.
Larry Rothfield has an interesting post on what is actually involved in guarding sites from looters (What It Takes to Effectively Police Archaeological Sites). Collectors and dealers slyly try to put the blame for looting on "foreign gubn'mints" who "do not do enough to protect their heritage from looting", so when looted material comes on the market, they feel it is OK to deal in it, because ostensibly the government and people of the source country "did not care enough" about it to stop it leaving the ground or country. Putting a total stop to any opportunities for looting by guarding every single lootable site in a country (England alone is estimated to have one million surviving archaeological sites for example) with an adequately resourced task force of men is obviously something not even the richest nations can afford. Far simpler and more cost effective is to reduce the abilities of culture-criminals to make money by selling looted material on a market which until now not only facilitates it, but one might suspect even secretly welcomes it. If we are to stop this, dealers and collectors have the choice between showing themselves to be trustworthy and cleaning up the market and definitively closing off the routes by which illicit material can enter it themselves, or having external controls imposed upon them.
Annoy a Dodgy Antiquities Dealer: Sign the Petition
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Number 1984 belated but sincere said tritely (I hate filling in forms):
We, the undersigned, call on the Egyptian Transitional Authority and Military to immediately restore adequate security measures to the ancient, Islamic, Coptic and Jewish sites, monuments and storehouses, to stop the unprecedented theft and vandalism, and restore adequate protection to the legacy of Egyptian cultural heritage.They actually forgot border vigilance, but hey it's better than nothing. Coming up to 2000 signatories, isn't that really rather a poor showing? I wonder how many antiquity collectors and dealers signed? I only saw a few names I recognised (lots of people with Polish-sounding names signed though).
Number 1984 belated but sincere said tritely (I hate filling in forms):
Whatever the present and future hold, if those whose responsibility it is to look after it fail in their duty and allow the past to be robbed and destroyed, it can never be replaced.It was all I could think of to replace my initial thought (comparing what I saw on the ground vis-a-vis police activity around Luxor's sites and monuments this year with last year): "Where the f.....", but I thought the latter was not too politic.
A PAS Blue Plaque?
.
We learnt yesterday that London's Heritage Blue Plaque Programme supports efforts to propagate awareness of the destructiveness of indiscriminate artefact hunting and collecting by erecting a heritage plaque in Gordon Square in honour of a fellow archaeoblogger. I wonder whether they would be placing one on a wall in Bloomsbury Square just a coin's toss away, celebrating the achievements of the considerably more expensive Portable Antiquities Scheme in this area? No, I guess not, when it seems at times that the pigeons make more of a noise about Looting Matters and instilling (real) best practice in "portable antiquity" (sic) collecting than the PAS does.
We learnt yesterday that London's Heritage Blue Plaque Programme supports efforts to propagate awareness of the destructiveness of indiscriminate artefact hunting and collecting by erecting a heritage plaque in Gordon Square in honour of a fellow archaeoblogger. I wonder whether they would be placing one on a wall in Bloomsbury Square just a coin's toss away, celebrating the achievements of the considerably more expensive Portable Antiquities Scheme in this area? No, I guess not, when it seems at times that the pigeons make more of a noise about Looting Matters and instilling (real) best practice in "portable antiquity" (sic) collecting than the PAS does.
Responsibility
.
And how does Gainsborough, Florida, Pastor Terry Jones fund his
hate-ridden cult church? How else? Through trading to American buyers old things taken from other countries:
And how does Gainsborough, Florida, Pastor Terry Jones fund his
hate-ridden cult church? How else? Through trading to American buyers old things taken from other countries: Dove World Outreach is funded by the pastor's furniture firm, TS & Company, which buys vintage items from Europe and sells them in the US.Jones claims he is "not responsible" for the consequences of his actions, like most people involved in the trade of artefacts taken from other countries. Would you buy used furniture from this guy if you knew where the money was going?
Eisenhower on American Greatness and Art Acquisition
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Dwight D. Eisenhower, 2nd April 1946,
speaking in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when he was awarded a life fellowship of the museum:
And other countries have to just get used to the idea that Chicago Ron and others of his ilk can commercially loot the archaeological sites away to their heart's content and scurry off with the loot for "passionate" US collectors to shut away in ever-growing private artefact collections the other side of the Ocean without raising a peep of protest. How dare they oppose the US collector's "rights", eh?
Photo: Eisenhower looking at evacuated art in Europe.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 2nd April 1946,
speaking in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when he was awarded a life fellowship of the museum: "The freedom enjoyed by this country from the desolation that has swept over so many others during the past years gives to America greater opportunity than ever before to become the greatest of the world's repositories of art".An opportunity dealers and collectors over there in subsequent decades took advantage of - thus creating huge desolation of archaeological sites and monuments, not stopping at items stolen from museum stores. This serves as a shameful monument to the undiscriminating greed of contemporary collectors of decontextualised artefacts and those involved in their commerce. Meanwhile their lawyers argue that what few laws the US has instituted to regulate their satisfying of greed were intended as a "compromise" to benefit and uphold that market. They argue that they should not be being applied in the way they are, arguing a free-for-all where American collectors get what they want is somehow the best way to "preserve" decontexualised artefacts. It does not however do anything to help preserve the places from where those artefacts are plundered to fuel that exploitive free-for-all no-questions-asked market.
And other countries have to just get used to the idea that Chicago Ron and others of his ilk can commercially loot the archaeological sites away to their heart's content and scurry off with the loot for "passionate" US collectors to shut away in ever-growing private artefact collections the other side of the Ocean without raising a peep of protest. How dare they oppose the US collector's "rights", eh?
Photo: Eisenhower looking at evacuated art in Europe.
Another Antiquities Store Looted by Armed Gang in Egypt
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Nevine El-Aref, writing in Al-Ahram on Friday 1 Apr 2011:
Nevine El-Aref, writing in Al-Ahram on Friday 1 Apr 2011:
Armed looters broke in to the Tel El-Dabaa antiquities warehouse on Thursday, stealing artefacts and breaking several pieces of the stored collection. Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, head of the Central Administration of Antiquities of Alexandria and Lower Egypt, said the warehouse was used to store artifacts found at Tel El-Dabaa's archaelogical sites by Dutch and German excavation missions over the last 30 years. They include a collection of ancient Egyptian clay pots and amulets.
I find the use of the term "warehouse" highly annoying here. What are being robbed in Egypt today are not "antiquities warehouses". A warehouse is where items destined for sale are temporarily held by merchants. What was broken into here is a storeroom of material from an ongoing archaeological project being archived for future work and research, not selling off to collectors eager to get their hands on their own private little "pieces of the past". In stealing this material, robbers are hindering - or removing any possibility - of using that material to write a public past. The results of decades' work by groups of dedicated people is being trashed overnight by these raids.
Now I really do not accept what one British artefact collector and propagandist for the artefact trade recently suggested, that this looting is a "a cry of frustration from the poor and dispossessed" desperate acts "of the forgotten underclass" against their government. Forgotten underclasses do not carry guns and anaesthetics to render guards unconscious. Forgotten underclasses in most parts of rural Egypt can barely afford a donkey. What we see in Egypt before our very eyes is the early stages of the development of networks of illegal activity involving antiquities, due entirely to their value (real, or perceived) on the antiquities market. The current political instability in Egypt is allowing them becoming bolder and will lead to them becoming better organized into criminal networks. Then foreign collectors and dealers will be happy as there will be lots more ancient Egyptian antiquities on the no-questions-asked external markets, and they can all make a heavy profit from helping to finance these new organized criminal groups in their free-enterprise emptying of the fragile and finite archaeological record onto the commercial market.
We have seen this before, most notably in eastern Europe in the political instability caused by the collapse of the Soviet bloc. We have seen how the international antiquities market has profited, and continues to profit from the illegal activities of artefact hunters in southeastern Europe (Bulgaria in particular) and now - as that source dries up - in other regions of the former eastern bloc (such as northwestern Russia and the Baltic states). We saw the same thing in Afghanistan then Iraq. Dealers and collectors deny this process took place and deny their responsibility for helping fund it, let us observe now the same thing happening in post-Mubarak Egypt. I'd like to draw attention to the fact that none of the pro-market collectors blogs or forums open to public view have expressed any real concern about this looting, why should they when they are obviously silently waiting for the artefacts to start flowing onto a market near them?
For those who cannot place Tel El-Dabaa, this is the site of some really very interesting and modern excavations on what is thought to be Avaris, a central place in the Hyksos realm and in the story of the rise and functioning of the New Kingdom but also - some would argue - having its place in Biblical history as well. The dealers and collectors who will be handling the artefacts stolen from this storeroom in their efforts to pursue a vision of a "people's archaeology" (sic) through the collection of random decontextualised artefacts of specific type are not dismembering history stolen just from the Egyptian people, but from us all.
Cultural Property and Antiquities Must be Protected from Irresponsible Dealings
.
Two second year law students at Georgetown Law School in Washington DC belong to an otherwise unknown group - they say - called "Students Against Looting of Valuable Antiquities". They've just published an article called "Cultural property and antiquities must be protected". It begins:
Apparently the authors consider that the situation in the US compares unfavourably with "European markets with more precise but less restrictive import bans". Eh? What "import bans" exist on the European market for cultural property? European states which are parties of the same 1970 UNESCO Convention as the US apply the respecting of the obligations it places on states party less selectively than the US (as is the intention of the Convention), but what does "more precise but less restrictive" mean? In the US one can according to US law perfectly legally import bucketloads (indeed container-loads) of ancient coins and brooches metal detected on bulldozed sites in southern Europe without any paperwork at all and nobody bats an eyelid. Only in the case of items from a relatively small number of "source countries" has the US reached specific agreements with those countries (who first specifically requested it) that it will examine the paperwork accompanying the items to ensure it is in order. This by the way is what they really should be doing with ALL antiquities and cultural items coming across their borders, and not only because they are (nominally) a state party of the 1970 UNESCO Convention!
Newburg and Blunt apparently consider that keeping illegally exported antiquities out of the North American antiquities market is "turning away major investments during a recession", I'd like to ask them where they think this American money is being "invested", when it is coming into the hands of those committing culture-crime? Into what kind of ventures do they think the organised criminal groups that are behind much of this looting are "investing" the money of US collectors raised by the illegal trafficking of smuggled antiquities?
Newburg and Blunt say they consider that "protecting art and cultural property is an important goal", and roundly criticise the CPAC as a means the US has chosen to do this. But one gets the impression that their reasons for this are because it leads to measures that they consider are too "restrictive" for US museums and collectors. Surely the opposite is true, the current US measures, embodied in the CPIA and other legislation allow (encourage almost) the completely unrestricted no-questions-asked and indiscriminate commerce in artefacts from most of the world's countries that are sources of illegally obtained artefacts for the US market. That is why it needs reform in order to help protect the international cultural heritage, to make it more transparent and restrictive of illegally obtained articles coming freshly onto the market, not less. I am sure Newburg and Blunt would agree that the US, one of the largest global markets for this type of material, should be leading the way, not dragging along behind the rest of the world in this.
Two second year law students at Georgetown Law School in Washington DC belong to an otherwise unknown group - they say - called "Students Against Looting of Valuable Antiquities". They've just published an article called "Cultural property and antiquities must be protected". It begins:
Every time we turn on the news, members of Congress are railing about wasteful federal spending and the dire need to curb ineffective programs.before revealing that what it is talking about is the US International Cultural Property Protection programme. It calls this "one of the most ineffective, and potentially illegal, federally-funded committees". According to these students, Deborah Newburg and Amanda Blunt as part of this programme:
the Department of State creates over[-]inclusive trade restrictions that deny acquisitions to U.S. collectors and museums.Let us be clear about what they neglect to say. These restrictions are only applied to cultural property of specific types from a small number of specially designated countries and only apply to those that cannot be documented as having been exported legally from those countries. Basically, I would have thought that, with the overall aim of protecting cultural property and antiquities, responsible (ethical) museums and collectors would themselves be taking steps to deny illegally obtained items access to their collections.
Apparently the authors consider that the situation in the US compares unfavourably with "European markets with more precise but less restrictive import bans". Eh? What "import bans" exist on the European market for cultural property? European states which are parties of the same 1970 UNESCO Convention as the US apply the respecting of the obligations it places on states party less selectively than the US (as is the intention of the Convention), but what does "more precise but less restrictive" mean? In the US one can according to US law perfectly legally import bucketloads (indeed container-loads) of ancient coins and brooches metal detected on bulldozed sites in southern Europe without any paperwork at all and nobody bats an eyelid. Only in the case of items from a relatively small number of "source countries" has the US reached specific agreements with those countries (who first specifically requested it) that it will examine the paperwork accompanying the items to ensure it is in order. This by the way is what they really should be doing with ALL antiquities and cultural items coming across their borders, and not only because they are (nominally) a state party of the 1970 UNESCO Convention!
Newburg and Blunt apparently consider that keeping illegally exported antiquities out of the North American antiquities market is "turning away major investments during a recession", I'd like to ask them where they think this American money is being "invested", when it is coming into the hands of those committing culture-crime? Into what kind of ventures do they think the organised criminal groups that are behind much of this looting are "investing" the money of US collectors raised by the illegal trafficking of smuggled antiquities?
Newburg and Blunt say they consider that "protecting art and cultural property is an important goal", and roundly criticise the CPAC as a means the US has chosen to do this. But one gets the impression that their reasons for this are because it leads to measures that they consider are too "restrictive" for US museums and collectors. Surely the opposite is true, the current US measures, embodied in the CPIA and other legislation allow (encourage almost) the completely unrestricted no-questions-asked and indiscriminate commerce in artefacts from most of the world's countries that are sources of illegally obtained artefacts for the US market. That is why it needs reform in order to help protect the international cultural heritage, to make it more transparent and restrictive of illegally obtained articles coming freshly onto the market, not less. I am sure Newburg and Blunt would agree that the US, one of the largest global markets for this type of material, should be leading the way, not dragging along behind the rest of the world in this.
Another Antiquities Storeroom Looted by Armed Gang in Egypt
.
Nevine El-Aref, writing in Al-Ahram on Friday 1 Apr 2011:
Nevine El-Aref, writing in Al-Ahram on Friday 1 Apr 2011:
Armed looters broke in to the Tel El-Dabaa antiquities warehouse on Thursday, stealing artefacts and breaking several pieces of the stored collection. Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, head of the Central Administration of Antiquities of Alexandria and Lower Egypt, said the warehouse was used to store artifacts found at Tel El-Dabaa's archaelogical sites by Dutch and German excavation missions over the last 30 years. They include a collection of ancient Egyptian clay pots and amulets.
I find the use of the term "warehouse" highly annoying here. What are being robbed in Egypt today are not "antiquities warehouses". A warehouse is where items destined for sale are temporarily held by merchants. What was broken into here is a storeroom of material from an ongoing archaeological project being archived for future work and research, not selling off to collectors eager to get their hands on their own private little "pieces of the past". In stealing this material, robbers are hindering - or removing any possibility - of using that material to write a public past. The results of decades' work by groups of dedicated people is being trashed overnight by these raids.
Now I really do not accept what one British artefact collector and propagandist for the artefact trade recently suggested, that this looting is a "a cry of frustration from the poor and dispossessed" desperate acts "of the forgotten underclass" against their government. Forgotten underclasses do not carry guns and anaesthetics to render guards unconscious. Forgotten underclasses in most parts of rural Egypt can barely afford a donkey. What we see in Egypt before our very eyes is the early stages of the development of networks of illegal activity involving antiquities, due entirely to their value (real, or perceived) on the antiquities market. The current political instability in Egypt is allowing them becoming bolder and will lead to them becoming better organized into criminal networks. Then foreign collectors and dealers will be happy as there will be lots more ancient Egyptian antiquities on the no-questions-asked external markets, and they can all make a heavy profit from helping to finance these new organized criminal groups in their free-enterprise emptying of the fragile and finite archaeological record onto the commercial market.
We have seen this before, most notably in eastern Europe in the political instability caused by the collapse of the Soviet bloc. We have seen how the international antiquities market has profited, and continues to profit from the illegal activities of artefact hunters in southeastern Europe (Bulgaria in particular) and now - as that source dries up - in other regions of the former eastern bloc (such as northwestern Russia and the Baltic states). We saw the same thing in Afghanistan then Iraq. Dealers and collectors deny this process took place and deny their responsibility for helping fund it, let us observe now the same thing happening in post-Mubarak Egypt. I'd like to draw attention to the fact that none of the pro-market collectors blogs or forums open to public view have expressed any real concern about this looting, why should they when they are obviously silently waiting for the artefacts to start flowing onto a market near them?
For those who cannot place Tel El-Dabaa, this is the site of some really very interesting and modern excavations on what is thought to be Avaris, a central place in the Hyksos realm and in the story of the rise and functioning of the New Kingdom but also - some would argue - having its place in Biblical history as well. The dealers and collectors who will be handling the artefacts stolen from this storeroom in their efforts to pursue a vision of a "people's archaeology" (sic) through the collection of random decontextualised artefacts of specific type are not dismembering history stolen just from the Egyptian people, but from us all.
Photo: Tel El-Dabaa, the future site no doubt of criminal organizations' artefact mines to tap the ample resources offered no-questions-asked by the international antiquities market. History for all becomes a blank, a looted site and a handful of collectable geegaws in a Chicago suburban back room.
Data matters but do data sets?
Interest in archiving data and data publication is growing, as evidenced by projects such as Dryad, and earlier tools such as TreeBASE. But I can't help wondering whether this is a little misguided. I think the issues are granularity and reuse.
Taking the second issue first, how much re-use do data sets get? I suspect the answer is "not much". I think there are two clear use cases, repeatability of a study, and benchmarks. Repeatability is a worthy goal, but difficult to achieve given the complexity of many analyses and the constant problem of "bit rot" as software becomes harder to run the older it gets. Furthermore, despite the growing availability of cheap cloud computing, it simply may not be feasible to repeat some analyses.
Methodological fields often rely on benchmarks to evaluate new methods, and this is an obvious case where a dataset may get reused ("I ran my new method on your dataset, and my method is the business — yours, not so much").
But I suspect the real issue here is granularity. Take DNA sequences, for example. New studies rarely reuse (or cite) previous data sets, such as a TreeBASE alignment or a GenBank Popset. Instead they cite individual sequences by accession number. I think in part this is because the rate of accumulation of new sequences is so great that any subsequent study would needs to add these new sequences to be taken seriously. Similarly, in taxonomic work the citable data unit is often a single museum specimen, rather than a data set made up of specimens.
To me, citing data sets makes almost as much sense as citing journal volumes - the level of granularity is wrong. Journal volumes are largely arbitrary collections of articles, it's the articles that are the typical unit of citation. Likewise I think sequences will be cited more often than alignments.
It might be argued that there are disciplines where the dataset is the sensible unit, such as an ecological study of a particular species. Such a data set may lack obvious subsets, and hence it makes sense to be cited as a unit. But my expect`tion here is that such datasets will see limited re-use, for the very reason that they can't be easily partitioned and mashed up. Data sets, such as alignments, are built from smaller, reusable units of data (i.e., sequences) can be recombined, trimmed, or merged, and hence can be readily re-used. Monolithic datasets with largely unique content can't be easily mashed up with other data.
Hence, my suspicion is that many data sets in digital archives will gather digital dust, and anyone submitting a data set in the expectation that it will be cited may turn out to be disappointed.
Taking the second issue first, how much re-use do data sets get? I suspect the answer is "not much". I think there are two clear use cases, repeatability of a study, and benchmarks. Repeatability is a worthy goal, but difficult to achieve given the complexity of many analyses and the constant problem of "bit rot" as software becomes harder to run the older it gets. Furthermore, despite the growing availability of cheap cloud computing, it simply may not be feasible to repeat some analyses.
Methodological fields often rely on benchmarks to evaluate new methods, and this is an obvious case where a dataset may get reused ("I ran my new method on your dataset, and my method is the business — yours, not so much").
But I suspect the real issue here is granularity. Take DNA sequences, for example. New studies rarely reuse (or cite) previous data sets, such as a TreeBASE alignment or a GenBank Popset. Instead they cite individual sequences by accession number. I think in part this is because the rate of accumulation of new sequences is so great that any subsequent study would needs to add these new sequences to be taken seriously. Similarly, in taxonomic work the citable data unit is often a single museum specimen, rather than a data set made up of specimens.
To me, citing data sets makes almost as much sense as citing journal volumes - the level of granularity is wrong. Journal volumes are largely arbitrary collections of articles, it's the articles that are the typical unit of citation. Likewise I think sequences will be cited more often than alignments.
It might be argued that there are disciplines where the dataset is the sensible unit, such as an ecological study of a particular species. Such a data set may lack obvious subsets, and hence it makes sense to be cited as a unit. But my expect`tion here is that such datasets will see limited re-use, for the very reason that they can't be easily partitioned and mashed up. Data sets, such as alignments, are built from smaller, reusable units of data (i.e., sequences) can be recombined, trimmed, or merged, and hence can be readily re-used. Monolithic datasets with largely unique content can't be easily mashed up with other data.
Hence, my suspicion is that many data sets in digital archives will gather digital dust, and anyone submitting a data set in the expectation that it will be cited may turn out to be disappointed.
Mendeley and Web Hooks
Quick, poorly thought out idea. I've argued before that Mendeley seems the obvious tool to build a "bibliography of life." It has pretty much all the features we need: nice editing tools, support for DOIs, PubMed identifiers, social networking, etc.
But there's one thing it lacks. There's not an easy way to transmit updates from Mendeley to another database. There are RSS feeds for groups, such as this one for the "Museum Type Catalogues" group, but that just lists recently added articles. What if I edit an article, say by correcting the authorship, or adding a DOI? How can I get those edits into databases downstream?
One way would be if Mendeley provided RSS feeds for each article, and these feeds would list the edits made to that article. But polling thousands of individual RSS feeds would be a hassle. Perhaps we could have a user-level RSS feed of edits made?
But another way to do this would be with web hooks, which I explored earlier in connection with updating literature within a taxonomic database. The idea is as follows:
Several things are needed to make this work. We need to be able to talk about the same record in the taxonomic database and in Mendeley, which means either the database stores the Mendeley identifier, or visa versa, or both. We also need a way to find all the recent edits made in Mendeley. Given that the Mendeley database is stored locally as a SQLite database, one simple hack would be to write a script that was called at a set time, determined which records had been changed (records in the Mendeley SQLite database are timestamped) and send those to the web hook. If we're clever, we may even be able to automate this by calling the script when Mendeley quicks (depending on how scriptable the operating system and application are).
Of course, what would be even better is if the Mendeley application had this feature built in. You supply one or more web hook URLs that Mendeley will call, say after any edits have been synchronised with your Mendeley database in the cloud. More and more I think we need to focus on how we join all these tools and databases together, and web hooks look like being the obvious candidate.
But there's one thing it lacks. There's not an easy way to transmit updates from Mendeley to another database. There are RSS feeds for groups, such as this one for the "Museum Type Catalogues" group, but that just lists recently added articles. What if I edit an article, say by correcting the authorship, or adding a DOI? How can I get those edits into databases downstream?
One way would be if Mendeley provided RSS feeds for each article, and these feeds would list the edits made to that article. But polling thousands of individual RSS feeds would be a hassle. Perhaps we could have a user-level RSS feed of edits made?
But another way to do this would be with web hooks, which I explored earlier in connection with updating literature within a taxonomic database. The idea is as follows:
- I have a taxonomic database that contains literature. It also has a web hook where I can tell the database that a record has been edited elsewhere.
- I edit my Mendeley library using the desktop client.
- When I've finished all the edits I've made (e.g., DOIs added, etc.), the web hook is automatically called and the taxonomic database notified of the edits.
- The taxonomic database processes the edits, and if it accepts them it updates its own records
Several things are needed to make this work. We need to be able to talk about the same record in the taxonomic database and in Mendeley, which means either the database stores the Mendeley identifier, or visa versa, or both. We also need a way to find all the recent edits made in Mendeley. Given that the Mendeley database is stored locally as a SQLite database, one simple hack would be to write a script that was called at a set time, determined which records had been changed (records in the Mendeley SQLite database are timestamped) and send those to the web hook. If we're clever, we may even be able to automate this by calling the script when Mendeley quicks (depending on how scriptable the operating system and application are).
Of course, what would be even better is if the Mendeley application had this feature built in. You supply one or more web hook URLs that Mendeley will call, say after any edits have been synchronised with your Mendeley database in the cloud. More and more I think we need to focus on how we join all these tools and databases together, and web hooks look like being the obvious candidate.
A Warning From Beyond the Grave for Looters
.
Attention has been focussed on the legal, rather than moral, aspects of the current retention by the St Louis Art Museum of the cartonage mask which proper due diligence should have revealed clearly should be in the archives of the 1952 excavation by archaeologist Mohammed Zakaria Goneim in Sakkara. The excavation has been published (Goneim 1956), but there is a nice online resource detailing her burial by K.M. Johnston, a previous correspondent with this blog, on Egyptology Geek and Amduat Wiki.
Johnston notes that the contents of Ka Nefer Nefer’s burial are in several respects extraordinary for such a simple interment. The body has the cartonnage accompaniments of a mummy, but was not actually mummified. A recent re-examination in association with the upcoming court case of the field catalogue of finds still held in Egypt however reveals (pers. comm. A. Mustafa Laff, Feb 2011) that also now missing from the Sakkara storeroom (presumably removed at the same time as the mask and presumably scattered in the no-questions-asked antiquities trade), are several fragments of cartonnage bands found loose in the vicinity of the body. Although, unlike the mask, they do not bear the name of the deceased, they clearly belong to this burial. There is a hieratic inscription on the cartonnage, and the text (visible in the low resolution photos in the field journal) is transcribed as below by Prof. Ivar Lupe, egyptologist in the Estonian Academy of Sciences, whose recent research has focussed on Ramesside non-royal burial practices and who will be publishing this new discovery in due course:
Lupe observes that a feature of great interest in these lost fragments is that alongside the usual funerary formulae, the mummy bands contain a text of the type popularly known as a „mummy’s curse”. Lupe translates this portion of the text as follows:
Readers cannot fail to note the coincidence that St Louis which refuses to allow Ka Nefer Nefer’s face to be reunited with the rest of her burial also calls itself the „Gateway to the West”. One may only speculate whether the priests and seers (re)burying Ka Nefer Nefer's remains foresaw the violation of the integrity of her burial and were issuing a warning to the people of St Louis, that under the rule of a foreign-born prince „fire, water and pestilence” will visit their land. Just to be on the SAFE side, in their place, and given all the other factors, I would be urging the local museum to give it back right now.
Reference: (Goneim, M. Zakaria. The Lost Pyramid. Rinehardt & Co Inc. 1956. pp 64-66; Goneim, M. Zakaria, Service des Antiquites de L'Egypte. Horus Sekhem-khet - The Unfinished Step Pyramid At Saqqara, Volume 1. Excavations at Saqqara. Imprimerie de L'Institut Francais D'Archeologie Orientale. Cairo. 1957. pp 23-27, Plates LXVII-LXXI)
Attention has been focussed on the legal, rather than moral, aspects of the current retention by the St Louis Art Museum of the cartonage mask which proper due diligence should have revealed clearly should be in the archives of the 1952 excavation by archaeologist Mohammed Zakaria Goneim in Sakkara. The excavation has been published (Goneim 1956), but there is a nice online resource detailing her burial by K.M. Johnston, a previous correspondent with this blog, on Egyptology Geek and Amduat Wiki.Johnston notes that the contents of Ka Nefer Nefer’s burial are in several respects extraordinary for such a simple interment. The body has the cartonnage accompaniments of a mummy, but was not actually mummified. A recent re-examination in association with the upcoming court case of the field catalogue of finds still held in Egypt however reveals (pers. comm. A. Mustafa Laff, Feb 2011) that also now missing from the Sakkara storeroom (presumably removed at the same time as the mask and presumably scattered in the no-questions-asked antiquities trade), are several fragments of cartonnage bands found loose in the vicinity of the body. Although, unlike the mask, they do not bear the name of the deceased, they clearly belong to this burial. There is a hieratic inscription on the cartonnage, and the text (visible in the low resolution photos in the field journal) is transcribed as below by Prof. Ivar Lupe, egyptologist in the Estonian Academy of Sciences, whose recent research has focussed on Ramesside non-royal burial practices and who will be publishing this new discovery in due course:
Lupe observes that a feature of great interest in these lost fragments is that alongside the usual funerary formulae, the mummy bands contain a text of the type popularly known as a „mummy’s curse”. Lupe translates this portion of the text as follows: "Death will come on swift wings to those who disturb my peace and shall do evil or wickedness to this. The City of the Gate will fall, and to its land will come fire, water and pestilence [...]."This seems to me a further argument for returning Ka Nefer Nefer's coffin mask to Egypt to rejoin the rest of the material excavated from her burial. It is what she would have wanted. The formulae are well known from other inscriptions of this type, but Prof. Lupe was unable to decipher the meaning of the „City of the Gate” in an ancient Egyptian context, suggesting it either refers to a local town or more likely refers to a military outpost on Egypt’s western borders in the Delta, referring to a text on a Late Ramesside papyrus from Deir El-Medina in a time of crisis at the end of the 21st dynasty which makes reference to the „foreign-born princes” ruling in a „City of the Gate on the Western Horizon” indicating a collapse of central control of this strategically important region.
Readers cannot fail to note the coincidence that St Louis which refuses to allow Ka Nefer Nefer’s face to be reunited with the rest of her burial also calls itself the „Gateway to the West”. One may only speculate whether the priests and seers (re)burying Ka Nefer Nefer's remains foresaw the violation of the integrity of her burial and were issuing a warning to the people of St Louis, that under the rule of a foreign-born prince „fire, water and pestilence” will visit their land. Just to be on the SAFE side, in their place, and given all the other factors, I would be urging the local museum to give it back right now.
Reference: (Goneim, M. Zakaria. The Lost Pyramid. Rinehardt & Co Inc. 1956. pp 64-66; Goneim, M. Zakaria, Service des Antiquites de L'Egypte. Horus Sekhem-khet - The Unfinished Step Pyramid At Saqqara, Volume 1. Excavations at Saqqara. Imprimerie de L'Institut Francais D'Archeologie Orientale. Cairo. 1957. pp 23-27, Plates LXVII-LXXI)
Armed men dig for archeological artefacts on site in Fayoum
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In a repetition of what we saw in 2003 in Iraq, groups of men, armed with automatic weapons, have descended on the Garza archeological site in Fayoum, forcing those guarding the sites to leave the area so that they could dig and search for saleable artefacts. The watchmen are armed only with 9mm pistols which are no match for the automatic weapons used by the armed groups. The number of watchmen posted and their inadequate weapons made it difficult to protect such archeological sites. There are ten guards who work in shifts to protect the 600 acre site. The armed groups had exploited the security vacuum created by current political instability and attacked the area several times, digging for artefacts all night long and leaving behind dozens of deep holes.
Mohamed Farghaly, 'Armed men dig for artifacts at archeological site in Fayoum', almasryalyoum, 29/03/2011)
In a repetition of what we saw in 2003 in Iraq, groups of men, armed with automatic weapons, have descended on the Garza archeological site in Fayoum, forcing those guarding the sites to leave the area so that they could dig and search for saleable artefacts. The watchmen are armed only with 9mm pistols which are no match for the automatic weapons used by the armed groups. The number of watchmen posted and their inadequate weapons made it difficult to protect such archeological sites. There are ten guards who work in shifts to protect the 600 acre site. The armed groups had exploited the security vacuum created by current political instability and attacked the area several times, digging for artefacts all night long and leaving behind dozens of deep holes.
Mohamed Farghaly, 'Armed men dig for artifacts at archeological site in Fayoum', almasryalyoum, 29/03/2011)
Urice and Adler Redraft
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Cultural Property Observer triumphantly trumpets: Urice and Adler Update on US Government Lawlessness in Cultural Property Field . I discussed the earlier version of this text here a while back. "Government lawlessness" seems to be the new Black Hat Guys catchword (where "Cosmopolitanism" and "cultural property internationalism" were last year). I must admit to feeling when discussing the earlier draft of this text that Urice and Adler were firmly in the camp of the antiquitist no-questions-askers. This time round I note something Tompa cannot bring himself to mention ("observe") and the CPRI seminar would obviously never have stooped to consider; the authors mention the need to reform the CCPIA to make it work to protect the cultural heritage, instead of calling for the abandonment of the concept. The CCPIA of the early 1980s is vastly out of date as a means to deal with the changed form of the ("minor") antiquities market that has occurred since it was passed and the scope of the threat to the global archaeological heritage from looting worldwide, and the current scale of the US market for such items ("no questions asked"). The other legislation of the US discussed by Urice and Adler similarly pathetically inadequate. Let us see the US reform them in a way which actually does help protect the global cultural heritage (not just archaeological) from the illegal exploitation caused by the unbridled avarice of some dealers and collectors. After all what would responsible collectors and dealers have to fear from increased transparency and more effective measures to keep illicitly-obtained material off one of the largest markets for antiquities in the modern world?
Cultural Property Observer triumphantly trumpets: Urice and Adler Update on US Government Lawlessness in Cultural Property Field . I discussed the earlier version of this text here a while back. "Government lawlessness" seems to be the new Black Hat Guys catchword (where "Cosmopolitanism" and "cultural property internationalism" were last year). I must admit to feeling when discussing the earlier draft of this text that Urice and Adler were firmly in the camp of the antiquitist no-questions-askers. This time round I note something Tompa cannot bring himself to mention ("observe") and the CPRI seminar would obviously never have stooped to consider; the authors mention the need to reform the CCPIA to make it work to protect the cultural heritage, instead of calling for the abandonment of the concept. The CCPIA of the early 1980s is vastly out of date as a means to deal with the changed form of the ("minor") antiquities market that has occurred since it was passed and the scope of the threat to the global archaeological heritage from looting worldwide, and the current scale of the US market for such items ("no questions asked"). The other legislation of the US discussed by Urice and Adler similarly pathetically inadequate. Let us see the US reform them in a way which actually does help protect the global cultural heritage (not just archaeological) from the illegal exploitation caused by the unbridled avarice of some dealers and collectors. After all what would responsible collectors and dealers have to fear from increased transparency and more effective measures to keep illicitly-obtained material off one of the largest markets for antiquities in the modern world?
Paper on NCBI and Wikipedia published in PLoS Currents: Tree of Life
My paper describing the mapping between NCBI and Wikipedia has been published in PLoS Currents: Tree of Life. You can see the paper here. It's only just gone live, so it's yet to get a PubMed Central number (one of the nice features of PLoS Currents is that the articles get archived in PMC).
Publishing in PLoS Currents: Tree of Life was a pleasant experience. The Google Knol editing environment was easy to use, and the reviewing process quick. It's obviously a new and rather experimental journal, and there are a few things that could be improved. Automatically looking up articles by PubMed identifier is nice, but it would also be great to do this for DOIs as well. Furthermore, the PubMed identifiers aren't displayed as clickable links, which rather defeats the point of having references on the web (I've added DOI links to the articles wherever possible). But, minor grumbles aside, as a way to get an Open Access article published for free, and have it archived in PubMed Central, PLoS Currents is hard to beat. What will be interesting is whether the article receives any comments. This seems to be one area online journals haven't really cracked — providing an environment where people want to engage in discussion.
How DIFFICULT is this?
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Looking into Chicago Ron and the artefact plundering trips he runs twice a year near Colchester for his hardcore group and came across this: Englands Treasure Laws, 101 Blog 1.avi. Pretty incredible how many mistakes you can fit into a simple explanation of (I would have thought) a pretty simple piece of legislation. It's not rocket science, but might as well be for artefact collectors if this is anything to go by. Frankly I cannot be bothered to go through it and point out the errors, that is one of the things the PAS could be doing and I've done enough explaining to dimwit collectors over there who can't be bothered to read the text for themselves (with comprehension turned on).
Chicago Ron is doing a blog, including posts on "deep target hunting with Minelab machines" and announces he's got himself a site-wrecker GPX 5000 from Minelabs. "There's a lot of great stuff out there for us to still find, you've just got to go a bit deeper for it, that's all". Deeper that is below the "hammered" ploughsoil, deeper that is into archaeological deposits below the ploughsoil, before its all carted off back to Chicago. "I'm off on my way to England in the next few days, and hopefully I'll have some good stuff (sic) for you guys to see". I suppose it is a bit much to expect that the PAS could react to this kind of material being put out on the web, announcing to all and sundry that the British archaeological heritage is out there up for grabs to all those who pay Mr Ron the asking price to join his hardcore groupies and listen to his distorted version of British legislation and export licencing procedure.
Looking into Chicago Ron and the artefact plundering trips he runs twice a year near Colchester for his hardcore group and came across this: Englands Treasure Laws, 101 Blog 1.avi. Pretty incredible how many mistakes you can fit into a simple explanation of (I would have thought) a pretty simple piece of legislation. It's not rocket science, but might as well be for artefact collectors if this is anything to go by. Frankly I cannot be bothered to go through it and point out the errors, that is one of the things the PAS could be doing and I've done enough explaining to dimwit collectors over there who can't be bothered to read the text for themselves (with comprehension turned on).
Chicago Ron is doing a blog, including posts on "deep target hunting with Minelab machines" and announces he's got himself a site-wrecker GPX 5000 from Minelabs. "There's a lot of great stuff out there for us to still find, you've just got to go a bit deeper for it, that's all". Deeper that is below the "hammered" ploughsoil, deeper that is into archaeological deposits below the ploughsoil, before its all carted off back to Chicago. "I'm off on my way to England in the next few days, and hopefully I'll have some good stuff (sic) for you guys to see". I suppose it is a bit much to expect that the PAS could react to this kind of material being put out on the web, announcing to all and sundry that the British archaeological heritage is out there up for grabs to all those who pay Mr Ron the asking price to join his hardcore groupies and listen to his distorted version of British legislation and export licencing procedure.
Perhaps only Memnon knows, and he's not telling
.
The night I left Luxor there was quite a brutal robbery in the Kom el-Hettan storerooms of the team excavating the Temple of Amenhotep III. Two freshly excavated sculptures were stolen, suggesting the thieves had received a tip-off that they were there. A few days later the sculptures were back in the storeroom, and the thieves caught. The newspapers said that: "The statues were found hidden inside the home of Ahmed El Zot, the head of an armed gang, who is infamous for his dishonesty. Three other members of the gang are also in custody". The men shortly afterwards got fifteen years for the offence. I was struck by that phrase that a guy who was known (?) to be the head of an organized criminal gang involved in antiquity offences "is infamous for his dishonesty". In what? Cheating on his wife? Not telling the shopkeeper he has given too much change? Did this previous infamy for "dishonesty" in some way involve antiquities and who had "known" about it? Is there more to this story than meets the eye? Or should we not listen to gossip?
The night I left Luxor there was quite a brutal robbery in the Kom el-Hettan storerooms of the team excavating the Temple of Amenhotep III. Two freshly excavated sculptures were stolen, suggesting the thieves had received a tip-off that they were there. A few days later the sculptures were back in the storeroom, and the thieves caught. The newspapers said that: "The statues were found hidden inside the home of Ahmed El Zot, the head of an armed gang, who is infamous for his dishonesty. Three other members of the gang are also in custody". The men shortly afterwards got fifteen years for the offence. I was struck by that phrase that a guy who was known (?) to be the head of an organized criminal gang involved in antiquity offences "is infamous for his dishonesty". In what? Cheating on his wife? Not telling the shopkeeper he has given too much change? Did this previous infamy for "dishonesty" in some way involve antiquities and who had "known" about it? Is there more to this story than meets the eye? Or should we not listen to gossip?
My Letter to Senator Gillibrand
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New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand prides herself on transparent dealings with lobby groups, that's nice. So I am posting here my letter to her about her apparent patronage of the recent CPRI anti-CCPIA conference here, and I am hoping she will allow me to post here too any answer she may give. Maybe some readers would like to add their voice to mine, especially those from New-York-Based SAFE. Let us see how she justifies her apparent support for those in and around the US antiquities trade who we would be forgiven for believing are hell-bent on undermining what semblance of international cultural heritage protection the US has to offer, rather than strengthening it.
I've just posted a brief note on this on the SAFE blog. Perhaps someone there might invite her and other politicians to in some way show some support for SAFE and its aims?
I note that in the list of topics in the Senator's contact form to choose from, there was no mention of culture or cultural property theft, suggesting this was not a matter about which Senator Gillbrand was expecting to get correspondence from citizens.
*PS because Americans can only imagine that the rest of the world's postal service works like theirs and nobody at all would want to ask a US Senator anything from outside the country, you can't send anything from outside without giving a Zip Code. It blocks you if you put a real postcode of another type. I therefore appended a random Washington DC one to my address. I do not expect she'll be writing back anyway, the letter is longer than it should be.
New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand prides herself on transparent dealings with lobby groups, that's nice. So I am posting here my letter to her about her apparent patronage of the recent CPRI anti-CCPIA conference here, and I am hoping she will allow me to post here too any answer she may give. Maybe some readers would like to add their voice to mine, especially those from New-York-Based SAFE. Let us see how she justifies her apparent support for those in and around the US antiquities trade who we would be forgiven for believing are hell-bent on undermining what semblance of international cultural heritage protection the US has to offer, rather than strengthening it.
Dear Senator Gillibrand,
you have been named in connection with the organization of a conference in Washington under the title: „The Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CCPIA): Is it working?”.
Given the tone and content of that meeting (summarized here http://www.cprinst.org/Home/issues), may I ask therefore whether you yourself actively support the International Cultural Property Protection program of the US government (http://exchanges.state.gov/heritage/culprop.html)?
Would you like to see a strengthening or weakening of the ability of the US to set a moral lead by helping stamp out the international trade in illicitly acquired cultural property and related criminal activity?
As you are no doubt aware, the CCPIA serves to regulate the import into the United States of certain designated groups of cultural property which is threatened by illegal activity from specific states. This is done by temporarily restricting items newly coming onto the US market from those states to those which have been legally exported. In this manner, responsible collectors purchasing items on that market can be assured that they are not running the risk of purchasing illicitly acquired material, with all that this may entail. I am sure you will have the same difficulty as me in seeing why any discriminating, responsible and ethical US collector would object to that.
There is however a group of US dealers in and collectors of antiquities and coins – together with their lawyers - who are actively challenging the US Government’s application of these measures. The motives of this group for wanting to challenge measures intended to keep illicitly-obtained material off the US markets can only be guessed. I can only hope that you were unaware that there were people associated with members of this milieu among the organizers of the conference you are named in connection with.
Senator Gillibrand, do you yourself, or those in your immediate environment, collect antiquities, or have any other connection to the global antiquities market and their other advocacy groups?
In the interests of transparency, may I post a copy of your office’s reply here: http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2011/03/my-letter-to-senator-gillibrand.html?
Thank you for giving your time to reading this
Paul Barford
Thank you
I've just posted a brief note on this on the SAFE blog. Perhaps someone there might invite her and other politicians to in some way show some support for SAFE and its aims?
I note that in the list of topics in the Senator's contact form to choose from, there was no mention of culture or cultural property theft, suggesting this was not a matter about which Senator Gillbrand was expecting to get correspondence from citizens.
*PS because Americans can only imagine that the rest of the world's postal service works like theirs and nobody at all would want to ask a US Senator anything from outside the country, you can't send anything from outside without giving a Zip Code. It blocks you if you put a real postcode of another type. I therefore appended a random Washington DC one to my address. I do not expect she'll be writing back anyway, the letter is longer than it should be.
It's (shrug) legal innit?
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I came back from Egypt to find 1000 or so unread emails in the inbox in my deliberately stationary office computer. One of them was the link I want to discuss here, this one from a British archaeologist (and why can't he discuss it himself?). Its about a month out of date as a news item, but still worth highlighting. It is about a new shop opened by a father and son team speaking about their treasure hunting (and now treasure-selling) passion. Sadly you do not seem to be able to embed the video, readers will have to make do with clicking here. The BBC-blurb to the video says:
Here's an edited transcript of part of the script...
Cultured voice over [Robin Gibson](dramatic mood music):"They are hundreds, even thousands of years old and they are here because they were dug up by Treasure seekers",
Estuary English bloke in a suit: "[...] some roman keys, we find hammered silver coins, there's a Celtic toggle",
Cultured Voice over: "Coins, rings, daggers, you'd think this was a museum, but in a few days' time anyone will be able to come in here and buy them".
Estuary English bloke in a tie (notably avoiding eye contact): "One or two pieces are for display, um, but, yeah basically, you know, legally you can buy all of these items (shrugs) and, you know, its basically a pleasure to see these people's faces as they open their wallets..."
[...] [more stuff, like son filmed against the backdrop of a case full of gold artefacts, ending with]
Cultured Voice Over: "It's likely to be a talking point - the shop where, if you can afford it, you really can buy buried treasures".
This gratuitous plug for a newly-opened business does not state the shop's name, but we learn that the owner's name is Simon Wicks, and he has "spent his whole life digging for artefacts and curios underground". We learn more from the Eastbourne Herald - the shop is called Britanicus and its in Terminus Road, Eastbourne. He also sells (what else could he sell?) metal detectors. There's a nice bit of calling-a-spade-a-spade in the newspaper article: "Simon Wicks has been legally plundering historical sites for the past 40 years [...]" Thank you Eastbourne Herald for getting it right and using a word (the P-word) few British archaeologists would dare mouth with regard their "partners with metal detectors". If the British archaeological community is not going to do conscientious public outreach about artefact hunting, its good to see some journalists who are not swallowing the PAS-fluffy bunny "partnership" pap. (Some "metal detectorists" did not appreciate the collocation, but do not seem really to explore the issue of the sale of these items very deeply.)
Coming back to the BBC (which does not use the P-word). How many times do people have to be told what the law is CALLED? IT IS NOT THE "TREASURE TROVE LAW" ANY MORE. Millions of pounds worth of PAS outreach and not even the BBC can get it right.
What about this statement "yeah basically, you know, legally you can buy all of these items"? Well, that is indeed so if (Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003) they are not tainted . Let's assume that all the potential treasure items of English and Welsh origin have been reported to the Coroner and released, let us assume that none came from Scotland or northern Ireland where different rules apply. But what about that plate brooch at 1:35? That's not a British find is it? Crimea? Danubian Plain? Southern Europe? (I've seen some very good fakes of these recently, from the Ukraine, is this one of them? We'd have to see the back to resolve that one, I'm a bit puzzled by what we can see of the pin mechanism). Not to mention the copper alloy Roman cavalry helmet mask, if real.
How many of those copper alloy artefacts were bought direct from local metal detectorists able to show the purchaser a valid landowners' agreement, and how many come from job lots of metal detected stuff from unknown foreign sites? Those arrowheads fleetingly shown at the beginning of the film are not typically British types, very similar ones do occur in the Balkans and across eastern Europe and central Asia. If those finds were dug up on the continent and came into the UK without the relevant paperwork (including export licences) they would fall under the definition of tainted artefacts in the terms of the 2003 Act (and before anyone suggests, "well those items might not be for sale", first look properly at article 3 of the 2003 Act). Britain has in fact some very strict laws about even handling this type of material - but of course it is all a hopeless sham, because that law has never actually been enforced (I stand to be corrected, but I believe it is still the case that - despite the tonnes of items on the UK market of dodgy provenance - that act has never once resulted in a successful prosecution). You will note as an indication of its irrelevance to the treatment of portable antiquities in the UK that there appears not to be even a link to its text on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website (not even here, though it is mentioned in passing right at the bottom).
But is "it's (shrug) legal innit" actually a justification for this? Legal, maybe, what about the ethical and moral issues? Is this the way to treat the archaeological record, as a source of collectables a resource to be eroded away for entertainment and profit? Now what Britain does with its archaeological heritage is up to the Brits to decide (which they can't do when the knottier issues are eternally skated over in the interests of maintaining an erosive "partnership"). It is however quite clear that, like the US antiquities trade, it is not just local sites which are being trashed to keep up the supply of goods in these markets. To those who follow such things, it is obvious that British artefact dealers, both the bigger auction houses but especially the dealers in so-called "minor antiquities" (a classification I do not accept) are not being supplied from the "legal plundering" of the archaeological record in their own country alone. The whole trade is all-too-obviously bolstered by dugup goods imported from other countries, in most cases where the exploitation of the archaeological record in this manner (to the detriment of the whole of society) is illegal. These artefacts are tainted because they were obtained by illegal activity, an activity which their incorporation (no-questions-asked) into the foreign market facilitates and encourages. In the case of the bigger dealers, its things like Greek pots and Egyptian sculptures, much of it from tomb-robbing. In the case of the "minor" (sic) dealers, the damage done by their source of supply is (though they will vehemently deny it) the wholesale destructive metal-detecting (sometimes accompanied by the use of heavy earth-moving plant) of archaeological sites to produce job lots of "partifacts" and coins which after sorting find their own niches in the market. Mr Wicks too has a pile of "uncleaned ancient" coins on display in his shop.
Has the local FLO visited Mr Wicks' shop? I think we'd all be interested to hear what she said to him about it as part of the PAS archaeological outreach to the public on portable antiquity matters. For Sussex that's Stephanie Smith, the Sussex Archaeological Society in Lewes, just down the road.
[Concerning one reaction to the news of the reputed find by Simon Wicks of Anne Boleyn's jewellery see here].
I came back from Egypt to find 1000 or so unread emails in the inbox in my deliberately stationary office computer. One of them was the link I want to discuss here, this one from a British archaeologist (and why can't he discuss it himself?). Its about a month out of date as a news item, but still worth highlighting. It is about a new shop opened by a father and son team speaking about their treasure hunting (and now treasure-selling) passion. Sadly you do not seem to be able to embed the video, readers will have to make do with clicking here. The BBC-blurb to the video says:
A new shop full of unearthed hidden treasure is opening in the East Sussex town of Eastbourne. The artefacts, some of which are thousands of years old, can be legally offered for sale under treasure trove rules.
Here's an edited transcript of part of the script...Cultured voice over [Robin Gibson](dramatic mood music):"They are hundreds, even thousands of years old and they are here because they were dug up by Treasure seekers",
Estuary English bloke in a suit: "[...] some roman keys, we find hammered silver coins, there's a Celtic toggle",
Cultured Voice over: "Coins, rings, daggers, you'd think this was a museum, but in a few days' time anyone will be able to come in here and buy them".
Estuary English bloke in a tie (notably avoiding eye contact): "One or two pieces are for display, um, but, yeah basically, you know, legally you can buy all of these items (shrugs) and, you know, its basically a pleasure to see these people's faces as they open their wallets..."
[...] [more stuff, like son filmed against the backdrop of a case full of gold artefacts, ending with]
Cultured Voice Over: "It's likely to be a talking point - the shop where, if you can afford it, you really can buy buried treasures".
This gratuitous plug for a newly-opened business does not state the shop's name, but we learn that the owner's name is Simon Wicks, and he has "spent his whole life digging for artefacts and curios underground". We learn more from the Eastbourne Herald - the shop is called Britanicus and its in Terminus Road, Eastbourne. He also sells (what else could he sell?) metal detectors. There's a nice bit of calling-a-spade-a-spade in the newspaper article: "Simon Wicks has been legally plundering historical sites for the past 40 years [...]" Thank you Eastbourne Herald for getting it right and using a word (the P-word) few British archaeologists would dare mouth with regard their "partners with metal detectors". If the British archaeological community is not going to do conscientious public outreach about artefact hunting, its good to see some journalists who are not swallowing the PAS-fluffy bunny "partnership" pap. (Some "metal detectorists" did not appreciate the collocation, but do not seem really to explore the issue of the sale of these items very deeply.)
Coming back to the BBC (which does not use the P-word). How many times do people have to be told what the law is CALLED? IT IS NOT THE "TREASURE TROVE LAW" ANY MORE. Millions of pounds worth of PAS outreach and not even the BBC can get it right.
What about this statement "yeah basically, you know, legally you can buy all of these items"? Well, that is indeed so if (Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003) they are not tainted . Let's assume that all the potential treasure items of English and Welsh origin have been reported to the Coroner and released, let us assume that none came from Scotland or northern Ireland where different rules apply. But what about that plate brooch at 1:35? That's not a British find is it? Crimea? Danubian Plain? Southern Europe? (I've seen some very good fakes of these recently, from the Ukraine, is this one of them? We'd have to see the back to resolve that one, I'm a bit puzzled by what we can see of the pin mechanism). Not to mention the copper alloy Roman cavalry helmet mask, if real.
How many of those copper alloy artefacts were bought direct from local metal detectorists able to show the purchaser a valid landowners' agreement, and how many come from job lots of metal detected stuff from unknown foreign sites? Those arrowheads fleetingly shown at the beginning of the film are not typically British types, very similar ones do occur in the Balkans and across eastern Europe and central Asia. If those finds were dug up on the continent and came into the UK without the relevant paperwork (including export licences) they would fall under the definition of tainted artefacts in the terms of the 2003 Act (and before anyone suggests, "well those items might not be for sale", first look properly at article 3 of the 2003 Act). Britain has in fact some very strict laws about even handling this type of material - but of course it is all a hopeless sham, because that law has never actually been enforced (I stand to be corrected, but I believe it is still the case that - despite the tonnes of items on the UK market of dodgy provenance - that act has never once resulted in a successful prosecution). You will note as an indication of its irrelevance to the treatment of portable antiquities in the UK that there appears not to be even a link to its text on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website (not even here, though it is mentioned in passing right at the bottom).But is "it's (shrug) legal innit" actually a justification for this? Legal, maybe, what about the ethical and moral issues? Is this the way to treat the archaeological record, as a source of collectables a resource to be eroded away for entertainment and profit? Now what Britain does with its archaeological heritage is up to the Brits to decide (which they can't do when the knottier issues are eternally skated over in the interests of maintaining an erosive "partnership"). It is however quite clear that, like the US antiquities trade, it is not just local sites which are being trashed to keep up the supply of goods in these markets. To those who follow such things, it is obvious that British artefact dealers, both the bigger auction houses but especially the dealers in so-called "minor antiquities" (a classification I do not accept) are not being supplied from the "legal plundering" of the archaeological record in their own country alone. The whole trade is all-too-obviously bolstered by dugup goods imported from other countries, in most cases where the exploitation of the archaeological record in this manner (to the detriment of the whole of society) is illegal. These artefacts are tainted because they were obtained by illegal activity, an activity which their incorporation (no-questions-asked) into the foreign market facilitates and encourages. In the case of the bigger dealers, its things like Greek pots and Egyptian sculptures, much of it from tomb-robbing. In the case of the "minor" (sic) dealers, the damage done by their source of supply is (though they will vehemently deny it) the wholesale destructive metal-detecting (sometimes accompanied by the use of heavy earth-moving plant) of archaeological sites to produce job lots of "partifacts" and coins which after sorting find their own niches in the market. Mr Wicks too has a pile of "uncleaned ancient" coins on display in his shop.
Has the local FLO visited Mr Wicks' shop? I think we'd all be interested to hear what she said to him about it as part of the PAS archaeological outreach to the public on portable antiquity matters. For Sussex that's Stephanie Smith, the Sussex Archaeological Society in Lewes, just down the road.
[Concerning one reaction to the news of the reputed find by Simon Wicks of Anne Boleyn's jewellery see here].
April Fool from CPRI
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It seems to me that the Santa Fe-based "Cultural Property Research Institute" (an antiquity dealers' advocacy group masquerading as an inefficient "research institute") has got its dates wrong. A text they have released (State Department in Contravention of the Law?) can only be seen as an April Fool joke accidentally published two days early. Still, I suppose that's better than all those promised pieces of "research" which are months overdue.
Among the gems of deadpan humour contained in this obviously satirical text, the reader will spot the following:
- "has disregarded the criteria established by the law that created it", the enquiring reader will ask what might they be, and in what way do they benefit the world's cultural heritage?
- "the Act was intended not just to save objects, but to save context and heritage". Where does it say that? Where? It actually says nothing of the kind in the CCPIA (which in general it has to be admitted is a badly-written text, but that is no excuse for the CPRI making things up).
- "limitations placed by the Act on the ability of the US Government to enter into agreements with other countries to impose import restrictions", eh? This is in an act intended to IMPLEMENT the 1970 UNESCO Convention on what? Oh yes, "on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property", so why did the US government issue an "implementing" act limiting its own ability to actually "implement" the actual measures of the Convention? Why would the US government fail to enter into an agreement with another country who requests it to actually implement the measures implicit in becoming a state party to the Convention? That's just plain daft, but then all of this US pretence to be implementing the Convention is plain double daft. Let the US just end the farce and withdraw from the Convention they have for nearly three decades obviously had no intention of fully honouring. Let the existing Wild West ethos of much of the US antiquity market show itself for what it is.
- "a provision requiring U.S. restrictions to be part of a "concerted international response" had been violated" eh? So where actually is this mythical "provision"? Where? How can you "violate" a provision that is not there?
- "in a manner that discriminated against Americans and that moved the trade abroad". Like keeping Chinese artefacts from being illegally exported FROM China? Isn't that what the 1970 Convention "on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property" supposed to do? What did the Americans think it was supposed to do when they became a state party? And how funny, an American law which affects Americans in America and not foreigners living outside America.
"Seminar summary at http://www.cprinst.org/Home/issues. Full transcript available soon". Can they manage it by April 1st?
The comedy is continued by that master of black humour, D.C. lawyer Peter Tompa, who asks "A related question is whether the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is listening or whether Assistant Secretary Anne Stock and her staff remain tone deaf as ever". Listen to what? The inventive rantings of the lunatic fringe of the US no-questions-asked market in dugup antiquities? That is a real joke.
What on earth is New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand thinking of aligning herself with these people with their all-too-transparent antisocial aims? Maybe readers in the States might like to write to her office and ask her http://gillibrand.senate.gov/contact/.
Vignette: Hilary and lookalike Kirsten (left) show their appreciation of the 2011 CPIA April Fool joke at the expense of the skeletal US International Cultural Property Protection program, such as it is.
It seems to me that the Santa Fe-based "Cultural Property Research Institute" (an antiquity dealers' advocacy group masquerading as an inefficient "research institute") has got its dates wrong. A text they have released (State Department in Contravention of the Law?) can only be seen as an April Fool joke accidentally published two days early. Still, I suppose that's better than all those promised pieces of "research" which are months overdue.Among the gems of deadpan humour contained in this obviously satirical text, the reader will spot the following:
- "has disregarded the criteria established by the law that created it", the enquiring reader will ask what might they be, and in what way do they benefit the world's cultural heritage?
- "the Act was intended not just to save objects, but to save context and heritage". Where does it say that? Where? It actually says nothing of the kind in the CCPIA (which in general it has to be admitted is a badly-written text, but that is no excuse for the CPRI making things up).
- "limitations placed by the Act on the ability of the US Government to enter into agreements with other countries to impose import restrictions", eh? This is in an act intended to IMPLEMENT the 1970 UNESCO Convention on what? Oh yes, "on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property", so why did the US government issue an "implementing" act limiting its own ability to actually "implement" the actual measures of the Convention? Why would the US government fail to enter into an agreement with another country who requests it to actually implement the measures implicit in becoming a state party to the Convention? That's just plain daft, but then all of this US pretence to be implementing the Convention is plain double daft. Let the US just end the farce and withdraw from the Convention they have for nearly three decades obviously had no intention of fully honouring. Let the existing Wild West ethos of much of the US antiquity market show itself for what it is.
- "a provision requiring U.S. restrictions to be part of a "concerted international response" had been violated" eh? So where actually is this mythical "provision"? Where? How can you "violate" a provision that is not there?
- "in a manner that discriminated against Americans and that moved the trade abroad". Like keeping Chinese artefacts from being illegally exported FROM China? Isn't that what the 1970 Convention "on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property" supposed to do? What did the Americans think it was supposed to do when they became a state party? And how funny, an American law which affects Americans in America and not foreigners living outside America.
"Seminar summary at http://www.cprinst.org/Home/issues. Full transcript available soon". Can they manage it by April 1st?
The comedy is continued by that master of black humour, D.C. lawyer Peter Tompa, who asks "A related question is whether the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is listening or whether Assistant Secretary Anne Stock and her staff remain tone deaf as ever". Listen to what? The inventive rantings of the lunatic fringe of the US no-questions-asked market in dugup antiquities? That is a real joke.
What on earth is New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand thinking of aligning herself with these people with their all-too-transparent antisocial aims? Maybe readers in the States might like to write to her office and ask her http://gillibrand.senate.gov/contact/.
Vignette: Hilary and lookalike Kirsten (left) show their appreciation of the 2011 CPIA April Fool joke at the expense of the skeletal US International Cultural Property Protection program, such as it is.
Egypt may have a "new" Minister of Antiquities
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After all the uncertainty and false reports, it is difficult to know how much weight to give this. I really hope this is true. Al-Ahram is reporting:
If true, best of luck to him in his new role. Let us assume that the PM gave him assurances about support from other state institutions, such as the police to help provide protection from sites and to help eject those who have taken advantage of the breakdown in law and order following January 25th to illegally encroach on them. The lack of a person filling this post for so long has hampered many attempts to re-establish some order in this area, let us hope that (if true) this appointment will remove the uncertainties which have been exploited by the unscrupulous and led to so much damage being done to sites, collections and monuments in Egypt.
Despite my own criticism of certain elements of what Hawass' has said in past weeks, I think this is a good resolution. Egypt needs a forceful person in charge in these troubled times of social and economic (?) change. One other reason why I am glad is to spite all those unreasonable hate-driven Facebook egyptologists and others who (after they thought he'd vanished from the scene) obviously regarded "saving and restoring the Egyptian Museum" or whatever as about unfairly attacking the guy personally and calling him names. They underestimated him. Now let us see all those who have been busily viciously and unfairly attacking him pledging their willingness to work with him to protect the archaeological heritage.
UPDATE: A few hours after this was posted it seems to be official, Zahi Hawass is again the new Minister of Antiquities.
After all the uncertainty and false reports, it is difficult to know how much weight to give this. I really hope this is true. Al-Ahram is reporting: Zahi Hawass, chief of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced that he had been re-appointed as Minster of Antiquities following a meeting with Prime Minister Essam Sharaf on Wednesday. (Margaret Maitland reports it is also announced by the Egyptian Cabinet on Twitter)
If true, best of luck to him in his new role. Let us assume that the PM gave him assurances about support from other state institutions, such as the police to help provide protection from sites and to help eject those who have taken advantage of the breakdown in law and order following January 25th to illegally encroach on them. The lack of a person filling this post for so long has hampered many attempts to re-establish some order in this area, let us hope that (if true) this appointment will remove the uncertainties which have been exploited by the unscrupulous and led to so much damage being done to sites, collections and monuments in Egypt.
Despite my own criticism of certain elements of what Hawass' has said in past weeks, I think this is a good resolution. Egypt needs a forceful person in charge in these troubled times of social and economic (?) change. One other reason why I am glad is to spite all those unreasonable hate-driven Facebook egyptologists and others who (after they thought he'd vanished from the scene) obviously regarded "saving and restoring the Egyptian Museum" or whatever as about unfairly attacking the guy personally and calling him names. They underestimated him. Now let us see all those who have been busily viciously and unfairly attacking him pledging their willingness to work with him to protect the archaeological heritage.
UPDATE: A few hours after this was posted it seems to be official, Zahi Hawass is again the new Minister of Antiquities.
St Hilaire on Current US Antiquities Smuggling Policy
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Rick Hilaire (Changing Course: Enhancing Homeland Security's Policy of Seizure and Repatriation with Investigation and Prosecution, culturalheritagelawyer.blogspot, March 12th 2011) adds his voice to those of us who believe that US authorities are not doing enough to confront the problem of illegal antiquities trafficking across US borders. At present, Us border authorities - upon coming across illegal activity involving cultural goods being smuggled across the border - in most cases merely seize the individual objects concerned and return them (most often with much fanfare) to their country of origin. That only serves to repatriate the object, as if that was all that mattered, rather than the fact that illegal activity was involved. Because there is minimal consequence to the perpetrators or accomplices, confiscation of the odd dozen detected smuggled objects or so (and of course it is pretty clear that annually very many artefacts make it across without being detected) does little to deter antiquities trafficking. Only by building legal cases that lead to arrests, prosecutions and convictions can would-be criminals and those in the States who collaborate with them in this activity be deterred.
Rick Hilaire (Changing Course: Enhancing Homeland Security's Policy of Seizure and Repatriation with Investigation and Prosecution, culturalheritagelawyer.blogspot, March 12th 2011) adds his voice to those of us who believe that US authorities are not doing enough to confront the problem of illegal antiquities trafficking across US borders. At present, Us border authorities - upon coming across illegal activity involving cultural goods being smuggled across the border - in most cases merely seize the individual objects concerned and return them (most often with much fanfare) to their country of origin. That only serves to repatriate the object, as if that was all that mattered, rather than the fact that illegal activity was involved. Because there is minimal consequence to the perpetrators or accomplices, confiscation of the odd dozen detected smuggled objects or so (and of course it is pretty clear that annually very many artefacts make it across without being detected) does little to deter antiquities trafficking. Only by building legal cases that lead to arrests, prosecutions and convictions can would-be criminals and those in the States who collaborate with them in this activity be deterred.
In order to successfully tackle crimes against cultural heritage, federal officials must pursue a strategy of investigation and prosecution. The current policy of seizure and return does not go far enough [...]. [Currently] smuggled cultural objects are not treated as criminal case evidence. That is to be expected when the primary mission of DHS is to seize and return, not to investigate and prosecute.[...] Combating crimes against cultural heritage requires authorities to investigate and prosecute trafficking rings. Effective law enforcement is characterized by thoughtful investigation, careful handling of physical evidence, and assembly of evidence for review and use by prosecutors. While seizing and repatriating illegally smuggled artifacts serves some purpose to curb antiquities trafficking, federal officials cannot be credited with performing a thorough job if this remains the sole accomplishment.The problem, St Hilaire indicates, is not the lack of qualified staff (which dealers often accuse the US ICE of); "Immigrations and Customs Enforcement investigators and Customs and Border Protection agents are skilled law enforcement officers who are capable of combating antiquities trafficking effectively", the problem, lies with US policy makers who are failing to "directly engage illegal antiquities networks by adopting a policy of investigation and prosecution that enhances the existing policy of seizure and repatriation".
Hands off the Cunies: US Ruling in Legal Battle Over Iranian Antiquities
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This is more fully covered with legalese in Derek Fincham's blog (where I picked up the story), so I will just signal the next development in the unusual case involving Iranian antiquities in the US:
(David Glenn, 'U. of Chicago and Museums Win Key Ruling in Legal Battle Over Iranian Antiquities', The Chronicle of Higher Education March 29, 2011)
This is more fully covered with legalese in Derek Fincham's blog (where I picked up the story), so I will just signal the next development in the unusual case involving Iranian antiquities in the US:
Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute won a victory on Tuesday in their efforts to maintain possession of thousands of ancient Iranian artifacts. In a ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed a lower court's order that might have handed the artifacts over to several American victims of a 1997 terrorist bombing in Jerusalem.
(David Glenn, 'U. of Chicago and Museums Win Key Ruling in Legal Battle Over Iranian Antiquities', The Chronicle of Higher Education March 29, 2011)
Portable Antiquities Scheme to endorse TV treasure hunting programme after all?
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I've just
had a mail from a journalist (I cant work out from what he writes whether he's on the preservationist side or that of the looter) who wants to chat to me tomorrow about a new TV programme , called "Britain’s Secret Treasures". This is suspiciously like the name of a proposed programme about which somebody leaked me a document a while ago. A key feature of the project was the collaboration of the Portable Antiquities Scheme in its portrayal of the romance of treasure hunting for collectable and saleable bits of Britain's underground archaeological heritage for entertainment and profit. Surely the PAS had "torn up the proposal and binned it", hadn't they? That's reportedly what they were telling archaeologists back home. All very confusing. I had a go at searching the internet for some sort of information. Being in Egypt at the time I missed what I regard to be a significant comment (British Museum to endorse TV treasure hunting programme?) by RESCUE at the end of February:
I wonder whether the head of the PAS replied to the letter and what he said in justification if these rumours are true? Who is holding their breath waiting for the BM to produce "a strong condemnation of the practice of artefact hunting"? (Well, don't - the wait could damage your health, under present management one may confidently predict that they never will).
In any case are not Britain's secret Treasures the ones that are not reported by artefact hunters? Now I'd like to see a programme focussing exclusively on that.
And thank you RESCUE, please keep up the pressure on all who wantonly damage the archaeological record.
UPDATE 30 March 2011:
Enquiries this morning at RESCUE head office indicate that no reply whatsoever was received from the PAS in response to the archaeological trust's expression of concern discussed above. As I pointed out in my original post about this, it seems that British archaeology's self-appointed "largest public outreach programme" is going about doing this "public outreach" without reference to what other sectors of the British archaeological community think, let alone keeping them informed or - heaven forbid - consulting with them. This is particularly disturbing when it concerns such a controversial issue as Treasure hunting, and the shaping of public opinion on what archaeology is about. Had the PAS in reality "torn up the proposal and binned it", most of us would be forgiven for thinking that they would have no problems in informing RESCUE of that fact straight away, instead of ignoring the request for information about it received last month. RESCUE, the trust for British Archaeology, like the rest of us obviously has to content itself with the sound of the cooing of the local pigeons as the only voice on portable antiquity matters to emerge from Bloomsbury in response to a specific query addressed by a group representing British archaeologists to "British archaeology's largest public outreach scheme". Why should that be?
I've just
had a mail from a journalist (I cant work out from what he writes whether he's on the preservationist side or that of the looter) who wants to chat to me tomorrow about a new TV programme , called "Britain’s Secret Treasures". This is suspiciously like the name of a proposed programme about which somebody leaked me a document a while ago. A key feature of the project was the collaboration of the Portable Antiquities Scheme in its portrayal of the romance of treasure hunting for collectable and saleable bits of Britain's underground archaeological heritage for entertainment and profit. Surely the PAS had "torn up the proposal and binned it", hadn't they? That's reportedly what they were telling archaeologists back home. All very confusing. I had a go at searching the internet for some sort of information. Being in Egypt at the time I missed what I regard to be a significant comment (British Museum to endorse TV treasure hunting programme?) by RESCUE at the end of February: RESCUE have written to the Dr Roger Bland of the Portable Antiquities Scheme to express our alarm at the well-substantiated rumours that are circulating regarding the participation of the British Museum in the production of a television series for ITV entitled ‘Britain’s Secret Treasures’ which will take as its focus the activities of artefact hunters and metal detector users. RESCUE has grave concerns that the apparent endorsement of this destructive activity by a body such as the British Museum will do nothing to lessen its impact on our buried archaeological heritage and will in all probability encourage more people to purchase a metal detector and set out to recover ‘buried treasure’ leading to the an increased level of damage to archaeological sites, scheduled and unscheduled, known and unknown.This is unusually strong language from this organization who, a few numbers back when I wrote a text on metal detecting for Rescue News (issue 99 if I recall correctly), accompanied it by by a somewhat wishy-washy "we are all friends now" official RESCUE statement on "metal detecting", and fluffy bunny articles like Jude Plouviez writing that ploughing damages more sites than artefact hunting (which does not make artefact hunting a sustainable way to conserve archaeological sites, does it?).
There is ample evidence of the damage done to archaeological sites by artefact hunters operating both with and without the consent of landowners and there is also good evidence that sites under excavation are being targeted by such individuals in their quest for saleable objects. Even when the object is not a ‘fast buck’ obtained through the agency of on-line auction sites or the less than reputable end of the antiquities trade, the accumulation of private collections of objects ripped from their archaeological context is of little or no value in archaeological terms. We are, frankly, astonished, that the British Museum is prepared to lend its considerable weight to the furtherance of activities of archaic concept and damaging to the practice of modern archaeology. We urge the British Museum to break off negotiations with the television production company involved and to issue a strong condemnation of the practice of artefact hunting at the earliest opportunity.
I wonder whether the head of the PAS replied to the letter and what he said in justification if these rumours are true? Who is holding their breath waiting for the BM to produce "a strong condemnation of the practice of artefact hunting"? (Well, don't - the wait could damage your health, under present management one may confidently predict that they never will).
In any case are not Britain's secret Treasures the ones that are not reported by artefact hunters? Now I'd like to see a programme focussing exclusively on that.
And thank you RESCUE, please keep up the pressure on all who wantonly damage the archaeological record.
UPDATE 30 March 2011:
Enquiries this morning at RESCUE head office indicate that no reply whatsoever was received from the PAS in response to the archaeological trust's expression of concern discussed above. As I pointed out in my original post about this, it seems that British archaeology's self-appointed "largest public outreach programme" is going about doing this "public outreach" without reference to what other sectors of the British archaeological community think, let alone keeping them informed or - heaven forbid - consulting with them. This is particularly disturbing when it concerns such a controversial issue as Treasure hunting, and the shaping of public opinion on what archaeology is about. Had the PAS in reality "torn up the proposal and binned it", most of us would be forgiven for thinking that they would have no problems in informing RESCUE of that fact straight away, instead of ignoring the request for information about it received last month. RESCUE, the trust for British Archaeology, like the rest of us obviously has to content itself with the sound of the cooing of the local pigeons as the only voice on portable antiquity matters to emerge from Bloomsbury in response to a specific query addressed by a group representing British archaeologists to "British archaeology's largest public outreach scheme". Why should that be?
Capable of Learning from "the Polaroids"?
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David Gill posts a question on his 'Looting Matters' blog about the polaroid images which have been seized in Geneva and Basel and which reveal that various items were in the hands of certain now-infamous Swiss-based middlemen. He points out that museums may well have 'learnt the lesson', but asks whether private collectors and dealers catering for the private collectors' market may still be pressing on with commerce in objects which may be suspected (or known) to have passed through these hands.
David Gill posts a question on his 'Looting Matters' blog about the polaroid images which have been seized in Geneva and Basel and which reveal that various items were in the hands of certain now-infamous Swiss-based middlemen. He points out that museums may well have 'learnt the lesson', but asks whether private collectors and dealers catering for the private collectors' market may still be pressing on with commerce in objects which may be suspected (or known) to have passed through these hands.
A number of sales are forthcoming. What will emerge?I have a feeling that it will emerge that antiquity collectors are slow learners and we might be hearing on LM about a few more private collectors with objects to sell anonymously hoping nobody is going to catch them out. It's not a question who has access to which polaroids, it is about who has bought what without enquiring too deeply about where it actually came from, and who is about to buy stuff with the same lack of diligence and care.
Hooray for That
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I see that the British Archaeological Federation ( BAJR Fed) Forum has finally dropped its section for "metal detectorists". A step in the right direction Dave. Now start calling them "artefact hunters" and admit that is what they do. That is just a step away from admitting that collecting decontextualised artefacts is not really "archaeology for all" at all, is it?
I see that the British Archaeological Federation ( BAJR Fed) Forum has finally dropped its section for "metal detectorists". A step in the right direction Dave. Now start calling them "artefact hunters" and admit that is what they do. That is just a step away from admitting that collecting decontextualised artefacts is not really "archaeology for all" at all, is it?
Looters Strip Latin America of Cultural Heritage
In the Past Horizons Magazine there is an interesting coverage of a recent report ("Saving our Vanishing Heritage") by the Global Heritage Fund in San Francisco. This alarms that a looting epidemic in Latin American countries, notably Peru and Guatemala is rapidly leading to the destruction of the region’s archaeological heritage. It identified nearly 200 “at risk” sites in developing nations, with South and Central America prominent.
Mirador, the cradle of Mayan civilisation in Guatemala, was being devastated, it said. “The entire Peten region has been sacked in the past 20 years and every year hundreds of archaeological sites are being destroyed by organised looting crews seeking Maya antiquities for sale on the international market.”What the article does not say explicitly is that - commercial treasure-hunting exploits excepted - the day-to-day looting is going on to find collectables for the international market (see Roger Atwood's classic book Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World, 2004 ). This is how locals are able to use digging up potsherds, bones, textiles and bits of carved stone to "supplement income". It is the no-questions-asked antiquities market that is driving this illegal digging and smuggling. Look in any internet shop selling so-called "Pre-Columbian art" (ie dug up archaeological artefacts) and see just how many of them offer any documentation to prove the items were taken out of the source country in accordance with their laws, or were exported prior to international agreements coming into force. It will be observed that very few of them do so, and yet collectors continue to patronise them.Northern Peru, home to the Moche civilisation which flourished from AD100-800, had been reduced to a “lunar landscape” by looter trenches across hundreds of miles. “An estimated 100,000 tombs – over half the country’s known sites – have been looted,” the report said.
The sight breaks the heart of archaeologists and historians piecing together the story of a society which built canals and monumental pyramid-type structures, called huacas, and made intricate ceramics and jewellery.[...] In the absence of written records, archaeology must shed light on what happened. In villages such as Galindo that is becoming all but impossible. Crude tunnels and caves make Moche ruins resemble rabbit warrens. Deep gashes cut into walls expose the brickwork below. Millennia-old adobe bricks are torn from the ground and scattered as though in a builder’s yard.
Most huaqueros are farmers supplementing meagre incomes. Montes de Oca, one of three police officers tasked with environmental protection in a region of a million people, said he was overwhelmed. “I’ve been doing this for 28 years. There are three of us and one truck. It’s insufficient but we do everything possible.”
Ten miles away Huaca del Sol, one of the largest pyramids in pre-Columbus America, is an eroded, plundered shell. Here the culprits were not impoverished farmers but Spanish colonial authorities who authorised companies to mine for treasure, said Ricardo Gamarra, director of a 20-year-old conservation project. “They diverted the river to wash away two-thirds of the huaca and reveal its insides,” he said. “They mined through the walls and caused it to collapse in various places. It’s impossible to guess how much was taken because we don’t know how much was there.”
Donations from businesses and foundations have helped Gamarra’s team protect what is left, drawing 120,000 visitors each year, but of 250 other sites in the region just five have been protected. “In the mountains it’s the same. It is full with archaeological sites, almost all of them have been destroyed,” said Gamarra.
This makes the criticism of dealers and collectors that "source countries do not do enough to guard the sites". How to guard hundreds of sites scattered in the jungles of Guatamala, or in the mountain valleys of Peru? Who pays for it and to what benefit? Certainly not the collectors who advocate that doing this is what dozens of developing countries should be spending vast sums of money on - when all that is needed to put a stop to the market in dodgy antiquities is for collectors to walk away from potentially dodgy deals. It costs them nothing. The only people who lose out are the dealers in dodgy artefacts.
There have been suggestions (like those from Jeff Morgan, executive director of the Global Heritage Fund reported in the article), to funnel tourists away from major tourist attractions to lesser known sites "which could then earn revenue to protect their heritage". Morgan says
“one of the biggest problems is the disconnect between local communities and management of the sites. We think locals should get at least 30% of revenues.” Only then, said Morgan, would cultural treasures from the Moche and other civilisations be saved.Nice words, nice sentiments. How does it work in practice? How do you actually "funnel" the average foreign tourist on a two-week whistlestop tour of a region away from major sites with the tourist infrastructure in place to scattered minor sites where there is not? To make it pay you would have to be catering for the mass tourist market, not the odd backpacker. To do that, you need to invest heavily in the infrastructure, roads, hotels, car parks, toilets, litter bins, maintenance of vegetation and then marketing. As we see in Egypt currently simply having the sites and infrastructure there is not enough, people have to actually turn up. How secure is the tourist market in any given country in the long-term, twenty, thirty years? Are millions of people going to be packing onto fuel-guzzling and fume-producing jet aircraft in the future to spend a few days in foreign climes to the same degree as many of us do with gay abandon today? Is investment in developing more and more tourist destinations sustainable in the long term, is it indeed always going to be the high-return investment that it has been up till now? I am minded of the mountain regions of southern Poland which during the past decade has seen huge investment in tourism, farmland being turned into car parks and ski-slopes. At the beginning all was well, people continued building bigger and better guest rooms onto their farmhouses, hotels, shops for the tourists. Tourists who are now preferring a few hours extra in the car to go to Austria or Italy. We see the same economic crisis in Egypt as huge numbers of people whose income relies on tourism in one way or another are suddenly facing weeks or months with virtually no income at all. These locals have been benefitting from the revenues the local monuments bring in, but to what extent is there actually a "connection" between these people and the "management of sites"? I think the question is more complex than the manner in which this is presented.
It seems to me that the "archaeology promotes tourism" argument is too simplistic. Not all that we do and call archaeology has any impact on tourism at all, in fact I would say most of what we do and call archaeology has none. Excepting a few percent, tourists have limited amounts of time (and that time is costing them money) and want to see something worth seeing. These days that means something that makes a good photograph, nobody looks these days, just snaps. So Stonehenge, Carnac, Karnak, Angkor Wat, Tower of London, are on their list. Palaeolithic kill sites and a Roman kiln site under a ploughed field, or an Early Bronze Age settlement (lovely storage pits) about to vanish under an office product supplier's warehouse are not on their list of 'must see' and I think we may reasonably predict never will be.
What archaeology actually does for tourists is produce unearthed ruins with a romantic story or appearance (Troy, Knossos, Karnak - not forgetting the recent unearthing of its Sphinx avenue, Silchester/Wroxeter etc) which can be 'visited'. We imagine that the public listen with bated breath as the archaeological 'expert' reveals the story ("how it was [here] in the past"), but in fact if we talk to that public at those sites, they do not. The average tourist could not care less whether the excavation of the ruins was done by you or me over a period of a decade to remove a few tens of superimposed pebble floors and worn areas, or whether it was Thomas Wright and his merry men in the 1850s . Or whether the gold hoard shining in its display case was found in archaeological context, or hoiked out of the ground by Bazza Boggins the Brummy plumber with his metal detector. What difference does it make, as long as its in a case to show the kids before you buy them an ice cream and a Roman-soldier-pencil-and-eraser and plastic dinosaur in the museum giftshop? I doubt whether very few would even look at the excavation report produced as an expensive monograph even if it was on the shelves of the giftshop, let alone fork out the money to buy it. They might buy the popular version written by the archaeologist if there is one. An equal (?) number are more likely to go for the one written by a local enthusiast who claims that Vortigern was buried here, and that at night you can see lights dancing on the hilltop which legend has it was haunted and has an unusually high frequency of UFO sightings, or somesuch "information".
To what extent does tourism, even so-called "cultural tourism", actually "need" archaeology, proper archaeology? In what way is archaeology superior for the needs of this tourism (its actual state today, not what we'd like it to be) to mere artefact hunting ("Treasure" hunting)? Given that "partnership" with artefact hunters is in Britain, for example (to take a bad example), is all-too-publicly promoted as "archaeological outreach", and artefact collecting is presented as a means of the public "doing archaeology" ("engaging with archaeology/their past" - not the same thing at all), then this question becomes one of fundamental importance. Public perceptions (and not just in Britain) of what archaeology is are altering because of the mode of outreach adopted through the PAS. The results of the sustained effort of decades of archaeologists trying to get over the idea why archaeology is important and relevant have been shattered by the stream of press releases of how this or that treasure-hunter has made an important discovery and made a lot of money out of it at the same time, and achieved more than the experts who can only congratulate him and be thankful he showed it to them. Not a mention is made anywhere of how the archaeological record is being eroded by this activity when so many of these finds are being made and removed without any kind of archaeological involvement or followup. It depicts archaeology as an uncontrolled artefact hunt and uncontrolled story-telling about individual and on the whole contextless items. This gives totally the wrong idea of what archaeology is (supposed to be) about. But then, I suspect that in Britain, many archaeologists who support the PAS have lost sight of that too. I ask them, how they would see the future of their discipline and its relationship with its public developing over the next few decades? What actually does British archaeology - in the form it exists today - actually have to offer anyone apart from archaeologists and a portion of the population (part of the one that actually reads books with big words in them)?
Two Captured Egyptian Museum Looters to go on Trial
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Al-Masry Al-Youm is reporting that
It seems from the statement the two men are accused of stealing the items and not merely handling stolen goods. I hope the military trial will be open and that it will reveal more of the background of these sorry events.
Al-Masry Al-Youm is reporting that
The Tourism and Antiquities Police referred two suspects accused of stealing artifacts from the Egyptian Museum for military trial, according to an Interior Ministry statement released Monday.[...] The first suspect is a mechanic and the second unemployed. The statement said an undercover officer impersonated a dealer and agreed to give the suspects LE1 million for the antiquities.The 1 million Egyptian pounds is still a high figure but more realistic than the sum being reported earlier. It would seem from the article that the two are from the group of three people arrested for trying to 'fence' the stolen objects (so what happened to the third guy arrested?). Also this leaves unknown the fate of the thief reportedly apprehended on the museum premises on the night of the robbery (28th Jan or the morning of 29th Jan). Very few details have emerged about who he was (some reports seem to suggest he was "from Fayoum") and how he was arrested (and what he had on him at the time). I trust he is being well-looked-after while being questioned. Let is also be remembered that Zahi Hawass several times assured us that he had talked to the theves (in the plural in both English and Arabic) in military custody but there is no clarity about how and when he did this, or whether it happened at all.
It seems from the statement the two men are accused of stealing the items and not merely handling stolen goods. I hope the military trial will be open and that it will reveal more of the background of these sorry events.
Linking the NCBI taxonomy to BBC Wildlife Finder
A few weeks ago I spent some time mapping pages from the BBC Wildlife Finder to the equivalent taxa in the NCBI taxonomy. This seemed a useful exercise because the Wildlife Finder pages have some wonderful picture, video, and audio content, as well as other nice features, such as reusing Wikipedia page titles as "slugs" in the BBC page URLs. For example, the Wikipedia page for the Yacare Caiman (Caiman yacare) has the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacare_Caiman, and the BBC page has the URL http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Yacare_Caiman. Both share the slug Yacare_Caiman.
After adding these links to iphylo.org/linkout, where you can find them listed on the BBC category page, I've finally uploaded these to the NCBI, so now some 504 NCBI taxon pages have links to high quality multimedia from the BBC.
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"Jako by egyptská bohyně pořádku Maat zemi opustila"
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I do not speak a word of Czech, but it is similar enough to Polish to get the gist of the article "Bohyně pořádku opustila Egypt, píše archeolog Bárta z expedice", 14th March 2011: "Archeolog a šéf české koncese pro výzkum v Egyptě Miroslav Bárta odjel do porevolučního Egypta hned, jak to bezpečnostní situace dovolila. Na vlastní oči se přesvědčil, že rabování neunikly ani lokality, kde Češi dlouhodobě pracují. Jako by egyptská bohyně pořádku Maat zemi opustila""Like the Egyptian goddess of order Maat had left the earth" Some of the photographs of what has been happening at Abusir speak for themselves.
Five more objects are back to the Egyptian Museum
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The Luxor Times is reporting that five more objects are back to the
Egyptian Museum
This clearly shows that the object retrieved is the other sceptre in the updated list of missing items ("Inscribed Bronze Sceptre of Ankhusiri", Dynasty 30, page 38/42 from vitrine K in room 19). Also from vitrine K was the Osiris (note the difference in state between the Al-Ahram photo and that of the Cairo Museum 'missing' list, page 3/42). The otherf three objects were also from Room 19, Centre E, vitrine Z, the bastet figure (page 1/42 of the 'missing' list), the neith figure (page 9/42 of the 'missing' list) and the Apis bull (page 40/42 of the list).
This brings the number of items known to be still missing from the Egyptian Museum collection to 37. Dr Tarek El Awady, the Egyptian Museum director is quoted as saying: “the fruitful co-operation between the Armed Forces and the Police to retrieve the stolen objects give us hope that the stolen objects are still in the country and all authorities will do their best to bring it back to where it belongs” and he promised a special exhibition when the last missing object is retrieved showing the story of looting and how the objects came back. I'd like them to show the rope which it is claimed they used to get in and a demonstration of how they passed through the window panes of the skylight without dislodging the dirt up there.
Before we rejoice too much about this, it should be noted that all these items came from the same place as the previously-recovered twelve items. All this probably means is that the guys in custody are revealing where they stashed some of the other items they took, or perhaps led the police to another member of the same looting gang who broke into the cases in Room 19 and then Room 6. This does not necessarily get us anywhere near the identification and apprehension of the people who were active in the other two parts of the Museum (the other end of the second floor and the Amarna gallery). These objects are probably going to be much harder to retrieve than these seventeen. But let us not give up hope, I believe the Egyptian authorities "have ways" of getting information from their prisoners which may yet prove to be effective...
[Egyptian Museum: I know you are reading this. Can the next version of the objects missing' list - you ARE going to make one, aren't you? - actually have a TITLE (did they not teach you that at university?) and DATE incorporated in the document and have the pages properly numbered please? Alternatively, give the missing objects serial numbers please]
UPDATE: 28th March.
Here's a version of this story from Zahi Hawass' blog:
UPDATE 31.03.2011
It seems I owe Dr Hawass an apology. The list of newly-recovered items has been published, and right at the bottom of the form is the information "The object was confiscated by the army and police from a dealer on 27/03/2011, while he was trying to sell it". It looks like the story of the police looking for this guy in the urban warren of the Khan el-Khalili after a tip-off (which I admit I doubted) might be true after all, if so it would suggest that a member or members of the original gang who had looted the cases in Room 19 on the first floor of the Museum were still at large after the 'sting' ten days earlier and had decided to get rid of the stolen goods. How many other people have already done so without the purchaser alarming the police? So have the Egyptian police really got now another three looters in their hands? (Making seven in total?). If I am right in suggesting these people were just a splinter of the original group, how many people were in there on that night?
Another innovation in the latest list is that the Museum is now adding the information where the recovered item physically is in the Museum ("It was moved to R4 (the conservation lab) on 28/03/2011"). Good for them.
Sadly the corresponding updated list of items still missing still has no title or date of revision, or page/object numbers incorporated. Its just a loose sheaf of pages. Since this is the third version (and who knows how many more mutations this list will undergo before the year is out?) it is now getting very difficult to refer to them (which Osiris on which page of which version of the list are we talking about?).
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The Luxor Times is reporting that five more objects are back to the
Egyptian Museum The objects are 4 bronze statues of four gods and goddess including Bastet, Apis, Neith and Osiris besides the Bronze Top of a Sceptre in the Shape of the Goddess Hat-Mehit Wearing a Fish Headdress (Lates Nilotica). They are all in good condition except Apis statue which is broken into pieces but can be restored and put back on display.This is a bit odd, because the sceptre with the goddess wearing a fish was in the previous list of recovered items (page 3 of 12). Several other versions of the story say the broken figurine was a "ram". Fortunately the corresponding Al-Ahram story has a photograph.
This clearly shows that the object retrieved is the other sceptre in the updated list of missing items ("Inscribed Bronze Sceptre of Ankhusiri", Dynasty 30, page 38/42 from vitrine K in room 19). Also from vitrine K was the Osiris (note the difference in state between the Al-Ahram photo and that of the Cairo Museum 'missing' list, page 3/42). The otherf three objects were also from Room 19, Centre E, vitrine Z, the bastet figure (page 1/42 of the 'missing' list), the neith figure (page 9/42 of the 'missing' list) and the Apis bull (page 40/42 of the list).This brings the number of items known to be still missing from the Egyptian Museum collection to 37. Dr Tarek El Awady, the Egyptian Museum director is quoted as saying: “the fruitful co-operation between the Armed Forces and the Police to retrieve the stolen objects give us hope that the stolen objects are still in the country and all authorities will do their best to bring it back to where it belongs” and he promised a special exhibition when the last missing object is retrieved showing the story of looting and how the objects came back. I'd like them to show the rope which it is claimed they used to get in and a demonstration of how they passed through the window panes of the skylight without dislodging the dirt up there.
Before we rejoice too much about this, it should be noted that all these items came from the same place as the previously-recovered twelve items. All this probably means is that the guys in custody are revealing where they stashed some of the other items they took, or perhaps led the police to another member of the same looting gang who broke into the cases in Room 19 and then Room 6. This does not necessarily get us anywhere near the identification and apprehension of the people who were active in the other two parts of the Museum (the other end of the second floor and the Amarna gallery). These objects are probably going to be much harder to retrieve than these seventeen. But let us not give up hope, I believe the Egyptian authorities "have ways" of getting information from their prisoners which may yet prove to be effective...
Hat-tip to Christine Fößmeier for drawing attention to the Al-Ahram article
[Egyptian Museum: I know you are reading this. Can the next version of the objects missing' list - you ARE going to make one, aren't you? - actually have a TITLE (did they not teach you that at university?) and DATE incorporated in the document and have the pages properly numbered please? Alternatively, give the missing objects serial numbers please]
UPDATE: 28th March.
Here's a version of this story from Zahi Hawass' blog:
These five pieces were found yesterday with three of the criminals who broke into the museum. They took the five objects to Khan el-Khalili in order to sell them. A man at the bazaar told the criminals that he would pay 1500LE for the pieces. The looters said that the pieces were from the museum and worth much more than that price. After this, the man informed the police who apprehended the criminals.So they have another three looters in custody (making at least seven)? Anyone who knows what the Khan el-Khalili market looks like will wonder how informing the police and the arrest of these men looked in practice. Was this really how it was, or were these objects retrieved as a result of information received from the men already in custody? All very puzzling.
UPDATE 31.03.2011
It seems I owe Dr Hawass an apology. The list of newly-recovered items has been published, and right at the bottom of the form is the information "The object was confiscated by the army and police from a dealer on 27/03/2011, while he was trying to sell it". It looks like the story of the police looking for this guy in the urban warren of the Khan el-Khalili after a tip-off (which I admit I doubted) might be true after all, if so it would suggest that a member or members of the original gang who had looted the cases in Room 19 on the first floor of the Museum were still at large after the 'sting' ten days earlier and had decided to get rid of the stolen goods. How many other people have already done so without the purchaser alarming the police? So have the Egyptian police really got now another three looters in their hands? (Making seven in total?). If I am right in suggesting these people were just a splinter of the original group, how many people were in there on that night?
Another innovation in the latest list is that the Museum is now adding the information where the recovered item physically is in the Museum ("It was moved to R4 (the conservation lab) on 28/03/2011"). Good for them.
Sadly the corresponding updated list of items still missing still has no title or date of revision, or page/object numbers incorporated. Its just a loose sheaf of pages. Since this is the third version (and who knows how many more mutations this list will undergo before the year is out?) it is now getting very difficult to refer to them (which Osiris on which page of which version of the list are we talking about?).
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