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".

 

British Metal Detecting: Metal Detectors Across the Sea

 

Never mind the "environment", look at my butterflies!

[PACHI] On social media we were alerted by Archaeology Ireland Magazine (@Archaeology_Irl) that "an international supermarket chain is selling metal detectors in Ireland for seeking ‘treasure and artefacts’. It is against the law to use metal detectors for this purpose in Ireland without a license", so this is a repeat of the Cadbury's Treasure Hunt fiasco all over again. In response, an individual called "@Dubht1"(who mostly retweets pro-Russian twaddle on the invasion of Ukraine and anti-vax stuff, you get the picture), obviously oblivious to why the law exists as it does (and ignoring the fact that the issue of a licence would have a purpose) asks: So is it better to leave history uncovered??? He seems to be Irish and we assume he means "unrecovered". The usual vacant trope. I decided to address the issue:

Paul Barford @PortantIssues · 5 g.
"Better" than what, @Dubht1 ?

Even in England and Wales where there is a recording Scheme touted as "successful", EIGHT IN NINE "uncovered" artefacts simply vanish into metal detectorists' pockets unrecorded https://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-revised-artefact-erosion-counter.html / As far as figures available show, situation in other countries, such as Scotland and Denmark (also claimed by metal-detecting-groupies as "successes") is no better. Artefact hunting everywhere destroys "Uncovered history"! That's why the use of these tools should be restricted.

Seems pretty unequivocal to me, but not if you are an Irish anti-vaxer:

@Dubht1 · 42 min
Is it better than never being found thou? I'm sure there are some unscrupulous people that pocket finds but the majority of detecorists would report important finds to their Flo.

There we go, the usual "minority of unscrupulous people that are not real metal detectorists like me and my mates" bla-bla mantra. Let's just note that in neither part of Ireland is there a FLO....

Paul Barford @PortantIssues · 22 min

Did you actually read what I wrote? As I said, it is very clear that the majority of detectorists just trash sites and assemblages to hoik out artefacts that never get reported. So from the point of view of saving sites from vandalism, better they don't dig holes all over them. [...] It's the same argument with wild orchids and osprey eggs, in the middle of a field or up a tree, nobody will see them, but if some collector collects them, they can show the world what they've got, eh? This is however not what we call "conservation", in Ireland or anywhere else.

Dubht1 replies:

Um, er, yeah I did but I don't agree with you.There are unscrupulous people in every walk of life you shouldn't tar all detecorists with the same brush...Our museum's are full of artifects that detecorists have found.

It is difficult to imagine a conversation with a detectorist that would contain more cliches.

Paul Barford @PortantIssues · 36 min
W odpowiedzi do @Dubht1 @Archaeology_Irl i @32_ireland
You "don't agree" about what? On which evidence? What are your figures and where do they come from? if a minority of Brits love or have dogs it's not "tarring Brits with same brush" to call them a nation of dog lovers, is it? Majority of detectorist finds NOT reported. Ask PAS.

Later, it came as no surprise that although he disagreed with it, "Dove" had not actually read the text to which I linked, and totally unsurprisingly intones the next cliche: " Archaeologists should work with detectorists as one big happy family unearthing history together".

Artefact Hunting: "It Is Not against the Law, if No-One Can See You"

An interesting, and perhaps provocative/controversial presentation containing some pertinent observations and fascinating detail: Samuel Andrew Hardy 2021, 'It Is Not against the Law, if No-One Can See You: Online Social Organisation of Artefact-Hunting in Former Yugoslavia' Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology nnn

Abstract
This study uses open-source intelligence to analyse the illicit excavation and illicit trafficking of archaeological goods (and forgeries) across the Balkan-Eastern Mediterranean region(s) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia. It draws on texts and images that have been published by hundreds of artefact-hunters across tens of online communities and other online platforms. These include online forums; social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram; social media, such as Pinterest and YouTube; generic trading platforms, such as eBay, Etsy and olx.ba; and specialist trading platforms, such as VCoins. It shows how artefact-hunters target sites, features and objects; reveal the objects that are collectible and/or marketable; acquire equipment; form patron-client relationships, peer-to-peer partnerships and other cooperative groups; engage in transnational activity; crowdsource techniques for smuggling; crowdsource ways to avoid being caught or punished; and respond to policing. Often, they give identifying details or leave an electronic paper trail that enables their identification. Such information also reveals the destructiveness of processes of extraction and consumption; the economics of the low-end market in cultural goods from poor countries; the gender dimension in cultural property crime and cyber-enabled crime; and the interaction between political allegiance and criminal activity. Thereby, this study shows how netnography and social network analysis can support intelligence-led policing.

Hardy, SA. 2021. It Is Notagainst the Law, if No-OneCan See You: Online SocialOrganisation of Artefact Hunting in Former Yugoslavia. Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 4(1), 169–187. DOI: https://doi. org/10.5334/jcaa.76

British Metal Detecting: Where are the Resources to Deal Properly with England's "Responsible Metal Detecting Problem"?

[PACHI] I wrote a comment in response to a tweet by a lady that excavated a hoard "very responsibly" reported by an artefact hunter. I seem to have touched a nerve pointing out that such ad hoc responses should not be being needed a full 25 years after England and Wales embarked on the PAS-reporting-adventure.  I suggest that if British archaeologists just play along with a demonstrably bad and try and make-do all the time every time, nothing will change.  I seem to have found some people who think they will. Tweet just now from Mike Pitts (@pittsmike 8 g).

You are of course entitled to your views. I'm of the opinion, however, that substantial progress has been achieved in this field by seeking to help, advise and work with others, and that broadcasting negative assumptions about people without investigation has never been fruitful

I don't suppose I'll get an answer to my query: "Care to enlighten us on those "assumptions" actually made in my post?", just the same as we'll not hear what Dr Wendy Morrison (the original tweeter) has seen here that apparently makes her think I'd "ban metal detecting", when I have consistently said here that I think the best way forward is a proper project-specific permit system. Anyway, what's the point of discussing with the "substantial progress has been made" devotees? 

You may have your opinion, I think that huge damage has been done by current policies on artefact hunting and the unfulfilled hope that "huge progress" will "one day" be made if you all just grit your teeth and wait long enough. As what we can see on the forums and through the blossoming of commercial digging firms, it's just not happening. I see nothing wrong with pointing that out. I see everything wrong with just trying to ignore it, and pointing to a few poster-boy exceptions to the general picture as if they show that the problem is just a matter of waiting a little longer while being as nice as possible to the artefact hunters stripping the fields and hopeful that they'll show us more stuff UK archaeology (PAS etc) is unresourced to deal with. 

Which is the point I started with. if there are 27000 artefact hunters with metal detectors alone (which I believe there are), all going out looking for stuff, how actually is Britain in any way prepared to give any of them proper archaeological support should even 15%  of them actually requested archaeological help, maybe twice a year each, with recovery of a below-ploughsoil assemblage, or plotting a complex surface scatter of evidence (metallic or otherwise). How much would that cost if the UK was not expecting archaeologists like dr Morrson to go out there and do it for free? 

Has the UK actually made "substantial progress" in reaching that "15%" (4050 tekkies, asking even one time a year)? Has the UK actually got the spare resources in place not only to recover the evidence, but properly analyse it and then write up and publish the results? 

In Poland, in the 1960s, Adam Rajewski of the State Archaeological Museum here in Poland set up the so-called "Pogotowie Archaeologiczne" (archaeology rescue) which consisted of a van parked in the Museum courtyard packed with tools and equipment ready to move off with a group of archaeologists from among the museum employees to any place in the country where a fresh discovery had been made in agriculture or development. Other museums (such as Konin) also set up similar services.  Where is the British Museum's van parked? 

Vignette: Resource guarding

 

New Book on Conflict Landscapes

 

[PACHI] When I came here to Poland nearly 40 years ago, it seemed like I was leaving for the end of the world, such isolation ("recipe for oblivion" one late archaeological mentor warned me). Although that's certainly not how I see it now ([geographical] "centre of Europe" after all)*, old mental habits are hard to break. So when I saw that on Twitter there was a lot of talk of this new book, and it's an archaeological theme that over the past two years I've got more enthusiastic about, my first thought was of a colleague who is trying to raise awareness in Poland about this: "must inform Ania about it", so I pull up the Amazon page... and then see from the contents list that she's in it. (Good in a way, because if I'd written now, I'd have had to explain why at the moment I'm not writing that book review I promised). 

What is interesting is that in a country like Poland where in many areas you can't go for a walk very far before almost tripping over some remains of twentieth century conflict, and where in theory all those remains are automatically covered by heritage protection laws, actual archaeological research on it is so sparse.   Perhaps that is because it is so full of traumatic memories for the entire population, including people that are alive today and were/are affected by it (such as my dear mother-in-law), that archaeological research seems superfluous and still rakes up so many bad emotions and memories. This is something difficult for the average Brit to understand. I had huge problems with this when I came here. 

The growth in popularity of literature on conflict landscapes, so-called 'dark heritage' and the like in the areas to the west is also an interesting social phenomenon that it might be interesting to explore.

* present government and its populist ideologies I trust a temporary phase