Culture Cops Victimise 91-year old Indiana Collector

One hundred FBI agents have descended upon the Indiana home of a 91 year old WW II veteran who collected the objects over an 80 year period as a missionary abroad. The veteran evidently held the items in a home museum that was open to local school groups. Some reports suggest the collector had actually contacted the FBI himself wanting to repatriate some of the items.   If so, the collector apparently got far more than he bargained for.  Shame on the FBI for treating an elderly collector in such a way

Read more: ' Cuture Cops Descend on 91 Year Old Veteran ' 

More Evidence of a Pre-Judged Done Deal Banning Import of Egyptian Antiquities?

An Egyptian news source is reporting that that Assistant US Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Evan Ryan will arrive on Monday 7/4/2014 to discuss a proposal submitted by Egypt to illegalize trading of Egyptian monuments in America.  Just more evidence of a pre-judged done deal with Egypt's military government cooked up with the help of politically connected academic insiders?

Read More: 'More Evidence of a Pre-Judged Done Deal Banning Import of Egyptian Antiquities?' [Cultural Property Observer]

More Evidence of Government Overreach and Maladministration at Expense of Small Business dealers and Collectors!

The evidence still continues to pile up concerning our government's continued overreach and maladministration of antiquities regulations at the expense of small businesses in the antiquities trade and collectors. Jim McAndrew, a former top customs official detailed to head up enforcement of  laws relating to cultural property, has recently expressed serious concerns that US Customs agents may be confusing their roles ('Former Top Customs Official Expresses Serious Concerns About State, Customs Program').  McAndrew is concerned that while their badges say US Customs, DHS appears to be acting as Chinese, Egyptian, Italian, etc. Customs, i.e., there seems to be a "seize first" mentality based on little more than a foreign request. Meanwhile Mark Feldman, the State Department's point person on accession to the 1970 UNESCO Convention and the passage of the CPIA, continues to express concerns with how State has administered the statute ('Feldman on State Department's Administration of CPIA')

Collector Forced to Give up Artifacts

Andy Proffet, 'FBI working with artifact collector to return items' Shelbyville News, April 3, 2014
The FBI on Wednesday was searching the home of a collector near Waldron and assessing the artifacts in his collection which had taken him a lifetime to build, closing off a road in the process.

FBI spokesman Drew Northern called 91-year-old Donald C. Miller of Waldron "an amateur archaeologist," who had collected the artifacts over his lifetime. "Mr. Miller has a large collection of artifacts and we are working with him to help him repatriate those items to the appropriate folks," Northern said. "There are treaties and statutes that deal with repatriation of cultural artifacts, and Mr. Miller is working with us to return those." Northern said he couldn't specify whether the artifacts in question were of native American or foreign origin. "But they are items of great cultural value that Mr. Miller has amassed in his private collection over the years, and the FBI is there, we have our resources meticulously cataloging and collecting and working with Mr. Miller to preserve these items," Northern said. 

The authorities call these items "priceless" and have brought in archaeologists and anthropologists to help catalog the items. They will then decide if any were stolen or need to be repatriated to the indigenous tribes they came from.

Eleven Burial Boxes Recovered in Israel

The Israeli Antiquities Authority unveiled 11 ancient burial boxes Monday that were recovered by the Israeli Police early Friday morning.  Officials say the boxes are 2,000 years old. Some are engraved with designs and even names, giving clues to their origin and contents. The boxes contain bone fragments and remnants of what experts say is pottery buried with the deceased.

The authority says the boxes were recovered last Friday in Jerusalem when police observed a suspicious nighttime transaction involving two cars, four individuals and the 11 boxes. Once police realized the boxes were of archaeological significance, they alerted the Antiquities Authority. It is not yet clear how the suspects got hold of the boxes.

 Read more: 11 ancient burial boxes recovered in Israel

Professional Archeologists Hoard Finds

In the United Kingdom heritage writer John Howland describes an appalling state of affairs, a BBC investigation has uncovered a secret stash of artefacts hoarded by archeologists ('Professional Vandalism – And Not a Detector in Sight!'):

Britain’s archaeologists are apparently world leaders when it comes to maltreating artifacts. This depressing lack of an efficient recording and classification system makes that which is happening in Egypt look almost regimented. That hundreds of thousands of precious artifacts hoiked from excavations by ‘archaeologists’ [...] are languishing unrecorded and unclassified, is nothing short of a national disgrace. Heads must roll. 

One estimate says up to 24 container loads of archeological objects are being stored by private companies.  Mr Howland suggests that the archeologists' campaign against private collecting is a concerted behind the scenes effort to create a damage-limitation diversion.  He points to a total silence from other writers on the heritage in Britain and the governing bodies of British archeology and museums.

heritage matters are of such vital importance they MUST NOT be left in the hands of people who simply can’t cut the heritage mustard. If ever there was a case for archaeology as a whole being legislatively bound to report their activities to a body that can actually do the business, then PAS is precisely the organisation to do it. Tax-payers hard-earned money has been squandered by the millions on ‘archaeology’ and which now ought to be diverted away from incompetent ‘archaeology ‘and ploughed into the PAS to ensure nothing like this scandal ever happens again to our heritage. What will the Minister responsible make of it? [...] 

Mr Howland urges all who care about the past get in touch with the UK's Minister for Culture, Media and Sport and make sure that she spends the money in her trust to the ultimate public benefit. I think collectors everywhere should be supporting this initiative and giving the PAS a boost:

If you believe that public money ought to be diverted from ‘archaeology’ and into a scheme to reduce the hundreds of thousands of artifacts piling-up every day in unsuitable warehouses and storage facilities, then make you views known to the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, the Rt Hon Maria Miller at:- Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 100 Parliament Street, London, SW1A 2BQ. Tel: 020 7211 6000. Or email at: – enquiries@culture.gov.uk marked ‘For the attention of the Rt Hon Maria Miller MP.’