Shannon Dawdy has presented us with a provocative dialogue on the question ‘is archaeology useful?’ In it, she forecasts a rather bleak future for our field, raising doubts about whether archaeology should be useful and whether it is ‘threatened with its own end-time’. Woven throughout her paper are major concerns about the use of archaeology for nationalistic ends and heritage projects which she deems fulfil the needs of archaeologists rather than those of the public they serve. In the final section of her paper, when she asks, ‘can archaeology save the world?’, Dawdy recommends that we reorient our research ‘away from reconstructions of the past and towards problems of the present’ (p. 140). In my contribution to this dialogue, I introduce an issue that reflects on cultural heritage, antiquities and artefact preservation, which, though they may seem antithetical, are closely aligned with Dawdy's concerns. As a prehistorian with a focus on the third millennium B.C. in the Near East and South Asia, I consider these issues to be the ‘big stories’ that have emerged in the early years of this third millennium, and those that speak directly to the usefulness of archaeology. Of course, it is not the only thing we do, but it is ‘useful’.
The changing climate in the antiquities trade
While the looting of antiquities has a long history, I am not sure how anyone could have missed the surprising challenges faced by archaeologists, museum directors, curators and national governments as a series of events unfolded, beginning in 2000. A good place to start with is the destruction of the Buddhist statues by the Taliban in Afghanistan in March of 2001 (Lawler 2002). This was followed closely by the looting of the Baghdad Museum in 2003 and a flood of artefacts that appeared on the antiquities market (Polk and Schuster 2005). In 2005 serious questions arose about the artefact collections and acquisition policies of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
The archaeological response was immediate. Professional organizations like the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) used their strong ethical codes against publishing looted materials as a platform on which to inform the public about the destruction of history that results from the purchase of illicit antiquities. Far from a mirage, in the year 2000 Chippindale and Gill published a comprehensive study of the large number of artefacts in several private and museum collections that were acquired after 1973, a date uncomfortably close to the UNESCO international sanctions imposed against acquiring artefacts that lack provenance. As an example, their study documented the extensive destruction caused by the looting of several hundred Cycladic marble figures currently held in museum and private collections. They calculated that it would require the looting of 10,000 graves (85 per cent of the funerary record of the Early Bronze Age Cycladic) to recover as many marble figures. In other words, these artefacts were not chance finds but ‘deliberate searching of known archaeological sites for saleable antiquities’ (Chippindale and Gill 2000, 119), a practice that probably is common in other archaeological contexts. Based on their results, I worry less that we have gone too far in our passion to preserve the past than that we have not gone far enough in speaking out against destruction of cultural heritage and the need to preserve and protect it.
Not surprisingly, museum directors on their side hold different points of view. Proclaiming museums as the primary curators of the past, Philippe de Montebello, then director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accused archaeologists of being the major ‘instigators of criticisms of museum policies’ regarding their holdings of looted artefacts. He made it clear that he did not consider archaeology ‘useful’ when he famously stated that archaeologists were exaggerating their claims that the context of artefacts was essential to the reconstruction of the past, since (according to him) ‘ninety-eight percent of everything we know about antiquities we know from objects that were not out of digs’. Furthermore, ‘how much more would you learn from knowing which particular hole [an artefact] came out of?’ Speaking about the Euphronios Krater, a 2,500-year-old Greek bowl signed by the potter, looted from a tomb in Italy and held in the museum's collection, he said, ‘Everything is on the vase’ (Kennedy and Eakin 2006). His colleague, James Cuno, former director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University and presently director of the Art Institute in Chicago, also expressed doubts about the significance of context and the loss of knowledge that results from looting. Even though context was desirable, for Cuno, the aesthetic, technological and iconographic knowledge to be gained from artefacts outside their specific context was significant enough to justify acquiring and exhibiting looted artefacts (Cuno 2008).
These issues of national heritage came to the test when the Italian government requested the return of objects held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Princeton University Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Italy has strict laws that were codified in 1909 in which palaeo-anthropological and archaeological materials, whether movable or immovable and more than fifty years old, are the property of the Italian government. Although looting of archaeological sites in Italy continues to be widespread, the laws are rigorously executed by an active cultural heritage unit of the Italian national police, the TPC (Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale).
More drastic measures were taken in the Italian government's dealings with Marion True, an art historian and chief antiquities curator at the Getty, who helped build its collection of antiquities from the Greek, Roman and Etruscan cultures. Although True had professed high standards for the acquisition of antiquities (in fact, the Getty did return antiquities to Italy during her tenure there), many were acquired either through purchase or through gift from major collectors and had been acquired illegally by those collectors. True's career came to an end in 2005 when she was indicted in Italy for removing Italian patrimony. Greek authorities also indicted her but their charges were later dropped. True was dismissed by the Getty when she disclosed that she had obtained a loan from Lawrence Fleischman, a major collector of antiquities, ‘just days after’ she had arranged the purchase of their collection by the Getty for sixty million dollars (Eakin 2007). She is currently on trial, along with Robert Hecht, the dealer with whom she worked in acquiring antiquities for the Getty (Povoledo 2009). They are being tried on conspiracy charges for the trafficking of antiquities.
A series of other initiatives by the Italian government followed in which collectors were approached. Shelby White, who directs the Leon Levy Foundation, a major New York philanthropic organization, and holds an important collection of antiquities, returned ten objects from her collection to the Italian cultural ministry (Povoledo 2007a; 2007c). The artefact return took eighteen months of negotiations and was the first that the Italian ministry had successfully negotiated with a private collector in the United States.
Four major museums in the United States have negotiated agreements that involve the return of antiquities. In addition, as part of the arrangement, the Italian government has made concessions involving the loan of artefacts. For example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art agreed to return two dozen classical antiquities, one of which was the Euphronios Krater (the vase that speaks for itself!), in exchange for receiving objects on loan for future exhibitions. The Princeton University Art Museum agreed to return eight artefacts that had been looted and illegally exported to the US. They will also have access to long-term loans of material from Italy. In addition, cultural exchanges have been arranged that grant Princeton students access to archaeological sites for future research projects. As for the J. Paul Getty Museum, its director was replaced, and new policies for acquisitions have been established. Its current director, Michael Brand, developed a policy that is similar to the arrangements made by the Metropolitan Museum. Patty Gerstenblith, director of the Cultural Heritage Law programme at De Paul University, described the Getty guidelines as ‘the most far-reaching of any U.S. art museum’ (Boroff 2006). All told, more than one hundred artefacts have been returned from the four major museums – the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Getty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Princeton University.
Antiquities theft is being pursued in other venues. The extent of criminality involved in the antiquities trade was revealed when federal agents raided the Los Angeles County Museum, a gallery and three other museums that possessed collections of looted antiquities from South East and East Asia that were donated by collectors. The objects were exported as replicas of antiquities by painting them and applying false stickers that read ‘made in Thailand’ (Wyatt 2008). In a sting operation in which an undercover agent from the National Park Service posed as a collector, the museums and donors were accused of inflating the value of the gifted artefacts that were later written off as deductions on their federal taxes.
The artefacts involved in the case of the Los Angeles County Museum differed from the ‘classical’ antiquities held by the Metropolitan Museum and others discussed earlier. Joyce White, an archaeologist and director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum's Ban Chang Project, authenticated the artefacts recovered in the investigation. She found that most of the artefacts were intact and had been looted from burials, obviously some of the most important contexts from an anthropological perspective. It is significant that this investigation revealed an active market in artefacts from prehistoric and lesser-known cultures as well as in the classical antiquities that have been the major focus of the headline news. As White put it, this investigation demonstrated the widespread looting of artefacts beyond the ‘large expensive pieces of Classical antiquity’ (quoted in Wald 2008).
Beyond these cases, other projects have been initiated by individual archaeologists. Brian Rose, the current president of the AIA, teaches courses on the rich cultural history of Afghanistan and Iraq to military personnel en route to combat zones. Elizabeth Stone at SUNY Stony Brook uses sophisticated software and high-resolution satellite imagery to monitor looting of sites in Iraq, an innovative effort that alerts Iraqi officials and the US military of site destruction and looting, much of it in remote regions, and not easily detected on the ground.
Archaeologists appointed to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee of the US Department of State have played an important role in reviewing requests by foreign governments that prohibit the export and sale of antiquities to the US. The majority of these requests have gained the approval of the committee. Still, many different groups have vested interests in these requests and are supported by powerful individuals with agendas that differ from those of the archaeologists. In the case of a request from the People's Republic of China, for example, coin collectors were aided by Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat, New York), who was presented with a Friends of Numismatics award in January 2007 for his ‘valuable assistance . . . in the arts and collecting community’ by the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (see www.accg.us). Although part of PRC's request was voted in the affirmative by the committee, the coins were tabled. They were finally affirmed in January 2009.
These examples bring me back to Dawdy's discussion of nationalism and an ‘imperialist archaeology’. Her dialogue is naturally restricted by time and space limitations and deals principally with North and South America. There are a few references to European archaeology and she gives a brief nod to Africa and South Asia. My experience in South Asia differs from Dawdy's observations from abroad. In fact, the imperial days of which she speaks are largely behind us in most of the Near East and South Asia and have been for some time. Certainly they are not a phenomenon of the third millennium. I assume that all archaeologists who conduct research in foreign countries are required to apply for permits to conduct their research and are subject to regulations issued by federal or, rarely, local governments. The long-established archaeological infrastructure in Pakistan is actually a legacy of British colonial days. Permits are granted through the Ministry of Culture and officers with archaeological training that are employed by the Department of Archaeology of the Government of Pakistan are assigned to excavations. The government representative is on-site at all times and monitors procedures. For example, opening new excavation units requires permission from the representative. Artefacts discovered on the excavations are transmitted to the government through their representative and remain either on-site in proper storage areas or in other repositories selected by the department. All artefacts remain in Pakistan, though they may be loaned for study purposes and later returned. In addition, some projects establish training programmes for students from local universities and elsewhere.
Although the system is intensely bureaucratic, it does not match Dawdy's suggestion that archaeologists implement a programme of Institutional Review Board documentation, an issue that brings me back to questions that might emerge as the US government funds projects in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presumably, these projects are designed to provide assistance or engage in what are meant to be genuinely helpful projects in which archaeology and heritage are implicated. I find it worrisome, if not downright scary, that anyone would suggest that an Institutional Review Board document be required to conduct archaeological research in a foreign country. It would be offensive at the least and might lead to total rejection of a permit application because this is not the way business is done in many parts of the world. All work projects begin with the ministry of culture of the host country and the protocols established there.
In many areas of the world these days, work is conducted as a collaborative, international enterprise (Kohl 2008, 504) and all such matters are worked out among colleagues. We share with our colleagues a desire to conduct problem-oriented research and make the compromises necessary to satisfy all parties concerned. This is far and away from the ‘archaeological colonialism’ that Dawdy worries over in her dialogue. We also are aware that our research results might be used ‘to underwrite questionable political agendas’ (ibid., 504), a fact of life that we just have to live with. The only way to control it is to collectively donate our trowels to the Smithsonian attic collection and stop digging. Admittedly optimistic, Phil Kohl proposes that there may be a way to divert nationalist tendencies by examining the ways in which we interpret the results of our research. Rather than emphasizing the uniqueness of archaeological remains, in appropriate situations, especially in macro-historical approaches, we need to consider the ‘shared nature’ of past societies (Kohl 2008, 504; see also Kohl 2007).
A matter of context
Finally, I return to Dawdy's concerns about cultural heritage and nationalistic tendencies because I am not persuaded that they are things of the past. The issues I addressed here will continue to loom large in this new millennium and I expect archaeology will be at the forefront of advocacy for the preservation of heritage. Nationalistic issues and the complexities involved in achieving reasonable outcomes will be more difficult to resolve.
I began this article with news of the destruction of the Buddhist statues by the Taliban in Afghanistan and measures taken by the then ‘legitimate’ government. As a national policy, all artefacts and monuments that preceded Islam were to be destroyed. They were particularly eager to erase the Buddhist statues from the country's past because they were well-known throughout the world. The National Museum in Kabul was also targeted and a large number of smaller Buddhist artefacts were smashed and other artefacts destroyed that dated back to Alexander the Great and earlier into prehistory.
The year in which the Bamiyan statues were dynamited by the Taliban, I attended a meeting at the Asia Society in New York City and for the first time heard de Montebello and Cuno state that the statues did not belong to Afghanistan, but were the cultural property of the world. Any rules and regulations pertaining to their recovery or restoration should be decided by Western scholars.
Just a few years later, in 2003, President Karzai proudly announced the discovery of artefacts that had been hidden in a vault in the presidential palace in Kabul since 1979. Using a system of checks and balances, it took five bank officials to open the vault in the presidential palace. International teams of archaeologists rushed to the scene to assist with curation and to re-establish a database that had been destroyed during the intervening years. One of the archaeologists that returned to Kabul was Viktor Sarianidi, the archaeologist who excavated Tillya Tepe, where a hoard of Bactrian gold was discovered. Buried in the tomb were five women and one man, all of whom were adorned with gold and semi-precious stone ornaments (Galvin 2004). Their sumptuous objects and rare finds are providing a new understanding of the social and economic lives of the nomadic groups that traversed the Silk Road, engaging in trade and accumulating large quantities of wealth, 2,000 years ago.
There is a sign on the door of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul that reads, ‘A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive’ (Sullivan 2002). These sentiments may have been the inspiration that led the staff of the museum to move the gold to the security of the vault many years ago. It was a handful of people comprising museum guards, curators, sweepers and others that hid the gold and many other artefacts that they viewed as Afghanistan's national treasures. Additional objects were removed from the museum or hidden in cupboards and under shelves and kept in safekeeping during Taliban rule. The story behind these heroics could hardly be mistaken for self-serving acts; they were, in fact, dangerous. They acted for all the right reasons and were being genuinely honest in their worry over tradition and heritage. You might say they were obsessed about their future at a time when their national identity was being destroyed.
An exhibition, Afghanistan. Hidden treasures has been on a worldwide tour of museums (Hiebert and Cambon 2009). It opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 23 June 2009 on loan from the government of Afghanistan, bringing the question of world heritage full circle and informing the world of the country's rich cultural history.
The examples I have discussed reveal the complexities involved in questions of nationalism and cultural heritage that are very much in the present. From my perspective archaeology is far from an ‘end game’. Our contributions to issues regarding looting, collecting and acquiring antiquities have made a good start on resolving some complex issues. Moving forward into the new millennium, fresh from processual and postprocessual debates, archaeologists have crossed a divide and hopefully are more tolerant of the different ways to ‘do’ archaeology. Important gains have been made by archaeologists in developing an enlightened ethical awareness. In that sense, I view the future of archaeology optimistically. We may finally be at the beginning of a transformed age when we are more confident about the value of our field and the significance of the remains we study. In the examples I have provided and others not discussed, I see a future in which we will continue to attempt to persuade others – professional colleagues and the public – that looting destroys everyone's history.
