Trafficking Culture

by Suzie Thomas

The original Golden Horns of Gallehus, unique Bronze Age artefacts, were stolen and melted down in 1802, causing national uproar in Denmark and even inspiring a famous poem. In 2007, the replicas of the originals were also stolen.

The Golden Horns (guldhornene), two spectacular artefacts dating from the 5th Century AD, were discovered in Gallehus, near to Mgeltønder in southern Jutland. Both were found ‘by accident’ by peasants, the first in 1639, and the second in 1734 (Eskildsen 2012: 44). They were made of gold, and were decorated with runic inscriptions and animal, human and geometric designs, likely representing ‘scenes from religious rituals, seasonal festivals or myths’ (British Museum 2012).

For years, the first horn was kept in the royal palace (Klindt-Jensen 1975: 25), and when the second horn was found, its discovery contributed to a ‘general upsurge of interest in prehistory’ in Denmark, and was one of several finds that contributed to a review of treasure trove law in Denmark (Klindt-Jensen 1975: 33).

by Neil Brodie

Freedom of Information requests can be made to release into the public domain information about the traffic in cultural objects.

The success of media investigations into the antiquities market such as those of Peter Watson (Watson 1997; Watson and Todeschini 2007) and Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino (2011), to name only two, has been largely due to their access to good-quality documentary evidence, obtained either from ‘whistleblowers’ or from more official sources. It is generally the case that any research into the traffic in cultural objects must overcome the challenge of identifying and acquiring reliable and relevant information. One route has been to use Freedom of Information laws to obtain material from publicly-funded institutions. Thus Neil Brodie obtained documents from the British Library pertaining to its acquisition in 1994 of some Kharosthi manuscript fragments, allegedly smuggled out of either Afghanistan or Pakistan (Brodie 2005). Brian Egloff used a Freedom of Information request to obtain documents from the National Gallery of Australia relating to the Gallery’s acquisition in 1977 of the Ambum Stone, which had been taken out of Papua New Guinea in suspicious circumstances in the 1960s (Egloff 2008).

by Suzie Thomas

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo found itself in the centre of the2011 Egyptian uprisings (the wider impact of which for Egypt is discussed in a separate entry), in part due to its location on Tahrir Square, upon which much of the protesting focussed (Anderson 2011). On 28 January 2011, despite apparent attempts to protect the museum and its contents (Butler 2011; El-Aref 2011a), looters and protesters entered the museum – possibly up to 1,000 individuals according reports (Sarant 2011) .

Although looters apparently raided the museum shop for jewellery, smashed display cases, (Sarant 2011) and ransacked the ticket office (ABC News 2011), it was at first unclear exactly what had been taken, with varying reports emerging suggesting different accounts of the damage caused and scale of loss of cultural objects. At the time of the break-in itself, nine individuals were reportedly arrested as they tried to make their way out of the museum via fire exits with the heads of two mummies that they had attempted to steal (but that had subsequently broken up into pieces) (ABC News 2011; Sarant 2011).

by Donna Yates

Five hoards of solid gold bracelets looted from the site of Sarmizegetusa Regia, Romania, and partially recovered from the USA and other countries in Europe.

The archaeological site of Sarmizegetusa Regia in Romania is the ancient capital of the Dacian kingdom. Dacia existed from 82 BC until 106 AD when the Romans conquered the area and destroyed Sarmizegetusa Regia. It is now the primary property within the UNESCO World Heritage site ‘Dacian Fortresses of the Orastie Mountains’ (see http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/906). Between 1999 and 2001 twenty four solid gold bracelets were looted from this site (AFP 2011; Constantinescu et al. 2010; Watson 2011).

by Meg Lambert

Ninth century CE Arab dhow shipwreck off the coast of Indonesia, commercially salvaged in 1998 and criticized by Western academics after a proposed exhibition of the shipwreck by the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery in 2011.

In the late 9th century CE, an Arab dhow ship carrying Chinese wares sunk off the coast of Belitung, an island off the eastern coast of Sumatra,Indonesia, in the Java Sea. The bottom of the vessel was torn out, possibly by a nearby reef, and the hull collapsed before there was time for sediment to build around it. The ship was most probably en route from China to the Middle East, where the Abbasid Dynasty had developed a taste for the ceramics developed during China’s Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD). The ship contained 60,000 ceramics, 58,000 of which were Changsha ceramics from China’s Hunan Province (Flecker 2000).

Foreign trade during the Tang Dynasty was so successful that in 723 AD, an imperial ban was decreed on the private transaction of copper and zinc to prevent a shortage of materials for currency production. Subsequently, the Tang Dynasty faced a need to perfect ceramic wares and glazes for everyday use (Lam 1999). The development of stoneware pottery and porcelain, as well as glazes that did not contain toxic materials, revolutionised the production of everyday ceramics and created a dynamic new artistic tradition. Tang ceramics became the first real industrial-scale, mass-produced item that was shaped by market demand, not imperial funerary purposes. The technical evolution of Chinese ceramics encouraged the popularity of tea ceremonies as described by authors such as the poet Lu Yu in In Chajing or The Classic of Tea (760–780) (Krahl 2011). The Changsha style of pottery is particularly notable for its tri-colour decoration and the lyrical abstraction of nature in its subjects.

by Donna Yates

A Nahuatl Codex legally exported from Mexico to France in the 19th century and stolen from the Bibliothèque National in 1982

The Aubin Tonalamatl[1] is a Nahuatl codex which consists of eighteen screen-folded pages on maguey bark paper. It is constructed out of thirteen bark pieces that were pasted together, and it is meant to be read from right to left (Star 1902). It contains the 260 symbols that represent thetonalpohualli, or the count of days. The codex would originally have been 20 pages long, but the first two pages have been lost. The pages are painted on one side and the contents relate to divination, recording the omens associated with particular days (Star 1902). It seems to have originated in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala, based on where it was collected (Quiñones Keber 2001: 61-62).

by Suzie Thomas

The ancient site of Zeugma in Turkey, now partially inundated by a dam, has experienced extensive looting, particuarly for its fine mosaics.

Zeugma comprises the two ancient cities of Seleucia and Apameia sitting on opposite banks of the Euphrates in Turkey, connected by a bridge, hence ‘zeugma’ from the ancient Greek for ‘junction’ or ‘bridge’  (Shoup 2006: 234). Belkis and Tilmuse, the modern settlements, were known to have ancient ruins for many years, but it was not until the 1970s that it was recognised for certain that these remains were actually Zeugma (Kennedy et al. 1998: 7). Zeugma was occupied from around 300 BC, in its heyday growing to a population of some 70,000, with growing prosperity leading to a taste for frescoes and fine mosaics in many of the villas of Zeugma’s inhabitants (Acar 2000a; 2000b: 40-41). Economic decline, a series of attacks, and earthquakes led to the apparent abandonment of the settlement by the 11th Century AD, with no further mention of it after 1048 (Acar 2000b: 41).

It is believed that looting has taken place at Zeugma since at least the 19th Century (Acar 2000b: 42), with one example of a looted mosaic known from 1873 (Kennedy et al. 1998: 129). 

by Suzie Thomas

‘A Northumberland National Park Voluntary Ranger patrol discovered the illegal excavations in the central area of Yeavering Bell, the largest hillfort in Northumberland and a scheduled ancient monument’ (Young 2002).

The Iron Age hillfort site at Yeavering Bell, one of the hills in the Cheviot range in Northumberland, ‘was almost certainly constructed at some point in the first millennium BC’ (Oswald and Pearson 2005: 98). It stands in close proximity to the Anglo-Saxon palace site of Ad Gefrin, a factor that possibly reinforced the significance of the palace (Frodsham 2005: 14).

Although in the stewardship of Northumberland National Park, the site belongs to landowner Lord Anthony Hill, who at the time said “National Park Staff have worked closely with local landowners over the last ten  years or so through projects like  ‘Discovering our hillfort Heritage’ to set up some really good management  agreements  for ancient monuments. These guarantee public access to many sites where it was previously impossible. Activity like this threatens all of that good work” (in Young 2002). The illicit searching of the site may have had a negative impact for the legal metal detecting community, with reports just a few years later from local metal-detector users that it was extremely difficult to gain permission to metal detect from landowners in Northumberland (Thomas 2006: 255).

by Suzie Thomas

A Roman sculpture: the bottom half was archaeologically excavated at the Turkish site of Perge and the top half was looted and eventually placed on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA.

Since the early 1980s, debate and dispute have surrounded two halves of a Roman sculpture dating from the Late Antonine period (AD 170-192), “of a type known as the Weary Herakles” (in Rose and Acar 1995: 49). Such statues were not uncommon, with many made in this period based on an original 4th Century BC sculpture by the sculptor Lyssipos of Sicyon (Kornblut 1998).

by Donna Yates

Extensively looted and faked figurines from sites in Ecuador’s coastal lowlands.

by Suzie Thomas

‘Tombarolo’ is an Italian term (plural ‘tombaroli’), derived from the Italian word ‘tomba’, meaning tomb or grave.

It refers primarily to ‘tomb-robbers’ operating in Italy (Mackenzie and Green 2009: 3), although the term ‘clandestini’ (meaning ‘illegals’ or ‘clandestines’ in Italian) has also been used to describe clandestine diggers (Renfrew 2000: 17), and a tombarolo might not necessarily limit their activities only to tombs and graves; for example sometimes removing material from villas and other sites (Watson and Todeschini 2006: 151).

University performance: Sociology in our sortable league table

by Donna Yates

For years this site was only known from looted archaeological material for sale on the art market; its location was unknown. It has recently been identified in the Peten region of Guatemala.

In the mid 1960s a number of Maya sculptural objects, many bearing the same emblem glyph, began to appear on the art market. Although the panels and stelae could be stylistically tied to the Petén region, the site name recorded on some of the objects was one that scholars were unaware of. It quickly became clear that an interesting archaeological site, unknown to science, was being looted in the deep jungle of Guatemala.

by Neil Brodie

The ‘organigram’ is a handwritten organizational chart that was recovered in September 1995 during a Carabinieri raid presenting a view of the antiquities trade within Italy as envisaged in the early 1990s.

The ‘organigram’ is a handwritten organizational chart that was recovered in September 1995 during a Carabinieri raid on the premises of Danilo Ziccho (Watson and Todeschini 2007: 16-18). Drawn by dealer Pasquale Camera, it presents a view of the antiquities trade within Italy as envisaged by Camera in the early 1990s. The US dealer Robert Hecht occupies a central place on the chart, with links to collectors and museums in the USA, to major antiquities dealers Nikos Koutoulakis, Eli Borowsky and Frieda Tchacos, and to the collector George Ortiz (who is in fact Bolivian, not Argentinian as suggested on the chart).