Does the panel Think....?

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In the discussion of the 2010 Kirsten Gillibrand Anti-Convention-on-Cultural-Property-Implementation-Act Seminar held the other day about whether the Act is "working" or not, there is a lot of talk about something the panellists called the “concerted international response requirement”. This might lead some readers to believe that this is a requirement of the Act.

The wording of course nowhere appears in it, a United States law cannot of course dictate what other sovereign nations should or should not do on their own territory. What the CCPIA says is that the President may decide that if putting import controls on illegally exported items from source countries, "if applied in concert with similar restrictions implemented, or to be implemented within a reasonable period of time, by those nations (whether or not State Parties) individually having a significant import trade in such material, would be of substantial benefit" in deterring the illicit trade in the artefacts concerned (duh), he may do that. He may do that because to do so "is consistent with the general interest of the international community in the interchange of cultural property among nations for scientific, cultural, and educational purposes".

Note the Act nowhere says that if the United States, arguably currently the world's greatest and greediest importer of all types of dugup cultural property, would be the only nation applying "similar restrictions", these restrictions cannot be agreed upon.

In any case other nations do apply similar restrictions, Nobody in the UK can legally buy illegally obtained artefacts from other countries, like Japan and a whole host of other countries. Their legislation implementing the 1970 UNESCO Convention has a blanket ban on such tainted artefacts - not a selective one (agreed individually by the CPAC) as in the USA. It is the USA which is lagging behind the rest of the civilised world here, not the other way around. The USA is not implementing the Convention at all, it is flouting its accession to it. Shame on you all.

Note that the Cultural Policy Research Institute was discussing how the US with its outdated and ineffective 1983 act should be sliding further out of her obligations to protect the world's cultural heritage under the Convention. There seems not to have been a single word spoken about how US cultural policy can help stop the looting and illicit exports, which of course is pretty typical of the milieu. It is a shame the antiquity dealers' friend Mrs Gillibrand could not see her way to facilitating a seminar on that topic in the Russell Senate Office Building .

Photo: Kirsten (left) and Hilary enjoying a good laugh, perhaps about the American Cultural Policy Research Institute's amateurish attempts to mislead the voters.

Another Coiney Blog Hides Away

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I have mentioned a persistent tendency for the websites, blogs and forums of artefact hunters and collectors to be closed for reading to all but registered viewers and discussion goes on there using pseudonyms rather than real names. Rather like kiddie porn consumers, the users of such forums obviously feel they have something to hide from the rest of us.

Recently joined these ranks is gun-toting ("I-shoot-to-kill") pastor Scott Head (pseud. "S. Capitus") whose blog on ancient coin collecting was discussed by me here a while ago. Now when we click on the link http://scotvscapitis.blogspot.com/ we are informed "Permission Denied: This blog is open to invited readers only [...] you might want to contact the blog author and request an invitation". On the other hand you might not. Unless of course you are curious about what kind of things are discussed which the Pastor feels not everybody should see. Like discussions (or lack thereof) of where those coins actually come from.

Sarah Marei "Tales from the Egyptian revolution"

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Sarah Marei is an antiquities inspector based at Giza in Egypt who has contributed comments to some of my posts here. Today a text was published on the online version of the Art Newspaper (24th March 2011) which should give antiquity dealers and collectors some pause for thought, so reproduce it below.

Scrambling in the glaring sun we lifted heavy wooden boxes laden with antiquities to safer locations at the site where hopefully they would be easier to protect at night. The director had his sleeves rolled up and, covered in dust, was booming spontaneous orders. The entire, hurried operation was guided by the levelheaded and reasonable decisions of the high-ranking officials responsible for the site now acting as patriotic Egyptians struggling to protect their history.
Giza, home to the Great Pyramids, had two storage facilities broken into in the wave of attacks on antiquities overtaking Egypt during the revolution. As the news broke I rushed to the site (where I am based as an antiquities inspector) to offer my help. I was not alone: many other inspectors and other employees had left the safety of their homes with the same thoughts.

Egypt is riddled with archaeological sites and many remained virtually unscathed due to the inspectors and residents of the surrounding towns and villages endangering their lives to protect sites, storage locations and museums, as was the case at Beni Suef and Fayum.

Under normal circumstances the tourist police are responsible for guarding Egypt’s rich ancient history, from monasteries to temples, synagogues to mosques. But the police presence vanished in the revolution and has yet to return to the sites. The individual initiatives on the part of site inspectors and the townspeople from the remote areas is often the only current protection afforded to some of the world’s most unique and magnificent monuments.

We continue to work everyday on the makeshift salvage operation in Giza. Volunteers regularly turn up and, as we work, stories are exchanged about the looting where gangs of armed men attacked and shot the guards and plundered the site.

The work we are conducting is not only physically draining but also emotionally exhausting. My anger is initially directed at the looters and my thoughts keep returning to the same question: why are these criminals, who are Egyptians, looting their own history and their nation’s pride in order to sell it? Only if they stand to gain substantially would they go as far, feeding a market that is standing ready and prepared to amply reward them for their troubles; the better the object, the bigger the reward.

No indication of the market for antiquities is clearer than in the selection of the sites targeted by the looters in the past few months in Egypt. The overwhelming majority is Pharaonic, followed by Islamic, with Coptic and Jewish so far remaining untouched. We are struggling to protect our sites, facing armed men while we have nothing but sticks, because of a demand from personal collections (both inside and outside Egypt) and from rival institutions seeking a competitive edge. We are paying the price for a greedy, insatiable and unregulated market.

I was quite struck by the comment: "No indication of the market for antiquities is clearer than in the selection of the sites targeted by the looters in the past few months in Egypt". Readers will be well aware that collectors and dealers claim they are spreading some 'cosmopolitan' values by collecting other people's dugup heritage, they call their borrowed ideology "cultural property internationalism", but is is not, is it? If their collecting activity ignores several whole areas of Egyptian cultural history (and those affecting modern identities as much as the Pharaonic), how can they claim, even tongue-in-cheek, to be spreading any form of inter-cultural understanding ?

TreeBASE meets NCBI, again

Déjà vu is a scary thing. Four years ago I released a mapping between names in TreeBASE and other databases called TBMap (described here: doi:10.1186/1471-2105-8-158). Today I find myself releasing yet another mapping, as part of my NCBI to Wikipedia project. By embedding the mapping in a wiki, it can be edited, so the kinds of problems I encountered with TbMap, recounted here, here, and here. The mapping in and of itself isn't terribly exciting, but it's the starting point for some things I want to do regarding how to visualise the data in TreeBASE.

Because TreeBASE 2 has issued new identifiers for its taxa (see TreeBASE II makes me pull my hair out), and now contains its own mapping to the NCBI taxonomy, as a first pass I've taken their mapping and added it to http://iphylo.org/linkout. I've also added some obvious mappings that TreeBASE has missed. There are a lot more taxa which could be added, but this is a start.

The TreeBASE taxa that have a mapping each get their own page with a URL of the form http://iphylo.org/linkout/<TreeBase taxon identifier>, e.g. http://iphylo.org/linkout/TB2:Tl257333. This page simply gives the name of the taxon in TreeBASE and the corresponding NCBI taxon id. It uses a Semantic Mediawiki template to generate a statement that the TreeBASE and and NCBI taxa are a "close match". If you go to the corresponding page in the wiki for the NCBI taxon (e.g., http://iphylo.org/linkout/Ncbi:448631) you will see any corresponding TreeBASE taxa listed there. If a mapping is erroneous, we simply need to edit the TreeBASE taxon page in the wiki to fix it. Nice and simple.

At the time of writing the initial mapping is still being loaded (this can take a while). I'll update this post when the uploading has finished.

Le trafic des biens culturels dans le monde s'intensifie

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Tunisia, Egypt, Libya… The traffickers of stolen cultural goods dream of countries like this where instability reigns, but it is not only they that fall victim to this trade. In the era of the Internet, this illicit commerce, estimated by some to be worth as much as 6 billion dollars is accelerating. UNESCO raises the alarm (Martine Robert, 'Le trafic des biens culturels dans le monde s'intensifie', Les Echoes, 15th march 2011).

Il n'y a pas que le marché de l'art qui est prospère. Le trafic des biens culturels se porte bien, lui aussi. Selon Interpol, il représente annuellement 6 milliards de dollars. «La situation est alarmante, particulièrement dans les pays en proie à l'instabilité comme la Tunisie, la Lybie, et surtout l'Egypte», a déclaré, hier, Irina Bokova, directeur général de l'Unesco, à l'occasion du colloque que l'organisation internationale tient jusqu'à ce soir à Paris, dans le cadre du quarantième anniversaire de la convention, signée par 120 Etats, visant à lutter contre ce phénomène. Il s'agit, avec l'aide de l'Organisation mondiale des douanes, d'Interpol, de maisons de ventes aux enchères ou de musées, de tenter d'apporter de nouvelles réponses. Car, ces dernières années, Internet a accéléré le trafic, la Toile étant devenue le support d'un commerce très lucratif dans le trafic des biens culturels.

La convention adoptée il y a quarante ans établit les mesures à prendre pour interdire et empêcher l'importation, l'exportation et le transfert de propriété illicites des biens culturels. Elle évoque aussi la question des restitutions et offre un cadre de coopération international pour mieux combattre le trafic. Mais il revient à chaque pays de mettre en oeuvre la législation permettant de l'appliquer. De plus, cette convention traite surtout des relations entre Etats: elle a dû être complétée en 1995 par la convention Unidroit, plus stricte, qui implique également les acteurs privés. Malheureusement, celle-ci n'a été ratifiée quasiment par aucun des pays où les marchés de l'art sont les plus actifs.

Like the USA for example, which applies the 1970 UNESCO Convention in a highly selective manner (to a degree that one might legitimately ask whether they have actually implemented it at all). The application of the sort of measures envisaged by the UNIDROIT document is vehemently opposed by US dealers in dugup antiquities (such as in their Unidroit-L discussion list which is a mouthpiece for the naysayers). One might wonder why a supposedly legitimate business is concerned with measures intending to prevent the commerce in illicitly-obtained items. The answer to that question might tell the objective observer a lot about the current state of the antiquities market, might it not?

Existing measures are not as effective at stopping the haemorrhage of illicitly obtained artefacts onto the international market in its current form:

Plusieurs pays africains ont ainsi perdu plus de la moitié de leur patrimoine, aujourd'hui dispersé. Des centaines de statues du temple d'Angkor, au Cambodge, ont été arrachées. En Amérique centrale, les fouilles illégales se traduisent chaque mois par l'extraction d'au moins 1.000 pièces de céramique maya, d'une valeur de 10 millions de dollars. Et en Irak, 15.000 pièces du musée national de Bagdad ont été dérobées lors du dernier conflit, plus de la moitié étant toujours manquantes.

The question is are we just going to continue to shrug our shoulders and say with the British archaeological establishment that "looting is here to stay, if we can't beat them, let's make them our partners"? Is this something we can wait until somebody else does the work for the archaeological establishment (volunteer grassroots organizations like SAFE over in the US, and Heritage Action in the UK, or HAPAH in France)? Or are we going to try and alert public opinion to the problem and its scale and significance and try to curb this kind of erosive and destructive commercial exploitation of the archaeological record by making dealers and collectors socially accountable?

What part should Britain's PAS play in all this? What part can they play in all this while considering artefact hunters and collectors their "partners"? They rather have allowed themselves to a situation where they have their hands tied, haven't they? Listen, you can hear the pigeons cooing from the roof and gables of the British Museum. The Portable Antiquities Scheme is silent on this matter too. It is annoying that its the Bloomsbury pigeons which are making a more audible public comment on certain portable antiquity issues than the multi-million pound organization set up at public expense to deal with portable antiquity issues.

Is "coo coo" the best argument the British archaeological establishment can muster these days?

Vignette: Bloomsbury Pete (national representative of the NGO, the Avian Concern for Cultural Heritage, British Museum, Bloomsbury WC1), currently Britain's most vociferous spokesman on portable antiquity issues.

Egyptologist: The west is driving looting

Quote:

A thriving market for antiquities in the west is behind the looting of Egypt's heritage, says Barry Kemp, [...] Archaeological sites are normally protected by the Tourist and Antiquities Police. All branches of internal security seem to have been disrupted and in the atmosphere of uncertainty the wolves have come out. The main targets of robbers are the antiquities storerooms. It is impossible to know at the moment how bad the overall situation is. The most useful thing the international community can do about this is to examine its conscience. The looting of sites is done to satisfy the market in antiquities, which continues to flourish in Europe and the US. It is now a reasonable assumption that any Egyptian piece that is for sale is either fake or was looted.

Jo Marchant, 'Egyptologist: The west is driving looting', New Scientist issue 2804,
22 March 2011

"Pharaoh's Statues" Identified

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Readers might remember a news item I covered a while ago about the seizure of some ancient Egyptian statues by Algerian authorities. The same story was covered by others, such as Kate Phizackerley, but the information appears to have been rejected because photos in the article taken to be of the objects were clearly fakes. I suggested at the time however that the photos used may have been stock photos rather than the objects involved in the seizure.

I was right, just a little to the east of Hatshepsut's Valley Temple in Gurna (West Bank, near Luxor), is an alabaster factory, Zalat. It is highly decorated with all sorts of paintings and sculpture, among them the heads shown in the Algerian newspaper article, which had obviously used the picture as a space-filler (you can see part of the word 'alabaster' in the photo behind them). The items pictured never left Egypt.

No More "Two-Minute Due Diligence"

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Writing on my comments about the "two-minute" due diligence (I use the term loosely) that some antiquity dealers admit to practicing when they buy new stock , one of them writes on his blog about what he considers to be due diligence (see here and here). Those who like me think the antiquities market should be more transparent about the actual origins of the items sold on it are accused by the dealer of ignoring "the practical realities" involved in defining what constitutes responsible and ethical collecting of and dealing in dugup antiquities. I understand that dealers might currently experience some problems in actually admitting that they have no idea where the items they sell really have come from and how they came on the market, but the whole point surely is that - whatever no-questions-asked dealers and collectors may wish to be the case - it is self evident to the rest of us in order to avoid buying tainted stuff, they should have. The antiquity dealer expresses the view that:

Mr. Barford does not ever want to see the concept of "ethical collecting" actually become politically or practically possible. It has always been his true goal to raise objections that cannot possibly be reconciled with practices normally followed in collecting and dealing in minor antiquities, including ancient coins. What is wrong, obstructive and unjustifiable in all this is not the concept of socially responsible antiquities collecting itself, but the unreasonable conditions its critics seek to impose. The public should realize that Mr. Barford and his like are doctrinaire conservatives, whose views cannot be altered by such insubstantial considerations as fact or practicality.

Actually I think it is antiquity dealers like Mr Welsh who do not ever want to see the concept of "ethical collecting" actually become politically or practically necessary. Throughout it has been the goal of dealers and their lobbyists to raise objections that ethical and responsible collecting cannot possibly be reconciled with the practices normally followed in collecting and dealing in dugup antiquities. In the face of the damage that the indiscriminate no-questions-asked commerce in antiquities is causing to the global archaeological record, this is wrong, obstructive and unjustifiable. There is nothing inherently impossible in the concept of socially responsible antiquities collecting. The problem lies in the doctrine of conservatism adopted by the dealers who attempt to cover up the reality that should continued social acceptance rely on the trade be restricted to material of verifiable legitimate origins, there are very good reasons why that trade will have difficulties sourcing that kind of material material. The public should realize why that is, what the "facts and practicalities" about the no-questions-asked market in antiquities actually are which create that problem. The public should realise that an important question to ask lobbyists arguing for a maintenance of the status quo in the commerce in archaeological finds and minimal attention to the collecting history of items involved is: how much of the no-questions-asked trade in dugup antiquities in fact is currently based on material of illicit origins?

Throughout the earlier pages of this blog I give my responses to the varied arguments advanced by both dealers and collectors that the quantities of material of illicit origin on the market are "minimal". In my opinion (and for the reasons set out at some length there) I think that the expansion of the market we see today is in fact largely based on material of illicit origin, in other words, being freshly removed from the archaeological record in considerable quantities. This is why I think if the archaeological resource is to be conserved as a source of information for future generations, it is a fundamental necessity that the political and practical difficulties of instilling the concept of ethical collecting be overcome and no-questions-asked dealing and collecting of antiquities excluded from polite society.

St Louis Art Museum did a "two-minute due diligence" on the Ka Nefer Nefer mask, as did the Getty buying its Euphronios vase and Morgantina Aphrodite, and we see what they ended up buying as a result. Now it is time for responsible and careful private collectors to insist on greter transparency and vetting on the antiquities market.

Getty's Stolen Goddess Finally Returned to Sicily

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The Aphrodite statue of disputed origin which came on the antiquities market in 1988 and once displayed in the Getty Museum has now been returned to Sicily (Jason Felch, 'Getty ships Aphrodite statue to Sicily', Los Angeles Times March 23, 2011). The statue was taken off display in December and freighted under an Italian diplomatic seal aboard an Alitalia flight to Sicily where it arrived on Thursday. From there it travelled with an armed police escort by ship and truck to the small hilltop town of Aidone, Sicily, where it arrived Saturday to waiting crowds. The town lies next to the remains of the ancient Greek colony of Morgantina, where it is believed that the object had lain buried in archaeological deposits for centuries before it was illegally excavated and smuggled out of Italy.

When the Getty bought the Aphrodite for $18 million in 1988, the statue's importance outweighed the signs of its illicit origins. "The proposed statue of Aphrodite would not only become the single greatest piece of ancient art in our collection; it would be the greatest piece of Classical sculpture in this country and any country outside of Greece and Great Britain," wrote former antiquities curator Marion True in proposing the acquisition. For years, the museum clung to the implausible story that the statue had been in the family of a former Swiss policeman, Renzo Canavesi, for more than 50 years after being purchased by his father in Paris in the 1930s.

The credibility of that cover story was destroyed with the appearance of evidence of its illicit origins and an alleged link between its appearance on the market through the agency of organized criminal activity.

In 2006, private detectives hired by the Getty uncovered more than a dozen photos of the statue. One shows fragments of the goddess scattered in a pile of dirt on a brown tile floor. In another, pieces of varying sizes were lined up in rows on a large, thick plastic sheet. Another photo showed the statue's marble face still encrusted with grime. It is not clear who took the photos or where they were taken. But the fact that the statue had been in fragments and covered in dirt as recently as the early 1980s — the date on the photographs — was seen as clear evidence that it had been illegally excavated not long before the Getty bought it. The investigators [...] also found evidence connecting Canavesi with an alleged Sicilian antiquities smuggler whom investigators were told had ties to organized crime [...] Canavesi told investigators that he was a friend of Orazio di Simone, who in 1989 Italian authorities charged with smuggling the Aphrodite out of Italy. (The case was eventually dismissed for lack of evidence.) When the Getty's investigators tried to interview Di Simone, they were warned against it by Italian authorities, who suggested he had ties to the Mafia. In an interview [...], Di Simone denied the charge and any involvement with the statue.

It turns out, as a result of a 2007 LA Times investigation which revealed the existence of the photos, that Getty officials had turned down an opportunity to see them a decade earlier. Only then, reportedly, did the Getty send an attorney and a museum official to Switzerland to secure copies of the photos, apparently from Canavesi, and confirm they were of the object they had bought (these images have still not been made public).

The story of the unravelling of the illicit origins of the "Getty" Aphrodite is described in a forthcoming book about the dispute - "Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum". The authors are Jason Felch and former LA Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino, the book will be published May 24 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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Just "saving the heritage"

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The story in a nutshell, Banksy painted a slogan on an abandoned water tank by the Pacific Coast Highway that links Los Angeles' coastal suburbs of Santa Monica and Malibu turning it (some consider) into a "work of art". This was bought by an organisation called Mint Currency from the owners (Calex Engineering company) who seem to have been unaware at the time that the status of their abandoned property had changed, so they reportedly agreed to sell it for "a pittance". Now Mint Currency (is this them?) are holding the tank in a secure warehouse close to the San Fernando Valley looking for a purchaser who will "pay tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars for it" (www.banksyelephant.com).
See Guy Adams, 'Did Banksy's latest work bring misery to a homeless man? ', Independent 19 March 2011.

I was struck by the arguments used by Mint Currency (partners "Tavia D", Christian Anthony, who runs a design firm, and Jorge Fernandez and Steve Gallion, who have day jobs at a waste-disposal company called Waste Stream Solutions) to justify their motives for acquiring this hunk of scrap metal for which a market can now be found. "Tavia D" says:

"If you read some of the street-art blogs, people are saying that whoever removed the piece is just out to make money," [...]. "But that's not true. We love art and did this because want to preserve it and inspire others with it. Ultimately, we want to see the elephant exhibited where it can inspire people, so we hope it goes to a gallery. This is actually a rescue mission."

We seem to have heard that before from people seeking to profit from collectables.

Photo: The water tank in question, from Flickr

Staffordshire Hoard millionaires in secret feud

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The metal detectorist who found the so-called Staffordshire Hoard (Terry Herbert) in a muddy field at Hammerwich, near Brownhills, on July 5 in 2009 and the landowner, (farmer Eric Johnson) are reported to be having a feud over the division of the Treasure payment (Adam Aspinall,'Staffordshire Hoard millionaires in secret feud', Sunday Mercury, Mar 20 2011). The rift reportedly began when Mr Herbert revealed a desire to search for more treasure on Mr Johnson’s land:

Fred, 67, labelled Terry ‘greedy’ and blasted: ‘‘I never want to see that fella on my land ever again – he’s banned. “I wish I‘d never met the man. It has caused me nothing but bother, all this.’’ [...] When the Sunday Mercury asked the farmer about the feud last week he exploded: “I’m fed up of him (Terry)! “To be honest I got fed-up of him from the start, I was fed up of his greed. ‘‘From the moment he found the Hoard all he wanted to talk about was how much money we were going to get for it and that, no matter what, we do we shouldn’t accept the first offer. “I couldn’t have cared less. ‘‘I wish I’d never let him on my land in the first place and I wish I had never met the man. It has caused me nothing but bother all of this. ‘It’s not like we were ever friends anyway, he was just very persistent so I let him on my land. “When I think of all the people who could have found that Hoard over the years and might have benefited from the money that came with it..." [...] When the Sunday Mercury asked the metal detectorist about the bad blood with the farmer, he could not hide his disappointment – and claimed money was at the root of it. He said: “Five years before I dug on that field I was warned off it because I was told Fred would want all of anything that was found.[...] “It’s a real shame Fred won’t let me on the fields any more because I am convinced there is more to be found on the site, but no one will listen to me,’’ he said. ‘‘I know for a fact there’s a lot more stuff to be found on those fields and if Fred just let people on to his fields they would eventually find it, and he’d be able to share in half the money again. “Even the archaeologists would not listen to me, even though I found artefacts 100 yards from where they investigated.

Narsty archies eh? They would not listen, but I bet the night'awks are. Note the treasure hunter stresses that if Farmer Brown would allow more people on his land he could share the munny, not find ("save") more 'istry.

See also David Wilkes, 'Sometimes I wish I'd never found that hoard': How sharing £3m find of Saxon gold led to a bitter feud', Daily Mail 22nd March 2011.

Hat tip to 'Mo' for drawing both articles to my attention.

Book Chapter: Halte au Pillage

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Some time ago I was invited to contribute to Halte au Pillage! - a collaborative book by authors based throughout Europe, which addresses the issues connected with the preservation of the archaeological heritage from the depravations caused by mining archaeological sites as a source of commercially attractive collectables. It is a call for policies to oppose this resource-damaging practice. The book (edited by Gregory Compagnon) was recently launched in Paris and apparently has been well received.

I was tempted to write about my usual hobby horse topic, the UK's approach to so-called "metal detecting" but I knew Heritage Action's Nigel Swift was also planning on covering that topic and I knew he would write a competent account - which he did, It is titled “Fantaisies, fictions et faussetés : quelques tristes réalités derrière la coopération entre « metal detectorists » et archéologues en Grande Bretagne” (it is in a section called “Le scandale des détecteurs de métaux”). I hope he publishes the English version of this text somewhere, not more than a few UK "metal detectorists" can barely read and write their own language, so any hopes they can cope with getting to grips with his arguments in a French one are a bit unlikely. Not of course that these people are at all interested in why there are criticisms of current British policies on artefact hunting anyway.

Looking at the conspectus it struck me that I should attempt to fill in a gap in its coverage and attempt to summarise what's happening in Eastern Europe. It struck me that as far as I was aware, there was not such a summary in print anywhere, so I set out to write one. The effects are the text "commerce de vestiges archeologiques dans l'est de l'Europe" pp 137-146 which was useful in getting my thoughts in order. I might try to get a longer version out later on in Polish.

Some VIZBI 2011 links

Given that the Twitter stream tagged #vizbi will fade away soon, I've grabbed most of the links I tweeted during VIZBI 2011 and have put them here. This isn't intended as a comprehensive list, merely the things which caught my eye, and didn't flash by faster than I could tweet.

Books

• Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information
• Visual Thinking for Design

Movies

• DNA
• Malaria lifecycle Part 1
• Malaria lifecycle Part 2
• WEHI.TV

People

• Drew Berry
• Manuel Lima
• Tamara Munzner
• Fernada Viégas
• Martin Wattenberg

Software and websites

• Arena 3D
• BioBlender
• BLAST Atlas
• Cerebral v.2.0
• Chromograms
• CloVR
• Cytoscape
• EMAGE
• embedded Python Molecular Viewer (ePMV)
• Fleshmap
• GenomeView
• History Flow
• HivePlots
• ImageVis3D
• JProfileGrid
• Many Eyes
• Molecular Maya
• Molecular Movies
• PathBLAST
• Phyloviewer
• Powerwall
• Quartz Composition of DNA
• Scribl
• Sequence Surveyor
• Shape of Song
• Sybil
• Topiary Explorer
• Vrtual Worm
• Web Seer
• Whole Brain Catalog

The Clock is Ticking for the Twelve Million Mark, but How Fast?

Heritage Action's Heritage Journal has a thought-provoking post based on its Erosion Counter figures (pay especial attention to the metal detector disguised as a walking stick - the marketers do not explain how having "detected" something, one would go about getting it out of the ground "without attracting interest". The piece concludes:

Sooner or later someone, irrespective of vested interest, embarrassment or professional loyalty, is going to have to finally openly admit to the public what they increasingly express privately – that the British have made a big mistake and it needs to be rectified. Or will the gap between the breathlessly enthusiastic press releases and the grubby net reality simply be allowed to grow ever wider?

Vignette: A metal detectorist uses the Rover Undercover metal detector.

The Cultural Property Implementation Act: Is it Working?

The Cultural Policy Research Institute, transparently a dealers' lobbyist group masquerading as a rather ineffective research institution based in Santa Fe, is hosting a meeting today: The Cultural Property Implementation Act: Is it Working? at the Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. I suppose the answer depends on whether you regard it as a cop-out law (in which case its working very well) or something which was actually intended to implement the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (in which case it most certainly is not). Is the CCPIA in any way able to effectively stop the import of illegally obtained artefacts from the looting of the Cairo Museum and archaeological sites in Egypt this very moment? (No, the Egyptians would have to ask nicely, make a number of promises, wait for the CPAC to meet a couple of times beforte this could even be "implemented", by which time who knows what could have passed onto the US market?).

The usual culprits are speaking at the seminar alongside a few token assorted others, but they each seem to get ten minutes (within antiquity collectors' attention span I presume), so I guess it will not be a very intellectually challenging meeting. No doubt we will be getting a blow-by-blow account from the observing Mr Tompa in due course. Hooray. If US dealers and collectors had any decency they'd be recommending that the US stop pretending to implement the Convention and withdraw from it and rename the CCPIA the 'United States Antiquities Market Protection Act'. But then if the majority had any real decency, the global antiquities market would not look like it does today anyway and America would not need a Reagan-era cop-out act.

UPDATE on the "Hunter Events" Business Plan

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No sooner do I get a post up here about the "Hunters Events" business venture than loopy Californian antiquities dealer Dave Welsh puts up on his own antiquitist micro-forum (A mistaken perspective) his own reaction to the comments of "Paul Barford, self-styled expatriate British archaeologist" on this commercial organization:

Mr. Barford's perspective appears to be solely based upon what he conceives to be the interests of archaeology. That which he seems to support his view of these interests is good, and that which contravenes his view of these interests is bad. Not only is this perspective essentially parochial, it also apparently makes little or no sense to many distinguished archaeologists with well documented and impressive credentials, for example the archaeologist who heads the British PAS.

two things really, like it or not, the perspective of this blog is the conservation of the archaeological record in the face of its erosive commercial exploitation to serve the predominantly no-questions-asked antiquities market. Whether or not that is a "mistaken perspective" (as the dealer representing a voice in that same no-questions-asked market would have it) I leave up to readers to decide. Personally I think (as the topic of the blog indicates) that it is a perfectly valid perspective and one I feel an important one.

Secondly I firmly believe that, distinguished or not, if he believes this perspective is a mistaken one, the "archaeologist with well documented and impressive credentials who heads the British PAS" (British archaeology's largest public outreach organization) is wrong. Wholly wrong. I and others are prepared to debate that with him, but it should be noted that there was recently an excellent occasion to do this in the pages of the UCL Institute of Archaeology's forum on David Gill's (another distinguished archaeologist with well documented and impressive credentials) thoughts on the matter. Roger Bland (who is primarily a numismatist rather than an archaeologist), however, declined to take part in this debate.

In Welsh's place though I would be wary of putting words in Bland's mouth, that particular question is one that, distinguished or not, Roger Bland seems unwilling to address in any detail himself. Putting the question of priority of site conservation over the exploitive activities of the PAS' "partners" the UK artefact hunters has until now elicited a response no louder than the cooing of the Bloomsbury Square pigeons.

US Government sues to seize St. Louis Museum Mummy mask

After reasoning with these people failed, the U.S. attorney's office has now filed a series of court motions intending to result in the seizure of the 3,200-year-old mummy mask at the centre of a controversy (Government sues to seize St. Louis museum's mummy mask). It is believed by many (most?) informed people outside the charmed circle of the Museum's directorate and trustees that the mask was illegally removed from Egypt some time before being bought for display in the St. Louis Art Museum. Readers will recall perhaps that the SLAM has already filed its own civil suit last month in federal court, trying to pre-empt such a move. See Ricardo St Hilaire's coverage too.

Let us hope the case finds a successful resolution - preferably by the museum saving face and admitting that there were indeed holes in its due diligence policy and coming to some kind of agreement with the Egyptians. Do the good citizens of St Louis really want their kids coming to the museum to view stolen artworks as a trophy and exemplar of modern US morality and attitudes to the rest of the world? Do they? Why do they not ask the Museum's Trustees why they are clinging to this clearly misappropriately acquired object so hard? Is it just the money involved?

The Cairo Sting

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It is being widely reported that Egyptian authorities have recovered 12 stolen artifacts from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Three suspects were arrested after they tried to sell the rare objects to an American Embassy employee, who agreed to take part in ...

There is a back story to this, I met a guy yesterday who'd been approached earlier to take part in this 'sting' and refused, the reason and circumstances surrounding this - taken with other facts - are very, very telling. More later if I can get independent confirmation of what he said. This Cairo Museum Looting story seems to get worse and worse in its implications the more I learn about it.

UPDATE (May 2011):
Confusingly, I noted, but only much later, that Dr Hawass is propagating another story about this on his blog, in a post apparently dated 20th March:

Twelve missing objects returned to the Egyptian Museum, Cairo Twelve of the artifacts missing from the Egyptian Museum, Cairo have been returned, including six bronze statuettes dated to the Late Period, a small limestone statue of a sphinx, and five necklaces. It is unclear if the people who had possession of these antiquities had any relationship with the looters who broke into the museum. They attempted to try and authenticate the objects by contacting a young archaeologist, whose name I have withheld for his own safety, with the goal was of selling the stolen pieces. The archaeologist recognized the objects as those missing from the museum and took photographs with his mobile phone. He contacted the director of the museum and the police, and the people were taken into custody. I believe that the rest of the missing antiquities will be found soon. It will be very difficult to sell any of the missing antiquities, and we will do everything in our power to have them returned.

Several things here: "His own safety" from whom? Why were these guys (note number not given) trying to authenticate antiquities from the Museum? Had they just found them lying somewhere? Why did the archaeologist take photos if he intended to report the would-be sellers (and why would the sellers let him)? [Remember the other version was that photos were being distributed by mobile phone which is how the men were caught]. If a young archaeologist led the police to them men, where does the US embassy official come in, and why was my contact approached earlier to take part in a 'sting'? Is the "stone sphinx" really the recumbent bull JE 27324? According to other reports, only five bronze statues were recovered on 17th March, not six.

Metal Detecting Gang Violence Reported

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Something from my old stamping grounds. Farmer Richard Storer of Baylham Rare Breeds Farm, Baylham (near Needham Market), Suffolk has recently been having some problems with metal detector using collectors of archaeological finds coming onto his land at night without his prior knowledge or permission to steal collectable finds from the rich archaeological record on his property. “It has been happening a lot lately and is particularly bad this year" he said. Readers will register that that's the year after a government-sponsored report claimed that the problem with illegal metal detecting was diminishing "due to the PAS". Anyway he'd got a field that had been ploughed and sowed a fortnight previously when two of these metal detector-toting thieves arrived early in the morning on 19th February. The men were discovered in action and told to leave the premises (oddly, no mention is made of the police being called). Then at three in the morning, the farmer's daughter Katrina was confronted by an injured man as she went to check on the farm’s lambing sheep.

“It was a very scary experience for her,” said Mr Storer. “As the man came into the light Katrina could see that his face was covered in blood and also that he was using his mobile phone to call an ambulance. He didn’t know where he was and had followed the light to find help.” Mr Storer said Katrina alerted her brother Neil, who was sleeping in the farmhouse, and they helped the man arrange for an ambulance to come out. The police were also called.

A local newspaper reports (Jonathan Barnes Baylham: Police probe ‘gang fight’ east Angliuan Daily Times, February 23, 2011):

It is believed that a number of men had been scouring the Roman site surrounding the farm looking for unearthed treasure and had been involved in a confrontation. The 38-year-old man, from the Grays area of Essex, was believed to have been struck with a “metal pole” and was taken to West Suffolk Hospital for treatment. Police said they arrested three men on suspicion of assault causing grevious (sic) bodily harm – the 38-year-old man, a 41-year-old man from Grays and a 43-year-old man of no fixed abode. Three men were arrested, the 41-year-old man was bailed to return to Ipswich Police Station on April 1 while the other two will face no further action.

There is a scheduled Roman site at Baylam, the Storers' farm is on part of the Roman site of Combretovium which included two Roman forts and a large civil settlement which I wrote about many years ago (with a nice cropmark plan published, ideal aid for treasure hunters). But it can't have been here that the men were caught since they "face no further action". Basically I guess the lesson from this is that it might not be a good idea to quarrel with nocturnal artefact hunters from rough areas of Essex and homeless guys carrying metal poles.

The distance from Grays to Baylam is 90 kilometres up the A13 and A12. Did this metal detectorist seriously not know where he was? So much for metal detectorists' site-research then.

Vignette: avoid head injuries, beware of metal detectorists going equipped with metal poles and other weapons.