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

It is nice to get some notice taken of one's work from time to time. The issue of the damage done to sites by artefact hunting tends to be dominated by metal detectors, here I step aside from that. It was noticed (though I am not sure I agree with the bit at the end) robertvernet Publié le 13 juin 2022, on the blog 'Préhistoire de l'Ouest Saharien Un projet d’inventaire de l’archéologie préhistorique dans l’ouest du Sahara' ("Une plongée dans le pillage archéologique du Sahara en août 2019"): 

Un archéologue, P.M. Barford, a consacré un mois, en 2019, à explorer les sites internet vendant, au Etats-Unis et en Europe, des pièces archéologiques paléolithiques et néolithiques provenant du Sahara :

Paul M. Barford Green Saharas, Grey Markets: Commercial Exploitation of North African Prehistory, an Overview Archaeologia Polona, vol. 58 : 2020 : 311 – 336
http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2020/05/artefacts-from-northern-africa.html

C’est un travail méticuleux de description des raisons poussant les acteurs de ce commerce illicite (vendeurs et acheteurs), de leurs méthodes, des résultats (impressionnant tableau des « prises » (!) pendant seulement un mois) et des conséquences sur le patrimoine des pays concernés. Une bibliographie conséquente permet de se faire une idée plus concrète (cf. par exemple : Barker, 2018 ; di Lernia, 2005 ; Keenan, 2013 ; Fay, 2013 ; UNESCO, 1970 ; Vernet, 1995, 2000, 2011, 2013). La conclusion est d’une grande clarté :

« The number of Saharan Neolithic artefacts currently on sale online is disturbingly high. Although it seems that the turnover of this trade is not as rapid as other artefact claim that since the mid 1990s, several million artefacts have been removed from sites in the Sahara and scattered on the international antiquities market, and this pran industrial scale. It seems that some areas have been stripped of diagnostic material. As long as a lucrative market for this material exists, the extent of the areas stripped out will only spread. In the Sahara, the majority of Neolithic sites consist of shallow surface spreads of material and the bases of negative features exposed desert conditions that have prevailed here for six millennia. As such, they are extremely fragile and sensitive to interference. A single unrecorded search episode removing the most collectible (and therefore diagnostic) material will irreversibly alter not only the composition of the site assemblage but, above all, the pattern of distribution of material that constitutes the main body of evidence that the site holds. In analysing prehistoric landscapes in the desert, the stratigraphic, artefactual and environmental data from single sites are not the main type of evidence. Desert surveys analyse the cumulative distribution of elation to each other but also to the geological effects of changing landscapes and natural environment. Rendering unrecognizable sites and findspots forming part of those patterns disrupts that research. […] Artefact hunting, alongside erosion and other geological processes, agricultural expansion, military activity, road construction, vandalism or mining and other extractive industries, is just one of the threats to archaeological sites in the fragile environment of the Sahara region. Yet it is one that arguably we can still be doing something about. Why aren’t we? » 

Références

Barker, A. 2018. Looting, the antiquities trade, and competing valuations of the past. Annual Review of Anthropology 47: 455–474.

Di Lernia, S. 2005. Incoming tourism, outgoing culture: tourism, development and cultural heritage in the Libyan Sahara. Journal of North African Studies 10(3–4): 441–457.

Fay, E. 2013. Trading in antiquities on eBay: the changing face of the illicit trade in antiquities. PhD Thesis, Keele University October 2013. Electronic document: http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/197/1/Fay%20PhD%202013.pdf.

Keenan, J. 2003. Tourism, development and conservation: a Saharan perspective. In D. J. Mattingly, S. McLaren, E. Savage, Y. al-Fasatwi, and K. Gadgood (eds), Natural resources and cultural heritage of the Libyan Desert: proceedings of a conference held in Libya. 14–21 December 2002, 14–21. London.

UNESCO 1970. Convention on the means of prohibiting and preventing the illicit import, Export and transfer of ownership of cultural property. Paris.

Vernet R. : Tourisme saharo-sahélien et archéologie : dangers et remèdes, communication au colloque de Chinguetti : Cités et patrimoine culturel du Sahara et du Sahel, oct. 1995, La Revue Anthropologique, Paris, 1996, p. 166-169

Vernet R. : Le pillage des sites archéologiques mauritaniens : des conséquences dramatiques, Colloque “Le Patrimoine Culturel en Mauritanie”, Nouakchott, 1999 ; Nouakchott, 2000 : 239-244

Vernet R. : Souvenirs, pillage, modernité et archéologie : un siècle de détérioration du patrimoine préhistorique en Mauritanie
In : Halte au pillage, G. Compagnon, éd., Éd. Errance, 2011 : 375-389

Vernet R., Choplin A. : Disparition d’un patrimoine archéologique : le cas de Nouakchott (1955-2008). Cahiers de l’AARS, 2013,n° 16 : 251-257

Vernet, R. and Le Quellec, J.-L. : Recension de : Eckhard Klenkler, Robert Dreikluft, Mark Milburn and Z. Jiang 2016. Sahara. Material culture of early communities. Cahiers de l’AARS, 2017 – 19: 295–297.

Fish-in-Barrel "Archaeology", Metal Detecting as Imagined "Citizen Science" in the Czech Republic

[PACHI]

Citizen science  

The 'English Disease' is spreading even in Central Europe:
Balázs Komoróczy 2022 Archaeology, Metal Detecting, and Citizen Science in the Czech Republic

Abstract
Although the legal conditions are perceived as restrictive, metal detecting has become a popular activity in the Czech Republic. In 2017, a questionnaire survey revealed that a significant segment of this community is made up of passionate people interested in history and archaeology. The majority of professional archaeologists consider metal-detecting finds to be important and believe that cooperation with metal detectorists is necessary, beneficial, and acceptable. A collaborative project called “Joint Forces in Order to Discover the Common Archaeological Heritage of the South Moravian Region” aims to create conditions for citizen science among the metal detectorists in the region. By using tools such as expert workshops for the employees of professional institutions, meetings, educational workshops and field activities with interested members of the public, and production and distribution of printed and digital information materials, the partners in the program have long endeavored to improve the mutual understanding of all relevant actors of society and administration. The creation of circles of citizen collaborators is in progress in several archaeological institutions; nevertheless, this process is far from over. In 2020, with the creation of the Portal of Amateur Collaborators, this activity acquired a unified digital scheme for the registration of finds.

Although the Czech scheme public finds recording scheme calls itself "PAS", if you look at the blurb https://amcr-info.aiscr.cz/?page=pas, it is a quite different concept to the UK's ineffective @findsorguk . More akin to the UK's Proposed Institute of Detectorists. I am not sure what that really achieves apart from more dots on distribution maps.

Their flagship publication seems to be:
Balázs Komoróczy, Petra Golanova, Matej Kmosek, Marek Vlach, Michaela Kmošková 2020, 'New metal and glass finds from the Late Iron Age in South Moravia (CZ). The contribution of citizen science to knowledge of the La Tène settlement structure in the Břeclav Region', Přehled výzkumů 61/2.

Abstract
The ‘Celts Beneath the Pálava Hills’ exhibition was installed at the end of the summer of 2020 at the Regional Museum in Mikulov. The museum prepared the exhibition in cooperation with the Moravian Museum and the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno. Along with other unique exhibits, an assemblage of 70 metal artefacts stored in Dolní Dunajovice in the study collection of the Research Centre for the Roman and Great Migration periods of the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, was chosen to be displayed for this event. The article presents 47 small artefacts made of copper alloys, 18 coins and five glass artefacts from 17 cadastral units, which enriched the exhibition with a variety of characteristic LT C and D1 finds. They do not form a complete collection, as their common denominator is that they were found in 2011–2017 solely by metal detectorists working together with the archaeologists from the workplace where the finds are stored. These never-before-published artefacts and the qualities of each deserve to be presented both to the public and the professional community. These artefacts include finds which, in the context of the Late Iron Age of south Moravia, are unique objects (including two bronze figurines) that are significant contributions to the clarification and differentiation of the topography of the La Tène settlement structure in the studied region.

Read this carefully, and you get the impression that these detectorists (called for some reason "citizen scientists") have been handing in artefacts they've been finding and aan exhibition was put together to make use of them. Whether or not the dots on the distribution map tell anyone anything much of use about the "the La Tène settlement structure", what it tells us is about the structure of detectorist search areas - some of which were known sites anyway.

In any case this collaboration consists of tekkies bringing stuff to the academics, cap in hand, for them to do their artefactological/typological bla-bla (and for some unfathomable reason metal analyses) publish and keep. That's not "citizen science", it is treating the services of the metal detectorist in an instrumental way, and its value as archaeology I would say is highly doubtful. The colourful dot-distribution map means, precisely, what in terms of the archaeological contexts of the sites these loose typological geegaws were hoiked from? So, they have pictures and descriptions of loose scattered "things" taken from deposits, but what do the latter mean?

What is "citizen science", apart from a trendy term currently being usefully employed in grant-applications? What kind of "science" is using a commercially (readily) available specifically designed dedicated tool for finding buried metal to... uh (checks notes).. find buried metal and dig it up? That is not science, any more than beachcombing, birdwatching, bottledump digging and beermat collection are.

Which definition of science does using a metal detector to detect a piece of metal and dig it up to pocket it comply with? https://merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science.

Definition of science
1a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method
b: such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena: 'NATURAL SCIENCE'
2a: a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study 'the science of theology'
b: something (such as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge 'have it down to a science
3: a system or method reconciling practical ends with scientific laws 'cooking is both a science and an art'
4 capitalized : 'CHRISTIAN SCIENCE'
5: the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding

British Metal Detecting: "Alan's" Legacy - A Collection and Some Drawings of "Antiquities", and a Lot of Gaps in the Archaeological Record

 

[PACHI] On social media, Dr Jenny Durrant (Hampshire FLO working for Britain's Portable Antiquities Scheme) writes: 

[It is] a privilege to sort the legacy collection of detectorist Alan. Many potential museum acquisitions here, lots beautifully recorded in notebooks. Legacies will become a common situation, but it's impossible for many museums to acquire them. [...] The notebooks are essential for matching objects to find spots - many of which are the other side of the country. So there's some repatriation to happen.

We learn from another FLO that "Alan was such an accomplished artist and illustrator. Sad that he's no longer with us, but a privilege to work with him in Hampshire". The photo shows a page of a notebook with a very accomplished pencil drawing of an early medieval mount, but carefully aligned so you can't see what is written by it. One assumes that here is the information being used that is "essential" to "match the objects with their findspots" but cannot tell how detailed that information might be. Of course if the finds had all been PAS-recorded beforehand, there'd be no findspot-hunting to be done at public expense and the cost of Dr Durant's time now.

The photo shows basically a heap of objects on a table, some are grouped (by the collector or the FLO?) loose in plastic containers like used ice-cream tubs and the suchlike, some in small groups on opened polybags. Virtually none of the ones seen in this photo seem to have been stored in individual, labelled, polybags. None seem to be associated with any kind of label, though it is difficult to be sure, the ones nearer the camera seem not to bear any catalogue number in ink that would link each individual find to an external paper or digital record.

Part of "Alan's Legacy"

It is to be hoped that there will be some kind of publication summarising this collection and making available information of the numbers of artefacts of the broad categories there are, and how many items it is in total. So few of these old collections ever do end up being characterised in the archaeological literature. That's a shame, as this kind of collecting is a poorly documented phenomenon and I think (from what I see on the forums) there is a lot of misunderstanding that arises because of this. Since this kind of collecting is a major consumer of the archaeological record and (with 27000+ metal detectorists) it is a major area of contact between the public and the past, which is why (as a result of/ and factor affecting/ PAS liaison) it should be being better documented. 

Someone asked in the thread about the comment "[these 27000] legacies will become a common situation, but it's impossible for many museums to acquire them". they asked why this is. Victoria Barlow of Maidstone Museums says that currently, "We have a hold on acquisitions because of staff capacity. I couldn’t even think of taking on a collection like this. It would be unethical to accept items we couldn’t accession, catalogue or make available to the public in anything like a reasonable timescale".

Dr Durrant adds:

Also, finds in private collections may be disassociated from their findspots - not written down, or on laptops for which no-one knows the password. Museums collect geographical areas, so unprovenanced finds become homeless [...] Also worth remembering that even if a detectorist lived locally their finds may be from various counties.

I dealt with one where this was the case, but some items were even from other countries, gathered on his honeymoon.

Another aspect is that whatever the collector may have intended (intended to put in writing but did not), heirs may have different ideas about what they will do with the antiquities in a collection. The individual items often don't have a high market value, but aren't worthless, look at eBay or the finds valuation pages of metal detecting magazines. A collection like this is worth ££££s Somehow the landowners handing this stuff to collectors for free seem unaware of this. When a collector dies their heirs may also be unaware and just dump it all in a skip when cleaning out the house after a death, others may sell them as a job lot to somebody to resell, or some may take them to a museum to give them first pickings, or try to get the museum to buy. In the 1960s, members of the public finding artefacts who did not want to hang onto them simply donated items to museums. With the rise in metal detecting this all seems to have changed and man of them then expected the museum to buy the artefacts.

The point is though that the table-top full (and potentially plus the big plastic bin full) of loose unlabelled artefacts with some cutely-drawn and maybe listed in a notebook is no substitute for a proper record of the removal of these items from a site which (x-marks the spot findspot or not) is trashed by being dug over in the search for collectables. And that, too, is "Alan's Legacy".