Diverse Interests in the Past II: Avocational Archaeologists, Private Collectors, and Museums
Description: Several groups share a world view in which archaeology
plays an established role, but they often value the remains of the past
not for their scientific or informational value, but for commercial,
aesthetic, or personal reasons. We consider why others who are passionate
about the past hold values that are often diametrically opposed to archaeological
values.
Learning Objectives:
• Evaluate the activities, interests, and values of looters, private collectors, and museums as they relate to archaeological materials.
• Assess the claims of collectors and museums to represent the public interest and contrast their claims with those of archaeologists.
• Compare and contrast the acquisition policies of AAM, ICOM, and the Getty Museum and categorize them as representing specific positions in the "cultural property wars."
Readings:
VITELLI, ch. 1.
L. E. Murphy et al., "Commercialization: Beyond the Law or Above it? Ethics and the Selling of the Archaeological Record," in LYNOTT, 45–48.
G. G. Griffin, "Collecting Pre-Columbian Art," in The Ethics of Collecting Cultural Property, ed. P. Messenger (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 103-115.
Shelby White, "A Collector’s Odyssey," International Journal of Cultural Property 7 (1998): 170–176.
Glenn D. Lowry, "Cultural Property: A Museum Director’s Perspective," International Journal of Cultural Property 7 (1998): 438–445.
Ford, "Ethics and the Museum Archaeologist," Ethics and Values, ch. 16.
American Association of Museums, Code of Ethics for Museums (2000).
International Council of Museums, "3. Acquisitions to Museum Collections," in Code of Professional Ethics (1995).
1. Introduction: Not only native groups, indigenous peoples, and local communities are interested in the remains of the past. Nor is it only religion or cultural identity that links people to archaeological sites and objects. Many people claim the past for other reasons, whether those reasons are monetary, as in the case of antiquities dealers or looters, or aesthetic, as in the case of collectors and museums. Often there are multiple interests: the art collector may acquire antiquities because they are beautiful, but private collectors and institutional collectors at museums operate in a quasi-public milieu in which art and money are linked to status and prestige. If an ancient Indian skeleton can be embraced as part of one's cultural identity, then surely a million-dollar Greek pot bought at Sotheby's can help to establish an individual's "cultural identity" as an erudite collector or a museum's entree into the world of big-time institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Getty Museum.
Archaeologists have traditionally treated those who threaten their control over the past, like indigenous groups, looters, and collectors, with an almost arrogant disdain. They dismiss these groups without bothering to learn about their interests, values, and (yes) ethics. Looters are bad, not (perhaps) impoverished farmers trying to survive. Collectors are evil, not (perhaps) art lovers who genuinely believe that they are preserving and rescuing art. But archaeologists need to understand the interests and motivations of looters, dealers, and collectors just as they do those of native peoples. Perhaps there is common ground, or failing that, at least we will be able to distinguish clearly between our archaeological values and those of others who, in effect, are competing with us for rights to control archaeological resources.
In this class we examine the attitudes and values of looters, private collectors, and museums. We save dealers for a later class. It is useful to remind the students of Lipe's "values for cultural resources" during this class.
2. Looters: The people who dig up archaeological sites in order
to sell artifacts. Known as tombaroli (Italian), huaqueros
(Spanish), arkaiokapili (Greek), they are plunderers, pillagers,
treasure hunters, thieves of time. What are we to make of them? Are
they simply criminals, pitiful impoverished peasants, or modern Robin
Hoods sharing the ancestral patrimony with their fellow salt of the
earth? Probably all of the above.
a. Student Report: Huaqueros in Belize (based on D. Matsuda, "The Ethics of Archaeology, Subsistence Digging, and Artifact Looting in Latin America: Muted Counterpoint," International Journal of Cultural Property 7, no. 1 [1988]: 87-97).
• Digging Maya artifacts as part of the "seasonal round" for Belizean subsistence farmers; artifacts are viewed as source of supplementary income.
• Huaqueros believe that artifacts in the ground are a "gift from the ancestors," often referred to as semilla, or seed. They believe they have more right to them than outsider archaeologists or the government, who use them to secure an upper-class living.
• Given the economic situation of most Central American farmers, who are exploited by the wealthy politicians, how can we blame the huaqueros?
b. Student Report: Subsistence Looters on St. Lawrence Island (based on D. P. Staley, "St. Lawrence Island's Subsistence Diggers: A New Perspective on Human Effects on Archaeological Sites," Journal of Field Archaeology 20, no. 3 [1993]: 347-355; and S. Scott, "St. Lawrence: Archaeology of a Bering Sea Island," Archaeology 37, no. 1 [1984]: 46-52).
• St. Lawrence Island, Alaska is owned by native corporations; they are free to administer their own cultural resources and are not subject to the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.
• Archaeological excavations from the 1920s through the 1970s introduced archaeology to the native population and acquainted them with the monetary value of artifacts. People tend to be poor and live in a mixed cash and subsistence economy.
• Local artifacts include unworked and carved ivory from walrus and other large sea mammals; museums and art collectors frequently bought them from natives.
• Because old or fossil ivory is not prohibited under the Marine and Mammal Protection Act, there is a demand for both worked ivory and bulk unworked ivory from archaeological sites. The entire community participates in the digging of sites, with the corporations acting as middlemen in the trade. Artifacts are regarded as "extractable commodities" rather than cultural resources. Sale of artifacts now makes up as much of 80% of a native person's income. People are not getting rich, but the looting may mean the difference of having a new refrigerator in the house or keeping the old one.
• Collectors and dealers encourage the natives to regard archaeologists as "resource competitors."
• Some prehistoric sites that were listed as National Historic Landmarks have now lost that status as a result of looting.
• Solutions that do not address the fundamental problem of subsistence for the native people are unlikely to have much effect.
3. Private Collectors: The bane of archaeologists, because
they disregard provenience and context (and often legality) in their
passionate quest to acquire antiquities. Collectors frequently describe
their collecting in terms of obsession, addiction, passion, love, and
lust. They "fall in love" with objects and "have to" have them. How
can so much passion for beauty result in so much destruction of the
very ancient cultures that are the objects of collectors' passion? Perhaps
it is not about beauty after all.
a. A Defense of Collecting (based on the articles of G. Griffin and other prominent collectors).
b. Profile of a Big-Time Collector: Shelby White of New York.
• Collects primarily Classical and Old World antiquities with her husband, Leon Levy.
• Donor and board member of Metropolitan Museum of Art and other institutions; funds archaeological publications.
• Outspoken advocate for private collecting.
• Her Met publication, Glories of the Past (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990).
• An essentially undocumented collection: out of 212 objects, 70% unpublished prior to catalog. Stated provenience: 0 from archaeological excavation; 91% with no stated provenance; of the 9% with stated provenience, 6% are "said to be from" a place, 3% described as "from" or "found in" a place.
4. Museums—Institutional Collectors of Antiquities. Many,
especially the great art museums, have been acquiring antiquities from
looted sites through dealers and private collectors for a hundred years
or more. They have never worried too much about where things come from
so long as they don't have to give them back. In light of overwhelming
evidence about the link between collecting and looting, isn't it time
for the art museums to adopt ethical acquisition policies? A few have
in recent years; most seem determined to defend at all costs their traditional
practice of acquiring objects that have been looted and smuggled out
of their countries of origin. We look at three examples.
a. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: History of the Classical collection, from looter/ambassador Luigi Palma di Cesnola to financier/collector Michael Steinhardt. In recent decades, acquisition of substantial private collections of Asian and South Asian art (Eilenberg, Kronos, Irving), almost all of which is undocumented.
b. Boston Museum of Fine Arts: Recent (1999) opening of new galleries of pre-Columbian, African, and Oceanic art, reviving the old colonial classification of these cultures—so widely separated in time, space, and culture—in the catch-all tag of "Primitive Art." Again, an almost completely undocumented collection of artifacts from private collectors. What message is the museum sending about collecting when it opens galleries containing art from some of the most heavily looted places on earth (e.g., Maya polychrome ceramics from Guatemala, Mali terracottas) at a time when it is illegal under U.S. law to import some of those artifacts?
c. Getty Museum, Malibu and Los Angeles: Previously vilified as the most voracious acquisitor of undocumented antiquities, home of some of the most controversial acquisitions (like the Getty kouros and the Fleischmann collection), the new Getty boasts one of the strongest acquisition policies for antiquities. It is a policy that effectively puts a halt to antiquities collecting.
5. Museum Ethics and Acquisition Policies: As modern museums
grapple with the conflict between their mission of acquiring art objects
and the likelihood that antiquities they acquire are looted from countries
of origin, they look to ethical codes and acquisition policies to guide
them. We consider three of the most influential.
a. American Association of Museums (AAM).
b. International Council of Museums (ICOM).
c. Getty Museum.