P9 12 heritage - Stanford University

[Pages:4]Buying, Selling,

Owning the Past

Neil Brodie

Dan Contreras

John Merryman

Paul Harrison

Tom Seligman

Lynn Meskell

INTER ACTION one in an occasional series of articles about multidisciplinary teaching and research

COLLAG E By An nA COB B; MADE W ItH I MAG ES fROM tH E CAntOR CE ntE R fOR V ISuAL ARtS At StAn fORD u n I V E RSIty, PAu L HARRISOn An D fLICkR P HOtOS By E RIC CHAn, ROB I n Z E B RO WSkI, nOAH G RAy, LARA EAkI nS, An D DI M ItAR DE n E V.

JANuARy 28, 2009

STANFORD RepORT 9

Buying, Selling,

Owning

the

NEIL BRODIE

J oe G era n io

L.A. CICERO

Past The Early Bronze Age cemetery of Bab adh-Dhra near the Dead Sea. The pockmarked soil, visible from above, is evidence of looters' work.

Neil Brodie and Dan Contreras in front of a projection of the Google Earth map, which they use to study sites in Lebanon.

C rates of 15th-century objects found at Machu Picchu in the early 20th century today are housed at Yale University, and Peru plans to sue to get them back. The so-called Elgin Marbles were removed from the Parthenon in the early 19th century and taken to London, where they have been displayed ever since. Athens' new Acropolis Museum has a wing sitting empty, awaiting their return.

Nearly a decade of litigation followed the discovery of 9,000-year-old skeletal remains near Kennewick, Wash., as American Indian tribes and scientists disputed ownership based on "cultural affiliation."

And the former curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum is on trial in Rome, accused of handling illegally excavated antiquities.

Stanford's archaeologists and other scholars who study the old objects we call "art" or "antiquities" frequently find themselves intervening in such controversies. The past decades have seen a booming international antiquities market in the context of sharply defined sentiments of nationalism and ownership on the part of former colonies. Violent upheavals such as the ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq-- all sites of remarkable ancient treasures--fuel the market. National and international bodies, most notably UNESCO, have tried to curtail the illicit trafficking. Still, the world's museums are full of objects that many people think don't belong there.

There are some, such as Stanford Law School Professor Emeritus John Merryman (88 and still teaching), who say what's done is done. In his view, archaeologists, including those at Stanford, are too inflexible.

"They say, `Collectors are the real looters,'" he said,

shaking his head. "They won't

belongs to all of us as humans

concede any role to collectors John Merryman, generally credited and therefore should not neces-

and dealers."

sarily remain in, for example,

Merryman, generally cred- with establishing the field of art law, Guatemala; or, instead, one

ited with establishing the field of art law, is interested in the

is interested in the distinction between

could argue that pre-Columbian art is part of Guatemala's specific

distinction between heritage and property. To his mind,

heritage and property. To his mind,

heritage, even though Guatemala as such did not exist in the 15th

heritage is fuzzy and intangible, and therefore more easily

heritage is fuzzy and intangible.

century, and should therefore remain there.

manipulated by source nations and their champions. Claims of

4

One of the more prominent participants in this debate is the

"cultural heritage" do not suf-

director of the Art Institute of

fice, in his mind, as ownership claims.

Chicago, James Cuno, who argued in a

(The term cultural property first arose

recent book that stewardship and broad

with the 1954 Hague Convention for

access should take priority over legal

the Protection of Cultural Property

ownership, given that most countries

after the massive destruction of World

claiming objects--Greece, Egypt, India,

War II.)

for example--are recent creations.

Archaeologists criticize Merryman

"That's fine," Brodie replied rhetori-

for condoning the buying and selling

cally to Cuno's argument, "but I'd add

of unprovenanced antiquities, a mar-

that there wasn't any `art' as we know it

ket he considers logical given what he

until the 18th century either. It's equally

calls "the human appetite for antiqui-

constructed. Objects removed from their

ties." He is the author of an article arguing that Lord Elgin's acquisition of

John Merryman

context become `antiquities.' The real question is sovereignty, not ownership--

the marbles was legal and ethical for its

the right of a country to have its heritage

time, and therefore should not be overturned now. laws respected by other countries." This is also his ob-

On the other side is Neil Brodie, cultural heritage jection to what he calls Merryman's "object-centered

resource director at Stanford's Archaeology Center. discourse of ownership." Instead, he said, let's look at

He is the former research director of the Illicit Antiq- knowledge, at heritage.

uities Research Centre at the University of Cambridge and an international expert on looting and the trade

Looting the Middle East

in unprovenanced artifacts.

"Everyone in this room has seen evidence of loot-

The ownership-heritage argument can be tricky: ing, I'm sure," Stanford archaeologist Daniel Contre-

One could say that pre-Columbian art, for example, ras recently told an audience at the Archaeology Cen-

10 STANFORD Report

January 28, 2009

co u r t es y P a u l H arriso n

E iri k New t h

I ris & B . G erald C a n t or C e n t er f or V is u al A r t s a t S t a n f ord U n iversi t y

L ara E a k i n s

W es & E li

A terracotta vase, c. 430 B.C., owned by the Cantor Center.

S ha u n C he

ter. "I'm not sure I've ever been at a site where there hasn't been looting."

After the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, archaeologist Elizabeth Stone, who teaches at Stony Brook University, wanted to quantify anecdotal information about the pillaging of the "cradle of civilization." Funded by a variety of sources, she obtained satellite images of some 1,800 sites in southern Iraq taken before the invasion. By studying before and after shots, she was able to identify looting patterns that revealed what was being taken and from where.

There are some who insist that reports of looting in Iraq are the result of deluded journalists echoing scholars with an agenda.

Brodie will have none of that. "There is no debate about the looting," he said. "We know what happened. Media like to think we don't."

Inspired by Stone's example, Brodie and Contreras wanted to do something similar for the approximately 9,0000 square kilometers of Jordan. The problem was that satellite images like Stone's would have cost around $1.6 million, far beyond the resources of the Archaeology Center. So they asked, what about Google Earth? They could pay $400 a year for the deluxe version, put those images next to data gleaned from a good database and then trace the damage.

"We wanted to see if Google Earth would be good enough for this task," Contreras explained. "Up until now, the evidence has been anecdotal. This will be more systematic. We'll be able to get a much better idea of how many pits there are. And if people say there's no looting in Jordan, now we'll be able to say, `Oh yes there is.'"

Above all, they wanted to have evidence to counter those who insist on "chance find" stories--tales of solitary villagers who discover the odd pot here and there

and sell it to feed their children. Those stories can't explain how the antiquities markets were flooded with Jordanian Early Bronze Age materials in the 1990s, said Brodie, who believes the looting is an organized response to a market, not the other way around.

Archaeologists are increasingly being trained in geospatial techniques, and there is an active geographic information systems (GIS) community at Stanford. Archaeologists here have used GIS for projects in Mexico and Peru; the Spatial History Project, led by historian Richard White, comprises several research paths using GIS; and staff at Branner Library and academic technology specialists are helping scholars in many disciplines incorporate GIS into their research. Contreras, a Stanford PhD and a lecturer in the Anthropology Department, teaches a course called Digital Methods in Archaeology.

Contreras found that Google Earth was more effective if used in conjunction with GIS software. So he exported the geo-referenced Google images of Jordan into ArcGIS, which makes it possible to precisely estimate the extent of looted areas. Looting is detected by the appearance of swaths dotted with pits that from the air look like pockmarks.

"It's almost like a smoking gun," Contreras said, if an area near known Bronze Age sites is pockmarked and shortly thereafter the catalogs start advertising those items. "John Merryman says enforcement will never stop the market, and he is partly right. But there is educational potential on the demand side. If buyers were shown these images of damage, then they couldn't have in their head the image of a poor farmer who sells a single pot to feed his children. Instead, there are photos of large-scale, systematic looting, and buyers are participating in the destruction."

He showed an image of one of the Jordanian sites,

Safi, that has suffered the most looting. "This was industrial scale," he said, "and the material was headed straight for the antiquities market. So this can be a tool to stimulate policy."

In theory, Brodie and Contreras say, using Google Earth for tracking looting could be an open-source project. People could add information and photos, monitor particular areas or issue alerts as images reveal possible pillaging. Such a project also could be combined with a comparative pixel analysis of remote sensing images of pitted landscapes.

The drawbacks to using Google Earth to monitor archaeological looting are, principally, two: The images are not always good, and you have to know what you're looking for. You can't just scan the globe in hopes of finding pits. Brodie and Contreras chose Jordan because they had a good database with which to compare the images. Contreras will next apply the technique to Peru, his area of expertise, for which he also has a lot of data. So it's not perfect. But, he said, "I reservedly recommend it."

From the caves of Afghanistan

One of the chief arguments for removing antiquities from their site of provenance is safety.

"When people say, `It's safer with us,' I always reply, `Look at 9/11.' There is no guarantee of safety in this world," said anthropology Professor Lynn Meskell. Beyond the fallacy of physical security, Meskell and others detect (and condemn) elitism in the assumption that an old bowl is better off in my city than in your backyard, or in my climate-controlled museum than in your shabby building.

But there are cases that stand out, and Afghanistan obviously is one. By 1996, after the Soviet withdrawal and when the country was torn apart by internal war-

January 28, 2009

STANFORD Report 11

L.A. CICERO

fare, its archaeological sites were ransacked, and it was feared that the Kabul museum's collections had gone missing. (In fact, museum staff managed to hide and save much of the holdings.) Few archaeologists or scholars would argue that in the case of intentional destruction or bombing, artifacts should not be removed. (Where they should be held in safekeeping can be a matter of controversy; the Hoover Institution garnered some unwanted headlines last summer when it was revealed that it was providing a temporary haven for Baath Party records taken out of Baghdad.) Brodie's position, also that of the profession in general, is that museums or other institutions may hold endangered objects in safekeeping, but no money may change hands.

Since the 1990s, and especially after the Taliban blew up the giant Buddhas at Bamiyan in 2001, professionals both inside and outside Afghanistan have struggled to ensure the survival of manuscripts and artifacts. Paul Harrison, the George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies, is one of the editors of a remarkable collection of ancient Buddhist manuscripts held by the Sch?yen Collection, headquartered in Oslo, Norway. That collection also has been the subject of controversy.

Some of the manuscripts--all of which Sch?yen asserts were legally obtained--were found in caves. They are among the earliest known Buddhist documents, written in two scripts, Brahmi and Kharosthi, dating from the second century AD onward.

Learning to read the scripts, Harrison says simply, was "painful," and thousands of fragments remain to be identified. Through these pieces, he said, "we have learned a new language we had only hypothesized about."

Using carbon testing, colleagues in Berlin and at the University of Washington have dated similar Buddhist manuscripts recently discovered in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the first century AD, said Harrison, a philologist by training. "So the dates have been pushed back, and this is very exciting, very big news. Our knowledge of the Buddhist canon is increasing enormously. There was a huge amount of literary activity; we've even found fragments of a play."

But the discovery of such remarkable texts was possible only because someone dug them up and sold them on the black market. How they got to Europe is a mystery.

"These objects have no clear provenance," Harrison said. "They were accidentally unearthed or dug up by fortune hunters, and there are no records. The objects were smuggled from Afghanistan to Pakistan, and somehow ended up in London. The collectors have had the sense to make them available to us. Our view is that ownership is one thing, but the information belongs to everybody. But, honestly, there is a certain moral unease about the whole thing which is not easily resolved."

Contreras and Brodie's position, that it is the market for antiquities that ensures that looting will take place, has echoes in Afghanistan.

"Do researchers owe their discoveries to the smugglers?" Harrison asked rhetorically. "That's right, you're in the position of helping create the market. There's a terrible problem across Asia with

C o u r t es y o f C a n t or A r t s C e n t er

`Some people say if you return things,

they'll be lost forever,'

Seligman said.

4

Paul Harrison with a computer monitor displaying the Sanskrit texts he is studying. The Sambadhavakasa Sutra, which instructs Buddhists in the practice of meditation. This manuscript is part of a hitherto unknown collection of sutras, which are scriptural texts that are often recited.

people smuggling pieces, including things that are right. They could be used to rebuild the country

used in temples, and then they show up in yuppies' [through tourism] and help those who most need it.

apartments in New York. I mean, dealers come to our They care about these objects, they know them. Peo-

[scholarly] conferences. There's an unholy alliance ple in Pretoria and the cities don't."

between dealers and scholars. Partly this is because In North America, the most obvious instance of

of all the political upheaval; people flee to the caves, this debate takes place around American Indians

they explore, they find things."

and the 1990 federal Native American Graves Pro-

Ownership of history

tection and Repatriation Act (NAGPR A), under which certain objects with "cultural

Theft and looting may be hard to pin

affiliation" to certain descendants and

down, but no one would argue that theft

tribes must be returned by museums.

is legal. That, at least, is clear cut. More

At Stanford, anthropologist Michael

murky is the matter of history itself. Who

Wilcox, himself an American Indian,

can lay claim to Etruscan art? Should

recently was on a task force of the

Muslims inhabiting formerly Buddhist

American Anthropological Associa-

lands care about the ruins around them?

tion that commented on new modi-

Do the Elgin Marbles belong in Athens?

fications of the law. Though he sup-

Should objects be shipped back where

ports NAGPRA, he also is troubled

they came from?

by its implications.

Figuring out the ethics of heritage in-

"Indian people must demonstrate

volves weighing the value of the object's context against the value of the viewer's

Lynn Meskell

connections to a past that has been created by a professional and

gaze; the village versus the museum.

`There should be more of an exchange,

theoretical dialogue that has explicitly excluded them,"

"The value of antiquities is the story of their culture and their

partnership. It's not our stuff, and we

Wilcox wrote. "Indians are asked to demonstrate our rela-

use, and when they're treated only as objects, they lose that," Con-

shouldn't have it just because we can,'

tion to the static cultures that archaeologists and museums

treras said. "Ownership, context and use add up to a very interest-

Meskell said.

have affirmed, reproduced and codified in professional

ing pattern of behavior that tells

4

journals."

us about trading, culture, society,

The web of interests and

gender and so on. One pot out of

claims enveloping these

context doesn't tell us that."

shards, bones, sculptures and masks is dense indeed.

Meskell, whose work is in southern Africa, is ada- Law, the legacy of colonialism, aesthetics, human

mant. "We know nothing about these objects outside history, property ... it's not easy to sort out.

of their context," she said. "We look at their design, "With cases like the Kennewick Man or with the

and they might as well come from Ikea. We look at Elgin Marbles, the most important thing is to wrestle

objects from Mali and we `recognize' them because with the ideas," Contreras said. "I don't have an an-

we have seen them in Ikea. We look with a colonial, swer. But at least let's think about it. There are hard-

imperial gaze. We don't recognize. We don't know liners on both sides." SR

who made it or why.

"There should be more of an exchange, partner-

ship. It's not our stuff, and we shouldn't have it just

because we can."

But sorting it out is not simple. Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, has proposed a system

RELATED INFORMATION

of partage, whereby objects of universal value would Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAG-

be shared by the source nation, even if the nation PRA)

did not exist when the object was created, and the financers of the exploration.

"I think Cuno is disingenuous," said Tom Seligman, director of Stanford's Cantor Center for Visual Arts. "Partage is fine; I have no objection to that.

Cultural Heritage Resource

Stanford Archaeology Center

But then he throws in that nation-state stuff. In the Sch?yen Collection

absence of Etruscans, you have to speak with Italy.

Whom else would you negotiate partage with?"

GIS at Stanford

So, send the stuff back? "Some people say if you

return things, they'll be lost forever," Seligman said. "Maybe." He shrugged.

Or maybe not. Who's to say where objects are better off? Referring to Africa, Meskell said artifacts "must remain with the communities of connection, the most impoverished people. They believe money would flow in if they had them, and maybe they're

"Patterns of Looting in Southern Iraq," by Elizabeth Stone . php?featureID=11

"The Market in Iraqi Antiquities 1980-2008," by Neil Brodie Market%20in%20Iraqi%20antiquities%20(2008)%20txt.pdf

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