Looting Matters

Sir John Boardman (in Eleanor Robson et al. [eds.], Who Owns Objects [2006]) recently suggested that current legislation over the protection of cultural property has created:
"The denial of the right of persons or museums to acquire antiquities which are not demonstrably stolen or the result of plunder, since most are only so deemed, not proved."What does he mean? Does somebody have to be present at the time the archaeological site is raided?

Nigel Spivey has pointed out the problem with that course of action by quoting Professor Mauro Cristofani.
"And what will you do ... when staring down the barrel of a sub-machine gun?"Is it enough to have photographs or Polaroids of, say, Athenian red-figured pots that are still covered in dirt? Does that imply that the objects were fresh out of the ground? And, if they were not excavated by archaeologists, can they be considered to have been "demonstrably stolen"?

Or what about a site where the bases of statues survive …

One of the striking pieces of sculpture in the exhibition, Glories of the Past: Ancient Art from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection, was a marble "Statue of Herakles resting, perhaps contemplating Telephos" (no. 172). It seemed to be a second century CE copy of a fourth century BCE statue.

Unusually there were two owners. The sculpture was partly owned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (1981.783), and partly by Leon Levy.

The catalogue statued that Boston had been presented with this part of the fragmentary statue in 1981 by the Jerome Levy Foundation (established by Leon Levy). However this has now been clarified:
"Gift of Leon Levy and Shelby White and Museum purchase with funds donated by the Jerome Levy Foundation, 1981"
Although the exhibition catalogue provided no hint of a find-spot, it did speculate,
"The Levy statue (or group ...) might have stood in a small public building, such as an urban bouleuterion, or a gymnasium-bath complex ..."The …

I was enjoying my post-lunch cup of tea while reading the paper. As I moved into the world section I noticed colour images of gold plate from the famous Panagyurishte Treasure found by chance in 1946 and now in the Plovdiv Archaeological Museum, Bulgaria. The piece by Malcolm Moore was about looting: "Tomb raiders strip Bulgaria of its treasures" (August 29, 2007).

There are some startling figures (for what they are worth):

a. "Tomb-raiding" in Bulgaria is worth an estimated £4 billion a year.

b. 16,000 artefacts have been seized since October 2006.

c. An estimated 30,000 individuals are involved in "tomb-raiding".

d. One consignment of 100 antiquities was intercepted in a lorry heading for Germany last Friday (August 24).

However it was reassuring to find that this "blog" had got there first on one issue, The Stanford Place Dish. Moore reports:

"Last November, Christie's in London was forced to withdraw a Byzantine plate after a complaint fro…

One of the most important studies of the scale of looting in Southern Italy has been conducted by Professor Ricardo Elia of Boston University ("Analysis of the looting, selling, and collecting of Apulian red-figure vases: a quantitative approach." In Trade in illicit antiquities: the destruction of the world's archaeological heritage, edited by N. Brodie, J. Doole, and C. Renfrew, pp. 145-53. Cambridge: McDonald Institute, 2001). Elia quantified the recent surfacing of Apulian pottery and suggested that perhaps as little as 5.5% of the corpus had come from scientific excavations. (Compare this with the figure for Cycladic marble figures where some 85% of the funerary record of the Early Bronze Age has been lost, i.e. only 15% either came from scientific excavations or had been provided with some sort of reported find-spot.)

Elia's study was cited as the first of three case studies --- the other two were on Cycladic figures and hoards of Greek coins --- in the final re…

Recently I suggested that there was much "huff and puff" in the discussion over the issue to include coins in the treaty with Cyprus.

I am glad to see that there is commonsense coming from the Coin Forum ("US imposes restrictions on importing Cypriot coins", on July 18, 2007):

"Trying to demonize the archeologists, museum people, and governments of source countries who genuinely believe that private ownership of old coins and artifacts leads to the destruction of historical sites and historical knowledge just turns people off, I believe. There are grains of truth in their arguments, even if their argument as a whole are wrong. We need to be credible. We're the good guys. Right now we're losing the debate and being seen as the bad guys."

Can we stick to the issues?

What are the material and intellectual consequences of collecting? That is where the debate lies.

There have been various unhelpful comments circulating about the decision to include coins in the agreement with Cyprus.

There was a public invitation to comment posted by the Archaeological Institute of America on January 28, 2007:

The Cultural Property Advisory Committee at the U.S. Department of State is asking for additional public comment on the inclusion of ancient coins in the Cypriot request for import restrictions

I was one of those who wrote to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (on January 31, 2007) concerning this issue. (For the AIA response.)

In the interest of transparency I include the core of my letter here:

I am writing to comment on the issue of whether ancient coins should be included as part of the agreement between the US and Cyprus. ...

It is clear that a considerable amount of newly surfaced archaeological material appearing in sale rooms and galleries (our research suggests a figure of some 85-90 per cent) has no previous history. Ancient coins, whether foun…