Editorial: How to Stop Illegal Excavations

016

Site looting is rampant in parts of the Near East. The looters are of two kinds. One is very difficult to control. The other can be stopped relatively easily.

The two kinds of looters are those with permits to excavate and those who dig without permits. The first type consists of professional archaeologists who excavate but do not publish scientific reports of their excavations. They are not usually called looters, but the effect is the same. Their digging is essentially destructive because it cannot be repeated to test the results. In the absence of a final scientific report, the information gleaned from the excavation is irretrievably lost. The finds are often mislaid, stored in basements of antiquities authorities or otherwise lost. When the public does learn about these finds, the artifacts, like antiquities on the market, have no context by which they can be interpreted.

We have discussed this kind of looting on at least two occasions in the past;^a we hope to do something more concrete in the near future. But the problem is complex and not easily solved.

The second kind of looters are illegal diggers who sell their loot on the antiquities market.

The antiquities market can also be divided in two—the high end and the low end. Common pots, oil lamps and the like are on the low end. This is the key to solving the problem of illegal excavations.

The high end consists of those rare, museum-type artifacts that sell for many thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.^b

It is impossible to search or excavate deliberately for high-end artifacts. If it were, professional archaeologists would be out there excavating for them. They are fortuitous finds. No one can predict that a site will yield a seal of someone mentioned in the Bible or a sacred bull or a gold pendant. Artifacts of this type are sometimes, but only rarely, found in a controlled, professional excavation. We have already speculated on the various ways artifacts of this type come to the market.^c More importantly, illegal diggers can no more dig for these high-end finds than legal diggers.

The illegal diggers find mostly pots and lamps—and they make a market in this. This is the market that we aim to eliminate, or at least reduce. As it happens, there is an easy way to do this: Dry up the market for illegal artifacts by offering the same items on the legal market. Yes, governmental authorities should sell common pots and oil lamps, found by the many thousands in professional excavations that are taking place all over the Near East.

This suggestion is anathema to some hidebound archaeologists and administrative bureaucrats, who like to feel self-righteous by standing on principle. I recall one prominent Israeli archaeologist who drew herself up at the suggestion, responding, “Not a pot!” spitting out the double t’s with special emphasis. Archaeologists do not sell pots—for her, that was that. If you ask her for a rationale, she will tell you that someday someone may be able to learn something from these pots.

A better question to ask is, If governments sold genuine, but common, artifacts in this way, would it no longer be profitable for the illegal diggers to excavate with flashlights at night? My answer is try selling them. Do it for a limited period and see what happens.

Recently, I had lunch with Ghazi Bisheh, the director of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities. Illegal digging is rampant in Jordan, he told me, because of the difficult economic situation in that country. Villagers are driven to loot known tombs that are filled with pottery. Then he told me something that supported my idea of government sales. The situation is so bad, Bisheh said, that the price of these pots has seriously declined on the Amman market! In short, the price dipped as the market was flooded with looted pots—and no doubt the incentive to dig them declined.

It is likely that the market for illegally excavated low-end pottery would simply dry up if the same thing were available at a reasonable price from a governmental office, especially when the purchase would be accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the government and a report on where the item was excavated, by whom, when and so on. In these circumstances who would want to buy an illegally excavated pot, especially when it might well be a fake and in any event has no provenance?

Another advantage to governmental sales would be the money that would then be available for legitimate, but cash-poor, archaeological endeavors.

The sale by excavators and governmental 071authorities of antiquities of which there are thousands of exemplars is supported, albeit sotto voce, by several prominent professional archaeologists. A former director of the Israel Department of Antiquities told me of a meeting several years ago with his counterparts in other Mediterranean countries. All favored the sale of hundreds of duplicates by the government, but none was prepared to say so publicly. As one of the directors stated, “Who wants to be the first accused of selling their national patrimony?”

Yigael Yadin, Israel’s most illustrious archaeologist of an earlier generation, wanted to sell duplicates from his excavation at Hazor but was fearful of the reaction from his fellow archaeologists.

In 1993 the Israel Antiquities Authority treasurer, David Steinfeld, suggested selling some of the 200,000 duplicates in the Authority storerooms, but nothing came of the suggestion. Characterizing the suggestion as “selling the cultural heritage of the state” and the “property of the nation,” other professionals in the Authority opposed the idea, and nothing came of it.

At about the same time, Harvard professor Frank Moore Cross told me he agreed that government antiquities authorities should sell to the public objects of which they have hundreds, but only if antiquities dealers were outlawed.

In a taped interview he stated, “You cut off motives for illegal digging by putting the antiquities dealers at extreme risk. If at the same time as the Antiquities Authority stole their business by selling duplicates from their vast stores, I think real progress would be achieved.”

Cross told me that in the 1950s he had himself purchased rare objects on the antiquites market and then given them to Jordanian antiquities authorities in exchange for more common pottery vessels that he needed in order to complete a series for teaching purposes.

Cross also noted that, “Selling off common duplicates would ease storage problems that plague museums in Israel and the Near East. So long as the objects sold were properly recorded and analyzed, and study collections from excavations preserved, I see no reason simply to keep masses of duplicates filling space in jammed museum storerooms.”

Cross acknowledged that he had on his mantle a “lovely burnished water or wine decanter of the seventh century [B.C.E.],” adding that he had acquired it before 1967. “There are thousands of them,” he said. “This is the sort of thing which could be sold profitably without harming the archaeological sciences.”

Cross drew the line at inscriptions, 072however; he would not allow any inscription to be sold. “I think your idea for the sale of antiquities should be pursued. But I think you will have to define very carefully what can be sold and what cannot.”

As a safeguard for scholars, duplicates sold by the government could even be recalled if they were needed. Each artifact could be photographed before sale and relevant information regarding the artifact and the purchaser could be stored on a computer.

My advice to the appropriate governmental authorities: Don’t let the Chicken Littles scare you; the sky will not fall if you judiciously sell duplicates. You may even be able to stop site looting. Try it.

Site looting is rampant in parts of the Near East. The looters are of two kinds. One is very difficult to control. The other can be stopped relatively easily.