Pompeii fresco stolen

Pompeii, Regio VI. Source: Google Earth

There are reports in the Italian news media that a fresco of Apollo and Artemis has been damaged and Artemis removed from Room 20 of the House of Neptune (VI.5.3) at Pompeii. An image of the fresco can be found here (Pompeii in Pictures: December 2007). It appears that the fresco was removed earlier in March.

The house was damaged by Allied bombing in 1943 during an attack on the nearby railway.

Presumably somebody thought that they could sell this documented painting on the market. Perhaps it would have surfaced as formerly in an "old European collection". Hopefully the publicity will mean that the fragment, measuring some 20 by 20 cm, will be returned.

The damaged fresco
with Artemis removed
Source: ANSA

This incident reminds us of the difficulty of policing such a huge archaeological site of such international importance.

It is worth remembering that North American collectors acquired fresco fragments that clearly had been derived from the area of the Bay of Naples, and that these have formed part of the returns to Italy. For further details see here.

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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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