Blogging Matters: Carnival Issues

Doug Rocks-Macqueen's Blogging Carnival has set a question for January: "What are your best (or if you want your worst) post(s) and why?".

Is the best post measured in the number of hits? Looking back over the last year Looting Matters receives on average 250-300 hits a day (excluding RSS feed viewing and email subscription). Yet some days there were 600-700 hits a day. (Note that due to other pressures it has not been possible to post on a daily basis.)

And what encourages 'hits'? It is clear that there are weeks when there are clusters of hits on a similar topic, e.g. 'The Getty kouros', and it looks as if there is a student essay deadline looming. Or LM can be used as a learning resource for research seminars.

There was a marked increase in visits when I was invited to collaborate with PR Newswire to write a blog post linked to a short press release.

Do blog posts lead to publications? LM is a research blog and ideas are worked into more formal printed publications. So for example, comments on the Princeton University Art Museum were turned into a longer essay. And ideas on the UK Portable Antiquities Scheme formed the basis of a forum piece for the Papers from the Institute of Archaeology.

Does LM have an impact? Commentary on "surfacing" antiquities have generated debate. One of the earliest, from the autumn of 2007, related to a piece of Lydian silver that was due to be offered at auction in London. The impact of LM on the proposed London sale of antiquities from an Australian "private collection" was also significant. LM's discussion of the Minneapolis krater drew attention to the unresolved nature of this piece.

Do I have a favourite? I suspect it is the case of advertising on London buses in the spring of 2009.

Do readers have a favourite LM post? Leave a comment and say why ...

Comments

Liz Marlowe said…

Agh! The bus hoax! Fool me once ...

9 January 2014 at 19:55

The scale of the returns to Italy

I have been busy working on an overview, "Returning Archaeological Objects to Italy". The scale of the returns to Italy from North American collections and galleries is staggering: in excess of 350 objects. This is clearly the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the material that has surfaced on the market without a history that can be traced back to the period before 1970.

I will provide more information in due course, but the researcher is a reminder that we need to take due diligence seriously when it comes to making acquisitions.

Stele returns to Greece

The Hellenic Ministry of Culture has announced (Saturday 8 September 2018) that a stele that had been due to be auctioned at Sotheby's in London in June 2017 has been returned to Greece (Friday 7 September 2018). The identification had been made by Cambridge-based forensic archaeologist Dr Christos Tsirogiannis.

It appeared that the stele had been supplied with a falsified history as its presence with Becchina until 1990 contradicted the published sale catalogue entry. It then moved into the hands of George Ortiz.

A year ago it was suggested that Sotheby's should contact the Greek authorities. Those negotiations appear to have concluded successfully.

The 4th century BC stele fragment, with the personal name, Hestiaios, will be displayed in the Epigraphic Museum in Athens. It appears to have come from a cemetery in Attica.

"Beating sites to death"

Policy decisions for protecting archaeological sites need to be informed by carefully argued positions based on data. Dr Sam Hardy has produced an important study, “Metal detecting for cultural objects until ‘there is nothing left’: The potential and limits of digital data, netnographic data and market data for analysis”. Arts 7, 3 (2018) [online]. This builds on Hardy's earlier research.

Readers should note Hardy's conclusion about his findings: "they corroborate the detecting community’s own perception that they are ‘beat[ing these sites] to death’".

Pieterjan Deckers, Andres Dobat, Natasha Ferguson, Stijn Heeren, Michael Lewis, and Suzie Thomas may wish to reflect on whether or not their own position is endangering the finite archaeological record.

Abstract
This methodological study assesses the potential for automatically generated data, netnographic data and market data on metal-detecting to advance cultural property criminology. The method comprises the analysi…

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