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Culture Without Context
Issue 5,
Autumn 1999
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- It was a
privilege for the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre to host over the weekend 22–25
October a symposium entitled: Illicit Antiquities: the Destruction of the World’s
Archaeological Heritage. Over fifty archaeologists, police officers, government
ministers and lawyers gathered to discuss papers on the looting of archaeological sites,
the size of the market, the culpability of museums and the legal problems that face claims
for restitution. The symposium adopted a resolution calling for an end to the collection
and trade of illicit antiquities and announced the formation of a Committee to work
towards the establishment of an International Standing Conference on the Traffic in
Illicit Antiquities (ISCOTIA) whose members will be drawn from governmental,
non-governmental and professional organizations worldwide.
- ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ is a principle
the trade is quite happy with when the provenance of a piece is in question, but far less
so when it is its authenticity. There are good financial reasons for this. A piece without
provenance may be worth less than one with, but an inauthentic piece — let us call it
a fake — is indeed worthless. But despite the best efforts of the trade fakes still
continue to turn up. Our attention is captured by high profile cases such as the
‘Getty Kouros’, an Archaic Greek statue which may (or may not) be authentic, but
more worrying perhaps is the entry onto the market of large numbers of smaller pieces.
Last year in the New Yorker for instance Alexander Stille told of a small factory
near the city of Xi’an, burial place of China’s first emperor Qin Shihuang (with
his famous terracotta army), where workers quite legitimately turn out replicas of the
ceramic soldiers, complete with signs of wear and added mud to make them look freshly
excavated. When Chinese archaeologists visited the United Kingdom recently to reclaim 3700
pieces of stolen archaeological material they rejected nearly 500 as fake.
- When a dealer guarantees the authenticity of a piece the
customer should ask for the evidence upon which the guarantee is based to be produced. Is
it a thermoluminescence date? Is it a properly recorded provenance? Is it the considered
opinion of an expert? If such evidence is not forthcoming then the piece should be
avoided. Indeed, in a recent issue of Biblical Archaeology Review Hershel Shanks,
not an extreme anti-trade figure by anybody’s reckoning, warned potential collectors
to stay out of the antiquities market altogether unless they were willing to risk
acquiring a forgery.
- An Italian request for import restrictions to be placed on
archaeological material dating from the fifth millennium bc to the fifth century bc was
discussed in October at a meeting of the US State Department’s Cultural Property
Advisory Committee (CPAC). The hearing was a lively one by all accounts as dealers and
archaeologists presented their respective cases. But the hysteria which surrounded the
event is hard to understand if the arguments of the trade are to believed. If, as they
maintain, nothing is now being smuggled out of Italy, and newly surfacing objects come
from legitimate collections around the world, why were they worried? Why did they even
bother to turn up and argue? Import restrictions after all would only apply to material
moved out of Italy after the date of any agreement. Perhaps, after all, there is some
smuggling going on. And perhaps the dealers know it.
- Meanwhile New York Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and
Charles Schumer have proposed an amendment to the 1983 UNESCO implementing legislation
with the aim, they say, of making the CPAC more public. It is a shame that their desire to
see an open society does not reach as far as the trade. It is, after all, the continuing
refusal of the trade to carry on its business in public which is the cause of all the
problems in the first place.
- Still, within a couple of years it will, hopefully, be
possible to read about British hearings in the editorial columns of Culture Without
Context. In October Parliament announced its intention to hold an inquiry into,
amongst other things, the advantages, disadvantages, requirements and consequences of
United Kingdom ratification of the 1995 Unidroit Convention on Stolen or Illegally
Exported Cultural Objects and the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and
Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.
Those who wish to draw attention to matters relevant to the inquiry should write to Colin
Lee, Clerk of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Committee Office, House of Commons,
7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA.
First posted March 2000; Page
design updated September 2006 |
