033
Cyprus’s most distinguished archaeologist, retired Antiquities Department director Vassos Karageorghis, has been harshly criticized for publishing privately owned artifacts obtained on the antiquities market and lacking known provenances in a catalogue of Cypriot terra-cotta figurines.
Karageorghis’s “inclusion of a large amount of material from private collections raises several difficult issues,” declares Ellen Herscher, chair of the Cultural Properties Legislation and Policy Committee of the powerful Archaeological Institute of America, in an extensive review of the Cypriot scholar’s catalogue in a recent issue of the prestigious Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR).1
Herscher deplores “the role of scholars in promoting the prestige that collectors continue to enjoy—despite their direct participation in a network involving criminals, smugglers and general sleaziness.” She continues, “[The monetary] value [of unprovenanced artifacts], enhanced by publication, will serve to stimulate the antiquities market in general and encourage further looting.”
“Publication [of unprovenanced pieces] will [also] inevitably serve to enhance the value of the pieces that subsequently come onto the antiquities market,” writes Herscher.
“It is difficult to see any justification for including, as Karageorghis does, a number of pieces that are only known from auction house and dealer catalogs,” she states (emphasis in original).
Herscher is especially critical of the publication of pieces that are not even beautiful. As an example, she cites Karageorghis’s publication of “the heavily restored plank figurine owned by Shelby White and Leon Levy [which] has little aesthetic appeal, even to this reviewer, who is as passionate as anyone about the Cypriot Early Bronze Age.”
Herscher notes that some people defend the publication of an unprovenanced find on the ground that “some knowledge can be gained from it.” She rejects this contention, however, declaring it “harder and harder to maintain.” When a piece is without provenance, its “very authenticity” is “doubtful.” While otherwise praising Karageorghis’s catalogue, Herscher in effect accuses him of publishing fakes (or, at least, pieces of doubtful authenticity), declaring that his catalogue “includes numerous unique, unparalleled examples without provenience, the authenticity and/or Cypriot origin of which must be considered questionable.”
This stern public spanking of one of the Mediterranean’s most revered archaeologists reflects the tensions within the scholarly community about how to deal with unprovenanced artifacts in private collections. Scholars who do publish these artifacts contend that we cannot deny ourselves the knowledge these artifacts provide. These scholars claim that the refusal to acknowledge the very existence of these artifacts is a foolish head-in-the-sand approach that does not face reality. Refusal to publish these artifacts will not solve the looting problem.
The American Schools of Oriental Research has made it a breach of ethics to publish “illegally excavated or exported” artifacts. But they do not say how artifacts will be determined to have been “illegally excavated or exported.”
Moreover, many scholars believe the knowledge that can be gained even from illegally excavated pieces should not be ignored. Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were illegally excavated. Scholars made arrangements to buy the scrolls from intermediary antiquities dealers. Should the scholars have ignored the scrolls instead, refusing to publish them because they were illegally excavated? Such a course wouldn’t help, many scholars argue. Although all of them oppose illegal excavations and looting, they do not agree on how to deal with the problem.
In March the American Oriental Society (AOS) adopted a proposal stating that it “does not condone the … publication … of artifacts illegally excavated.” The AOS statement does not discuss how it will be determined that an artifact was illegally excavated. And does the AOS proposal permit an artifact published in contravention of the AOS statement to be cited?
Ironically, the longest article in the issue of BASOR containing Herscher’s condemnation of Karageorghis approvingly cites a book containing nothing but unprovenanced articles in private collections.2
Cyprus’s most distinguished archaeologist, retired Antiquities Department director Vassos Karageorghis, has been harshly criticized for publishing privately owned artifacts obtained on the antiquities market and lacking known provenances in a catalogue of Cypriot terra-cotta figurines. Karageorghis’s “inclusion of a large amount of material from private collections raises several difficult issues,” declares Ellen Herscher, chair of the Cultural Properties Legislation and Policy Committee of the powerful Archaeological Institute of America, in an extensive review of the Cypriot scholar’s catalogue in a recent issue of the prestigious Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR).1 Herscher deplores “the role of […]
