Antiquities Market Research Articles

Remote and Close Range Sensing for the Automatic Identification and Characterization of Archaeological Looting. The Case of Peru

Looting is the major source of artefacts for the antiquities market. Specific measures are needed to fight the whole chain of the illicit activities undertaken by criminal organizations (from the excavation to the selling of the artefacts), and they should be devised for each phase of such illegal activities. The development and use of appropriate technologies for the identification of the most ‘vulnerable’ sites, and the timely detection and automatic quantification of the extension of the looted areas are crucial steps for setting up a monitoring system working also for remote and inaccessible archaeological areas, often in regions affected by armed conflicts or characterized by flight restrictions. In this context, Earth Observation (EO) technologies can provide reliable information: (i) to quantify the looting phenomenon even if it is on an ‘industrial scale’ over large areas, and (ii) to set up a systematic monitoring tool to trace the illicit trade in antiquities. In this paper, an improvement of the Archaeological Looting Feature Extraction Approach (ALFEA) -developed by the same authors in 2018- is proposed to further improve the ability in the automatic identification and extraction of looting features for heterogeneous desert landscapes, characterized not only by looting patterns but also by archaeological micro-relief and emerging remains, as well as by natural geomorphological features and the presence of structures and dirt pathways, which exhibit a similar spectral behavior but dimensions, morphology, and/or geometric patterns different from those linked to looting. The improvement of ALFEA (ALFEA-I) was applied in significant test areas considered among the most important archaeological sites in Peru, (i) Pachacamac close to Lima, and (ii) Ventarron in the Lambayeque region Northern Peru. The first site is characterized by past clandestine excavations and looting is difficult to recognize both in situ and from satellite image; the second site is affected by more recent archaeological disturbances due to grave robberies, easier to identify from remote sensing data. The original ALFEA -composed of the sequential integration of spatial autocorrelation statistics, unsupervised classification, and segmentation- has been herein refined by adding a processing step based on multi-threshold parameters of segmentation, thus improving the performance in terms of extraction capability of looting features in case of heterogeneous areas. Tthe integration of satellite based data processing with unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based close range acquisitions has proved to be effective in enhancing the visibility of old looting features, crucial for the validation of ALFEA-I.

Descriptions and the materiality of texts

This article builds on the notions of thick and thin description elaborated by Geertz and looks at what descriptive methods have been used in the field of papyrology, a sub-discipline of classics that studies ancient manuscripts on papyrus fragments recovered through legal and illegal excavations in Egypt from the 19th century. Past generations of papyrologists have described papyri merely as resources to retrieve ancient ‘texts’. In the article I argue these descriptions have had negative effects in the way this ancient material has been studied, preserved, and also exchanged through the antiquities market. Through a series of case studies, I offer an alternative description of papyrus fragments as things, which have a power that can be activated under specific circumstances or entanglements. In demonstrating papyrus manuscripts’ unstable nature and shifting meanings, which are contingent on such entanglements, the article calls for a new politics and ethics concerning their preservation and exchange.

A First Reading of the Anhui University Bamboo-Slip Shi Jing

Abstract In September, 2019, Anhui University published the first volume of Warring States bamboo-slip manuscripts in its collection. The bamboo slips were purchased by the university in 2015 on the antique market. This volume contains ninety-three slips that correspond with all of or portions of fifty-seven poems in the Guo feng 國風 (Airs of the States) section of the Shi jing 詩經 (Classic of Poetry). The manuscript is written in the script of the ancient state of Chu 楚, and thus presumably was robbed from a tomb somewhere in the territory of that state. This preliminary study of the manuscript presents close readings of six representative poems, comparing the versions in the manuscript with those of the received text. It concludes with consideration of how to understand the textual variants apparent in the manuscript, and also the significance of the manuscript for the composition and especially the transmission of the Shi jing in the pre-Qin period.

More Dubious Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract In the course of the last eighteen years more than 75 new “Dead Sea Scrolls” fragments have surfaced on the antiquities market. These are commonly referred to as post-2002 Dead Sea Scrolls-like fragments. A growing number of scholars regard a substantial part of them as forgeries. In this article, we will discuss four more dubious fragments, but this time from the 20th Century—or at least from pre-2002. Two of the fragments have been known since the late nineties and are published in the DJD series. One was published in Revue de Qumran (2003), and one in Gleanings from the Caves (2016). All four are today accepted as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls dataset even though they are unprovenanced and have made-up—or at least very adaptable—lists of previous owners. In this article, we will critically review their provenance and discuss the lack of proper interest in provenance on the part of the collector who owns them and the scholars who published them.

Loss and Reconstruction of an Archive. The Ettore Cozzani Case

This essay aims to reconstruct the history of Ettore Cozzani’s archive, which was believed to have been totally destroyed during the Second World War. It maps what remains, however, in the Lombard Academy of Sciences and Letters and on the antique market. Finally, it reflects on the meaning that Cozzani attributed to his archive and on his attempts to reconstruct it, both materially and through autobiographical writing.

Wooden Ceilings in the Italian Antiques Market between the 19th and 20th Centuries. Paradigmatic Cases from the Eredità Bardini Historical Archive

This paper throws a light on a first investigation of the wooden ceiling market in relation to Stefano Bardini’s antiques business, starting from a partial examination of the Archivio Storico Eredita Bardini in Florence and from the analysis of some paradigmatic cases that occurred during the Eighties and Nineties of the 19th century.

India: Heritage theft remains a challenge

Faced with an increasing demand for its art objects in the global antiquities market, India has introduced strict laws to curb the illicit export of its archaeological and cultural heritage. However, the implementation of these laws remains a major challenge, due to the poverty that fuels looting, and the lack of adequate security to protect historical monuments.

Memorial to Constance Fulmer

Memorial to Constance Fulmer

FERDINAND BARBEDIENNE’S BRONZE FOUNDRY PRODUCTS AND URAL MEAL CASTING ART. ON THE ATRIBUTION OF URAL CAST-IRON ARTWORKS

The study discusses the attribution of several Ural cast-iron artworks. The authors of the model range of metal castings from Kasli and Kusa factories are still the least researched in Russian art history and, thus, the study appears to be very timely. The article considers connections between the model range of the Urals plants and the famous French bronze foundry of Ferdinand Barbedienne. Castings available on the antiques market and in Russian museum collections are analyzed comparatively. New names of authors of Ural metal casting models are introduced into scholarship.

Científicos vs. huaqueros. Responsabilidad y participación en la competencia comercial de piezas arqueológicas calchaquíes, a fines del siglo XIX

En este artículo analizo el comercio de piezas arqueológicas de los valles Calchaquíes (Noroeste Argentino/NOA) a fines del siglo XIX, como una práctica compartida por distintos actores que modificó el sentido y los objetivos del huaqueo tradicional de la zona, a la vez que propició el veloz desarrollo de un mercado de antigüedades. Planteo que esto respondió a la demanda de los científicos e instituciones para la formación de colecciones, aunque rápidamente se convirtió en una amenaza para los mismos, especialmente por el accionar de huaqueros a gran escala. Ante este avance -y aunque en los hechos sostuvieran activamente la competencia- los arqueólogos sostuvieron un distanciamiento discursivo “purificador” respecto de las prácticas comerciales, que al mismo tiempo sirvió para invisibilizar su propia responsabilidad en el proceso.

The Photo Image of Artworks as an Instrument of Assessment and Attribution (the Case of Painting and Drawing by V. I. Shukhayev)

This article explores the use of photographic images of art pieces as a tool for assessment and attribution, focusing on Vasily Ivanovich Shukhayev’s (1887–1973) paintings and drawings. Shukhayev was a famous Russian and Soviet artist, who contributed to greatly to Russian art during the six decades of his artistic career. The artist’s works are kept in many state museums and private collections in Russia and abroad, and are also in high demand on the antiques market. Assessment and attribution of his works is, therefore, a pressing issue. Previously photographs of the pieces made at the exhibitions or during the plein-air paintings by the artist himself, as well as other photographic materials showing the artist with his works or their fragments were believed to be of low importance to the experts. The most important photos are those made within the artist’s lifetime or which belonged to the artist personally, especially if they contain inscriptions on the back. Such photos help to understand what the missing pieces look like, to confirm authorship and the creation dates, to find its variations and copies, to detect fake works, to show the artist’s working style and work stages and sometimes to prove that the artist painted the painting over (typical for V.I. Shukhayev). Altogether, creating a compilation of photographic images of works lost or distributed over the world helps shed light on the painter’s artistic career, a task particularly important for research, for museums and exhibitions, for educational work for monographs and catalogues development.
 Keywords: photographic images, works of art, assessment, attribution, painting, drawing, V.I.Shukhayev

Professional Ethics, Provenance, and Policies

Abstract This article presents and discusses the results of an online survey undertaken in 2018, which targeted scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls and associated research fields. Respondents were asked questions on the state of knowledge in the field regarding provenance issues and related ethics and policies. The goal of the survey was to establish the levels of awareness within Qumran and related studies concerning the role of the antiquities market, the potential accountability (or not) of scholars as perceived by respondents, as well as their general awareness of relevant policies and codes of conduct. The article discusses the key points that the survey raised, with the aim of offering textual scholars tools to assess their role in provenance issues.

Simon Mackenzie, Neil Brodie, Donna Yates with Christos Tsirogiannis. 2019. Trafficking culture: new directions in researching the global market in illicit antiquities. London: Routledge; 978-1-13-869250-3 hardback £29.99.

Simon Mackenzie, Neil Brodie, Donna Yates with Christos Tsirogiannis. 2019. Trafficking culture: new directions in researching the global market in illicit antiquities. London: Routledge; 978-1-13-869250-3 hardback £29.99.

‘An indefatigable intermediary’

Abstract At a time when museum curatorship in America was in its infancy, Harold Woodbury Parsons (1882–1967) scouted and negotiated for outstanding works of art for the cash-rich Cleveland Museum of Art, which opened to the public in 1916. As its European representative (1925–41), he acquired such masterworks as the Stroganoff Ivory, El Greco’s Holy Family with St Mary Magdalen, and the Warren tondo by Filippino Lippi, all during the late 1920s. During a lifetime’s work in the art market, in which he worked for private collectors and other museums, this was his most important achievement. What he acquired for the Cleveland Museum is vividly recounted in the art agent’s correspondence, until now, almost entirely unpublished. After moving to Rome in 1910, Parsons first served as ‘an indefatigable intermediary’ in the world market for antiquities. Later, with the blessing of Edward Waldo Forbes and Paul J. Sachs – director and assistant director, respectively, of Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum – and with a host of European contacts, he was able to ‘gun for’ art for an ever expanding number of clients.

Reja-e BusailahPoems of a Palestinian Boyhood

Books in Review Written in 2012, the novel’s almost flippant , deeply cynical tone calls to mind the excesses of the early 2000s more than the current relationship between consumer and society today. Rather than feeling connected to Farah and Joanne as well as the cast of supporting characters, they remain largely at arm’s length, defined predominantly by their shallowness. Despite moments of compelling reflection on the ways in which consumerism drives and exacerbates insecurity , isolation, and unhappiness, the book ultimately falls flat as commentary. Bridey Heing Washington, DC Juan José Millás From the Shadows Trans. Thomas Bunstead & Daniel Hahn. New York. Bellevue Literary Press. 2019. 208 pages. THE INVISIBLE BUTLER did it. That’s the high-concept vision of Spanish novelist Juan José Millás’s quirky, dark comedy From the Shadows. The winner of several of Spain’s literary prizes, this is his first book to be published in North America in English. When forty-three-year-old Damian Lobo loses his job as a multitasker in high tech—a job he’s had since he was eighteen —he chalks it up to the “heartlessness of today’s capitalism.” He aimlessly wanders a mall in Madrid until he comes upon an antiques market. There, after he shoplifts a gold tie clip, he is pursued by security and eventually hides out in a one-hundred-yearold wardrobe that becomes his shelter and his home for the remainder of the book. The womblike nature of the vintage piece of furniture allows him to create a new self, a newborn personality. He identifies as a moray eel, “lying in wait for some prey, or protecting himself from a predator of its own.” His prey and his predator are a “normal family” of bourgeois suburbanites on the outskirts of the city. Federico, the manager of an electronic toy store; his wife, Lucia, who works for a bakery known for its artisanal breads and pastries; and their teenage daughter, Maria, enjoy the luxuries of their three-bedroom bungalow. When Lucia unknowingly brings Damian into their routine life, he becomes the tenant of the wardrobe and their unseen butler. Lucia buys the clothes cupboard after she recognizes it as one that once belonged to her grandparents. She and her twin brother, Jorges, would hide and play inside it. There are height marks scratched into it. After Jorges dies at an early age, Lucia no longer enjoys the dark insides of the massive closet. When she purchases it and brings it home, she finds it is too large for the bedroom and ends up placing it in front of an already built-in wall unit. Damian creates a cavelike environment for himself between the two pieces. He surreptitiously becomes part of the family’s daily life, embedded in the household as a “kindly poltergeist willingly keeping house.” When they are out, he takes on all the necessary tasks to maintain order. He makes the beds, washes the dishes, cooks supper, irons, vacuums, dusts, repairs broken appliances . The family is oblivious to all this, until Lucia begins to suspect something is awry. She has an interest in the paranormal and believes there may be a specter in the house. When a Ghost Butler logs in on an internet forum, Lucia is certain it is her spirit of the wardrobe. Throughout the novel, Damien continues to invent his new individuality. Part of that includes ongoing imaginary monologues with a nonexistent tabloid TV interviewer , Sergio O’Kane. His exchanges with O’Kane—and then another more elitist journalist, Inako Gabilondo—provide background to his childhood and the formative sexual fixations he had on his adopted Chinese sister. They also convince him that he suffers from depersonalization, a dissociative personality disorder that may derive from social exclusion and alienation as a result of the economic system. When Damien discovers Federico’s secret life—more egregious than his own closeted identity—he plots to seek vengeance for Lucia. The bizarre conclusion to the novel is completely unexpected yet totally logical. Millás makes the incredulous believable. A seductive narrator, brisk dialogue, and a unique claustrophobic setting contribute to a distinctive blend of Kafka’s surrealism and Pirandello’s...

Green Saharas, Grey Markets: Commercial Exploitation of North African Prehistory, an Overview

The collection-driven destruction of the archaeological record by artefact hunters not only threatens to obliterate part of the world’s cultural heritage, but also profoundly affects our ability to understand the human past of the region. This text takes a preliminary look at the material and archaeological consequences of a little-known aspect of the antiquities market, the gathering of surface finds to fuel the online collectors’ market in ancient lithic tools. It attempts to characterise the dynamics and effects of this commerce on the basis of a survey of the internet trade in Stone Age artefacts from North Africa and how they reach and are spread in the market countries. It demonstrates that the effects of these activities are having a devastating effect on parts of the archaeological record of the source countries.

ЭКСПЕДИЦИЯ В МАЛИ В 2020 г.

The research expedition of the Institute of Oriental studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been working in Mali since 2015. Since 2017, it has been attended by employees of the State Museum of the East. The task of the expedition is to study the transformation of traditional Dogon culture in the context of globalization, as well as to collect ethnographic information (life, customs, features of the traditional social and political structure); to collect oral historical legends; to study the history, existence, and transformation of artistic tradition in the villages of the Dogon Country in modern conditions; collecting items of Ethnography and art to add to the collection of the African collection of the. Peter the Great Museum (Kunstkamera, Saint Petersburg) and the State Museum of Oriental Arts (Moscow). The plan of the expedition in January 2020 included additional items, namely, the study of the functioning of the antique market in Mali (the “path” of things from villages to cities, which is important for attributing works of traditional art). The geography of our research was significantly expanded to the regions of Sikasso and Koulikoro in Mali, as well as to the city of Bobo-Dioulasso and its surroundings in Burkina Faso, which is related to the study of migrations to the Bandiagara Highlands. In addition, the plan of the expedition included organization of a photo exhibition in the Museum of the village of Endé and some educational projects. Unfortunately, after the mass murder in March 2019 in the village of Ogossogou-Pel, where more than one hundred and seventy people were killed, events in the Dogon Country began to develop in the worst-case scenario: The incessant provocations after that revived the old feud between the Pel (Fulbe) pastoralists and the Dogon farmers. So far, this hostility and mutual distrust has not yet developed into a full-scale ethnic conflict, but, unfortunately, such a development now seems quite likely.

The Curious Case of Kom Aushim Inv. no. 45: The Rediscovery of a Fragment from a Lost Inscription?

Kom Aushim inv. 45 is a fragment from a larger Greek inscription on basalt. This fragment was acquired by the Kom Aushim (Karanis) magazine in 1999 when it was seized by Egyptian police off the antiquities market. Owing to some very specific parallels this fragment shares with a previously published inscription, I.Fayum 17 (= SB I 624), it seems likely it once was a part of this inscription but is a broken off fragment. This article therefore offers an updated transcription and investigation of the inscription since the last reported sighting of this piece was in 1908 in Fayum City.

Radiocarbon Dating and the Protection of Cultural Heritage

ABSTRACTThe modern antiquities market uses radiocarbon (14C) dating to screen for forged objects. Although this fact shows the potential and power of the method, the circumstances where it is applied can be questionable and call for our attention. Here we present an outline of a call to radiocarbon laboratories for due diligence and best practice approaches to the analysis of antique objects requested by non-research clients.

The Market for Heritage: Evidence From eBay Using Natural Language Processing

The trade in antiquities and cultural objects has proven difficult to understand and yet is highly dynamic. Currently, there are few computational tools that allow researchers to systematically understand the nature of the legal market, which can also potentially provide insights into the illegal market such as types of objects traded and countries trading antiquities. Online sales in antiquities and cultural objects are often unstructured data; relevant cultural affiliations, types, and materials for objects are important for distinguishing what might sell, but these data are rarely organized in a format that makes the quantification of sales a simple process. Additionally, sale locations and the total value of sales are relevant to understanding the focus and size of the market. These data all provide potentially useful insights into how the market in antiquities and cultural objects is developing. Based on this, this work presents the results of a machine learning approach using natural language processing and dictionary-based searches that investigate relatively low-end but high sales volume objects sold on eBay’s U.S. site, where sales are often international, between October 2018 and May 2019. The use of named entity recognition, using a conditional random field approach, classifies objects based on the cultures in which they come from, what type of objects they are, and what the objects are made of. The results indicate that objects from the United Kingdom, affiliated with the Roman period, mostly constituting jewelry, and made of metals sell the most. Metal and jewelry objects, in fact, sold more than other object types. Other important countries for selling ancient and cultural objects include the United States, Thailand, Germany, and Cyprus. Some countries appear to more greatly sellspecific types of objects, such as Egypt being a leader in selling Islamic, terracotta, stone, and wood artifacts and Germany selling Viking/early Medieval weapons. Overall, the approach and tool used demonstrate that it is possible to monitor the online antiquities and cultural objects market while potentially gaining useful insights into the market. The tool developed is provided as part of this work so that it can be applied for other cases and online sites, where it can be applied in real time or using historical data.