In Every Backyard

An Archaeologist in Every Backyard?

http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2012/03/archaeologist-in-every-backyard.html

by Peter Tompa

From the looks of it, the archaeological establishment wants an archaeologist in every backyard to make sure you are not excavating anything of historical value on your own land: See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/arts/television/spikes-american-digger-draws-concern-from-scholars.html?_r=2&hpw

The Spike TV show "American Digger" takes place on private land, but that is of little moment to Susan Gillespie, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida. She is quoted as stating:

“Our main issue is that these shows promote the destruction and selling of artifacts which are part of our cultural heritage and patrimony.”

But Spike TV's star, Ric Savage, counters that,

“I’ve been a digger my whole life,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday. “But I never had the funds to get the right kind of detector or the time to go out and do it.” After he retired from wrestling more than a decade ago, he devoted himself to digging. “When you find something of value and hold it in your hands, that’s what it’s all about for me,” he said. “It’s about touching history. You can read or watch history, but the only way you can touch or feel it is to dig it out of the ground.”

That’s about what the anthropologists and archaeologists would say as well. They just argue that this sort of entrepreneurial artifact hunting is antithetical to the more straightforward goal of preserving the past. And also that shows like this could, as Dr. Gillespie put it, “encourage people to dig not on private property” but on federal land, battlefields and American Indian burial grounds.

Mr. Savage said he avoided such areas. He seeks out private property, makes a deal with an owner to, say, dig up his yard or pool, and split with him the proceeds from the finds. Before any dig takes place, his team, led by his wife, Rita Savage, researches the historical record of an area, compares period maps with contemporary maps and makes a guess about sites where something of value might be found.

That value is mainly derived from what private collectors might pay. For example, Mr. Savage, a Civil War buff, said that buttons from Confederate uniforms are so plentiful that museums have boxes of them that they no longer bother to put on display. But a private collector might still pay him several thousand dollars.

“I’ve been a digger my whole life,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday. “But I never had the funds to get the right kind of detector or the time to go out and do it.” After he retired from wrestling more than a decade ago, he devoted himself to digging.

“When you find something of value and hold it in your hands, that’s what it’s all about for me,” he said. “It’s about touching history. You can read or watch history, but the only way you can touch or feel it is to dig it out of the ground.”

That’s about what the anthropologists and archaeologists would say as well. They just argue that this sort of entrepreneurial artifact hunting is antithetical to the more straightforward goal of preserving the past. And also that shows like this could, as Dr. Gillespie put it, “encourage people to dig not on private property” but on federal land, battlefields and American Indian burial grounds.

Mr. Savage said he avoided such areas. He seeks out private property, makes a deal with an owner to, say, dig up his yard or pool, and split with him the proceeds from the finds.

Before any dig takes place, his team, led by his wife, Rita Savage, researches the historical record of an area, compares period maps with contemporary maps and makes a guess about sites where something of value might be found.

That value is mainly derived from what private collectors might pay. For example, Mr. Savage, a Civil War buff, said that buttons from Confederate uniforms are so plentiful that museums have boxes of them that they no longer bother to put on display. But a private collector might still pay him several thousand dollars.

Is the archaeological establishment's campaign really about preserving artifacts or is it instead motivated by snobbery, self-promotion and a desire for control?

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COMMENTARY

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> Is the archaeological establishment's campaign really about preserving artifacts or is it instead motivated by snobbery, self-promotion and a desire for control?

Well, really. Does anyone think Tompa doesn't know the answer to this rhetorical question?

Which doesn't really go far enough. Events in Germany have shown what excesses doctrinaire archaeologists are capable of, and how far divorced from social responsibility (and ordinary human decency) such zealots can become. See

http://classicalcoins.blogspot.com/2009/02/die-wacht-am-rhein.html

and

http://classicalcoins.blogspot.com/2010/06/krombach-case.html

Dont think that "It can't happen here." If the Kouroupas regime at the State Department's Cultural Heritage Center should ever get a free hand, that and worse would indeed happen here.

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No Safe Harbor

More Evidence 1970 No Safe Harbor

http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2012/03/more-evidence-1970-no-safe-harbor.html

by Peter Tompa

Turkey's demand that the Met return artifacts from a collection formed as far back as the 1960's again demonstrates that 1970 is no safe harbor for museums as the AIA claimed to induce the AAMD to accept a 1970 provenance rule for new acquistions. See http://chasingaphrodite.com/2012/03/20/exclusive-turkey-seeks-the-return-of-18-objects-from-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art/

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COMMENTARY

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The "1970 provenance rule" is of course not likely to satisfy Turkey or any other "source nation" seeing advantages in securing the return of artifacts from foreign collections, whether or not any legal basis for repatriation exists (in this case it does not).

The appetite of these nations for amassing artifacts seems to be endless.

On the other hand, their appetite for properly caring for artifacts seems never to have gotten started.

It's all domestic politics of course , and it's abysmally unclear why law-abiding US citizens should be inconvenienced (or even dispossessed of their rightful property) so that unscrupulous foreign politicians can find political cover.

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Association of Greek Archaeologists

Greek antiquities at risk as budgets shrink, economy falters

http://www.pri.org/stories/politics-society/government/greek-antiquities-at-risk-as-budgets-shrink-economy-falters-8929.html

by a Public Radio International staff writer

Greece's antiquities are being stolen at an increased rate as Greek budgets shrink — especially those for security around cultural sites. Greece's archaeologists are turning to the public for help in keeping the country's heritage top of mind as budgets get cut.

"Monuments have no voice. They have us." That was the message from the Association of Greek Archaeologists at a news conference in Athens Wednesday.

Despoina Koutsoumba, head of the association, said the Greek government is failing to protect Greece’s cultural heritage, leaving the country’s antiquities up for grabs. “We don’t sell our cultural heritage, our history or our dignity,” Koutsoumba said. “These are things that are not for sale.”

Greece’s economic woes have forced the country to adopt tough austerity measures, resulting in severe budget cuts. Last week, staff at Greece’s culture ministry took to the streets in front of the National Archaeological Museum. They warned that the austerity programs were hurting their work.

Maria Tzagkarak, sitting at a museum cafe that same day, recalled that she'd recently lost her job as a museum guard. She said she and her friends, also former guards, come here regularly to press for 10 months of back pay. “They are unpaid for months, and that is a great problem,” Tzagkaraki said. “I’m waiting for more thieves in the museums, but they don’t care.”

One group that said it does care about the theft of Greece’s heritage is the Police Antiquities Squad. Dimos Kouzilos, a deputy director, worked narcotics for 17 years before joining the squad. He said he fell in love with the work immediately. Kouzilos said Greece’s troubles are definitely causing an increase in lootings and robberies. “The economic crisis is driving more people to commit crimes,” he said.

Just last month, masked men with guns took dozens of items from the museum at ancient Olympia. There was also a theft of a painting from Greece’s National Gallery of Art. Kouzilos said both incidents are “open wounds.” “But I swear to you,” he said, “both cases will be solved.”

Jack Davis, director of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, said Greece is a place where you can find an antiquity on every corner.

“They’re everywhere,” he said.

When you walk through the agora, the ancient Greek market, you start to realize how hard it is to safeguard Greece’s antiquities. The agora is one of more than 1,000 officially listed archaeological sites spread out across all of mainland Greece and myriad islands.

Davis said small-scale looting and black-market trading has always been a problem in Greece. But in recent years it’s gotten worse. “There are gangs operating throughout the Mediterranean, criminal gangs who systematically loot archaeological sites and smuggle finds outside the borders,” Davis said.

The collectors who are driving the demand these days are mostly from the Far East and Middle East, and they have no interest in putting the works in museums, Davis said. “I can’t document this, but we know that there are significant private collections that are maintained secretly, never put on display and only shown to a privileged few friends," he said. "So you never become aware that particular individuals have these particular materials.”

Whenever an antiquity disappears from Greece, something more than the object is lost, said Nikolas Zirganos, an investigative journalist who’s written extensively on the illegal trade in antiquities. “We lose very valuable information, because we don’t know this masterpiece. We can’t study the scene, we can’t study in a proper way the society that created this masterpiece," he said.

Zirganos praised the work of the Greek antiquities squad. But he said more needs to be done to go after the collectors who are driving the demand.

Kouzilos agreed but admitted his own department is feeling the economic pinch right now. There have been a lot of cuts, Kouzilos said, even to wages.

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COMMENTARY

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The International Association of Greek Archaeologists Wednesday unveiled a campaign to try to rally support around preserving Greece's ancient artifacts — despite tough budgets. Posters and photos from the campaign [very interesting] may be viewed at

http://www.pri.org/thumbnail.php?file=/Screen_Shot_2012_03_14_at_9.42.27_PM_202908912.png&size=tpl4028_article_small

The measures that the International Association of Greek Archaeologists is campaigning for should be enthusiastically and generously supported by antiquities collectors and antiquities dealers worldwide. In this observer's opinion, they can do nothing but good. Already this campaign is helping to increase public awareness of the vulnerability of Greek cultural heritage, and the importance of safeguarding Greece’s antiquities and protecting that nation's more than 1,000 archaeological sites.

I urge every reader to join me in contributing generously to this worthy cause. The letter accompanying the donation was sent to the Greek Embassy in Washington, and may be viewed at http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/oIdqTwSIWvmMDmfUXFGNlZpg969Fqvy1iFOEQp0BOWDvjf72X7w84U1LxfS7qf6_nW48_P5ozwhidTQ4lmGXSw/Donation%20to%20SEA.pdf .

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AIA Cyprus hearing summary

Selective Memory

http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2012/03/selective-memory.html

by Peter Tompa

Months after the fact, the AIA has produced this highly selective and rather condescending account of what happened at the CPAC meeting to discuss the renewal of the current MOU with Cyprus. http://archaeological.org/news/advocacy/8558#Oral%20Comment

For a far more complete and hence accurate summary, see my own here: http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2012/01/cpac-meeting-on-renewal-of-mou-with.html

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COMMENTARY

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Peter Tompa's summary was laudably comprehensive, objective and unbiased -- especially when compared to that of the AIA. Like almost everything else the archaeology establishment puts out on the subject of private collecting (and their relentless efforts to suppress it), their own summary was mere special pleading and as such, very far from being objective, balanced or fair.

Isn't it ironic that those whom archaeologists view as being the damnable villains whose immoral and unethical collecting of antiquities (in flagrant contravention of the ethical code to which archaeologists subscribe) is, according to Renfrew and Elia, the root cause of looting, can discuss the subject in an open, sensible and fair manner, while archaeologists trapped by their prejudicial jargon [ see http://classicalcoins.blogspot.com/2012/03/glamorization-of-looting.html ] appear to be incapable of doing so objectively? Or indeed, of uttering anything at all on this subject that makes any real sense?

More grist here for the mill of those who deny that archaeology is a genuine science, and contend that archaeologists do not follow the scientific method -- or observe proper scientific rigor in "proving" their theories. [ see http://classicalcoins.blogspot.com/2012/03/archaeologists-and-their-pretensions.html ]

The pretensions of archaeologists are nowhere revealed as more unreasonable and flagrant than when they presume to instruct the rest of the world as to what is moral and immoral based upon their own archaeocentric viewpoint. The jargon in which their preachings are stated ascribes immorality, criminality and social irresponsibility to conduct which (according to the laws, social attitudes and standards of ethics prevailing in normal democratic societies) is in reality moral, lawful and socially beneficial.

I have in the past referred to such a perspective as "living in Wolkenkuckucksheim (Cloud Cuckoo Land) -- see "Emperor Barford" in http://classicalcoins.blogspot.com/2011_11_13_archive.html ." It does appear that archaeologists have indeed created their own imaginary archaeocentric world, in which their perspective alone governs, and "archaeologese" is the only language spoken.

Perhaps they are compelled by their pretensions and delusions to live in that strange fantasy world, but no one else has to join them in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

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