Illicit Antiquities
Research Centre
against the theft & traffic
of archaeology

In the news

Jenny Doole

McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
Downing Street
Cambridge
CB2 3ER

Culture Without Context

Issue 8,
Spring 2001

Persian mummy confusion

Looting around the world

Destruction of Afghan cultural heritage

Greek police raids

Fakes and faking

Compiling data

International meeting

Mysterious deposit

Antiquities thefts

UK issues

Italian developments

Returns

Internet decision

Mexican enquiries

US concerns

Chinese concern

Telli arrested

Collection criticisms

New ICOM initiative

Sources

Issues of provenance

Persian mummy confusion

• It has emerged that a mummy seized from a house in Quetta, Pakistan in mid-October 2000 (see In The News CWC Issue 7) is a fake. It had been suggested the mummy was the remains of an ancient Persian princess possibly looted from the area or nearby, but reports indicate that it is actually the body of a 21-year-old woman mummified not more than two years ago. Oscar White Muscarella of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, told Archaeology magazine (Jan/Feb) that in March 2000 he had received four photographs of the mummy, with an accompanying letter, offering it for sale to the Museum and explaining that it had been brought from Iran to Pakistan by Zoroastrian families long ago. The Iranian government still wants the corpse back, while Pakistani authorities await the results of further tests.

• Meanwhile, in November 2000 Pakistani customs officials seized $10 million worth of twelfth- to sixteenth-century Balochi jewellery on a bus near Quetta, allegedly en route to Karachi for transport abroad.

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Looting around the world

• Officers from Ukranian special forces, with frustratingly few resources, are attempting to clamp down on the lucrative grave-robbing industry in the Crimea. It is estimated that at least $2 million worth of antiquities are smuggled west from the area annually, with some pieces stolen from Greek and Roman graves to order for private collections.

• Journalist Sarah Rooney, in a feature on looting of Khmer sites in Cambodia (Sunday Times magazine 6 January 2001), describes a journey to the remote temple of Preah Khan. A local tells her that the past few years have seen a ‘free-for-all looting season’ with thefts controlled by a high-ranking military officer who paid villagers about £16 per carving and selected specific items. The frenzied looting apparently continued until last year and only stopped because it seems there is ‘nothing left to steal’ at the gigantic temple.

• Archaeologists have reported extensive looting at a major Iron Age site discovered in Cambodia, Phum Snay (see Report from Southeast Asia by Rachanie Thosarat), which has destroyed hundreds of burials and important stratigraphy at the site.

• The New York Post (22 April 2001) reports Palestinians selling artefacts looted from the Temple Mount site. Amongst other antiquities mentioned are pottery fragments dating from around 700 bc illegally offered for sale for $100,000 and a carved stone menorah with seven branches for more than $1 million.

• Biblical Archaeological Review believes that the time has come for orthodox Jews to review their religious objections to the excavation of tombs which are in danger from grave robbers. Recent investigations have shown that some of the 1200 graves at the ancient cemetery of Qumran contain lead coffins and looters with metal detectors have been locating these, discarding bones in the process of extracting the coffins and smashing skulls to retrieve any coins which may have been placed on the eyelids of the deceased in ancient times. Hershel Shanks believes that Jewish religious law could be interpreted to allow excavation, by archaeologists, of graves which are at risk as long as the bones therein are reburied with dignity and respect.

• More than 300 Ming and Qing Dynasty tombs in Chuzhou District of Huaian City, Jiangshu Province, China were illicitly excavated by locals during March and April. Many important archaeological sites have been found and looted since water conservation developments on the Huaihe River began in 1999.

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Destruction of Afghan cultural heritage

• In March, as Taliban authorities ordered the destruction of the giant Buddhas at Bamiyan in the face of international opposition (see Editorial and statement from UNESCO), Mehrabodin Masstan, a representative of the Afghan opposition alliance said that, at the same time, the smuggling of pre-Islamic heritage from the country was gathering pace, adding ‘We are losing our past. This is yet one more tragedy for our country’ (Reuters 2 March 2001). It has been pointed out that no registry of Afghan antiquities exists and neither is Afghanistan a member of Interpol, making retrieval of stolen material even more problematic.

• The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas boosted interest in ancient Afghan heritage, and law enforcement officers in Pakistan said they were prepared for a fresh wave of smuggling.

• 10 truck-loads of pieces from the destroyed Bamiyan Buddhas were reportedly driven by middlemen to Peshawar, Pakistan, for sale in the town’s antiquities markets. A leading UK dealer in Pakistani and Afghan artefacts, George Bristow of Artique in Tetbury, said he had been approached by ‘one of his regular buyers in Peshawar’ with pieces which may be recognizable and joinable (The Telegraph 7 April 2001). He was also offered a nearly life-sized Gandharan black schist Buddha and other frieze fragments which he believed might have been of interest to the Victoria and Albert Museum but may already have been bought by a Japanese collector.

• Scott Baldauf (Christian Science Monitor 20 March 2001) describes his visit to an antiquities shop in Peshawar where, in a showroom behind a false door, the dealer offered a wide range of artefacts from an ancient Greek terracotta head to carved Buddhist altarpieces. Any size Buddha is procurable, but purchasers were advised that they might experience difficulties in smuggling bigger pieces through the airport.

It seems every antique shop in Peshawar has old-looking Buddhas on sale, but since more have come out of Afghanistan, and with fewer Japanese and European tourists visiting Pakistan as a result of trade sanctions, prices have fallen. Authentic pieces are now apparently worth less than some mass-produced reproductions.

• Investigators in London, a centre for the sale of illicit Afghan antiquities, believe there is a ‘loose network’ of low-profile dealers, working from home and selling mainly small, and therefore difficult to police, objects to collectors world-wide (The Observer 11 March 2001).

• The Art Newspaper (April 2001) and Sydney Morning Herald (30 December 2000) with help from Robert Kluyver from the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage (SPACH) take this opportunity to recap the development during the last few years of demand-driven, organized plunder of antiquities in Afghanistan. Specifically mentioned are:

• the museum of Tepe Shotor, on the site of a Buddhist monastery near the border with Pakistan, stripped ‘very professionally’ in a single day;
• looting of almost all the sixth- to eighth-century frescoes in Bamiyan;
• the Hellenic city of Ai Khanum, Bactria reduced to its foundations;
• a Buddhist statue from the central valley of Saighan, which had reportedly been sold for $95,000;
• a private collector in Tokyo who has allegedly bought several Gandharan reliefs looted from Kabul Museum (prices reach $1 million for a Buddhist schist panel);
• Nasirullah Khan Babar, formerly Pakistan’s minister for the interior, who admits purchasing one of the looted Begram ivories for $100,000, arguing that he holds it ‘in safe keeping’ although it has been alleged he may have been part of a scheme to sell the ivories back to Afghanistan.

Kluyver suggests that ‘professional’ looting only subsided as supplies of identifiable antiquities became scarcer, and that it was at this stage that ‘amateur’ digging escalated.

• James Cuno, Director of the Harvard University Art Museums, writing in The Boston Globe (11 March 2001) uses the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas to push forward the argument that ‘nationalist’ approaches have been less successful than ‘internationalist’ with regard to the protection of cultural heritage. He maintains that the Afghan government’s restrictions on trade and ownership of cultural property did not protect Afghan cultural heritage and the same is true of the situation in Italy, adding that such policies put world treasures at risk and create an illicit market for antiquities. He also urges an urgent rethink by the new US administration with regard to their position on bi-lateral agreements signed under the auspices of the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Cuno’s arguments were challenged in a subsequent letter from Claire Lyons of the Getty Research Institute (18 March 2001) who suggests that ‘the banner of universalism’ has sometimes been used as a cover under which some US museums have knowingly acquired looted antiquities, thereby providing incentives for continuing destruction of archaeological sites.

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Greek police raids

• February: Police questioned archaeologist Nikolaos Anayiotakis, following the discovery of about 7000 ancient coins and thousands of other ancient artefacts found in his home in Heraklion, Crete.

• March: Dimitrios Gerakis, a farmer from Marathon, was arrested under Greek antiquities laws and charged following the discovery, under one of his freshly-tilled fields, of a life-sized, one-ton, fourth-century bc, headless statue of Cybele seated on a throne. It is not known whether the piece was found there or had been reburied after removal from another findspot. Gerakis had allegedly been trying to sell the piece (estimated to be worth Dr100 million or $260,000) to police posing as dealers for many millions of drachmas.

• March: Police in Crete charged a German painter and Greek construction worker with alleged antiquities smuggling, after finding a wide range of antiquities — including carved stone seals, clay statues, bronze cups, coins, other objects and Byzantine icons — in their homes.

• April: After arresting Panagiotis Benos, Greek police confiscated one hundred bronze and two silver coins, dating to ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine periods, and third-century bc loom weights (one of clay, two of lead). Benos claimed he found them in a rubbish bin and was charged with possession of antiquities.

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Fakes and faking

• Michel Brent, writing in Archaeology magazine (Jan/Feb) stated that, since the 1980s, nearly 80 per cent of apparently ancient terracottas smuggled from Mali have been fakes. He interviewed a forger who said he had added the body and hind legs to a genuine fragment of a ram unearthed at Dary on the river Niger in 1986. Residents of the village confirmed the story. Brent claimed that the piece was auctioned at Sotheby’s New York in 1991, as part of the Kuhn collection (at which time a thermoluminescence test registered the piece as ancient) and it sold for $275,000. The same forger identified pieces of his skilled work in the collections of Baudouin de Grunne, the Barbier Museum (Geneva) and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Brent suggests various reasons for the marked rise in forgery of West African terracottas:

• collecting trends;
• publication since 1980 of photographs for forgers to work from in monographs, auction catalogues and art books;
• the relative ‘newness’ of the market which makes identifying forgeries more difficult;
• the recent emergence of ‘investor’ collectors, less knowledgeable about antiquities;
• and lack of care, especially amongst American buyers, in establishing authenticity.

• In a new book The Lie Became Great: the Forgery of Near Eastern Cultures, published February, Oscar White Muscarella highlights more than a thousand Near Eastern artefacts in museum collections around the world as possible forgeries. He condemns the existence of a ‘forgery culture’ in which he claims professors, curators, scientists, museum officials and trustees, dealers, smugglers, auction house employees, collectors and forgers all collude, and which results in museums sometimes knowingly displaying fake objects, donors of fakes receiving tax benefits, not to mention distortion of the archaeological record and our understanding of the past. Harold Holtzer of the Metropolitan Museum, where Muscarella works and where 45 suspicious pieces were pinpointed, strongly contests Muscarella’s conclusions. Among the interesting statistics Muscarella claims are that:

• 40 per cent of objects tested by the Oxford Thermoluminescence Laboratory are proven to be fakes;
• half the antiquities brought for sale at Sotheby’s are fake;
• 25,000 forgeries of ancient art enter the market each year.

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Compiling data

• During March and April, teams of archaeologists from the University of California and the University of Cambridge, England, in collaboration with Albanian colleagues, began an archaeological survey of an area of the western coast of Albania believed to be the location of the ancient Greek colony of Epidamnos. Jack Davis of UC, said that looting of archaeological sites throughout Albania makes this mission a urgent priority in order to identify ancient sites that should be studied or preserved.

• Canadian Heritage in Ottawa and Whitford Environment Ltd have brought together a team of archaeologists and cultural heritage experts to produce a report on the extent, nature and location of looting of archaeological sites and underwater wrecks in Canada, and connections with illegal export of archaeological resources. The research project, which will concentrate particularly on the last five years, follows reports of site looting and unauthorized trafficking of artefacts from professionals in every region of the country and will invite public participation.

• The TAY project (The Archaeological Settlements of Turkey) has created an online data base of Turkey’s archaeological sites. The project has been working for eight years to log the country’s archaeological heritage in the face of increasing threats from urbanization, agricultural activities, dams or illegal digging. Some sites have been completely destroyed. The World Wide Web site (http://tayproject.eies.itu.edu.tr/enghome.html) presents an interactive collection of inventories, maps, photographs and sketches and will, TAY hopes, be a model that other countries — especially in the Mediterranean area — will follow.

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International meeting

The 11th Session of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in Case of Illicit Appropriation was held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in March. The meeting looked at the cases of the Parthenon Marbles (currently in the British Museum), the so-called Bogazköy sphinx (currently in Berlin), and a report on cultural property displaced during WWII intending to establish a series of principles for inter-state settlements.

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Mysterious deposit

Following an anonymous telephone call, six fragments of Roman frescoes were found abandoned on the doorstep of London antiquities dealer James Ede, who immediately contacted the police. Rare examples from the first century bc, they were apparently the results of clandestine excavation, chiselled from the wall of a villa being excavated in Pompeii in the 1980s. Experts noted extensive damage, which presumably occurred during their removal. Major Ferdinando Musella of the artistic heritage protection squad in Rome told The Times (25 March 2001) that investigations led them to believe that the same pieces were discreetly offered for sale in London by an Irish businessman who apparently decided to abandon them as ‘investigative pressure’ intensified. Ede suggested that they were left at his premises because of his prominence in the London antiquities world.

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Antiquities thefts

• Pre-Columbian artefacts (valued at around $267,700 in 1996) have been stolen from a locked basement store below the Mary Couts Burnett Library at Texas Christian University. The 110 Aztec and Mayan ceramics — donated to TCU from the Moorehead Collection between 1996 and 1997 — were last seen in February 2000 and had been stored in plastic wrappings and boxes, which were left behind. Several remaining pieces were damaged.

• In March the British Museum confirmed that a marble hand was stolen from an ancient Greek sculpture in November 2000. The hand, which had been attached with a metal rod to the wall fragment from the Temple of Apollo, Bassae, was said to be worthless separated from the relief.

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UK issues

• On 14 March, at a meeting of the Institute of Field Archaeologists, the Rt Hon Alan Howarth, Minister for the Arts announced that the UK Government had taken the decision to accede to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property as soon as normal Parliamentary and other formalities have been completed.

He cited the publication of the Palmer report in December 2000 (see Editorial) as an important landmark in developing public policy in this area ‘not least because it represents for the first time a consensus between all those groups interested in the trade in cultural objects on practical measure to improve the current situation’. It has been agreed that the Panel should continue in existence to advise on how to implement other recommendations in the report.

• March: As the UK government lauded the success of the portable antiquities reporting scheme (a voluntary code encouraging England’s and Wales’ estimated 50,000 metal detectorists to report finds of antiquities to local museums) at the launch of the latest report on the initiative, some archaeologists expressed grave concerns. The report shows a 50 per cent rise in the number of objects reported (31,783) most of which were returned to their owner after passing through the recording process, and some bought by museums. The value of the scheme was clear in the case of objects that owners had thought of little interest but were of particular archaeological significance, or when reported finds led to the detection of undiscovered archaeological sites. But, as the Guardian reported (24 March 2001), archaeologists remain divided about the value of a programme which encourages metal-detecting, citing reports of massive night-time damage to sites under scientific excavation. Archaeologist Percival Turnbull pointed out the existence of ‘a sizeable criminal element, who not only loot and trespass, often on protected sites, but who routinely create false provenances for material’

• April saw the second antiquities sale hosted by up-market London department store, Fortnum & Mason, despite protests by leading archaeologists Colin Renfrew of the McDonald Institute, Cambridge and Alex Hunt of the Council for British Archaeology, who accused the shop of indirectly encouraging looting. Fortnum & Mason argues that the items on sale (supplied by dealer Chris Martin and his company Ancient Art) were everyday items, surplus to overstretched museums. Prices ranged from £30 to £20,000, with objects from Roman and Egyptian statues to Greek pots. Norman Palmer, chairman of the Ministerial Advisory Panel on Illicit Trade commented that, while there may be no legal objection to the sale, ethical buyers should think carefully before making a purchase. (The Times 2 April 2001).

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Italian developments

• January: Archaeologists in the United States were delighted when the governments of the United States and Italy signed a landmark agreement to protect pre-Classical, Classical and Imperial Roman archaeological material. The agreement — long resisted by the dealing fraternity, who have claimed it to be indecipherable, un-enforceable and anti-free trade (see In The News CWC Issues 5 & 7, and Editorial CWC Issues 5 & 6) — prohibits the import of such material into the US without an export permit issued by Italy or verifiable documentation that it left Italy prior to 23 January 2001, the date of the agreement. Prominent dealer in Mediterranean antiquities, Jerome Eisenberg said the agreement created a dealing minefield, telling the Washington Post (20 January 2001), ‘Nobody ever imports Italian antiquities from Italy. What kind of proof do I need if I buy something in Switzerland?’.

• Souren Melikian, reporting on the spring antiquities sales (International Herald Tribune 5 May 2001), suggests that the US/Italy agreement has contributed to a shift in attitude, in that ‘buying antiquities that might be suspected of having been illicitly dug up recently will henceforth be seen as a huge commercial risk’. He argues that this new mood outweighs the legal provisions of the treaty, extends beyond Italian material to the whole antiquities market and was evidenced by museums acquisitions from Christie’s, London where purchases by the British Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and others seemed suitably cautious.

• The Telegraph (8 April 2001) reports on increasing efforts by the Italian State to protect archaeological sites such as Vejo and Cerveteri from looters. Initiatives include evening stake-outs to catch tombaroli in the act and police helicopter patrols. Plans have also been announced for a detailed object ‘biography/passport’ to go with ancient artefacts, which will be necessary for legitimate sales.

• Christina Ruiz of The Art Newspaper (March 2001) filed a report on the life of a tombarolo who allegedly controls looting at the ancient Etruscan city of Veii. Among the details revealed were:

• He had trained with his father, also a skilled tomb robber and is now said to have a team of men working under him.
• He estimated that he had broken into several hundred tombs, on average one every ten days, to retrieve vases, statuettes, mirrors, ornaments, jewellery and other golden objects.
• Tombs (which take three men approximately two nights to break into, and must then be left for 24 hours so that fragile grave goods can oxidize and harden), if they have not been previously looted — either in antiquity or modern times — will yield about 30–40 vases in addition to other saleable artefacts.
• The tombarolo expressed some frustration at receiving ‘only 20 per cent of the profits’ on selling loot to middlemen — who are described as well-educated, establishment figures with international contacts — for low, fixed prices (which apparently keep supply steady), usually within 24 hours of the theft.
• Bronze items are more valuable than gold because they are easier to authenticate.
• Some farmers accept a cut of profits, but some apparently refuse to work with the tomb robbers for fear that illicit activity will encourage the State to protect the land and thus restrict agriculture.
• Objects are smuggled in containers carrying car parts, food or marble (with some marble blocks hollowed out, stolen works secreted in them, and then sealed with stucco).
• The carabinieri only come after the tombaroli if they receive a tip-off and treat them kindly because they know they are not the ones making the money.
• The tombarolo regrets the damage he has done to Veii, but feels there is no alternative way for him to feed his family.
• He has recently found a necropolis with hundreds of unexcavated tombs unknown to archaeologists.

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Returns

• In April archaeologists welcomed what was seen as the first major success of the US/Italy bi-lateral agreement. After what Col. Roberto Conforti, head of the Carabinieri, described as ‘hard bargaining’ (The Guardian 18 April 2001), the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California returned to Italy a second-century bust of a victorious athlete, copied from a fifth-century bc original by sculptor Polykleitos, which, it emerged, had been stolen soon after being excavated from Venosa, southern Italy in 1956. The Museum refused say who sold them the piece in 1996.

• 285 objects stolen from the Archaeological Museum of Ancient Corinth in 1990 and recovered in Miami in 1999 (see In The News CWC Issue 5) were returned to Greece in January. The FBI will continue to investigate the whereabouts of 11 pieces from the robbery still missing. A gang of Greek nationals (see In The News CWC Issue 6) stood trial for the raid, during which the museum guard was beaten and money stolen. The gang leader Anastasios Karaholios was sentenced to life imprisonment — the severest sentence ever passed for an archaeology-related crime in Greece — but has appealed. Two other gang members were acquitted, the trial of one continues, while another two, believed to be in South America, are being tried in absentia. Wilma Sabala (a friend of one of the gang), in whose Miami home the stolen antiquities had been stored, was convicted in New York in June 2000, after pleading guilty to interstate transportation of stolen property. She had given objects from the robbery to Christie’s in New York, where they were bought by Jerome Eisenberg’s Royal-Athena Galleries amongst others. Sabala was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment.

• The US District Court in New York ordered in March that the wall panel stolen from the tenth-century Chinese tomb of Wang Chuzhi in 1994 and impounded from Christie’s, New York when it was offered for sale in March 2000 (see In The News CWC Issue 6) should be returned to China — formalizing an agreement worked out between China, the US Government, Christie’s and the M and C Gallery who consigned the piece from Hong Kong. M and C Gallery claimed they been made the scapegoat, and that the case has cost them over one million Hong Kong dollars. They reportedly purchased the panel for two million Hong Kong dollars ($256,739) in 1999. Christie’s Hong Kong said the auction house generally made careful checks of ownership history.

• The Miho Museum, Kyoto, Japan (see In The News CWC Issue 2) in April announced that a rare statue of Bodhisattva (valued at around $830,000) in their collection was indeed the one stolen from a garden building in Boxing, Shandong Province, China in 1994 (see In The News CWC Issue 6). Although under no obligation to return the statue, since Japan has not ratified the 1970 UNESCO or 1995 Unidroit Conventions, the Museum presented the piece, which it claimed to have bought in good faith, to the People’s Republic of China. A museum spokesperson stated that the gesture was in keeping with their philosophy that ‘art plays a significant role in creating greater tolerance and peace in the world’ and China agreed to loan the piece for display in the Miho without charge until 2007 when a major exhibition is planned (New York Times 17 April 2001). Philip Constantinidi, a director of Eskenazi Ltd. London, who sold the bodhisattva to the Miho via an intermediary in 1995 expressed surprise at the return and told the New York Times that J.E. Eskenazi was travelling and could not be reached for comment. The statue was apparently purchased from another dealer whom Constantinidi refused to name.

• May: The Munich Museum announced its intention to return to Egypt a 3300-year-old gold decorated coffin (found in Tomb 55 in the Valley of the Kings, 1907) which had been donated by a Swiss collector in 1980. The coffin, but not its gold lid, had disappeared from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 1931 and will be seen in a Munich exhibition of art from the era of Tutankhamun in Munich later this year. The Museum will not ask for compensation for more than 200,000 DM spent reconstructing the coffin, which had been found in fragments.

• In May, New Scotland Yard was able to return a plundered piece to the Iraqi authorities in London. This was a human head in high relief, 50 cm high and 40 cm wide, which had been for sale in a London gallery and was identified by an Italian archaeologists as coming from the Parthian city of Hatra in northern Iraq, several of whose renowned sculptures have been plundered since 1990. On being informed of its origin the dealer handed the piece over to the police.

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Internet decision

January: In a ruling which was believed to have implications for antiquities sales over the Internet, a San Diego judge dismissed a lawsuit against eBay (see In The News CWC Issue 7), finding that the Internet auction house did not vouch for the authenticity of items for sale on its World Wide Web site. eBay states that, while it discourages fraud and reports it to the authorities, it cannot be held liable.

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Mexican enquiries

Mexico’s ambassador to Australia confirmed in February that he had written to the Art Gallery of New South Wales requesting information about the ownership history of two Pre-Columbian statues bought from a Sydney dealer in 1964: one a woman with outstretched arms, the other a woman holding a child and a bowl. He emphasized that this was part of a general investigation to inventory Mexican pieces in Australian institutions, and did not mean that all were taken in an illegal way.

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US concerns

• In October 2000 William Dean Jaques was sentenced to serve six months in a work release programme and five years of federal probation, banned from hunting archaeological artefacts on public or private land and fined $803.86 in damages after his conviction for looting archaeology on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Oregon — where sites range from 9000 to 200 years old. An elder of the Burn Paiute Tribe was pleased with the conviction, but said that federal laws should be strengthened as a deterrent, emphasizing that native American concerns run much deeper than the destruction of archaeological contexts. Jaques, who has a long history of looting convictions, claims he was surface-hunting arrowheads and doing nothing wrong, although refuge employees videotaped him digging for artefacts.

• February: Environmental managers at Riffe Lake, Washington, fear the theft of native American artefacts which cover the lakebed, large areas of which have been exposed following drought conditions. The situation is not expected to improve in the short-term.

• Authorities in Citrus County, Florida have reported a marked increase of looting on native American sites, which may be connected with the Internet since World Wide Web sites give details of where and how to retrieve artefacts. In recent incidents:

• more than 50 illegal holes were dug on a midden site (dating from 2000 BC–tenth or twelfth century AD) off the Withlacoochee river between Yankeetown and the Gulf of Mexico;
• five men were issued notices to appear in court on trespassing charges (which were later dropped by the land owner) after suspected digging of submerged sites on a private island;
• another investigation was launched in salt marshes in Bennett’s Creek, also off the Withlacoochee.

State archaeologist, Jim Miller, says such sites are popular because they are remote and yield large numbers of points and other tools and that when word gets out ‘literally dozens of the people’ show up the next weekend (St Petersburg Times 18 April 2001). The State has now begun enforcement initiatives in conjunction with the Coast Guard.

• Officials from the State Institutional Trust Lands, admitted late last year that they are not sure what to do about the theft of a boulder etched with prehistoric petroglyphs stolen during the summer from their lands in southwest Utah county by thieves who towed it off behind their all-terrain vehicle. The agency is seeking legal guidance on how to proceed with their investigation. Much ancient rock art from public lands in Utah has apparently been stolen or damaged in the past to be used in garden and interior design, and also by thieves who believe it marks the location of ancient gold mines.

• December, 2000: Ian Martin Lynch — who was sentenced in 1999 to six months in prison for looting the 1400-year-old skull of a child from the Warm Chuck Village and Burial Site burial site near Prince of Wales Island, southeast Alaska (see In The News CWC Issue 4) — has had his sentence overturned. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the authorities must prove that Lynch (who said at the time of his conviction that he never meant to anger the native American community in taking the skull from the eroded site) had been aware that the remains were archaeological resources and emphasized that Congress intended the law to discourage looting and grave-robbing by those seeking commercial gain.

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Chinese concern

Assistant Professor Wang Ycheng of the Institute of History, Chinese Academy of Sciences believes that a rare Han period bronze candelabra tree sold in New York City in late 2000 for a record $2.5 million may have been stolen in 1997 from a tomb in Wushan country, Sichuan province. Storage facilities and sites in the Three Gorges area have recently suffered extensive looting and Professor Wang Ycheng calls for urgent attention for the archaeological resources in the area.

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Telli arrested

The alleged smuggler who is said to have masterminded the removal from Turkey of the ‘Elmali Hoard’ (1900 fifth-century bc silver coins looted from Elmali, near Antalya: see In The News CWC Issue 4) and other important Turkish antiquities, has been extradited to Turkey from Switzerland. Having avoided extradition since 1985, when he was first taken into custody in Munich as a result of an Interpol bulletin, Edip Telli was arrested when he entered Switzerland in the mistaken belief that his arrest warrant had expired. It had in fact been renewed as a result of his alleged involvement with antiquities smuggling in Istanbul in 1991. Media reports in Turkey suggest that big players in the illicit trade have now rushed to Europe afraid of what Telli might reveal.

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Collection criticisms

The Toronto Star (28 April 2001) accuses the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa of taking ‘the principle of repatriated art to a zealous, unnecessary degree’ regarding their decision to turn down the bequest of the Tanenbaum Collection of about 1800 Chinese tomb artefacts (dating from 3000 bc to 1600 ad, and valued at Canadian $104 million). The decision was made when experts hired by the museum expressed concerns over the provenance (or lack of it) of about 25 of the items, and resulted in the Tanenbaums offering the collection to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto who, according to the paper, had ‘less shrill reservations. Essentially the ROM decided to put the artefacts on display and conduct the historical detective work afterwards’. Part of that detective work included Canadian $25,000-worth of scientific tests (carried out at the Ottawa Canadian Conservation Institute and in Oxford, England) on 50 objects, which have proved that at least 20 are fakes. The collection is now the subject of a major new exhibition at the ROM.

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New ICOM initiative

ICOM launched a new publication, Looting in Europe, at events in Budapest and Prague. The book is the latest in the important ‘One Hundred Missing Objects’ series which has highlighted looted objects and associated issues from Africa, Latin America and Cambodia.

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Sources

• Ad Week
• Agence France Press
• Antiques Trade Gazette
• Archaeology magazine
• The Art Newspaper
• Associated Press
• Athens News
• BBC Breakfast News
• BBC News
• Beijing Youth Newspaper
• Bergen Record
• Biblical Archaeology
• Review
• The Boston Globe
• Channel 6000
• Chicago Tribune
• Christian Science
• Monitor
• Cultural Heritage Watch
• The Dawn
• Department for Culture,
• Media and Sport
• Egyptian State
• Information Service
• EurekAlert
• Charles Higham
• Inside China
• International Herald
• Tribune
• International Rivers
• Network
• Kathimerini
• Los Angeles Times
• Minerva
• Museum-security.org
• National GeographicNews
• New York Post
• New York Times
• St Petersburg Times
• Sydney Morning Herald
• The Guardian
• The Observer
• The Oregonian
• The Salt Lake Tribune
• The Sunday Times
• The Telegram St John’s Newfoundland,
• Canada
• The Telegraph
• The Times
• The Toronto Star
• University of
• Pennsylvania
• US State Department
• U-WIRE
• Washington Post

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First posted September 2001; Page design updated September 2006