Category: Things and Objects

We will remember!

Archaeology, Sovereignty and the Political, Things and Objects

A version of the following op-ed appeared yesterday in the Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank section of the Washington Wire.  I am posting the slightly longer version of the piece here.

 

What’s an effective reaction to Islamic State’s destruction of artifacts housed in Iraq’s Mosul Museum and the militants’ bulldozing of the ancient site of Nimrud, former capital of the Assyrian Empire?

The barbarity of ISIS’s assault has provoked not just condemnation but also parody. One satirical Web site, the Pan-Arabia Enquirer, jokingly awarded ISIS a prize “for its conceptual art piece ‘Smashing Mosul Museum To Pieces: Death To The Infidels.’ ” The mock award praised the extremists for “demolishing priceless 3,000 year old statues” and said that liberating the works from “bourgeoise, middle class concepts of ‘beauty’ [had] invited us to examine pig ignorance as an artistic expression in itself.”

That critique is hard to beat.  And it underscores a conundrum: ISIS is thrilled by the global outpouring of dismay. But shame has no power over the shameless.  Moral condemnation has no impact upon those convinced of their moral righteousness. The extremists opened their program of defilement with acts against the bodies of opponents, journalists, minorities, and innocents; they have moved on to assaulting a heritage prized not just by Iraq but also by communities across the Near East and around the globe.

Assaults on archaeological remains, the durable parts of our historical memory, have happened for centuries, including in the area now threatened by ISIS. The 7th century BC Assyrian king Esarhaddon, whose palace at Nineveh lies across the Tigris river from modern Mosul, demanded that any vassal who violated his treaty obligations would suffer the defilement of the graves of his ancestors.  But the wholesale destruction of a epoch of human history is something new.  Even the Taliban’s widely deplored demolition of 6th-century colossal statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan seems surgical compared to ISIS’s reported bulldozing of entire archaeological sites. Irina Bokova, the director of UNESCO, has described ISIS’s campaign against antiquities as a war crime, a “cultural cleansing” that attempts to eradicate all diversity by destroying the evidence of history.

So how can the world effectively react to ISIS’s assault if outrage has reached the limits of its efficacy? The most powerful rebuke to those who would force us to forget the past is to redouble our commitment to remembering.

The Iraq Museum opened its doors early as a retort to ISIS’s attempts at historical erasure. Other global museums should do everything they can to display the remains of the ancient world that have been preserved for future generations and, as much as possible, the specific heritage that ISIS has sought to burn. But museums are not enough. The remains of ancient Mesopotamia should be made visible everywhere, from neckties emblazoned with lamassu (Assyrian deities often depicted as colossal winged bulls or lions with human heads) to a television marathon of documentary films dedicated to antiquity.  If you are shocked by ISIS’s assault on antiquity, go take an archaeology class—in person or online—and become another who can say, “I will remember”.  If media are the chosen vehicle for ISIS to transmit its program of shock, they are also critical to a global response. On at least this issue, defeat for ISIS lies in global memorialization, in a refusal to forget the past that extremists seek to destroy. A renewed exploration of the ancient world would be a direct rebuke to the depravities of those who would impose ignorance.

Artifacts, Assets, & The Limits of Monetization

Sovereignty and the Political, Things and Objects

In a much awaited decision,  US District Judge Robert Gettleman last week provided a summary judgment on a case that threatened to force the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum to sell vast collections of artifacts from the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  The judgment represents a victory for archaeological institutions anxious that works of heritage might be monetized to settle accounts for unrelated political action.

In September 1997, Hamas carried out a triple suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed 5 and injured 200 others.  Nine Americans sued in US Court for damages under a 1990s law that allows American victims of terrorism to seek restitution in U.S. courts if a foreign government was seen to be complicit.  Iran, a patron of Hamas, was explicitly targeted.  In 2003, the plaintiffs received a $71.5 million uncontested judgment against Iran.

But following the Iranian Revolution and succeeding decades of hostile relations, Iran had few assets vulnerable to seizure in the US since President Reagan unblocked Iranian assets that President Carter had frozen.  Unless artifacts held on loan from Iran in US museums could be held to be fungible assets.  The victims then sued the Oriental Institute and Field Museum, demanding that they sell thousands of tablets, seals, and other artifacts that Iran had loaned to the Institutions for study and conservation beginning in the 1930s.

As I read the judgment, the decision seems to turn primarily (though not exclusively) on one key issue.  The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act declares all property of a foreign state in the US to be immune from attachment with a couple of exceptions.  One exception is for assets used for commercial activity.  Are artifacts in a museum assets used for commercial activity?  Both the OI and the Field Museum clearly engage in commercial activity, though that is not their reason for being.  But, as the Judge found, their commercial activity is not Iran’s commercial activity.  The artifacts are not in the US in order for Iran to conduct commercial activity with them.

The plaintiffs argued that the OI and Field were effectively Iran’s commercial agents, equating the OI’s ongoing commitment to document and return the objects as evidence of a fiduciary relationship.  But as Judge Gettleman pointed out, Iran does not control the OI nor is the purpose of the relationship a commercial one.

Certainly the protection of the integrity of an important archaeological collection is the most obvious good to come of last week’s judgment.  But perhaps the more significant outcome is to preserve a relationship to things from rampant monetarization.  The tyranny of economics has led to the commodification of our ties to everything, with much noted ill effects.  What aspect of our material lives is not now susceptible to reduction to a financial cost?  But this is historically a very unusual, if not deeply pathological, way of thinking about the things that we make, share, use, and discard.  Our ties to things, whether artifacts or other, are far more densely complex.  It is heartening that the US District Court has effectively carved out a legal space where economics must not tread, where value is not defined by monetarization.  And perhaps this judgement opens opportunities to expand this space so that the depth of our engagement with things can be recognized as greater than a game on the Price is Right.

Despite both the pragmatic and more philosophical salutary aspects of Judge Gettleman’s decision, there is one interesting caution as well.  A key element of the judgment was the clear distance between Iran’s objectives and the OI’s.  The Judge noted that the OI was pursuing its own research objectives in studying the materials, with no linkage to Iran’s interest in them.  As the politics of archaeology have come to demand increased responsiveness of archaeologists to the various places where they work and a more collaborative approach to setting research agenda’s, one wonders if archaeological institutions run a legal risk of being understood as agents of foreign states.  As someone deeply committed to collaborative research, I nonetheless would balk at the extension of collaboration to conspiracy.

Doing more with less: Depletion Gilding on the Eurasian Steppe

The Caucasus and Eurasia, Things and Objects

A recent article in Archaeology Magazine details recent work by David Peterson (Idaho State U) on a remarkable example of depletion gilding on a pendant from the Late Bronze Age site of Spiridonovka II on the Eurasian steppe.

“Evidence of depletion gilding at this time in this area is a big surprise and stands to greatly impact our understanding of the technical sophistication of Srubnaya pastoralists,” says Peterson. “A kind of technological sleight of hand or dissembling was used in covering the copper ornaments with a very thin gold and silver foil, and then altering the surface to make it look more like pure gold, a strong indication of the high valuation of gold.”

More on Peterson’s discovery here: Ancient Alchemy? – Archaeology Magazine.

Rethinking fashion, war, and peace

Aesthetics and Representation, Things and ObjectsLeave a Comment on Rethinking fashion, war, and peace

Can costume disarm?  This is a larger historical question posed by Anarchopanda, the alter ego of Julien Villeneuve, a philosophy professor at the College de Maisonneuve in Montreal.  As police attacks on students protesting tuition hikes became more violent, Villeneuve took to the streets in a $200 panda suit.  The absurdity of a panda amidst protesters appears to have at least a marginal impact on police aggression.  Apparently, it is not easy to charge a line of protesters reinforced by a panda as the docile figure emphasizes the disparity in power between baton yielding police and unarmed students and pandas.  The qualities of the panda rub off on the protesters, reinforcing the peaceable nature of their action and underlining the violence of the police.  See the full story here and be sure to watch the video.

The Professor They Call ‘Anarchopanda’ – Global – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

There is a larger question of material efficacy here.  Is the panda suit unique in disarming violence through a dramatization of power inequality.  One wonders if other forms of dress might be, so to speak, suitable.  The strategy here would be a version of the technology of enchantment that Gell described–a technology of pacification.

Heritage, Irredentism, Materiality

Aesthetics and Representation, Archaeology, Landscapes and Places, Sovereignty and the Political, The Caucasus and Eurasia, Things and ObjectsLeave a Comment on Heritage, Irredentism, Materiality

As described in a recent column in The Atlantic Armenia is opening a fascinating new front in the battle over heritage and repatriation:

To the British Museum, she is “probably Aphrodite,” the Greek goddess of love and beauty. To most Armenians, she is Anahit, an ancient Armenian goddess of fertility. Whoever is on the 1st century BC female bronze head with wavy hair and aquiline nose, it may serve as a political prop in Armenia’s looming parliamentary election campaign.

The bust, housed in the British Museum, is featured on Armenian beauty parlor logos, coins, banknotes and stamps alike. It is better known in Armenia than even the country’s state emblem, a recent TV opinion poll indicated. If asked, many Armenians most likely assume that the head, and a companion hand, are in Armenia itself.

And, now, Education Minister Armen Ashotian, a leader of the governing Republican Party of Armenia, along with the party’s Armenian Youth Foundation (AYF), want to make sure that, one day, they will be. In February, Ashotian and the AYF launched an online campaign to gather petition signatures aimed at having the British Museum turn over to Yerevan ownership of the 1st century BC hand and head.

via How a Mythical Fertility Goddess Could Help Steer Armenia’s National Election – Gayane Abrahamyan – International – The Atlantic.

The innovation here is that the bust was not found within the borders of the Republic of Armenia and spirited out of the country to feed the colonial appetites of the British public (a la the Elgin Marbles).  Instead, the bust was found in what is today northeastern Turkey but had been since at least the early 5th century BC part of a territory named Armenia.

The Republic of Armenia’s claim on the bust is thus specifically cultural, a link defined by genealogy but separated from the national territorial by the political consequences of invasion, imperialism, and the Armenian Genocide.  Yet the claim has a distinctly modern political consequences.  Affirmation of Armenia’s claim to the bust is a de facto recognition of Armenia’s claim upon the territory of eastern Turkey/western Armenia.  It is thus a deft sublimation of irredentism into the far more subtle lexicon of global cultural heritage, of landscape into materiality.

It will be fascinating to see how this develops to shape politics within Armenia, between Armenia and Turkey, and within the global heritage community.

On Islamic Art

Archaeology, Things and ObjectsLeave a Comment on On Islamic Art

Souren Melikian has an excellent review of “Islamic Art” at the Met here.  The article is particularly welcome as the NYTimes Arts Section has traditionally refused to trouble the staid ground of ancient art criticism.  Michael Kimmelman, for example, a regular NYTimes Art correspondent, seems to have never met a case of cultural theft he didn’t approve of.  Indeed it is very hard to find in the Times archive an article where archaeological research comes out as a greater priority than the adventurous–and sometimes illegal–acquisitions policies of the Met (even when caught red handed, Kimmelman still finds cause to defend the Met).  Therefore particular kudos to Melikian since critique of the Met clearly does not come easily to the Times editors.

Burden of Proof

Archaeology, Things and ObjectsLeave a Comment on Burden of Proof

 

 

Should auction houses be able to claim that there is “no proof that an object was obtained illegally”?  Or should they be required to provide positive proof that an object was legally brought to market?

If I sell jewelry, for example, I have to possess records that I obtained these commodities through normal–and legal–supply chains.  If I suddenly come into possession of a shipment of Tiffany rings that a dear “friend” of mine sold me at a discount because they “fell off a truck”, can I resell them on the basis that there is no proof that these items were obtained illegally?  Or do I need to be able to show a bill of fare and invoices that track my payments and shipments?  Were one to claim the former, one would be derided as an incompetent businessperson and a fraud.  I have no doubt the IRS would soon investigate.

So why is it that Sotheby’s is able to invert the proper burden of proof without remark?  Would they have us presume them to be complete business incompetents?  Or is it that the inverted burden of proof is in fact a business model that encourages further looting and criminality?

Sotheby’s Caught in Dispute Over Prized Cambodian Statue – NYTimes.com.

The New Antiquities ‘Arms Race’

Aesthetics and Representation, Archaeology, Things and ObjectsLeave a Comment on The New Antiquities ‘Arms Race’

A two-and-a-half-year-long suspected archaeological fraud involving thousands of forged Greek and Etruscan artefacts, a hospital x-ray machine, a philanthropic aristocrat and a sophisticated network of forgers has come to an abrupt end after police raids late last year on two homes belonging to alleged members of a gang. Seven arrests were made and a further seven suspects are under investigation. 

There are two striking things about the techniques used by the forgers: the use of an x-ray to scramble any possible Thermoluminescence signature and the admixture of grog from actual ceramic artifacts into the clay of the forgeries to throw off compositional analyses.  These two techniques, dating and sourcing, were supposed to be critical new weapons in the archaeologist’s toolkit to expose forgeries.  What now?    Does this signal a new phase in the arms race between forgers and authenticators?  Perhaps this is an issue where archaeologists, museums, and collectors can find room for collective action.  Find more on the story here:

Police raid criminal gang suspected of faking antiquities – The Art Newspaper.

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