The Massacre of Mesopotamian Archaeology
From: dwelsh46 (dwelsh46_at_cox.net)
Date: 09/26/04
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Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 16:12:10 -0700
Readers of this NG should be aware of the debate over antiquities
collecting.
More unfavorable (and biased) publicity about site looting:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=8536
If you read the factual information in this slanted report carefully, it's
quite clear that the average Iraqi has little or no interest in archaeology,
and apparently no respect at all for antiquities laws that are not enforced
on the spot by someone carrying a weapon.
This sort of report makes it easier to understand why archaeologists focus
their attention on suppressing antiquities collecting: because they think
that this might be possible. Clearly they have given up on the possibility
of controlling the behavior of people living in what are referred to as
"source states." In justice to their point of view, that does seem to be
about as feasible as preventing ants from getting at the contents of a
picnic basket. A massive slaughter of offenders would accomplish the goal,
but our view of morality will not permit such an approach (although Sadaam
Hussein had no difficulty with it).
There is something very wrong with a world view in which bloody-handed
authoritarian rule, as the Baathist regime practised in Iraq, is viewed as
preferable to democracy because archaeological interests are preserved.
There are no easy answers in this situation. What is happening to
archaeological sites in Iraq is a great tragedy for archaeology, but
everyone, including archaeologists, seems to agree that even this situation
does not justify guarding the sites with thousands of troops and shooting
looters on sight, which is probably the only tactic that would work.
Archaeologists who focus their outrage and sense of helplessness in the face
of this devastation on antiquities collectors should pause for a moment.
They should think about the moral implications of their assault on
collectors and antiquities dealers. Two wrongs do not make a right. The end
does not justify the means. Demonizing collectors, seeking to destroy the
legitimate antiquities trade and to make it impossible to collect
antiquities in order to control site looting, is not the right thing to do
simply because it seems (to uncritical minds) to be possible. Antiquities
collectors and dealers are not swarming over archaeological sites to loot
them. They collect and deal in unprovenanced antiquities only because there
is presently no alternative that is available to them.
Archaeologists and source state cultural ministries have no interest in
supplying collectors with provenanced antiquities and rarely if ever release
such antiquities into the trade. Millions of artifacts that are of no
importance to science, which collectors would treasure, take good care of
and pay well to own, lie unconserved, uncatalogued and inaccessible in the
basements and store rooms of museums whose inadequate staff cannot even keep
track of what is in the "collection." Such accumulations really are not
collections at all. Let us rather describe them as what they actually are.
They are hoards, and those who amass and keep them are seizing and hoarding
all antiquities that are found, under color of their archaeological
credentials and governmental authority.
This blind determination to prevent collectors from acquiring provenanced
antiquities is the only thing that sustains the unprovenanced antiquities
trade. It creates artificial scarcity, and that scarcity is what actually
drives site looting. Remove the artificial scarcity, make a reasonable
supply of provenanced antiquities available to collectors, and the market
for looted antiquities will collapse. It will be destroyed by the most
powerful of all laws: the law of supply and demand.
The ultimate tragedy in this looting is that it is all so unnecessary. It
could so easily be stopped if only archaeologists would open their minds,
allowing themselves to think rationally about it. The root cause of site
looting is not collecting, it is instead the scarcity resulting from the
determination of archaeologists and cultural authorities to prevent
collectors from acquiring provenanced antiquities. This anticollecting bias
has become so ingrained in archaeological institutions and cultural
ministries that it is treated as revealed truth in professional and academic
circles. Any archaeologist who publicly espouses a view that there is really
nothing wrong with antiquities collecting had better either have
professional stature as massive as Lord Renfrew, or desire to move into
another profession. The zeal and rigor with which opinion about collecting
that departs from the "party line" is suppressed is utterly
anti-intellectual. Edicts preventing anything whose provenance falls short
of AIA standards of purity from being published are, from a scientific
perspective, just as valid as "Aryan physics." Truth is truth. It will
eventually emerge no matter what repressive measures are applied by those to
whom political correctness is more important than knowledge. In the mean
time a great deal of irreparable and unnecessary damage is being done.
Ironically, the repressive laws anticollecting advocates desire would
without doubt be the worst possible approach. Should they foolishly be
enacted, they could not possibly have the desired effect, any more than the
Volstead Act had the intended effect. Like that simplistic attempt to
suppress normal, natural human desires, repressive antiquities laws would in
the first place destroy a time honored, presently legal trade. Instead of
being conducted by legitimate antiquities dealers who learn their trade over
many years and have extensively studied the objects they deal in, dealers
with considerable respect for the law even if a few sometimes evade it, the
antiquities trade would instead fall into the hands of ignorant mafias with
no respect for the law, and no compunctions about eliminating or
intimidating those who interfere with their illegal dealings. This would in
itself would be a great wrong, not only to those who collect and deal in
antiquities, but to the best interests of society as a whole.
Once the legitimate antiquities trade is destroyed, as the liquor and wine
industries were virtually destroyed by the Volstead Act, it will not be a
simple matter to recreate it. A great deal of knowledge and custom which
presently facilitate and control the flow and distribution of antiquities
through existing markets will be lost. In the black market that would
replace existing markets there would be none of the protections collectors
and institutions presently enjoy from forgeries and property thieved from
another collector or institution. Although existing protections are not
perfect, they are fairly reliable. The incentive to steal antiquities would
increase, and here is a second great wrong.
When it was finally realized (as eventually it would be) that the AIA and
other cultural property law advocates have no more power to change human
nature and natural human desires than Prohibitionists did, or King Canute
did to command the tide, cultural property laws will have become a joke.
They would be scoffed at and evaded by the general public just as
Prohibition was, just as such antiquities laws are scoffed at and evaded
today in "source states." The social consequences of this should not be
taken lightly. It would take a long time to repair that damage once sanity
finally prevailed, and some of it could never be restored. The breakdown in
public respect for law which resulted from Prohibition was disastrous, and
led to small time racketeers in a few big cities becoming the organized
crime empires that have plagued society ever since. Here is a third great
wrong.
When sanity finally did prevail, should measures such as the 1995 Unidroit
Convention and restrictive laws based on the 1970 Unesco convention be
enacted, when events then show that after all the initial "collateral
damage" to collectors these laws actually made the situation worse not
better, would the misguided advocates of such wrongheaded measures admit
that they had made a mistake and that a different approach is necessary?
History suggests such a realization is most improbable. The antiquities laws
will instead have failed because the public lacked faith, because collectors
were even more evil than they had been made out to be, because governmental
officials were corrupt, etc. There would be many plausible reasons found to
defend the thesis that if everyone had the true faith and lived righteously,
the failed laws would have succeeded. A desperate rearguard action would be
fought against their repeal, delaying it considerably, and when repeal would
finally be forced through there would be great bitterness on both sides,
with much resistance to any approach involving cooperation between
archaeologists and collectors. Here is a fourth great wrong: the obstacles
this mistaken approach would create for implementing something that could
actually succeed.
There is another way to do this, one that will succeed: by creating a
regulated legitimate market in provenanced antiquities. It is perfectly
feasible to do this, and the details can be found here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Unidroit-L/message/31.
When archaeologists and other advocates of repressive antiquities
legislation realize that their approach is wrong and that their goals can
only be achieved through cooperation with collectors, something like this
may be possible. Until then, collectors and dealers whose interests are
threatened by misguided repressive laws will continue to oppose them, as
they have every right to do. If that means that no action at all will be
taken and site looting will continue unchecked until every conceivable site
has been looted, then that is what will happen - so be it. It is a bad
situation, but even so it is not nearly as bad as what would ensue if these
pernicious laws were actually passed.
To archaeologists and others who demand repressive antiquities laws, and
find their goal of suppressing collecting is being frustrated while the
looting continues, remember that there is another way, a way that will
succeed if there is the wisdom to pursue it. I commend such zealots to dig a
little, and read the words Oliver Cromwell wrote in his letter to the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1650.
Dave Welsh
dwelsh46@cox.net
Unidroit-L Listowner
- Next message: Tedd Jacobs: "Re: how do modern day egyptians feel about the ancient egyptians?"
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