Why I am worried about AAMD's new "safe haven" protocols

Brian Daniels, whom I greatly respect for the important work he and his colleagues are doing to try to monitor and help Syrians safeguard archaeological sites and artifacts, is happy about the AAMD's announcement of safe haven protocols for antiquities from conflict zones. Here's Brian's facebook post, which many other fellow heritage protection advocates are retweeting approvingly:

"Quite possibly one of the most important developments in the field of cultural heritage policy in recent years. Not only does the AAMD declare its support for the 1954 Hague Convention, but it will treat objects in AAMD member museum safe havens as loans--not permanent acquisitions. (As such, a U.S. museum would need to follow U.S. law for an international museum loan to participate). The guidance outlined here is what framers of the 1954 Hague Convention had in mind for museums following World War II."

I cannot share this enthusiasm. Framers of the 1954 Hague Convention did not have in mind, objects dug up from archaeological sites by private parties, smuggled out of Syria to Turkey or Dubai and then bought up by dealers or collectors. There was nothing like the global market for illicitly excavated antiquities in 1954 that there is now. And the AAMD protocols, I worry, include provisions that will encourage more looting and smuggling of artifacts.

Here's the relevant section of the AAMD protocols, with the problematic language italicized:

II. The Source of Works In Need of Safe HavensIn the event of a terrorism occurrence or during an armed conflict or natural disaster, works may be brought for safe haven in the United States, Canada or Mexico from any depositor, assuming of course compliance with applicable law (see below).  Predetermining who may request such assistance in the abstract is not always possible, but may include the legal owner of a work, the agent for the owner, the bailee of a work, the custodian of a work, and a person or entity who comes into possession of the work and the owner is unknown, unavailable or legally constrained [sic] (collectively, a “depositor”).  Examples of a depositor are:

• Museums in the affected area that hold works;

• Governmental entities of or within the affected areas;

• U.S. government authorities who have seized works on entry to or in the United States; or

• Private individuals, companies or organizations who own or come into possession of works, whether in the affected area or after removal from the area.

Member museums should exercise caution to assure that accepting the request for safe haven will not violate the rights of lawful owners, subject the museum to a claim for return, reflect negatively on the reputation of the museum or cause the museum to be involved in any illegal or unethical activity.  Requests for safe haven and agreements to accept such requests should be documented where possible prior to movement of works to be transferred.

The garbled syntax in the first italicized phrase is a tell, indicating that this is an issue the AAMD must have been wrangling. With good reason. The last quoted paragraph above notwithstanding, the protocols give a green light to museums to accept as loans artifacts purchased from the networks that are paying looters to continue to dig, networks that in some cases are run by or beholden to ISIS. Those who purchase such blood antiquities will now be able to loan them to a museum, which will provide the buyers with a patina of legitimacy and museum approval that will increase the value of the artifact when it is returned to them. 

Taking as loans artifacts from museums, government entities, or seizures is an excellent idea. Taking as loans artifacts bought from the illicit market is a terrible idea.

, seeing it as marking a welcome albeit belated move that 

Is there a major antiquities collector out there willing to step up and fund these heroic efforts to save heritage?

Some young Syrians are putting their lives on the line to try to protect what they can of their country's heritage. It would be a wonderful gesture on the part of super-wealthy antiquities collectors if one or more of them seized this opportunity to demonstrate that they care about and are willing to do something about the destruction of heritage, by putting some money on the table to help these brave souls. Would the Cultural Property Research Institute, or Christies and Sotheby's, or the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art, or the American Association of Art Museum Directors, or the Getty, or intellectuals such as James Cuno and Kwame Appiah or John Merryman or Philippe de Monebello who speak for the values of collecting, or individuals such as Shelby White who have shown great generosity funding archaeological and art historical research and education, be willing to promote such an effort? Perhaps as the first recipients of an annual prize for such efforts, as has recently been suggested by Melik Kaylan (and as has long been offered, though without any money attached, by Saving Antiquities for Everyone).

Why Christie's Thinks It Can Find Buyers for Antiquities Lacking Pre-1970s Provenance

Nord on Art points out that the e-catalogue for Christie's upcoming London antiquities sale includes a number of items lacking in the pre-1970s provenance that museums belong to the AAMD should require for any objects they acquire, and that makes buyers more vulnerable to potential repatriation claims. 

For Wennerstrom, that Christie's thinks these items can be sold is puzzling:

as the repatriation of antiquities continues to make international news, one wonders why any potential buyer would consider acquiring works without clear datable pre-1970 provenance.

But there is really not much to wonder about here for two reasons. 

First, not all buyers care whether museums are some day going to be willing to accept donations of their artifacts. They are happy enough to acquire for themselves such beautiful objects, and perhaps eventually even display them in private museums; or they anticipate that eventually some solution to the problem of so-called "orphan" antiquities will be found and the very caring foster-parents who purchased these "orphans" will then be permitted to donate them. 

Second, the risk of having a repatriation claim brought is a calculated one for any buyer, and depends on several factors that may reduce it substantially: where the object's country of origin is difficult to establish that risk drops substantially, for instance, and the resources available to the country of origin are likely to be scarce, requiring them to focus on the highest-end objects and on repatriating items owned by countries, museums, or universities where leverage can be exerted in the form of threats to ban archaeological digs or exchanges. 

The continued saleability at auction of the kinds of items noted in the Nord post is only the tip of the iceberg. One can only imagine what goes on in the back rooms of antiquities dealers' shops where presumably the very highest-end provenance-challenged pieces are sold directly to collectors. But the key point here is that heritage protection advocates are deluding themselves if they think that the 1970 rule in itself is making much of a dent in the trade in non-archaeologically-excavated artifacts.

Hawass: No Tourist Police, No Army on Sites

In a very illuminating interview, Zahi Hawass at long last makes clear how little power he wielded, despite his high public profile as head of an agency employing 30,000 responsible for one of Egypt's most important sources of revenue. The military, which had been protecting sites until 10 days ago, has withdrawn, but the tourist police have not filled the security gap, and Hawass now explains that the site guards under his control are unarmed and therefore incapable of protecting sites from gangs of looters:

people come with guns. They stand in front of my security people, who run away, because they are not armed. In the past, Police refused to give them weapons.

Assuming things are as bad as he claims (and there is no reason to think otherwise, since many of the sad facts he adduces here have been independently confirmed already by archaeologists), Hawass is to be commended for resigning under these conditions, and for using his resignation to call attention to the failure of the transitional military government to continue military security on sites. 


What can be done now by those outside Egypt who wish to help that country secure its heritage during this unstable phase in the democratic revolution? The answer can't just be to issue public statements deploring what is happening and calling on the Egyptian authorities to protect sites, as the AIA/AAMD press release does. While necessary, that is unlikely to have much effect on its own. And while these organizations rightly call on their own members to provide expertise supporting Egyptian efforts to identify and reclaim missing objects, curators and archaeologists are not trained in site security. One thing that the AAMD's member museums could do, however, would be to pull together resources -- money and their own best security people -- to at the very least try to hire locals to secure the storehouses and sites connected to archaeological digs that they have been jointly engaged in with the Egyptians. This need not, and probably cannot, involve buying AK-47s for site guards, as was done by some institutions and individuals for a few dig sites in Iraq; but many other steps short of that are doable.


But only the Egyptian military can really handle the security demands. We know that the Egyptian military has longstanding and strong professional connections with the US military, and that archaeologists have participated in joint military trainings in Egypt such as the Bright Star exercise. We also know that the Smithsonian has been developing new and potentially extremely valuable interagency links to the US military, largely as a result of the initiative spearheaded by the Smithsonian's Richard Kurin to bring disaster relief assistance for Haiti's cultural sector after the earthquake. It is these networks of relationships that the archaeological and museum community needs to somehow tap into. 


That means, for starters, a focus on:

1. identifying and work contacts with the Egyptian military to urge them to deploy troops to secure sites.
2. identifying and working contacts within the US military to urge them to contact their Egyptian counterparts to express concern about the security vacuum on archaeological sites.
3. offering material support, not just in the form of archaeological expertise to put humpty dumpty together again, but also in ways that would make it easier for the Egyptians to secure and guard their sites. (Just to be clear: there is almost nothing the US military could do directly to help -- we have no deployable equivalent to the Italian carabinieri, and even if we did have such capability the Egyptian military would never countenance American troops being in a position where they might have to fire on Egyptian citizens. The support here would have to be in the form of financial and logistical support for whatever the Egyptian military says it needs.)

Cairo Museum Looting: A Wake-Up Call to Heritage Protection Organizations

Bad, but it could have been much, much worse. Photos here and here and here (thanks to Chuck Jones).


What is disconcerting is that it could have happened at all, given the fate of the Iraq Museum. One would have expected that Zahi Hawass would have anticipated some such eventuality and that the museum would have had the wherewithal to lock itself down. That does not appear to have been the case. 


This should be a wake up call. Right now, the national and international agencies and NGOs who make it their business to save our vanishing heritage -- the Smithsonian, the State Department's Bureau of Economic and Cultural Affairs, UNESCO's World Heritage Centre, INTERPOL, ICCROM, ICOM, AAMD, AAM, AIA, Blue Shield, World Monument Fund, Global Heritage Fund, World Heritage Foundation, the Getty, etc. etc. -- should be on the phone to museum officials in all countries where there is the chance of unrest, asking them if they have in place a plan to secure their buildings and holdings, and offering immediate assistance to create and/or beef up these plans. 

"Orphan" Antiquities Study

The Cultural Policy Research Institute, a think tank formed last year "to build a viable legal framework for the protection of world historical remains", has issued its first research study. It focuses on "orphan" artifacts: archaeological material or ancient art in private hands that the AAMD's recently-adopted guidelines exclude from being acquired by Member museums because these artifacts lack clear provenance showing they were outside their country of probable modern discovery before 1970 (or were exported legally after 1970). This first pilot study limited itself to Greek, Roman, and associated material, coins excluded, with a value of $1000 or more. CPRI researchers -- unnamed in the report -- interviewed museum staffers, major US dealers, private collectors, and scholars. The interviewing methodology is not described, and sources remain anonymous, so there is no way to evaluate the accuracy of the results. We have no way of knowing how those interviewed determined that provenances were inadequate, but it seems obvious that dealers and collectors have a vested interest in exaggerating the number, so these figures need to be taken with a big grain of salt.

The study estimates that 67,500-111,900 classical artifacts with inadequate provenance are being held by collectors or dealers. It would be very interesting to know what percentage is in the hands of dealers rather than collectors, and even more interesting to know how many total artifacts, well-provenanced as well as "orphaned", worth $1000 or more are now in private hands. One thing at least is deducible: the market for only inadequately provenanced Roman/Greek/related antiquities involves capital to the tune of at least $67,500,000-111,900,000 (since all the artifacts reported are supposedly worth at least $1000 each).

The CPRI could do a major service to all students of the antiquities markets if it could ascertain how many of these "orphans" change hands annually, at what prices, and in what country.

But the aim of the CPRI is not to throw light on the operations of the antiquities market. Rather, it is to call attention to the existence of these objects, which supposedly are endangered by being held in private hands:

objects excluded from acquisition by Member museums cannot have the benefit of professional museum exhibition, publication, or conservation. ... Such objects can have no permanent parentage or protection (many run the risk, over time, of deterioration, damage or destruction).

The problem with this line of argument is that even if the objects in question were not excluded from acquisition most of them would not be acquired. And the notion that dealers and collectors would be negligent towards objects worth thousands of dollars seems very questionable.

The hope seems to be to persuade AAMD to rescind its guidelines. But those guidelines were created in response to a recognition that the antiquities market is being fed by looters. One has no way of knowing how many of the 67,500 "orphaned" artifacts were orphaned from their contexts by Bulgarian, Cypriot, or Turkish looters, but we do know that site looting of these countries' Greek and Roman sites is ongoing.

That does not mean that the guidelines in themselves will have much if any effect on this ongoing looting, at least not in the short run. The market will continue to function, and "orphaned" antiquities will continue to flow into it. But at least the guidelines lay down a challenge to dealers and collectors: figure out some way for your industry to play a progressive role in reducing looting and clean up its act by establishing a strictly licit market. Come up with a plan like that and maybe bringing in the orphans can be part of the final deal.