Monday 19 August 2013

Neil Brodie on the Antiquities Trade


Neil Brodie quoted on Larry Rothfield's blog ("Neil Brodie Stirs the Pot" Monday, August 19, 2013), in it he replies to this.
 I believe the problems of looting caused by the antiquities trade are ultimately caused by those who do the buying in the so-called demand or destination countries, and it is there that the solution lies. Calls for site protection sound to me very much like the trade and its beneficiaries trying to shirk responsibility for the damage caused while at the same time relocating guilt and inhibiting the development of more effective demand-focused policies. They add insult to injury. 
Hear, hear. There is a point there about Mubarak too which maybe I'll comment on later. 

4 comments:

Larry Rothfield said...

I do not think that Monica Hanna in Egypt or Donny George in Iraq, or any one of hundreds of others in countries being looted who focus part of their effort on trying to get their own governments or occupying powers to secure sites, could be accused of being on the side of the trade or relocating guilt etc.

Paul Barford said...

Well, I do not know about you, but I perceive a difference in individuals who suggest that cultural sites such as museums and monuments in Iraq and Egypt should be secured better in times of civil strife and war, and the suggestion that we need to mount a 24/7 armed guard from now till the end of time on every single archaeological site in every country in the world regardless of the wider political situation. One is just plain common sense, the other idealistically unrealistic and unworkable. I have discussed this, giving the range of costs likely to be involved in the case of one site (the Staffordshire Hoard field, still being looted http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2013/07/guarding-sites.html ) so far the advocates of 24/7 guards have not returned with costings of their own to show that what they propose is at all feasible. Until they do, you will excuse my scepticism.

Larry Rothfield said...

Hi Paul, for some reason I hadn't seen either your response nor your earlier post on the costs of site guards. I appreciate your trying to put a price on site guards, but as you yourself note, the figures for the UK are completely irrelevant to the vast majority of countries. In Iraq, according to the archaeologists I spoke with, the cost for a site guard to live on the site was something like $500. It might be higher now after a decade, but still nothing anywhere near the price you got. The bigger problem with your argument, however, is its assumption that proponents of site protection are suggesting guards on every site. That's far from the case. Rather, the idea is that we need to beef up the number of site guards while also at the same time beefing up the number of archaeological police and the technologies and transportation they need to police large areas effectively. We also need to beef up the number of police going after the dealers and collectors, I would add, and to make it easier for them to be prosecuted by changing laws.

Paul Barford said...

That's 500 dollars a year for one guy 24/7? Living in ad-hoc conditions or with proper facilities? Guards at minimum wages are next to useless, they could be bribed.

"Experts estimate that the number of archaeological sites in Iraq could be anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000" (Unesco courier http://www.museum-security.org/02/134.html).

I do not see that NOT putting guards on a certain percentage (twenty? Fifty? Sixty? Eighty?) of sites is in any way using a system of guards to "protect sites". All you'd be doing is shifting looting from one site to the nearest unguarded one.

Let's just take the last bit of what you said. Jeremy Gottalot Braghoard the NY collector may have in his flat a modest but 'encyclopaedic' collection of stuff looted all over the ancient world, Gandharan and Indus valley stuff from Pakistan, scarabs and shabtis from looted sites in Egypt, a cunie or two from Iraq, pots from Palestine and Cyprus, and illegally metal detected Roman coins from Bulgaria, France and Great Britain.

I'd say going after Braghoard and going (properly) after the dealers he patronised and prosecuting them by those "changed laws" is a damn sight more cost effective than relying on having "antiquities armies" in each of a dozen countries. Let's have investigation of the international links and handing the looters and smugglers over to national authorities to deal with - and they will.

But yes, let's have a beefing up and training of the local police forces all over the world too. Perhaps UNESCO (for want of anyone else) could be doing more to promote this.

 
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