Spartan phalanx

An exceptional image of a Spartan phalanx by artist, Cliff Nielsen

Blaming Antiquities Collectors

An impossible situation for museums and collectors,

"to be blamed...for owning objects with provenance issues, while simultaneously denied the ability to confirm whether those objects passed through the hands of these dealers.”

Tsirogiannis: Master of the Blame-Game Goes After Frieze Masters

Patriotic collectors boost market for ancient Chinese artifacts

Even objects previously considered inauspicious,
such as archaic jade from tombs, are being
sought by Chinese buyers.

Patriotic collectors boost market for ancient Chinese artefacts, The Financial Times

 Following the fashions to buy western art and classic wristwatches, historical Chinese artefacts are now the must-have item for the country’s wealthy collectors who are snapping up [...] objects that have been in foreign hands for often hundreds of years. Interest in Chinese artefacts has intensified since President Xi Jinping began pushing to highlight the role of the country’s heritage in the national narrative [...] The buying spree is supported by China’s government, which is backing a $450m branch of Beijing’s famed Palace Museum being constructed in Hong Kong, among other initiatives. “It’s about the emergence of China,” Mr Stone says. “The government sees art and culture as a key industry. It’s part of the strategy for the development of China.

It's great the Chinese public is getting in touch with past, but makes no sense to restrict American collectors from buying what Chinese collectors can readily buy.

Medusa Close-up

The underlying beauty of the Gorgon, Medusa is visible on the sarcophagus from the Hellenistic city of Aphrodisias in Western Anatolia. What occurred following her transformation.... one of Greek mythology's feared creatures.

Reclining Griffin from Megiddo.

This reclining griffin carved in relief is perhaps one of the most famous images from Megiddo.

Archeologist advises dig be stopped on Oak Island after ‘artifact’ found

Archaeologist advises dig be stopped on The Curse of Oak Island after 'artifact' found - The treasure hunt by the Money Pit on Oak Island (History Channel) faces being shut down by spoilsport archeologists after “alarming news”.  Culture and Heritage has mandated that archeologists be involved with any digging and now the archeologist is stopping the digging (Julian Cheatle, "Archaeologist advises dig be stopped on The Curse of Oak Island after ‘artifact’ found" Monsters and Critics 20th November 2017)

A dig on The Curse of Oak Island is brought to a halt by an archaeologist in a new sneak peek for Season 5 Episode 3 — after what appears to be a significant discovery. Laird Niven, an archaeologist who has previously worked with Rick and Marty Lagina and the team on the series, is shown telling Marty as he uproots trees using an excavator: “I think we have to stop.” It comes after Laird appears to see something in the ground that is being dug up. Marty, who is at the controls of the excavator, asks him: “You strongly suspect this is an artifact?” Laird says: “Yes, I do.” Footage then shows a close-up of some sort of debris before Laird is seen looking through the dirt that has been dug up [...]  It also sees the team find “hard evidence” of a European presence on the island — thought to be a coin — more than a century before the Money Pit was discovered. Meanwhile, Rick Lagina recently gave a big hint that this season the team uncover evidence of some sort of link on the island to the Knights Templar. 

As has many times been pointed out, all that archeologists are concerned with is exercising control.  

VICE: Indonesia Can't Stop Its Illegal Treasure Hunters

The illegal antiquities trade is robbing the country of millions of dollars and no one seems to have a plan to stop it. (Adi Renaldi, "Indonesia Can't Stop Its Illegal Treasure Hunters" Vice, Nov 20 2017)

Indonesia's lost treasures keep going missing. Conservations say that a flood of illegal treasure hunters are digging up artifacts in rice paddies in the Central Java district of Sukoharjo—a region hundreds of miles outside Indonesia's capital city of Jakarta—and selling the valuable items on the black market. Local officials declared a site in Sukoharjo's Joho village a conservation zone three years ago after evidence of an ancient Buddhist temple was discovered nearby. But the classification has only increased the appetite of looters who are willing to pay local farmers as much as $222 a day for the right to dig for buried treasures under the cover of darkness. "We haven't calculated it, but if this has been happening since the 1990s, then we have lost so much money," Darno, the head of the local culture and heritage foundation, told VICE. "The government doesn't seem to realize the potential of historical sites." The money is a vital resource for the village's rice farmers, who would typically make nothing off their paddies during the dry season. But it's also proven to be a difficult crime to prosecute. And with little risk of being caught, there are few reasons for farmers in Joho village to not offer their fields up to treasure hunters who are willing to pay cash up-front. "I know nothing about the heritage," one farmer, a man named Mariman, told the Jakarta Post. "Someone says they want to rent my field... I just allow them.

If the foreign government cannot look after its past, then why should collectors here tke the blame for their omissions?

Russian minister blasts Netherlands’ Scythian gold ruling

Dmitry Korobeinikov ‘Similar to Nazi looting’: Russian minister blasts Netherlands’ Scythian gold ruling Sputnik 16 Nov, 2017

 Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky has described a decision by a Dutch court not to return a collection of Scythian gold to Crimea as a “most dangerous precedent,” and threatened to sever all museum ties with the Netherlands. [...] The minister was reacting to a decision by a court not to return 500 Scythian gold artifacts, which Dutch museums had borrowed from Crimean collections. [...]  The exhibits of Scythian gold were delivered from several Crimean museums to the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam in February 2014, shortly before the Crimean Republic reunited with the Russian Federation following a referendum that attained almost universal support. [...]  Russian officials have repeatedly condemned the ruling as a dangerous precedent that threatens the whole system of international cultural exchange. 

"Unauthorised" Drone Photos taken of Chichén Itza

Meixco's INAH starts legal proceedings for unauthorised drone photos taken of Chichén Itza

The Spread of Roman Literacy

Amazing map to discover where Roman inscriptions have been found in the ancient world and what they tell us  

Questionable data on Cambodia

Questionable data on Cambodia to Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) from the Antiquities Coalition: 

An advance report authored by Ms. Katie Paul is circulating on the Antiquities Coalition website and was presented in public testimony to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) meeting on the request for renewal of import restrictions by Cambodia. The report not only illustrates how easy it is to tell half the story to advance an agenda – but also how easy it is to challenge it. CCP spent an hour or so on the Internet after listening to Ms. Paul’s statement to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, in which she asserted that there was a substantial US market for Cambodian antiquities, based upon online research at the popular LiveAuctioneers website. As a result of that hour or so of work, we beg to differ. [...]  The Antiquities Coalition study could have revealed some useful information, but it chose to advocate for a position instead. All it does now is raise questions about her methodology. Certainly, her results do not seem to show that the United States remains a major market for Cambodian antiquities. But, take a look for yourself, and make up your own mind. 

Turkey Sent Arms to Jihadists in Syria

Turkey's Erdogan government illegally sent arms to jihadists in Syria and panicked when it got exposed how operatives of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), Turkey’s spy agency, got caught breaking Turkish laws in arming jihadists in Syria but were saved by Erdoğan, who hushed up the probe. MİT has dispatched thousands of trucks full of arms to jihadists in Syria to fuel a dirty war of regime change, which led to the killing of so many in Syria and other places. We should refuse to co-operate with such a crooked regime and certainly not allow cultural items to be repatriated there.

The Pylos Combat Agate, an intricately carved 3,500-year-old sealstone discovered in a the tomb of a Greek warrior.

"More than two years ago researchers from the University of Cincinnati unearthed a 3,500-year-old tomb in the southwest of Greece. The tomb belonged to a Bronze Age warrior nicknamed the “Griffin Warrior,” and contained many treasures, such as four gold signet rings, that have challenged previous notions about the origins of Greek civilization".

The Pylos Combat Agate, an intricately carved 3,500-year-old sealstone discovered in a the tomb of a Greek warrior. Images courtesy of The Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati

Perhaps one of the most important and visually captivating finds from the tomb occurred a full year after its discovery. Researchers uncovered a carved sealstone no larger than an inch and a half wide. The “Pylos Combat Agate” meticulously displays two warriors engaged in battle with bodies strewn at their feet, with some details less than a millimeter wide. The carving is perhaps most astonishing because it predates artistic skills that were not associated with Greek civilization for another millennium. “What is fascinating is that the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later,” said Jack Davis, Carl W. Blegen professor of Greek archaeology at the University of Cincinnati in UC Magazine. “It’s a spectacular find.” In a testament to the anonymous artist’s skills, it’s also worthy to note that magnifying glasses were not believed to be used for another thousand years. This ability and sophistication shows that the inhabitants of the area were creating art with an interest and knowledge of representational art not previously imagined. This new discovery, explained Davis and fellow dig leader Shari Stocker, is a catalyst to completely reevaluate the timeline and development of Greek art. You can read more about the miniature carving and the Griffin Warrior’s tomb in UC Magazine. (via Neatorama and The History Blog)

Kate Sierzputowski, 'An Astonishingly Small Stone Carving That Has the Power to Change Art History', Collossal Nov 10 2017. 

see also: Jamie Seidel, "Pylos Combat Agate is a 3500-year-old masterpiece of ancient art, technology", News Corp Australia Network, Nov 9, 2017

NY Prosecutor Pursues Stale Claim Based on Foreign Law

New York prosecutor pursues another stale claim based on unclear foreign law, this time of Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism... October 30, 2017. Crusade Against the Art Trade: Where Will It End?

A prosecutor from the New York County District Attorney’s office walked into the booth of English art dealer Rupert Wace at the gala opening of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) at New York’s Park Avenue Armory on October 27. He was holding a search warrant and accompanied by uniformed police officers, who seized a limestone bas relief from Persepolis in Iran. The relief was worth $1.2 million. Wace had purchased it from an insurance company, which had acquired it from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The New York District Attorney’s office, under the aggressive direction of DA Cyrus Vance and dedicated anti-art trade crusader Assistant DA Matthew Bogdanos, has made two cultural property seizures in recent weeks. Neither object was recently looted; together, they had been in museums or private collections for over 115 years. There was no evidence of wrongdoing by the collectors or dealers involved. Wace had purchased the bas relief after it was given up by the Canadian museum. The other seized object, a fragment of mosaic from Italy, was purchased in the 1960s by a journalist and his wife, an antique dealer, from an aristocratic family in Italy. According to the couple, the deal was brokered by an Italian police official “famed for his success in recovering art work looted by the Nazis.” These cases raise serious questions, impacting both private and museum collections in the US. When an artwork is well-known to scholars, published or exhibited, how long is too long for a country to make a claim? Will museums and collectors in the US that are second, third, or fourth generation owners be held to vague, ambiguous, and unenforced laws in foreign nations, when those nations have failed to make any claim for decades? At what point do US judges or law enforcement consider whether the evidence, or the terms of the foreign laws, actually provides a reasonable basis for a claim that an object is ‘stolen’?  

Read more here

Ancient Mosaic Excavated in southern Turkey

This stunning ancient Greek floor mosaic, dating back to the 2nd century BC, was excavated in southern Turkey, near the Syrian border, in the ancient Greek City, Zeugma, Gaziantepe...

An older, sweeter and superior culture to the later retrograde aberrations that have swept the region. The Turks are about to flood the site.

The Vast Majority of Antiquities Sold Online Are Probably Looted or Fake, Report Says Artnet News

More scaremongring from our enemies: Julia Halperin, "The Vast Majority of Antiquities Sold Online Are Probably Looted or Fake, a New Report Says" ArtNews November 1, 2017.

Up to 80 percent of the antiquities for sale online are likely looted or fake, according to new research. The Wall Street Journal has conducted a thorough investigation into the surge in illicit antiquities bought and sold online. Neil Brodie, a senior research fellow in Endangered Archaeology at the University of Oxford, estimates that 80 percent of the 100,000 antiquities available online at any given moment have no recorded provenance—which means they are probably looted or fake. These objects have a combined total asking price of more than $10 million, he says. The explosion of fake and looted antiquities is the result of two combustible factors. First, ISIS has conducted unprecedented looting across the Middle East in recent years, bringing a wave of illicit objects into the marketplace. Second, novice collectors now have unprecedented access to un-vetted material thanks to the rapid growth of outlets like Facebook, WhatsApp, eBay, and Amazon.

There are many ways to avoid buying either, like stay with respected dealers with a clean record.