New Ambassador to Iraq Confirmed -- No Help for Iraq's Endangered Archaeological Sites Likely

The Senate has just confirmed James Jeffrey as the new ambassador to Iraq. As part of the confirmation process, Jeffrey was posed a few questions in writing about the State Department's policies regarding the protection of archaeological sites. Here are the questions, and Jeffrey's responses:

Questions for the Record Submitted to
Ambassador - Designate James Jeffrey by
Senator John Kerry (#5)
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
July 20, 2010

A recent front-page story in the NY Times reports that looting of Mesopotamian archaeological sites is surging again, as it did in the 2003-2006 period. In 2008, the Iraqi government shifted responsibility for protecting archaeological sites from the Federal Protection Police to a new antiquities police force that was supposed to field 5000 officers. As of December 2008, however, State acknowledged that it “has no mechanisms at its disposal to provide ongoing security at archaeological sites and museums in Iraq,” and a major $13 million initiative, the Iraqi Cultural Heritage Project, announced in October 2008 by First Lady Laura Bush, did not include any funding for site security assistance.

a. What is the State Department’s policy for assisting the Iraqi government in protecting Iraqi antiquities?
b. How actively committed to the antiquities police force has the Iraqi government been? How large is the antiquities police force?
c. What personnel and what level of resources are being allocated to the specific issue of antiquities policing? Will antiquities policing be included in the police training program, when the State Department takes over next year?


Question:

a. What is the State department’s policy for assisting the Iraqi government in protecting Iraqi antiquities?

Answer:

Our policy for assisting the Iraqi government in protecting antiquities includes training and developing the capacity of the Iraqi police broadly. While the small antiquities police unit has yet to become effective, we will give this issue due attention. In addition, in the “Strategic Framework Agreement,” Section IV, Cultural Cooperation, the United States committed to “Promote Iraqi efforts and contributions to international efforts to preserve Iraqi cultural heritage and protect archeological antiquities, rehabilitate Iraqi museums, and assist Iraq in recovering and restoring its smuggled artifacts through projects such as the Future of Babylon Project and measures taken pursuant to the U.S. Emergency Protection for Iraqi Cultural Antiquities Act of 2004.” Our assistance to Iraq in the antiquities field therefore falls under the policy umbrella of the Strategic Framework Agreement.

The U.S. Embassy is playing a leadership role in helping Iraqis preserve their cultural heritage and antiquities. The $12.9 million Iraqi Cultural Heritage Project (ICHP) will upgrade the Iraqi National Museum, train Iraqi conservationists, and partner with Iraqi institutions to protect the priceless heritage of Mesopotamia.

Question:

b. How actively committed to the antiquities police force has the Iraqi government been? How large is the antiquities police force?

Answer:

The Iraqi government has established an office to address protection of archeological sites, and to our knowledge, this office has hired approximately 100 officers. The officers have not yet assumed an active role in protecting archeological sites. Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) has held meetings with the Ministry of Interior (the agency responsible for Iraqi police) and other Iraqi government agencies to discuss nationwide protection of archeological sites. If confirmed, I will press for the antiquities police to play an active role, and for the SBAH to make further progress.

Question:

c. What personnel, and what level of resources are being allocated to the specific issue of antiquities policing? Will antiquities policing be included in the police training program, when the State Department takes over next year?

Answer:

The decisions on personnel and resources for the entire Police Development Program (PDP) are currently under discussion. The PDP will include broad, multi-purpose training for investigators, but does not envision a separate component for antiquities police.

A number of prominent archeological sites, such as the world-famous ruins at Babylon, Samarra, and Ur have Iraq-supported police and army guard forces in place to protect them. Some other sites, where there is no Iraqi police presence, are protected by Iraqi army units. The State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) has held meetings with the Ministry of Interior and other Iraqi government agencies to discuss nationwide protection of archeological sites. We are not aware of Iraqi governmental plans to include antiquities policing in future training programs, although SBAH has requested this. If confirmed, I will look into this.

I would be interested to know if any readers of this blog have a more sanguine interpretation of these remarks than I do, but to me they are very saddening. It sounds as if "due attention” to the problem of looting means jawboning the Iraqis, and that’s about it -- no targeted funding for site protection or even specialized training for antiquities police (or any other material support – walkie-talkies, vehicles, weaponry, satellite photos, gasoline, etc. -- that is also desperately needed by those few Iraqis who are now deployed). How likely is it that the Iraqi government will respond to ambassadorial pressing without any carrots? I’m glad the ambassador is at least saying he’s going to press, but unless we put our money where our mouth is, it seems very unlikely that the dysfunctional Iraqi government will move on this issue.

It is particularly galling to see the ICHP presented as having something to do with the issue of protecting sites from looting, since the introductory paragraph before the questions points out that the ICHP includes no money for site policing. And its money has almost certainly been spent already by now; this was the Bush administration's (only) initiative. But it is understandable that Jeffrey's assistants went to the well of the ICHP to defend themselves, because they were given an opening by the way the question was posed. It did not say protecting archaeological sites, just “protecting antiquities.” If you don’t specifically distinguish the policing of antiquities on sites from “protection of antiquities,” State will continue to do what it has done since 2003: disingenuously point to the good work done at the Museum, and fudge the fact that while they have been doing this good work but doing almost nothing to help secure and police archaeological sites, a huge disaster has taken place out in the countryside.

Let's tally this up: The Museum holds 170,000 pieces, and lost 15,000 in the invasion; anywhere from 200,000 to half a million artifacts are estimated to have come out of the ground (or been destroyed by diggers) since 2003. The disaster is going to accelerate again as the Obama administration pulls out. It won't be the dramatic public relations black eye that the Iraq Museum turned out to be for Bush, because the damage is not as vividly concentrated, but it is in some ways even more inexcusable.

Pace Pres. Obama, where keeping Iraq's archaeological heritage safe is concerned, we appear to be as careless getting out as we were careless getting in.

Iraq's Antiquities Police: The Bitter Fruit of US Indifference to the Looting of Iraq's Archaeological Heritage

I have been putting off posting about this front-page New York Times story. In part I've delayed because I needed to check some of its facts with colleagues; in part because I and others have been pushing the story to contacts in the US government asking them to do something (and Iraqi colleagues have been mobilizing to do the same for their government); in part because I try to make it a principle to not write when too angry to think straight.

The gist of the story is that the Iraqi antiquities police force is a miserable failure. The article focuses on the failure of the Iraqis to fund the force. But the key point is that this new force was not established until 2008 — that is, after years of unsuccessful efforts by Iraqi cultural heritage officials — in particular, Donny George Youkhanna -- to build policing capacity with almost no assistance from the US. From 2004 on, Youkhanna struggled to create a 1,400-strong antiquities police, which might have done quite a bit of good had the US provided some help even if only in the way of things like gas, trucks, walkie-talkies, etc., but Youkhanna's force was starved budgetarily until it was shut down. Of course, under Bush this was hardly surprising, given that the US military itself did almost nothing to address the problem of massive looting of archaeological sites during the occupation period.

Many of us had hoped that with a change in administrations, attention would now be paid, at long last to beefing up Iraq's capacity to police its sites. But the Obama administration does not look much different than the Bush administration on this issue. As reported repeatedly on this blog, it has failed to train or fund or provide logistical support for Iraqi antiquities police: the military has done next to nothing, as the article makes clear enough, and the State Department, which has money to spend on Iraqi cultural heritage, refuses to spend more than a smidgeon of it on security issues. In short, where stopping the looting of Iraq's archaeological heritage is concerned, to paraphrase Obama, we seem to be as careless getting out as we were careless getting in.

Do Fakes Poison the Market for Looted Antiquities?

A very sobering new article on tomb looting in China, making it clear that a combination of strengthening demand both domestic and international, combined with a culture of official corruption, is devastating China's archaeological sites. As Saddam did in Iraq, the response to increasing looting has been the imposition of the death penalty, but as in Iraq, Draconian measures do not deter effectively if they are not applied systematically.

Nor, apparently, does the flooding of the market with fakes, pace Charles Stanish:

China's surging interest in antiques is fueled by popular TV shows. On one, the host smashes the piece in front of startled owners if he decides it is fake. Wu blames such shows for raising prices — and false hopes.

Intact Cyprus tomb may yield Trojan hero

Intact Cyprus tomb may yield Trojan hero

So the Leon Levy Foundation holds a meeting aimed at figuring out how to get archaeologists to publish their sites. But not all sites -- only sites excavated under partage agreements (i.e., long-ago digs). How curious! Why the restriction, since surely there are many many sites that have been excavated but not published? Is the exclusive focus on partaged material meant to generate good will from countries of origin for the Levy Foundation (since the publications will certainly be of value to them)? That hardly seems likely to succeed. Or is it to show these countries, and the press, the untapped virtues of partage? That seems equally unlikely to succeed (though one can never underestimate the gullibility or sycophantism of some journalists). A third possibility seems most likely: to remind the world that partage once was practiced, and therefore might be practiced again some happy day.

Just to be clear: unlike some purist archaeologists, I have no beef whatsoever with the Levy Foundation's support for publishing digs; the backlog of unpublished information would be considered a scandal in any other discipline, archaeologists do need major help in bringing their findings into print, and if the Levy Foundation can supply that help, god love 'em. But mixing this up with the issue of restoring partage makes no sense. As the discussion at CUNY made clear (see below), it is time to give up on trying to get the countries of origin to see the virtues of partage. That is a non-starter. One can only hope that Brian Rose and Philippe de Montebello are speaking with Shelby White about other more viable policy options for protecting sites, sharing heritage, and cleaning up the antiquities trade, that she and her foundation could promote.

Who Protects Antiquity? Panel Discussion Video Now Up Online

Thanks to CUNY's crack team, led by Michael Washburn, this panel on April 7, 2010 went off well, and the video is now available. A couple of things stand out for me reviewing the tape. First, James Cuno responds positively to my suggestion that a "polluters pay" tax on antiquities purchases could be instituted to generate funds that then would be funneled to site protection efforts of various kinds. I was expecting a peremptory dismissal. Also surprising was Cuno's acceptance of the need to retire the term "partage". Second, the comments by Philippe de Montebello (unidentified and invisible in the video, he is the first questioner) showed how touchy museum directors are at any imputation that they might still be accepting dodgy antiquities, even as gifts. I was not trying to suggest that at all, as I made clear. I was, of course, disappointed that Montebello sees no benefit to taxing the trade here based on his assessment that no one buys antiquities in the US or Britain anymore. He is no doubt right that there is a lot of money in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere around the world competing for artifacts. But he still needs to explain $57 million at auction in New York for that Mesopotamian figurine; the buyer might well be non-American, but the sale is made here, and those sorts of sales though rare will certainly recur. And antiquities dealers on Madison Avenue continue to ply their trade. The tossed-off "99% of the trade is now outside of the US and Europe" reminds me of the similarly unsupported claim Montebello and John Boardman used to make that 99% of what we know about the ancient past comes from studying the objects themselves, only 1% from the findspot context.

Interview on Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio show Artworks

The producers on this show did a pretty nice job gathering audioclips, and the interviewer had actually read my book, which was a pleasant surprise.

Memo to Zahi Hawass: Museums are not the main source for buying stolen antiquities

Zahi Hawass, at a news conference at the meeting convened in Cairo on recovering looted antiquities, asserts, "Museums are the main source for buying stolen artifacts. If museums stopped not to buy artifacts, actually, the theft will be less, and we can control that." (See the BBC clip, starting around 0:55).

Um, not exactly. Where to begin? Museums are not the main source for buying stolen artifacts -- that "honor" goes to individual collectors (including, increasingly, collectors in the Gulf oil states with the wherewithal to compete against American, British, and Japanese super-rich). Museums make up only a small percentage of the buyers on the antiquities market worldwide. And most museums in the West have now already stopped buying illicit or even just dodgy antiquities. That is not going to put an end to collecting of illicit antiquities. Hawass is certainly correct to say that if museums stop buying illicit artifacts, the theft will be less, but by only a slight amount. No one believes that collectors will be much deterred by knowing they cannot donate or sell their antiquities to museums, when they can count on other collectors to buy their pieces should they need to part with them. And so long as a collector is willing to pop $57 million for a single "kosher" figurine, looters are going to try to find equivalent pieces and collectors will buy them even though they are not kosher.

So if Hawass really thinks that looting will be reduced to manageable levels by getting museums out of the market, he is badly mistaken. They have already gotten out of the market, and countries being looted continue to be unable to handle the problem with the resources they've got at their disposal. Countries suffering from antiquities looting are going to need more than just clean hands from the museum world: they are going to need money to pay for site guards, satellite monitoring, helicopters, etc. That money should come from the collectors and the dealers, and from the boards of museums as well.

Looting in Lebanon

This article has already spurred at least two responses in the blogosphere, from Derek Fincham and Larry Coben. Coben suggest that the Sustainable Preservation Initiative is designed to prevent precisely the type of looting to feed one's family that is detailed in the article -- the interviewed looter is quoted saying he does not believe he is doing anything wrong:"I have a wife and six children to support, and I do so through this business."

The SPI is a wonderful idea, but its success, if I understand correctly, depends on getting buy-ins at the local level, from community leaders, for a tourism-oriented business model. That might be a tad difficult in countries like Lebanon where tourism is difficult to arrange, and where -- if the article is accurate -- the community leaders one hopes to appeal to are acting as middlemen to consumers who include Lebanese elites:

The artifacts often wind up in the homes and gardens of Lebanese politicians and citizens and even in private collections on other continents.

In February, police confiscated a child's sarcophagus dating back to the Roman empire from the Baalbeck home of a Muslim sheikh who was trying to lure in the highest bid.

I'm not suggesting it is not worth trying the SPI approach, even in Lebanon. But it would seem more likely to succeed in countries without a strong indigenous demand for antiquities, and where the central authorities are more committed to combating the illicit trade.

Iraq Cultural Heritage Policy: The Kurdish Problem

Stuart Gibson, a longtime international consultant to museums, UNESCO, and cultural ministries in former socialist countries, shares the attached report on the conditions in museums in Kurdistan. Though the report is couched in diplomatic prose, and deals mainly with technical matters, a few policy issues stand out:

a) relations between regional antiquities authorities and national ones are problematic (and not just in Iraq -- witness the tug-of-war in England between Birmingham and the British Museum over the disposition of the recently discovered Staffordshire Hoard), but much more so in the case of Kurdistan, with its history of victimage and its aspirations towards autonomy. The report does not go into detail about "the disruption in the museum community over the past years" and why that should make it unfeasible for Kurds to send their finds to Baghdad to be registered, but it seems clear reading between the lines that what is really keeping the Kurds from doing so is less chaos within the National Museum than a desire to register items as Kurdish;

b) the priorities of tourism are clashing with those of museums and archaeologists within Kurdistan, as they do at the national level, and as at the national level, preservation is taking second place to the demands of economic development. This mess, it is important to recall, stems in large part from the failure of American postwar nation-builders early on to even think about how to help the Iraqis organize its governance of cultural heritage. The position of the State Department now is that any such issues are internal matters for the Iraqis to work out themselves, but one would hope that behind the scenes some pressure is being applied, especially since the US is pumping $13 million into conservation efforts.

c) Speaking of the State Department, it is mentioned only in passing, with a reference to the Erbil Institute's Cultural Heritage Project, whose newly-opened facilities were paid for by State. It would be interesting to learn more about this.

The Waters of Babylon

The New York Times reports on a major undertaking by the World Monument Fund and Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, financed (at least for the assessment and preliminary management planning phase) by the State Department. The last paragraph raises obliquely a criticism of the way in which postwar funding for archaeological concerns may have skewed towards producing more archaeologists, to the neglect of beefing up other kinds of expertise also needed to do the dirty, unglamorous jobs of shoring up buildings, pumping out or diverting water -- and, one might add, securing, monitoring and patrolling sites against looters:

The site was returned to Iraqi control more than a year ago. Ms. Ackerman and Mr. Allen said the project had already surveyed the remains, building by building, and started the restoration of two museums. Although Iraq has a large corps of trained archaeologists, they said, an immediate need is to instruct others in the conservation of ruins and bring in structural engineers and hydrologists to handle the water problem.

Upcoming Discussion With Larry Coben and James Cuno

CUNY's Center for the Humanities is hosting a panel discussion, moderated by Joel Allen, between James Cuno, Larry Coben, and me. Unlike almost every other panel on which Cuno has appeared, this one will move past the worn-out arguments about "retentionism", to focus on practical and realistic responses to the problem of the looting of antiquities from archaeological sites. Do museums recognize any obligation to do more than just say no to acquiring illicit antiquities? What solutions do museums, collectors, and dealers offer to the problem of market-driven destruction of archaeological sites? How likely are these solutions to be implemented? Would they stop looting? What alternative approaches are being proposed by archaeologists and heritage protection advocates?

The finder's keepers argument for antiquities | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

The finder's keepers argument for antiquities | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

An interesting discussion between Jim Cuno and Patty Gerstenblith. A few observations:

The moderator calls Cuno's bluff about his claim that governments care much more about symbols of national identity than people do. Is that really true? She asks him if he thinks a poll of Egyptians would show they would prefer to have the bust of Nefertiti or the Rosetta Stone returned, or be indifferent? "I have no way of guessing," he responds, surely disingenuously. Cuno must know that the image of Nefertiti is on Egyptian currency and that the Egyptian press covers repatriation stories assiduously. Of course both of these are governmentally-backed undertakings, and yes, governments use symbols of national identity to promote their agendas, but the public in Egypt would not accept the imposition of a symbol on their currency, and the press would not cover a topic if its readers were not interested. Cuno goes on to throw in the red herring of suggesting that most Egyptians would probably place many other issues (freedom of speech, for example) much higher on their list of priorities, as if one would have to choose between pride in one's heritage and the wish to make one's country or one's own life better.

The argument against nationalist feeling as the basis for claims to cultural patrimony, then, is: nationalism is a conspiracy by governments to create identity where none exists, to invent traditions; luckily, most people have no deep investment in national identity, despite the efforts of states, so we can discount any claims that certain objects really are connected to a people.

But what about where people of a country, say Greece, have somehow internalized the invented tradition and show they do care, in ways that cannot be poohpoohed as merely the effects of governmental incitement? In that case, their caring is outweighed by our caring more about the tradition that has been built up (i.e., not invented) over several hundred years while the Elgin marbles have resided in the British Museum.

The moderator does a fine job of continuing to push Cuno, asking him whether then he would be happy if, say, the Declaration of Independence had somehow been taken back to London (she might have done the thought experiment by imagining this happening in the War of 1812). Cuno said it would not bother him at all. Incredulous, the moderator asks whether it makes no difference viewing the Declaration in the context of Washington, DC. Not to Cuno. Authenticity, yes; context, no (unless the context is the museum's collection, apparently).

Unfortunately, time ran out before the conversation could really come to grips with the issue which is much more pressing than that of repatriation: the problem of looting today. The recent adoption of more stringent rules for acquisition of unprovenanced antiquities gives Cuno the chance to point out that very few antiquities are being acquired by US museums today. Gerstenblith raises the question of whether museums are using the same standards in accepting donations from collectors, but time runs out before that can be answered.

The follow-up question, which never gets raised, is whether museums should go beyond the "clean hands" position to something like "active engagement" in protecting archaeological sites from destruction at the hands of looters (as well as by development). What does Cuno think could and should be done about the problem of site destruction?

"Some scholars' opinions" collated by antiquities dealers

The International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art has added a new page collating "some scholars' opinions" about matters such as the importance of archaeological context (answer: not at all important) and the right of archaeologists to "show off" as guardians of the cultural heritage of mankind (none, apparently, insofar as they fail to publish their findings in a timely way).

This collection of quotations is most helpful in clarifying the logical weakness, not to say intellectual bankruptcy, of the arguments IADAA takes to be slamdunks. Take, for instance, the straw-man claim reiterated again and again by Cuno and de Montebello that archaeologists believe that antiquities have no meaning outside their archaeological context. Perhaps there are a few, but the vast majority of archaeologists recognize the obvious fact that artifacts can be studied by art historians for their aesthetic and iconographic value, or (if they bear writing) by epigraphers. The archaeologists' position, rather, is that archaeological context supplies meanings which aesthetic, iconographic, or epigraphic analysis often cannot supply, and that the contextual information supplied by archaeologists can and does serve as a control and check on the hypotheses of art historians and textual scholars.

If the archaeologist who says "no meaning without context" is a straw man, the museum director who says "context has no meaning" is all too real, however. Such claims -- or the pseudo-stastical "only 2% of what we know comes from context" -- are as silly as the ones purportedly made by archaeologists. It is a strange argument that does exactly what it accuses its opponent of doing.

Even where there is an argument to be made that the legal structures designed to protect cultural heritage have failed, the experts quoted by the IADAA overplay their hand. Take the sad story of how Afghan antiquities in the Kabul Museum were left to the hammers of Taliban iconoclasts because UNESCO refused to authorize their export to Switzerland. Why did UNESCO refuse? Appiah thinks it is because UNESCO acts on the basis of nationalist ideology enshrined in its convention, an ideology that says art properly belongs in the state whose cultural patrimony it is -- even when the state disagrees that the art in question is a part of its heritage, and wants to destroy it. That is a radical oversimplification of the situation faced by UNESCO at the time, and it begs the question of whether UNESCO could have been certain in 1999 that the Taliban would actually destroy the artifacts under its control. Moreover, it is difficult to see how it is that the case of the Taliban -- surely an exceptional one -- discredits an entire international system that puts the primary responsibility upon states to care for cultural heritage within their boundaries. The response should be to close the policy loophole, as UNESCO has done in the wake of the bitter lesson of Afghanistan, not to give up on the nation-state as a means to the end of protecting cultural heritage.

Appiah himself does not go so far as to suggest that "the nation state has lost its implicitness [sic] as a political paradigm," as Luca Giuliani is approvingly quoted by the IADAA. Nor does the philosopher, one presumes, share John Boardman's bizarre apologia for the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, also quoted approvingly by the IADAA:

And who are we to blame them for this rather extreme exercise of their deeply felt faith? The major loss in this case is probably to the tourist trade... The act of the Taliban was exactly that of Moses with the Golden Calf made by the idolatrous Aaron, which he “burnt with fire, and ground to powder and scattered upon the water.” No doubt the calf might have been judged a distinguished example of animal sculpture for its day, but we do not question Moses’s motivation or deed.

Boardman does at least raise one interesting analogy worth pursuing -- though like the other argumentative moves made by the IADAA's scholars, it doesn't achieve the argumentative aim it intends. Boardman:

The argument holds that since robbing cannot be controlled at its source, it must be controlled, blindly, at its eventual home in a collection, public or private, and indiscriminately so, regardless of evidence. But this is topsy-turvy. Surely (and the example is the international trade of illegal drugs) it is more appropriate and more effective to target the sources of criminal activity, and especially those middlemen who handle the material long before it arrives in the pockets of street dealers. In terms of the antiquities trade this suggests the need for a far more serious approach by source countries, often with the policing of their own officials, and a far more determined international effort to bring to justice the middlemen and anyone who sponsors such activities, something quite beyond the imagination of UNESCO.

Yes, both drugs and antiquities are being dealt on an international market, and yes, it is important to target not just the dealers but the middlemen and, a fortiori, the looters who supply the illicit good. But the analogy breaks down when Boardman equates street dealers with antiquities dealers. The demand for antiquities is not driven by hundreds of thousands of daily users paying small sums to poor gang members; it is driven by a relatively small number of very wealthy collectors paying tens of thousands of dollars for their artifacts. In the drug trade, the big money is made by the drug lords; in the antiquities trade, by the dealers and middlemen, as the Medici Conspiracy made clear. And, of course, the antiquities trade, unlike the drug trade, operates both legally and illicitly, complicating enforcement efforts enormously.

On the other hand, Boardman is right to suggest that more could be done to target the source of illicit antiquities. We know that Italy has dramatically improved its anti-looting efforts by increasing its budget substantially. The problem is how to help source countries less well-off than Italy do what Boardman wants them to do. And here neither Boardman nor the IADAA have any constructive suggestions. The answer, however, is not hard to see -- if one shifts one's analogy. Antiquities, even illicit ones, are more like oil than like drugs: they are goods that do us good, but producing them causes harm (in the form of permanently lost knowledge of our human past). The antiquities trade, one might say, generates a kind of pollution.

The rational way to regulate markets that generate externalities is to internalize the costs. Make the polluters pay, and use the funds generated by taxing their trade to mitigate the harm. You want to sell or buy antiquities? Fine, but we want you to pay into a fund that will pay for more site guards, more antiquities police, more INTERPOL agents, and the like.

Is that a policy position that IADAA is likely to get behind? Don't hold your breath.

Italian Conference on "Cultural Goods: A 'Treasure' to Defend with the Law"

One of the conference organizers measures the effectiveness of Italy's antiquities police by the number of successful restitutions of important artifacts:

«Per capire – conclude Clemente - quanto efficace sia oggi l’azione di tutela dei beni culturali, intesi come patrimonio universale, basta ricordare i casi della Triade Capitolina, della Venere di Morgantina, dell’atleta di Lisippo, dei meravigliosi Grifoni di Ascoli Satriano e le numerose querelle internazionali in corso, perché le opere d’arte vengano restituite ai Paesi di provenienza».

While restitution is undoubtedly an important facet of the carabinieri's cultural protection work, one would think that the primary measure of effectiveness should be the crime rate -- which, with regard to the looting of archaeological sites, has gone down dramatically over the past few years. High-profile restitution cases may well have contributed to this reduction in looting, though the main cause is more likely the substantial beefing-up of site-policing resources by the Italian government.

Clemente is also quoted on the importance of artifacts found in his frontier region to that region's particular identity -- distinct, one should note, from national identity (though Clemente does also link these objects to the nation, and to universal patrimony as well):

«I beni culturali – commenta Clemente - rappresentano l’immagine del territorio, lo specchio della sua storia, il libro della memoria collettiva, che tanto serve a dare una identità al Paese. Ciò vale in modo particolare per la Capitanata, terra di frontiera, da sempre attraversata da popoli e culture diversi, nella quale abbondano siti archeologici».

Identity on the frontier is cosmopolitan because it has been created by the history traced on the territory by the diverse peoples and cultures that have crisscrossed it. That is a far more nuanced view of cultural identity than the one ascribed by the cultural internationalists to so-called "retentionist-nationalist" countries like Italy.

Middle East Geo-Database for Antiquities

This sort of database is an important tool for any country seeking to develop a robust national heritage conservation program that can rationally set priorities for conservation. The only caveat is that the recording of sites is "based on the existing national registry collected by the SBAH and using available surveys". If those data-collecting mechanisms are not regularly and frequently updated -- and if time-series data is not maintained -- then there will be no way to promptly assess where damage is being done presently to sites by looting, development projects, etc.

The next step for GCI, World Monument Fund, and UNESCO is to persuade Google (whose head visited Iraq and announced Google would digitize the Iraq National Museum's holdings) to work with them and the Iraq SBAH to

a) link the registered sites to GoogleEarth satellite imagery;

b) develop a computerized program designed to compare time-series images for sites and identify sites that have been damaged or looted.

Such a project for Iraq could serve as a pilot project that could then be implemented worldwide.

Israeli Cabinet Communique announcing cultural heritage initiative incorporating disputed sites

documentary on looted Afghan antiquities now online

Via Paul Barford, news that the documentary "Blood Antiquities", dealing primarily with how Afghan antiquities are looted, smuggled, and ultimately put on sale in Brussels, is now available online. The film offers the best view I've ever seen of the whole system, including amazing interviews with Afghan diggers and great hidden-camera discussions with Belgian dealers.

Indiana Jones, but in reverse - The National Newspaper

Indiana Jones, but in reverse - The National Newspaper

Another profile of Zahi Hawass. Not much new here, but Matt Bradley mentions, as has already been reported by an Australian paper, that

Buoyed by his recent successes, Mr Hawass has called for an international conference next March for countries who are seeking the return of ancient objects. Greece, Italy, China and Mexico will be among about 12 nations he expects to attend.

This sounds a lot like the first real step towards the creation of an antiquities cartel, a strategy that Richard Leventhal has suggested would enable countries of origin to pool their bargaining power to extract more from wealthy collecting nations. The only question is whether the bargaining will remain, as it has, on the plane of restitution and loan agreements, which in themselves do nothing to address the problem of contemporary looting and other threats to heritage, or whether countries of origin will take the opportunity to press collecting institutions to materially assist in anti-looting initiatives. Museums could, for example, be told that no country will agree to loans unless the museums first persuade their donors to contribute voluntarily (or their governments to contribute via dedicated taxes on sales of antiquities) to an international fund. One already exists, established by UNESCO several years ago, but it has failed to attract any donations.

The key is to move beyond restitution to the real issue, which is what can be done to protect archaeological sites.

Australian Archaeologists Use Google Earth to Map Sites -- and Suggest Info Could Help With Site Protection Efforts

This is a potentially important project. Money quote at the end:

"The most important aspect of the work is that we'll be able to go to the Afghan archaeological institute and say these are the sites in this area, if you've got guys down there you can either go and visit them or you can at least start thinking about trying to protect them," Thomas said.

One hopes that the coalition forces are also going to be contacted, so that if any are operating in these areas they can at least avoid damage to sites where possible. And it would seem reasonable to try to build on the work already done by developing ways to use Google Earth to monitor a large number sites over time; it seems hard to believe that some sort of automated program could be devised to register whether holes are appearing. It would make little sense for the Afghan antiquities board -- or whoever is in charge of site policing -- to devote scarce resources to the dangerous work of protecting sites if they are not under threat while others are.

Google Documents Iraqi Museum Treasures-- How about Documenting Site Looting Next?

Sci-Tech Today | Google Documents Iraqi Museum Treasures

Google chief Eric Schmidt is quoted saying, "I can think of no better use of our time and our resources than to make the images and ideas from your civilization, from the very beginnings of time, available to billions of people worldwide."

Here's another use of Google's time and resources that might be better: gather time-series satellite images of archaeological sites in Iraq (and other looting-prone countries) from GoogleEarth, and use your programmers' expertise together with archaeologists to develop automated methods for counting holes. That would enable countries to finally be able to track what has happened, and what is happening right now, on their sites.

guest post from Maj. Corine Wegener on Kaylan's downplaying of damage to Iraq's cultural heritage during the U.S. occupation

Corine Wegener, a now-retired major in Civil Affairs who deployed to Iraq after the looting of the museum to assist in mitigating the damage there, is now President of the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, has written a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal responding to Melik Kaylan's article there. She has kindly agreed to allow me to post it here as well:

To the Editor:

Melik Kaylan’s efforts (Nov. 13, 2009, Myths of Babylon) to downplay damage to Iraq’s cultural heritage during the U.S. occupation actually do a disservice to our military and carry political overtones which serve neither our troops nor our reputation on the international stage. In 2003-2004, I served in Baghdad as the Arts, Monuments, and Archives Officer for the 352d Civil Affairs Command. Inadequate planning for the protection of Iraqi cultural property prior to the invasion of Iraq resulted in harm to an ancient cultural heritage shared by us all, and it could have been prevented.

As much as I respect Chaplain Marrero and the Marines’ efforts to secure Babylon in 2003, the subsequent damage done by contractor KBR’s continuously improving and expanding the site as an operating base was significant and avoidable. That Babylon had suffered damage under Saddam’s regime does not make additional damage while under the control of Coalition Forces any more acceptable to the Iraqi people or the international community. Damage did occur at many sites, and certainly did not help us to win hearts and minds.

The U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, a nongovernmental organization founded in 2006, has provided cultural property training to dozens of deploying U.S. Army Civil Affairs units. Informed with this training, military personnel demonstrate an understanding and respect for local cultural heritage that helps build relationships and, ultimately, saves lives. We do not believe diminishing or denying the mistakes of the past will move us forward. The U.S. military has a proud tradition for respecting cultural heritage that goes back to WWII - we must rebuild that reputation and provide military personnel with the tools and training they need to accomplish their mission while preserving cultural heritage for future generations.

Major (Retired) Corine Wegener
President, U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield
Minneapolis, MN

Kaylan Continues to Try to Rewrite History, Now Smearing Bogdanos as Well as Curtis and Stone

Melik Kaylan's attempt to rewrite history continues, now with increased desperation including a smear of Matthew Bogdanos. I've posted a comment on the Forbes site, which I append here:

Col. Bogdanos is certainly inconvenient for Kaylan's story. A Marine war-hero and Republican who is a prosecutor in NYC when not on anti-terrorism missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, he hardly fits the anti-American, anti-military mold, yet he concluded that approximately 15,000 artifacts were looted in April 2003. 5,000 or so of these were cylinder seals, the best of which (that is, the kind that would go to the museum) sell for over $100,000 apiece; that is an inconvenient truth that would explain why looters would target the museum and thousands of archaeological sites. Kaylan therefore chooses, shamefully, to smear him as self-serving, ignoring that Bogdanos has donated to charity the profits from his book (for which he received the National Humanities Medal from George W. Bush). Kaylan also chooses to ignore reports by the Italian carabinieri and Polish forces that describe ongoing looting in the 2003-4 period, and ignores as well the evidence from satellite photos proving a massive surge in site looting began just before the war when Saddam moved his troops away from archaeological sites to the front lines. All this information, and much more, I shared with Kaylan when he contacted me in July 2008 while he was preparing his first story. For him to claim now that he got no help from the archaeological community is... well, I leave it to readers of Forbes to decide what it is. Professor Lawrence Rothfield University of Chicago

Rereading this I realize I forgot to also defend the honor of Donny George, also smeared.

"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.

Doonesbury on illicit antiquities/plants

"I can protect it better than the Turks." Gary Trudeau must be reading Cuno.

New Damage to the Iraq Museum

From Lamia al-Gailani Wehr, via the Iraqcrisis listhost:

SBAH and the Iraq Museum were victims to the bombing of the Foreign Ministry last week. Many of the glass windows were broken, part of the roof of the children’s nursery collapsed, fortunately there was no fatality, just bruises and minor injuries. One of the accounts was at the Ministry of Finance when it was also bombed, he was injured and taken to hospital. I understand some of the exhibited antiquities in the the Museum were also damaged. I hope they have already been photographed.

Worrying issue, I heard that most of the staff ran away. Was there any emergency plan to deal with this kind of situation, such as the closure of all the doors, particularly the ones leading to the Museum and the storerooms? Apart from the police guards, is there a team whose duty to take charge whenever the Museum is under threat?

Prof. al-Gailaini Wehr raises a very important question, one that it is to be hoped will be asked as well by all those who wish to help the Iraqi government do what it can to secure the museum for a future that may well involve more bombings and even, god forbid, a breakdown of civil order on a much larger scale. Until now, the State Department has blithely pursued a Pollyannish policy that has ignored repeated warnings by archaeologists that it was too dangerous to reopen the museum. Instead of focusing on security for the museum (or archaeological sites for that matter), we have acceded to the Maliki government's desires to use it for propaganda purposes as a symbol that things are returning to normal. As part of that fantasy, US money has been plowed into site assessments, sustainable tourism planning, and training for archaeologists -- all good ideas but surely secondary in importance to the need for far better protection of Iraq's cultural heritage against looting and bombing. If the report of damage to exhibited artifacts is true, our negligence has once again borne bitter fruit, albeit on a much smaller scale than the looting of the museum and archaeological sites in the 2003-2007 period.

Speaking recently about the State Department's involvement in a site assessment of the ancient city of Ashur, a Public Diplomacy Officer remarked,

As the U.S. forces look toward our draw down out of the country, this is a great potential legacy that we can leave behind; showing that we took proper care of the ancient sites and history of the Iraqi people. When the security situation arrives at the point when there is an opportunity for wide-spread tourism, our good stewardship of these sites will pay off because we will have met the immediate needs to preserve these sites now.

The danger is that if we do not recognize that taking proper care means worrying about security first and foremost, the legacy that we leave behind will be of a country whose heritage remains inexcusably vulnerable.Let us hope that we learn from it and refocus our cultural policy in Iraq.

Review of Rape of Mesopotamia in September issue of Harper's

Harper's has a nice review of my book in the just-out September print issue (the review unfortunately is available online only to subscribers).

Reductio ad absurdum:

“[What] would it be if, in order to know the art, you always had to go to Greece, to know Mesopotamian art you had to go to [the Middle East]?” de Montebello asked. “What kind of a world would that be?"

Yes, and what kind of world would it be if when you went to the Middle East you found thousands of archaeological sites missing their artifacts?

University College London - Cultural property conference

I'll be giving a keynote address at this meeting in London Friday Sept. 18 at 1:30.

review of Rape of Mesopotamia in Times Higher Ed. Supplement

How to Sell a Masterpiece (without considering the public interest)

If a museum decides to sell an object, does the institution have any responsibility beyond maximizing monetary value?

James Snipes, legal counsel to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston described [the Albright-Knox decision to sell their pieces at auction] as an "optics issue, rather than an economic one. Going to auction may not provide the best return, but it is the most transparent" way of selling an object. Museums not only "have a fiduciary duty to maximize value when they deaccession objects, but they have to be seen fulfilling that duty."

What is missing here is the duty museums owe to the public (not just the local public but the public at large) to make sure that artworks that have entered the public domain at the cost to the public of a tax deduction do not disappear from public view into the living room of a collector. Maximizing value for the institution at the cost of public value is a bad deal for taxpayers.

Utah Looters' Arrest -- A Long Time Coming

It does not seem to have been noticed that at least one of the gang charged recently with violating ARPA by stealing or trafficking in Native American artifacts has been associated with the issue since the mid 1980s. Harold J. Lyman, now 78 (and a recent inductee into the Utah Tourism Hall of Fame for having "helped establish the 'Trail of the Ancients,' a scenic byway taking motorists past Indian cites in Utah and Colorado", was interviewed back in 1986 by Carol A. Bassett for an article in Science magazine about looting in the area (Science 86, July-August 1986, 22-29; the relevant passage can be found in  Archaeology, Relics, and the Law, ed. Richard B. Cunningham). Bassett quoted Lyman as an observer who reported that "because of the increased attention over the past year, enforcement has gone up dramatically. Folks are lying low now, but when the heat is off, looting will go up again." I guess he knew what he was talking about.

'Ancient' artifacts, cyber scams - Los Angeles Times

An interesting new article on Charles Stanish's argument that Ebay has reduced looting by making it more profitable for looters to switch to making fakes for gullible, uninformed buyers, and poisoning the legitimate market. Antiquities dealer Jerome Eisenberg disagrees, noting that his annual sales are in the tens of millions of dollars, including an Internet trade that has "increased exponentially" over the past few years. Eisenberg believes that news about forgeries -- and one might add, the Internet's spreading of the news that it is possible to buy antiquities -- only succeeds in making the market grow. 

Eisenberg, of course, may simply be trying to reassure his clientele, and we do not know whether his sales revenues have increased, even if his internet trade has increased. But the fact that this reputable dealer is able to increase his sales on the internet tells us something that Stanish -- and even Steve Levitt -- do not adequately address. The basic economics of "lemons" teaches that warrantied used cars fetch a higher price than unwarrantied ones, and it would be odd if this were not also true of authenticated antiquities. The Guennol Lioness suggests the price for authenticated antiquities may be going way up. (There's an interesting economic question buried here, which is about the difference between a good that is not as good as it appears, i.e., a lemon, and a good that is no good at all if it is not as it appears, i.e., a fake.)

If that is the case, what does it mean for looting? One thing it might mean is that collectors -- even eBay ones -- will learn to distrust unauthenticated antiquities, and that might lead to declines in sales of both fakes and looted artifacts, assuming some archaeological body of experts could be created to vet artifacts. And since the costs of authentication will raise the price dealers need to charge, some buyers will be driven out of the market.

But if some buyers are driven out, many more will have been enticed in by the news stories and by eBay's seductive ease of perusal. Some among these new buyers will surely become cognoscenti, and bring additional money into the system. The more scrupulous will demand authentication from a recognized body, or put their trust in reputable dealers; there are sure, however, to be some less scrupulous who will be willing to pay a lot for artifacts that have been looted, if the middleman can show that the piece has come from the ground. That, after all, was what Giacomo Medici was doing with his Polaroids of dirt-encrusted vases. The Internet has made that technology quaint: a looter nowadays can snap and send a cellphone photo direct from site to buyer. Looting might well continue under these circumstances, not decline.

'Ancient' artifacts, cyber scams - Los Angeles Times

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Smugglers loot Libya’s ruins - The National Newspaper

Smugglers loot Libya’s ruins - The National Newspaper

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Interview on WTTW's "Chicago Tonight"

I was interviewed last night on the public television station's daily news show.

David Gill blogs smartly as usual on the new online site launched by the Aboutaams. His post makes clear why we need some alternative to the porous Art Loss Register -- a new registration system specifically designed provide a real vetting of archaeological material to leave no doubt about whether provenance passes muster. To be credible to the archaeological community, archaeologists appointed by major archaeological associations would be officially in charge of a registering commission. Dealers would have to pay for the costs of the commission's work -- and one could tack on an additional charge (or if the commission were legally sanctioned, a tax) to raise money to help pay for site guards in countries where antiquities are being looted.

Deep Thought about Brandeis' Attempt to Sell Off its Art Collection

Brandeis' trustees have apparently decided to slow-walk the university's Rose Museum into oblivion, in the hope that the furor will die down eventually and they will then be able to go ahead with the sale. But the way the art market is going now, by the time Brandeis pulls the trigger it may no longer be worth it to try to sell.

Iraqi Archaeologists Studying in Chicago

An interesting TV segment, with some footage of looting at the museums and some very old footage of digging on sites that I have never seen before. (Charles Jones kindly informs me that the old footage is from the Field Museum's long-ago expedition to Kish.) Bringing Iraqi archaeologists here to update their skills is heartwarming and the State Department is to be applauded for supporting this effort. But watch the story and you will see how this program is being promoted as a response to the looting, when in fact it does not do one thing (so far as I can tell from the coverage) to make the Iraqis better able to protect their sites. 

My colleagues are in a difficult position, and Gil Stein does an excellent job in this story of highlighting the immense losses that have occurred as a result of site looting. Unless it is made clearer, though, that while we all welcome the chance to assist Iraqi archaeologists other programs also need to be established to help cut down on looting, the archaeologists we train may have less and less to excavate.

Archaeologists Ignored Again as Babylon Re-Opens after US Turnover

The NY Times has an interesting article about the reopening of Babylon to tourist visitors. The writer makes clear that Iraq's archaeological heritage is no longer controlled by the professional archaeologists in the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, but by the Ministry of Tourism and Prime Minister Maliki, and that any concerns about the security of sites, whether from looting or development, are being superseded by the desire for tourist dollars and the wish to present a bella figura to the world.

 

The State Department will of course say that this is a purely internal matter for the sovereign government of Iraq to determine for itself. But as the article makes clear along the way, the Iraqi government would not be in control of the sites if the US had not agreed to turn over that control as part of the Status of Forces agreement reached with the Iraqi government. 

 

Here are the relevant clauses from the agreement:

 

5.  Upon the discovery of any historical or cultural site or finding any strategic resource in agreed facilities and areas, all works of construction, upgrading, or modification shall cease immediately and the Iraqi representatives at the Joint Committee shall be notified to determine appropriate steps in that regard.  

 6.  The United States shall return agreed facilities and areas and any non-relocatable structures and assemblies on them that it had built, installed, or established during the term of this Agreement, according to mechanisms and priorities set forth by the Joint Committee.  Such facilities and areas shall be handed over to the Government of Iraq free of any debts and financial burdens.  

 7.  The United States Forces shall return to the Government of Iraq the agreed facilities and areas that have heritage, moral, and political significance and any non-relocatable structures and assemblies on them that it had built, installed, or established, according to mechanisms, priorities, and a time period as mutually agreed by the Joint Committee, free of any debts or financial burdens.   

That the Iraqi government should wish to reassume responsibility for its country's heritage is both completely understandable and honorable, and that the US should be willing to turn them over is perfectly fine.  In fact, given the pathetic record of the military and the State Department in protecting Iraq’s archaeological sites, they may well be in better hands now, even if the government is disregarding the concerns of its own archaeologists. It is a shame, though, that the SOFA did not also include some provisions for assistance to the Iraq government for protecting sites. It would be interesting to know what kinds of conversations took place about this issue. The author of the Times piece suggests that it was at the insistence of the Iraqis that the sites were turned over. But what did we say? Were we surprised? Were there any negotiations about the issue?

Iraq War's cultural costs as seen through a Chicago prism

Chicago Tribune cultural critic Julia Keller interviewed me about Rape of Mesopotamia.

New Yorker asks me about looting

The New Yorker has done a Q & A with me about my new book, The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum.

Real Progress: Iraq Troops Bust Smuggling Ring, Recover 235 Looted Artifacts

Good news from Iraq: it appears that the Iraqi Army is beginning to score successes against antiquities smugglers in southern Iraq.

Brian Rose's radio interview -- a few comments

AIAPresident and Professor at University of Pennsylvania Brian Rose describes his recent first trip to Iraq where he saw ancient sites cratered by looters. Professor Rose also speaks about the cultural heritage briefings he has been giving to American soldiers on the archaeology of Iraq and Afghanistan, and his visit to the Iraq Museum. The interview can be heard here in the second part of the broadcast.

Rose was struck by the great number of sites that had been looted, and waxed eloquent on what has been lost: history has been murdered. Hammering home this reality is vital, and Rose is to be commended for doing so with great effectiveness. Even more important is to translate the despair at what has been lost into a determination to do something going forward to stop the looting. Here again Rose met the challenge. His visit, he said, had a purpose, which was to add to the credibility of suggestions for how to protect the sites, since “archaeologists have been talking about what would be the best way to safeguard the archaeological sites and antiquities yet few of us have actually been there on the ground witnessing the situation as it really exists, so we were making recommendations without a full deck of cards.”

No doubt Rose is correct in believing that speaking as one who has been “in country” will give recommendations the patina of being based on an assessment of the situation “as it really exists.” The problem, however, is that it is not clear from the interview how full or accurate a view of what really exists he achieved during a State Department-run tour that, at least from what one can glean from the interview, included stops at Babylon and at Ur, both sites that have been visited already by others and that have had military bases established on or near them since 2003. (See my earlier blogs on the visit of the British Museum team in June/July 2008.) A better view of the overall situation as it really exists would have been gained if the State Department had instead given the AIA time-series photos of a representative sample of sites, so archaeologists could count the number of new holes.

The more serious concern, however, is about whether recommendations from archaeologists for safeguarding the sites will go beyond site management plans such as the one for Ur that Rose mentions discussing with Iraqi officials eager to promote tourism to Abraham’s birthplace. For major sites like Ur and Babylon that have long been well-protected, site management may be just fine, but most sites are not so lucky. They need to be secured from looters, not managed for tourist visits.

And site security is not going to be achieved by cultural awareness training for troops, something Rose has been doing for the past five years. Not that such efforts are not extremely important for other reasons and worth continuing. They are crucial. But if sites are going to be secured archaeologists need to give the military and the State Department pointed practical directions for specific tasks they can and should undertake to secure them, and the tools needed to perform that job. It would have made no difference whatsoever had the tank crew that approached the Iraq Museum received a lecture in the history of Mesopotamia – they had no riot gear, no tear gas, no barbed wire, no crowd control training, and were barred under the rules of engagement from firing over the heads of looters.

Figuring out what these tasks and tools are is not that difficult, but it is not the kind of thing that archaeologists are used to thinking about. In fact, while Rose speaks of recommendations being made about how to protect sites, there are none from the archaeologists – at least not to my knowledge, and I would be delighted to be told otherwise – that are based on input from site security experts, cultural police like the carabinieri, or the Iraqis themselves, who have repeatedly decried shortages of money for site guards, gas for vehicles, communications equipment, etc.

The Italians are coming back in to help train Iraqis to fight the trafficking of antiquities, and it would be fantastic if the AIA set up a task force with them and other policing experts to develop teaching modules. When Brian Rose’s lectures for deploying officers include a powerpoint segment entitled “how to secure a site from looters”, with a bulleted tasklist linking to resources, this trip will have been worth it.

eBay reduces looting -- maybe

There's a fascinating article in the May/June issue of Archaeology magazine, arguing that the electronic buying and selling of antiquities on eBay has actually reduced the looting of ancient objects, rather than fuelling it.

On a quick first read, it seems logically persuasive, with some caveats. One is that if eBay is expanding the market then even if fakes bring the prices down relative to what a market with lower level of supply would charge, the increase in the number of potential buyers might drive the price back up, leaving the incentive to loot about what it was before. 


A hat tip to Scott Rosenblum for alerting me to this.

Q & A with Chronicle for Higher Education

From the issue dated April 17, 2009
A Fragile History, Besieged


A post-mortem examination of the cultural disaster in Iraq

Six years ago this month, the National Museum of Iraq was extensively looted amid the chaos of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad. Among the stolen objects was the Mask of Warka, a 5,100-year-old Sumerian artifact that is believed to be one of the earliest surviving representations of a human face. The mask was found buried on an Iraqi farm five months later — but thousands of other precious objects were destroyed or disappeared into the black market.

"We do not know, and we may never know, a great many lessons about how human civilization first arose, because of this disaster," says Lawrence Rothfield, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Chicago and a former director of the university's Cultural Policy Center.

In his new book, The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum (University of Chicago Press), Rothfield examines the sacking of the museum and the "slow-motion disaster" of the looting of archaeological sites across Iraq since 2003.

Rothfield recently spoke with The Chronicle's David Glenn. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

Q. Why should the world care about Iraqi antiquities? Doesn't this issue pale in comparison to the war's political struggles and tens of thousands of deaths?

I hear that question sometimes: Why should we care? Why should we worry that all of this material is being brought onto the black market? After all, isn't this making available to the rest of the world the beauty of all these objects that otherwise would not have been available for us to see?

One reason to worry is that this material is being ripped out of its context. The individual intact pieces that fall into the hands of collectors might be beautiful. But most of what we know about the origins of civilization has come from piecing together fragments and reconstructing contexts. The Epic of Gilgamesh was pieced together from fragments that looters today would have crushed underfoot.

Q. Before 2003 the National Museum of Iraq was regarded as one of the best in the region. Despite all of the cruelties and travails of Saddam Hussein's regime, this institution thrived. Why was that?

Saddam thought of the Mesopotamian past as a propaganda tool — which meant that at least he cared enough about it to impose severe penalties on looters, and to spend the resources needed to support the work of the museum. And even before Saddam came to power, Iraq had some longstanding relationships with European and American archaeological institutions, including the Oriental Institute here at Chicago. So for decades, they had been training archaeologists to produce work that was of very high quality.

Q. Why did the United States do such a bad job of protecting the museum in 2003?

Before the war, nobody except archaeologists was worried about civilians looting the archaeological sites and the museum. And that includes the Iraqi exiles who were advising the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, which was supposed to develop plans for the postwar period. They set up working groups on all sectors of society — but they forgot about culture.

Q. But would it have made a difference if the Future of Iraq Project had paid attention to culture?

No, it wouldn't have made any difference at all, given that the military threw all of their plans in the garbage can anyway.

Now, the military itself was very interested in doing its job in terms of protecting cultural sites and museums. But under international law, its job is defined as not destroying or looting cultural sites itself — not as preventing civilians from destroying sites.

So before the war, they reached out to archaeologists, and they did a perfect job of identifying sites to put on a no-strike list. None of those sites was destroyed in active combat operations.

Unfortunately, they ignored warnings from the same archaeologists they were working with that the museums and sites might be looted by Iraqis. The Pentagon should have known about that issue. Nine museums were looted after the 1991 Gulf War. The military did not learn its lesson from that experience.

Q. There were reports last year that the military had asked archaeologists to develop a similar no-strike list for cultural sites in Iran. And some archaeologists have argued that it is unethical to cooperate with that project, because they say an American attack on Iran would be immoral. Have you been part of those debates?

My thought is that requiring the military to spend time and effort to protect cultural sites actually makes the cost of war higher for the military than it would otherwise be. So if you're interested in doing what you can to discourage the U.S. from going to war, raising the cost of war is one way to do so.

There's no contradiction between speaking out publicly against the war and making sure that the military protects cultural sites if it does go to war.

Q. Do you believe the American military has learned lessons since 2003?

It's a mixed picture. The new Army Field Manual includes on its task list the imperative to secure and protect cultural sites and museums. That's a huge step forward in itself. They've also been developing excellent cultural-awareness training programs to sensitize soldiers heading into war zones, working with the Archaeological Institute of America.

But there is also the separate question about what to do going forward in Iraq — and in Afghanistan, where matters are arguably even worse. There is still severe looting in both countries. The British recently returned several tons of Afghan antiquities that had been seized at London airports since 2003, just to give you some sense of the size of the problem.

The looting of the Iraq museum was terrible, but the amount of material lost from the slow looting of Iraq's archaeological sites dwarfs the amount that was taken from the museum. Estimates are that roughly half a million pieces have been destroyed or taken from the ground since 2003.

Q. If you had half an hour to talk to people at the Pentagon or the State Department, what would you say?

Archaeologists have been asking for years now for the military to share satellite photographs of the Iraqi archaeological sites so that they could count the number of holes and track the rate of looting around the country. They're still waiting.

I would also urge the Pentagon to form a task force to develop operational plans to inject resources into those areas where it's possible to make a difference. In some cases that might mean providing cars, weapons, and walkie-talkies to the civilians who are supposed to be protecting sites.

And I would suggest a tax on all sales of antiquities from Iraq and Afghanistan. The proceeds could be used to help finance anti-looting efforts in those countries.

Q. At the end of your book, you wrote that you didn't expect the Iraq museum to reopen "for years to come." But in February, after your book went to press, a part of the museum reopened. Were you surprised?

Well, I was dismayed by it, as were [the museum's former director] Donny George and a number of other Iraqi archaeologists. Conditions in Baghdad are still very fragile. And the museum is nowhere near ready to be open to the public, even if the situation weren't so touchy. The recent reduction in violence is heartening, but it only brings us down to levels that are equivalent to other long-running civil wars.

David Glenn is a senior reporter at The Chronicle.

http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 55, Issue 32, Page B17

Interview about Rape of Mesopotamia with ABC Radio Australia's PM Program

Iraq Welcoming Archaeological Tourism, As Sites Remain Unprotected

The Iraqi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities continues its public-relations offensive with the announcement that Iraqi archaeologists have uncovered 4,000 Babylonian artifacts. The good news, dutifully splashed across the headlines by Reuters ("Iraqi Archaeologists unearth Babylonian Treasures"), is engineered to support the Ministry's agenda, as the article notes:

Iraq, which lies in the heart of a region historians call the cradle of civilisation, is hoping a decrease in violence to levels not seen since late 2003 will encourage tourists to visit its ancient sites.

In late 2003, let us recall, looting of Iraq's archaeological sites was going into overdrive, and there is some reason to believe that despite improvements in security the looting continues. That dark underside of this tourism marketing is missing from the headline, but shows up at the end of the article:

Qais Hussein Rasheed, acting head of the antiquities and heritage committee, told reporters Iraq still had a big problem with looters ransacking archaeological sites.

"These sites are vulnerable to endless robbery by thieves, smugglers and organised gangs because they are not protected," he said. "We have asked the relevant ministries to allocate policemen but haven't received very many so far."

More on Iraq's Amnesty/Rewards Program for Turning In Looted Antiquities

Donny George has kindly clarified that the amnesty program is not new, but is mentioned in Iraq's antiquities laws. Antiquities coming to the museum are brought before a special "Technical Committee" which decides on the amount to be awarded the person who brought them. The money comes from the annual budget of the SBAH, as a line item. Sometimes the funds are exhausted before year end, and more monies have been requested from the ministry of finance to support the program. In 2003-2004, for obvious reasons, it was difficult to get money for the program, but the SBAH kept records for every one that brought antiquities to the museum, and payments were eventually made.

Perhaps as useful as the artifacts themselves is the information that those returning items are supposed to provide the Committee regarding where and how they obtained the items to begin with. According to Donny George, such leads have in the past helped archaeologists locate hitherto unknown sites.

The problem with the turnover of materials by high-level officials, however, is that -- if these officials are to be believed -- they merely accepted antiquities from their constituents. If that is the case, and those constituents cannot be identified and brought before the Committee, then any chance of tracking antiquities back to their original sites is lost.

Iraq Appears to Have a Portable Antiquities Scheme of Its Own

According to a new report from Azzaman, Iraq has adopted a new law not only immunizing those who turn in looted antiquities but offering them compensation. It is not clear if there is any requirement to assist antiquities officials in locating the sites from which items may have been taken.

Government officials surrender 531 artifacts to Iraq Museum, among them gold and silver coins

By Zainab Khudair

Azzaman, March 9, 2009

The Iraq Museum has received 531 archeological pieces which were in the possession of senior government officials.

The pieces were handed over to the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Qahtan al-Jibouri who in turn gave them to the Iraq Museum, according to the ministry's spokesman Abdulzahara al-Talaqani.

Talaqani said the first batch comprising a magnificent collection of numismatic coins was returned to the museum by Minister of National Security Shirwan al-Waili.

This batch included 366 gold and silver coins of various colors, Talaqani said.

He said the second batch of 165 artifacts was kept by two members of parliament and included mainly statues and cylinder seals.

Talaqani said Iraqi scientists who have examined both collections have said they were of astounding beauty and great value.

One magnificent piece, he said, was a pottery statue of a standing woman holding a beaker made of glass.

It is the first time senior government officials are reported to have been in possession of so many artifacts. The officials say the pieces were passed to them by ordinary people.

Under a new law in Iraq holders of ancient relics whether stolen or dug up illegally cannot be prosecuted if they choose to hand them over to the authorities willingly.

In fact, the law makes it incumbent on the authorities to compensate and reward anyone returning antiquities by their free will.

It is not clear whether the officials will get any compensation and Talaqani declined to say whether the pieces were among the thousands of missing artifacts or part of relics which are being dug up illegally by smugglers across the country.

Tons of Looted Afghan Antiquities Heading Back-- Why Now?

National Geographic has an interesting story about England's return of literally tons of Afghan antiquities seized at Heathrow over the past six years since the destruction of the Taliban regime. Although the story notes that

Poor villagers lacking other sources of income use shovels and wheelbarrows to cart off precious objects from historic spots around the country, while criminal gangs smuggle the loot to Pakistan and onwards.

The Kabul government remains too cash-strapped, and too caught up fighting the Taliban-led insurgency, to do anything about it. (Afghanistan's own Ministry of Culture was the target of a suicide bomb attack last October.) And despite efforts to raise awareness among Pakistani customs and law enforcement officials, the situation is no better across the border.

What is missing from the article is any indication of what, if anything, is being done by overstretched coalition forces to assist the Afghan government to protect some small fraction at least of its sites. Nor is there any indication whether the criminal gangs smuggling the loot to Pakistan might be linked to the Taliban, as Matthew Bogdanos has argued the antiquities smugglers in Iraq were also supplying insurgents there with weapons and even taxes on their revenues from antiquities sales.

Afghanistan offers an opportunity for all those who did far too little to protect Iraq's sites -- the military, the State Department, UNESCO, cultural heritage NGOs, collectors, dealers, and the museum community -- to develop a coherent, focused, and cost-effective set of initiatives. Granted, the task in Afghanistan is more formidable than in Iraq, for a number of reasons: the sheer size of the country; its not having developed the kind of well established cultural heritage protection bureaucracy that Iraq had over many decades; the lack of pizzazz associated with fabled Biblical names like Babylon, to name just a few. But surely a task force given modest resources could come up with some measures that could make a real difference. Is anyone working on this problem?

Throwing a Monkey Wrench into the Antiquities Auction Market

Chinese collector pulls a fast one on Christie's in protest of auctioning of antiquities China deems looted.

Site Looting Down Dramatically in Italy

Italy has demonstrated that it is possible to dramatically reduce the looting of archaeological sites, according to a new story in Scotland's Sunday Herald. What lies behind this success? Here's the money quote:

A three-pronged strategy from the government has made life increasingly difficult for Italy's would-be Indiana Joneses. Increased monitoring of archaeological sites means they are more likely to be caught; tougher penalties are in the parliamentary pipeline; and aggressive prosecution of museum curators and middlemen who trade in illegally excavated antiquities is drying up the market for their goods.
Last year, the carabinieri art squad discovered just 37 illegal digs, a tiny figure compared with the 1000 or so regularly found in the 1990s.

Assuming that the astonishing decline is not due to the carabinieri having cut back radically on site monitoring, the message here is clear: if the appropriate policies are put in place and -- crucially -- backed by adequate policing and enforcement resources, looting can be stopped. Dealers and collectors who suggest that the only feasible solution is to legalize the illicit market are wrong, as are archaeologists who put great stock in raising cultural awareness.

Of the three causes mentioned, it seems least likely that tougher penalties alone are responsible, since the decline has preceded the passage of stronger laws (though it may well be that even before the new laws have been passed, looters are being deterred by media attention). Nor is it likely that the high-profile prosecution of a small number of curators and middlemen -- really, only the Medici network -- could have done the trick by itself. While the Getty's buying spree surely poured oil on the fire, the demand for antiquities is primarily driven not by American museums but by the continued avidity of wealthy collectors worldwide; and the takedown of the Medici network must have left others intact.

That leaves increased monitoring of archaeological sites. The article provides no figures or additional information about how monitoring has improved, but whatever the specific measures -- better technology, additional personnel, information-sharing, etc -- they must have cost something. Those who are interested in assisting other countries where looting is out of control should focus on targeting their assistance on measures to improve the capacity for site monitoring. It is a lot less sexy than restoring a world heritage site or sponsoring archaeological digs, but much more cost-effective in preserving the past.

Finally, Policing Assistance For Iraq's Archaeological Sites -- On the Way, At Least

Obscured by the controversy over the photo op "reopening" of the Iraq Museum is something much more significant: the announcement by the Italian Ministry of Culture that Italy will help Iraq create a new police unit, modeled on Italy's crack carabinieri units, to fight the trafficking of stolen works. The Italians had been in Iraq during the first few years of the post-war period, and the area for which they were responsible was far better protected than others, remaining so even after they withdrew following an attack that killed several carabinieri.

While other forms of assistance such as site conservation and management, museum administration, and archaeological training, are of course valuable, without site policing and anti-looting efforts there will be far fewer sites to conserve, artifacts to catalogue, archaeological digs to conduct. Policing efforts should be a top priority for nations or NGOs hoping to assist Iraq in preserving its past, and it is deeply heartening to see that the Italians are again offering such assistance after a hiatus.

Add Peru to List of Countries Used as Smuggling Routes for Mesopotamian Antiquities Heading for the U.S.

The Peruvian Times reports:

Peruvian authorities and the Andean country’s National Culture Institute, INC, have been leading a campaign to stamp out the trade in antiquities illegally smuggled from Peru, reporting the seizure of more than 1,200 cultural and national heritage artifacts in 2008.
“Last year, we stopped 1,235 cultural objects from being smuggled out of Peru,” said the INC’s director, Dr. Cecilia Bákula, in comments to daily La República.
A team of three archaeologists and three art historians – on call 24 hours a day – carried out an average of 600 verifications every month, and recorded 30 seizures of artifacts.
Some of the most important pieces seized last year were not Inca or prehispanic treasures at all. Among the objects were three ancient clay tablets from Iraq, inscribed with cuneiform writing - one of the earliest known forms of written expression – and 21 macuquinas, or cobs, a crude style of irregularly shaped, hand-hammered coins, struck in Spain and colonial Spanish America. One of the Sumerian tablets was identified as originally from Babylon, south of Baghdad, and another from the region of Diyala, in southeastern Iraq. The tablets are between 4,000 and 5,000 years old.
Peru seized the ancient Mesopotamian tablets at Lima’s Jorge Chavez International Airport in February 2008, from where they were being smuggled to the United States.
The tablets were returned to Dr. Ameera Idan Hlaihel, head of Iraq’s Institute of Antiquities, last Friday.