Looting Matters

Verity Anthony from @RomanBathsBath on the Beau Street Hoard #SMA2014pic.twitter.com/sj5baE3cg7
— David Gill (@davidwjgill) November 6, 2014
It was encouraging to hear last week from Verity Anthony about the Beau Street Hoard. The hoard was discovered in 2007 during excavations in Bath by archaeologists from Cotswold Archaeology. As a result we know the precise context:
The mass of fused coins lay in a right angle created between the walls of a Roman building (probably the corner of a room). It was tightly packed in on the other sides by two stones, forming a stone-lined chamber.  The  hoard was not removed until its 'full extent was established and its position accurately planned and recorded'.

Careful conservation work revealed the outline of the original bags in which the coins had been deposited. Sampling work was able to identify that the bags were made from 'skin product'.

The hoard itself contained some 17,500 Roman coins, originally deposited in 8 bags.

The Bea…

Neil Wilkin on crowd sourcing the British Bronze Age #micropastspic.twitter.com/K9DUeZAsQo
— David Gill (@davidwjgill) November 6, 2014
It was instructive to listen to Dr Neil Wilkin yesterday at the Society of Museum Archaeology annual conference. He was talking about the Micropasts project and the use of crowd sourcing. It was good to hear a discussion of the digitisation of the card files as well as the images from the Horsfield archive (see here).

At one point Wilkin appeared to have to defend the intellectual reliability of the data provided by PAS. I think that he is right to be cautious. How far can we trust the information supplied with the reported objects? Are these largely reported or "said to be" findspots? Is the PAS information triangulated by more secure information from the Micropasts project?

And what about all the unreported finds?

The Archaeological Institute of America has issued a statement about the sale of antiquities by the St Louis branch of the organisation ("New AIA Statement on the St. Louis Society", November 4, 2014). The AIA's Governing Body has highlighted three reasons why the St Louis branch should not sell (and I have restructured the format):

First, the objects from Egypt were entrusted to the Society by the British School of Archaeology in Egypt in 1914 for the benefit of the citizens of St. Louis and were intended to be placed in a public institution where they would be used for public education and scholarly study. Selling them breaks this fundamental commitment, now a century old. The citizens of St. Louis have been deprived of part of their legitimate heritage. Second, the objects were obtained by division from an authorized excavation, thus enhancing their scholarly and educational value. Such objects should remain in the public domain, not sold off in a manner that risks rem…

Jason Felch has reminded us of the impact of toxic antiquities on museums. This time he has looked at the collection of Greek pots at Haverford College. The collection was derived from George Allen who worked for Hecht's Hesperia Art in Philadelphia. Interestingly one of the pieces looks like it comes from a known looted temple in Turkey (but we need to wait for Felch's publication).

This story will be making very uncomfortable reading for other museums that acquired objects from Hesperia Art - and not just in North America.

I have been working through some of the names associated with the Salisbury Hoard (through Ian Stead's 1998 volume). He has a section on an Arnold Saslow:
An American dealer, Dr Arnold Saslow, had bought two axes from Martin, and my [sc. Stead's] letter to him provoked a furious response. He was one of the largest coin dealers in the USA, and had bought the axes at a fair at which he had probably spent $10,000 — how could I expect him to know what he had purchased from Martin! It would seem that American dealers do not have to keep strict records, unlike their British counterparts, and one got the impression that export licences were of little concern to someone as important as Dr Saslow. Dr Saslow's name occurs in one of my earliest essays on the market: a review article, written with my then colleague Kevin Butcher, for Antiquity 64 (1990) 946-50 [online]. The subject was the first set of numbers for Minerva: the international review of ancient art and archaeology (first…

I have been doing some work on the Icklingham bronzes that were apparently removed illegally from a Suffolk field. Neil Brodie, then in Cambridge, wrote a rather good letter in response to Peter K. Tompa (Washington Post 9 November 1999; with response 5 December 1999). Brodie talks about the Icklingham bronzes that "were illegally excavated and smuggled out of the United Kingdom and now are owned by an American collector". Brodie contrasted the Italian approach to that adopted in Britain: "At a recent conference held to discuss these issues, delegate after delegate from around the world expressed amazement at the British system, which allows the private excavation of antiquities and which, in the words of one participant, condones systematic looting."

Tompa did respond to Brodie (Washington Post 23 December 1999) and accepted that the Icklingham bronzes was indeed an "incident".

There are several things to note looking back at this exchange in 2014.

First…

Context helps to explain archaeological material. There is information about the specific location, the stratigraphic relationship with other objects, and the association with related material. 

It is easy for archaeologists to document the looting of archaeological sites. And the Medici Dossier, the Becchina Archive, and the Schinoussa Images have made it possible to identify objects that have entered the market.

But we also need to consider the limitations of discussing such 'unexcavated' objects. Chris Chippindale and I explored some of the issues relating to Cycladic figures, and I have published a study of the intellectual consequences of acquiring the Sarpedon krater. I will be exploring further issues at a seminar in Cambridge this week.

Among the areas that the seminar will consider are:

Athenian red-figured pots attributed to the Berlin painterEtruscan architectural terracottasApulian cavalry armourApulian potteryClassical bronze statuesThe Icklingham bronzesThe '…