MessageI was wondering just why Dave Welsh thinks it necessary to provide
yet again an exegesis of the alleged "archaeological code words" contained
in my messages to this board. In fact he has it all wrong, and I do wonder
why he thinks he knows better than anyone else here (including myself) what
I meant. [Is "data hygiene" an archaeological codeword too, and "tainted
goods" are never referred to in plain English and "of dubious origin" does
not mean precisely that?] Not "code" at all and if you read what I said,
referring to what a responsible collector PRESUMABLY actually does endeavour
to keep out of their collection. Though of course my calls for members of
this list to give me a decent definition of what YOU actually understand by
being a responsible collector of portable antiquities has repeatedly, one
might say studiously, been ignored. There is no hidden "code", only what I
actually wrote, and I don't know why anyone would attempt to insult your
intelligence by trying to make you believe that I wrote anything else.

Then Wesley Lau replied and I began to understand. Wesley is apparently not
even interested in following the history, because he tells us he does not
collect emperors or mints, he collects "tangible links to all the ancient
myths". That rather reinforces the point I was making... Dave Welsh asserted
that a numismatist who is not a collector is "not a real numismatist"; I
wonder if in fact its not the other way round, by no means are all coin
collectors numismatists. How many are? Well, Wesley complains I have not set
out to offer any "real data to show that archaeologists can do it better in
the study of numismatics". [Why would I? That is not what we were
discussing. Go and get some decent archaeology books if you want to find out
what archaeologists do.] And what is it in your opinion they do or don't "do
it better" than coin collectors? And have you considered in your search for
logical arguments what is it that numismatists, numismatics, and collectors
do not "do it better" working on their hoard-heaps of unprovenanced objects
if you look at the other side of the coin ? (That's not a pun).

Wesley, you say "he offers the example of the collector just trying to
collect every emperor and then questions the contribution", but in fact you
obviously did not see that this was a question I myself posed to this group
a few days ago. You have not answered it, merely said what we all can read,
that I questioned it. I'll pose it again. There are (we are told by Wayne
Sales), 50 000 collectors of ancient coins in the USA alone, each having
varied numbers of unprovencanced coins tucked away somewhere, so in one
country alone we are potentially talking about millions of coins ultimately
taken from some kind of a context in some source country or another
overseas. That is millions of holes in somebody else's archaeological
record, which therefore can no longer be used for study by archaeological
means. Now you tell me that these collectors create other types of
information which mitigates this. So my question was how many numismatic
books and articles do these 50 000 collectors produce for each decade of
creation of those millions of holes in the common heritage? I am not even
asking for which of them provide a significant insight into the past, just a
ball park figure to put one of the points frequently emphasised by the ACCG
into perspective. And no, I am not talking "code words" here either; "common
heritage" is the basis of the arguments you (plural) yourselves use to
justify why you all have your right to own a bit of it at a price which
suits you and in whatever quantities and from wherever you want.

I am sorry to say that despite the long reply attempting to refute my
previous comments, I still think that Kenneth Blair's arguments boil down to
"two wrongs make a right out of one of them". He's not alone in this, it's a
frequently used argument (and not just here of course). Kenneth, there
either IS a market in licit and legitimate material (which is what the two
hundred list members here insist), or there is not. Make your minds up which
currently is in the dominant position. If there already is a market in licit
material and it's the one that dominates, we don't need to empty the museums
for you. My McDonalds analogy which you dislike was addressing Farhad Assar's
suggestion that the market exists because people were busily digging stuff
out of ancient sites and then wondering what to do with it which is to my
mind simply wrong (and yes, Wesley, I did say at some length precisely why).
Kenneth, I am of course fully aware of a long tradition in grave robbing and
the like, you take my comment out of the context of the specific discussion
with Assar. There is no need to impute me of ignorance ("another that makes
me shake my head over where you get your information"), and falsehood ("the
fallacy of this is patently obvious"). Read again - properly this time -
what I actually wrote and YOU QUOTED and tell us all where what you say
falsifies what I wrote. What I wrote is perfectly true. While we know of
cases where this did happen, there really are many many sites which were not
dug over at any time in the past for the metal objects they contain. The
very fact that metal can be found in them today in significant quantities
shows this. This subsistence digging clearly has only started on a massive
scale in the recent past. Which tends to suggest that Dr Assar's inference
based on anecdotal evidence is too simplistic.

Likewise in my reply to Dr Assar, I made a number of comments why I consider
the argument he advances too simplistic. I think it was about a dozen if you
count them. Dave Welsh replied that he views the argument that the market
for portable antiquities does not exist independently of the demand for them
from collectors as "misleading and fallacious". But in saying why, he only
half-addresses one point (the use of old coins as scrap) which I had raised
(and "it is reported" - where? All I have seen myself is a reference to 18th
and 19th century Ottoman coins used as scrap for making such trinkets and
other objects, I'd be glad of a further reference). Well, we can go on
"discussing" like that for the next couple of months and not get anywhere.

Voz Earl quite rightly observes that the situation is far more complex than
the present discussion reflects. I should make the point that for my part I
am merely answering the points raised in reply (or rather, as far as I can
see, to avoid addressing) my original points which were at the start of this
exchange. I have no intention of or available time to using this list to set
out some grand overview of the antiquities trade. Voz makes a number of
important points, though as regards creating a database of provenances he
says it will not make a difference.. I say (folksily) "every journey starts
with a single step". Voz suggests "need to see UK style antiquities programs
extended to other source countries--otherwise, nothing is going to change
one way or the other." Good idea. And of course one thing that might add to
the pressure to actually doing that would be the example set by the central
database set up by responsible foreign dealers and collectors. What kind of
public education program can the heritage managers of the source countries
be claiming to supply if their citizens have to go to a foreign database to
find out anything at all about what is coming out of the ground in their
country and what it all means? That'd be a sharp kick up the backside for
those "archaeologists" you all so distrust and vilify, wouldn't it? And it
would be precisely doing precisely what several of you have said should be
happening. spreading the word about responsibility for the heritage and its
significance. And it would be coming from the collectors and dealers.

By the way Voz, you use the "its human nature to collect" argument. In fact
its not. Marketing surveys done by ebay for example show some very
interesting facts with regard that argument used by portable antiquity
collectors. In Britain (a source country par excellence), the number of
people who do what you say you would do is 1 in 6000 hardly a significant
majority.

But of course the fact that this whole discussion was supposed to be about
provenancing of licitly-obtained coins seems to have been forgotten.

A few weeks back I was "challenged" to "put up or shut up" to propose ways
in which the trade in unprovenanced coins could be managed in a way which
was beyond criticism (ie. to deal with the issues Elkins had raised and
which was the subject of critique here). In response to this I made several
suggestions for discussion. Well, where has that "discussion" gone now?
Scrap metal value of coins, what pH means, acid rain, global warming, Thomas
Paine, flooding of Chinese valleys, what museums allegedly do with coins,
"who owns Temple Mount", and now a numismatist who collects "tangible links
to all the mythology"...

And of course we are still waiting with bated breath for the promised
explanation of the extraordinary statement by one dealer here 12 days ago
which seemed to be about him not supporting "suppressing someone else's
fundamental rights" to dig up and smuggle portable artefacts. Two hundred or
so list members all involved (they say) in a licit enterprise and not a
SINGLE one of them questions the potential implications of such a statement
made on a public forum by an individual representing the same profession. I
would say that does not reflect well on this trade or those who patronize
it, and yet not a single one of you tried to disassociate yourselves from
the comment or its potential implications, or show where it might have been
misunderstood. I find that rather interesting..

From another forum I belong to (devoted to numismatic forgery) I found this
comment in my inbox, the extent of fakery in precisely this market is hardly
surprising. "Would it be a legitimate assumption to say that all
internationally obtained ancient numismatic items in the wholesale market
are sourced from shady entities? Does not organized crime play a major role
in the international trade of ancient numismatic artifacts as it is widely
known and virtually an accepted fact in other ancient cultural artifacts?"
And so on. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coinforgeryebay/message/609. I
expect this comment will be dismissed like a lot else here as written by
another "tyro" who knows nothing of what he writes, or who "ignores certain
facts", or is "not a real numismatist" or whatever. Nevertheless it is
interesting to see comments like this coming out of the numismatic
community, and comparing that with some of the things one can read here
(candid and otherwise).

On the 5th of October Dave Welsh wrote:
> Archaeologists really are not justified in arbitrarily demanding
> proof of provenance, without first sincerely cooperating in an effort
> to demonstrate the practicality of such a requirement..<
[here I would like to add that not all archaeologists "demand" anything of
the sort. They just want looting and smuggling to be curtailed and the
easiest way to police it would be to make all such trade subject to strong
legal constraints. The ones that are saying "OK, carry on chaps, but let us
record at least where this stuff is coming from" [the Portable Antiquities
Scheme approach] are the ones on your side, the ones who are "seeking
motivated cooperation by friendly, ethical collectors than from continuing a
misguided, negative and unproductive war against coin collecting". Voz says
the Portable Antiquities Scheme approach is the way forward, Dave Welsh has
said the same, as I think has Wayne Sayles, but when it comes down to
actually adopting it yourselves, suddenly the practical problems it involves
for you are allegedly "insurmountable". So you say its entirely up to "the
archaeologists" to set it all up and in motion for you. "They want it, let
them do all the work" you say. So what DO you want - apart from to be left
totally alone to buy whatever you want from whatever undeclared source you
want? From what I have seen here, I have severe doubts whether if "the
archaeologists" set up for you a fully working system shiny and new with all
the bells and ribbons, you'd all just take one look at it, snort and refuse
to use it. This has to be something coming from within the hobby not imposed
from above ]

Welsh continues:
> But neither are collectors and advocates of collecting justified
> in preemptively rejecting the proposal that they should document
> provenance, .<
[well, that's not very co-operative, friendly nor ultimately ethical if they
lead to the loss of that information while pretending to be custodians of
the common heritage - what is that definition of responsibility in
collecting? ]..

> ..without first sincerely exploring the question and evaluating whether
> such a requirement may be reasonably possible. In my view, both sides
> have a moral obligation to study the issue in good faith and cooperatively
> arrive at a definitive, common sense appraisal. <
Well, you will forgive me. But sidetracking to pH, groundless accusations on
the alleged use of "archaeological code words" and all the rest of the past
few days' posts on this list really does not seem to be leading to any sort
of "appraisal" of the basic idea at all. It's just a waste of time and
words. Are we going to discuss this or not?

As for change. Thomas Paine was evoked here a few days ago by Wayne Sayles
for writing common sense. In it, he wrote something which seems to me to be
almost made for the present "debate":
"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET
sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not
thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT,
and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom." I see here a
lot of very loud but ultimately unreflexive "outcry in defence of custom",
defending that which is given the superficial appearance of being "right",
and a lot of "reasons" being thought up to justify that impression. The
question is whether the passage of time will not bring the numismatic
community to reassess and condemn the unreflexive approach of their
predecessors on these matters and not exploring them in more detail, but
just sticking to self-justificatory superficiality. My impression is that as
numismatics develops as a discipline and begins to pay much more attention
to ethics, it will, and those currently sticking their heels over
established custom and because they cannot be bothered will be seen as the
dinosaurs of numismatics.

Paul Barford


----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Welsh
To: Unidroit-L@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 10:04 PM
Subject: RE: [Unidroit-L] Re:[ Provenance "Challenge"]


> What we are talking about here is maintaining the hygiene of personal
> collections of responsible law-abiding collectors, taking the steps
> required to eliminate the possibility that they contain material of
> dubious, tainted or illicit origin.

In order to keep this discussion properly focused, I think it is important
to discuss terminology used in this sentence. It contains four words which
those involved in the collecting advocacy movement have come to think of as
archaeological "code words," and which I personally think of as
"doublespeak." Such terminology has a lot to do with the conflict between
archaeology and coin collecting.

The starting point must be to observe that responsible law abiding coin
collectors are not doing anything wrong. Collecting unprovenanced coins is
perfectly legal in most Western nations, and it has never been customary or
common to maintain any records of provenance. Those who collect
unprovenanced coins are observing present laws as they should, and presently
have no obligation to inquire into the origins of the material they collect
so long as they acquire it in a legal manner. The issue under discussion is
that Dr. Barford and those who share his perspective wish to change either
the laws, the beliefs of collectors as to their moral obligations, or both
in such a way as to induce collectors to conform to archaeological standards
of ethics.

I recently read an article discussing the dilemma faced by a conservator who
was approached by a collector with a Roman sword needing conservation to
stop what appeared to be progressive corrosion (which often happens when a
metal artifact is unearthed without subsequent chemical stabilization). The
conservator commented that professional ethics required her to refuse to
treat the artifact because it was considered to be of dubious origin. I
suspect that the average intelligent person would be likely to wonder
whether mankind is really best served by allowing artifacts without
provenance to rot instead of conserving them, and ignoring the existence of
everything that does not have an impeccable provenance in archaeological
publications. Numismatics certainly would be much impoverished, if only
coins with provenances could be studied. Thus, archaeological standards of
ethics are not necessarily what "comes naturally" to the average good and
decent person.

For this reason I think it is a mistake for Dr. Barford and those of his
persuasion to argue in a manner that implies that those who do not embrace
archaeological standards of ethics are irresponsible or immoral. They are
neither. They simply have a different point of view. It is one thing to set
out to persuade and educate such people to share one's point of view, and it
is quite another to address them in a manner that implies that they are
morally inferior. That does not make converts, it makes enemies.

Now let's address the "code words" Dr. Barford used, and their intended
meanings in context as I understand them:

"hygiene" of personal collections = conformance to archaeological provenance
standards
"dubious" = unprovenanced
"tainted" = describing an artifact whose removal or excavation was an
offence under local law in the state of origin
"illicit" = contrary to local law in the state of origin

These meanings however are quite different from what the average intelligent
person who is unfamiliar with such specialized terminology would take them
to be. Such an individual would instead be likely to receive the impression
that a collection containing "dubious" coins that might well be "tainted"
and perhaps "illicit" had very poor "hygiene" indeed, and that anyone who
possessed such a collection was a moral leper. There are those who do not
believe that such a reaction would surprise Dr. Barford and those of his
persuasion, or that it was not a factor in these words coming to have their
meanings in archaeological and cultural preservation jargon.

In a recent post Voz Earl made this comment: "Honestly, you all sound like a
bunch of moralizing school-marms or chastising preachers wishing to beat the
ignorant masses over the head in frustration with
your stick of self-righteous indignation." The continual and relentless use
of such "code words" has a lot to do with this negative and oppositional
reaction. Communication would be greatly enhanced, and the odds of
persuading collectors correspondingly improved, if arguments were carried on
in plain English instead of in terminology which impresses collectors as
condescending, moralistic and one sidedly prejudging the issue.
Dave Welsh
Unidroit-L Listowner
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Unidroit-L
dwelsh46@...


-----Original Message-----
From: Unidroit-L@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Unidroit-L@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Paul Barford
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 1:22 AM
To: Unidroit-L@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Unidroit-L] Re:[ Provenance "Challenge"]


The gist of Kenneth Blair's recent long post to this list seems to be that
"two wrongs make a right out of one of them". The existence of more than one
problem somehow is supposed to absolve us from attempting to do what WE can
to deal with one of them while others which are out of our hands seem so far
from resolution. (We've seen this one too from the collection advocacy
movement before too.)

Yes, let us deplore the destruction of the heritage of vast areas of Asia
and the world through poor archaeological planning and development control.
Yes, let all who are interested in understanding and preserving the past
take every opportunity to condemn such acts and urge by whatever means that
the situation should change. But let us NOT try to use this as an excuse to
condone something else.

It's like saying that we are not going to take a shower or change our socks
because its to much bother and "some people in other countries have smellier
feet". What we are talking about here is maintaining the hygiene of personal
collections of responsible law-abiding collectors, taking the steps required
to eliminate the possibility that they contain material of dubious, tainted
or illicit origin.

I frankly do not see why a discussion on how to take any steps to ensure
that this is possible, suddenly becomes in the eyes of some here a
discussion on "banning collecting" and its consequences.

Paul Barford