~ G. M. Trevelyan ~
A posting on Kimberly Alderman's blog yesterday caught my attention as I'm always looking for cultural property related resources and materials. The post lauded an online bibliography developed by the University at Buffalo Anthropology Department. The effort is titled: “The "Looting Question" Bibliography: Web and Literary Resources on the Archaeological Politics of Private Collecting, Commercial Treasure Hunting, Looting, and "Professional" Archaeology.” After reviewing the contents, I commented on the Alderman blog, saying that
"In my view, this site and its bibliography are a disgrace to academic research. It is merely a list of publications by and for archaeologists and does not even attempt to address the vast published scope of private and public collector thought on the subject."
This led to a counter comment that "Huffing and puffing without making specific suggestions for improvement will not effect positive change, and it sounds quite unreasonable." Since it seems unfair for me to monopolize someone else's blog with the lengthy response required, I've decided to address the question here.
Prefacing the Buffalo bibliography is the following paragraph: "This resource is intended to be provide (sic) a comprehensive overview of what is often a controversial topic, for scholarly and classroom use. Coverage is intended to include extreme perspectives as well as more neutral or consensus-seeking views. The list is extensive, with the hope that users will be able to find a range of these items close to hand. While the main focus is on North America, materials from around the world are noted whenever possible (and certainly encouraged). Items are added as they come to my attention or are contributed by others. Annotations are mine except as noted, and are NOT intended to be incendiary. Comments and additions are most welcome!"
In retrospect, I suppose my comment on the Alderman blog might have been a bit incendiary. I must admit to being piqued by the delusory claim of balance, which was in my view totally lacking. In the first place, no comprehensive overview of the "Looting Question" could possibly focus mainly on North America. The supposed multi-billion dollar illicit market, that is fueled by looting, and often compared in scale to drug and weapons dealing, most certainly is not comprised in any significant way of North American artifacts. And, in fact, this bibliography does NOT focus mainly on North America despite its rather odd and confusing claim to that effect. The vast majority of citations deal with what one would expect in this subject area, the ubiquitous issues stemming from the UNESCO resolution of 1970. In that respect, there are many pertinent sources listed. That was not my criticism. The problem with this bibliography from my perspective is that it offers a very slanted view of the debate by excluding relevant views from the private and public collector worlds that stand in contrast to the views of archaeologists. Consequently, if this is a bibliography intended to facilitate education, it fails in a very big way. What it does do is present the archaeological party line to young impressionable scholars in a biased way. That is not education, it is indoctrination. In order not to be further accused of "huffing and puffing", I'll point out some rather obvious illustrations.
The bibliography is divided into seven topical areas: Periodicals; Books & Articles; Government Action & Legislation; Web articles, pages & sites; Other net resources; Attached Documents and Acknowledgements/Contacts.
Section A - Periodicals: Includes seventeen periodicals, seven of which are characterized by the assembler as "archaeological views" and two as "a perspective from the side of the collectors". Those two are the Indian-Artifact Magazine and Treasure Quest Magazine, which are undoubtedly useful and entertaining but hardly the leading cultural property debate resources within collecting literature. The remaining eight periodicals listed are characterized as "mixed perspective". One of those is a link to the Web Journal on Cultural Patrimony. This periodical was launched in 2006, posted three issues online and has not been updated since 2007. Two of the citations in this category are to the Boston Globe, where the reader is directed to search for the keyword "Antiquities" (OK, what about the scores of other print periodicals like the Washington Post, Art Newspaper, Wall Street Journal, Congressional Quarterly, Forbes, etc. that do publish pertinent and insightful articles? Why not just do a Google search? One citation is to a singular article in The Glyph, the newsletter of the Archaeological Institute of America, San Diego Society. One has to wonder how "mixed" that perspective might be? In the same section is a citation to the "Anthropology in the News" website. In reality, that imbedded link takes one to the home page of the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University which is dominated by local department news and program information - not the promised cultural property resources.
Section B - Books and Articles: This is a veritable who's who of writers on the cultural property views of archaeologists. It would be pointless to try summarizing this lengthy section other than to say it is as much a polemic as might be possible for a bibliography. Based on sheer volume, this would necessarily be of some benefit, but where are the classic collector perspectives written by Cuno, Merryman, Fitz Gibbon, De Montebello, Alsop, Boardman and others? Amidst a sea of articles written about ancient coin collecting and cultural property, the only reference to numismatics in the entire bibliography is one paper by PhD candidate Nathan Elkins. If you're looking solely for the archaeological point of view, here you have it.
Section C - Government Action and Legislation: This section is primarily a useless laundry list of links to pages on the web site of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. State Department and the UNESCO web site. One link to each site would have been more than most people need.
Section D - Web Articles, Pages and Sites: A listing of Loss/Theft Reporting Sites within this section seems useful, though I'm puzzled as to why "Safe Corner" would be included in that group. A second group of citations are to "Miscellaneous Sites & Pages". Herein are 41 links to a potpourri of resources dealing with archaeology and theft reporting. Very little to do here with the philosophical or legal questions regarding the transfer of cultural property between individuals or states, or with the distinction between art theft and archaeological site looting. No coverage whatever of the legitimate market and issues facing law abiding collectors nor of the raging debate over application of nationalist laws in an international market. The third group of citations within this section is "Codes of Ethics". Virtually all are examples of codes of ethics of archaeological groups. No collector group or museum codes of ethics are mentioned.
Section E - Other Internet Resources: Radio & Television Transcripts: This section is a diverse listing of a few documentaries of general interest, one online course in Anthropology and a limited assortment of online archaeology discussion groups. None of the many collector discussion lists are listed and only two museum related lists are cited.
Section F - Attached Documents: Select bibliographies from two archaeological monographs and two orphaned articles are included in this section.
Section G - Acknowledgements/Contacts: Included here is a list that is conspicuous mainly by the absence of any collector contributions. Since there is a huge corpus of material informing the anti-nationalist view, one would think that an odd reference or two might have cropped up somewhere amidst this assemblage.
There are at least three blogs mentioned within the bibliography, all of which represent the archaeological perspective. None of the well known collector blogs are cited, nor are any of the moderate archaeology blogs like that of Derek Fincham. In summary, the bibliography discussed here is very far from balanced and is in fact nearly exclusive of any collector oriented content. As such, I fear that it fails the test of academic credibility.
To balance this bibliography with a list of publications and articles reflecting the collector/museum viewpoint I have created a supplemental bibliography which is posted at http://www.accg.us/issues/editorials/supplemental-bibliography/ . I did not segregate the references by topical area nor by type since it is a rather limited and superficial attempt merely to expose a broader view.
