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.

Lost Technologies

Archaeology, Things and Objects2 Comments on Lost Technologies

In February 2011, Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired made the following assertion: “I say there is no species of technology that has ever gone globally extinct on this planet”.  You can listen to the NPR interview here.  In his book, What Technology Wants Kelly amplifies his argument writing:

A close examination of a supposedly extinct bygone technology almost always shows that somewhere on the planet someone is still producing it. A technique or artifact may be rare in the modern urban world but quite common in the developing rural world. For instance, Burma is full of oxcart technology; basketry is ubiquitous in most of Africa; hand spinning is still thriving in Bolivia. A supposedly dead technology may be enthusiastically embraced by a heritage-based minority in modern society, if only for ritual satisfaction. Consider the traditional ways of the Amish, or modern tribal communities or fanatical vinyl record collectors. Often old technology is obsolete, that is, it is not very ubiquitous or is second rate, but it still may be in small-time use.

Robert Krulwich, who interviewed Kelly for NPR took up the challenge and tried to find a technology that was truly extinct with the results posted on the interview’s comments section and here.

I have been thinking on and off about Kelly’s comment since archaeology in large measure relies on the regular life cycle of styles and technologies and yet has also long attended more to the additive, rather than subtractive, process of technological change.  Today I was pleased to see this story:

Technologies that weve lost – and the quest to find them again.

Greek fire and Damascus steel appear to represent technologies that are not currently under production.  Except, as the article points out, we do make other kinds of steel and we also have petroleum based substances that are used as military incendiaries.

One potential response to Kelly’s claim is to note how unique this historical period is.  Thanks to archaeology, we have not only curated current technologies, but also tried to recreate how ancient ones were made.  Hence, 500 years ago, Acheulean hand axes would have been an extinct technology, even if they are not today.  Thus Kelly’s claim seems to say less about history per se than it does about modernity’s museological impulse–the remarkable desire to resuscitate and curate formerly extinct technologies.

Modern Art and the CIA

Aesthetics and RepresentationLeave a Comment on Modern Art and the CIA

This new revelation raises a number of interesting questions.  What art is the CIA supporting now and why?  Did it (or does it) also support other artistic genres?  What does the term ‘propaganda’ mean when the link between politics and representation is invisible?

Modern art was CIA ‘weapon’

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince – except that it acted secretly – the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

via Modern art was CIA ‘weapon’ – World – News – The Independent.

In Memoriam, Liz Brumfiel

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I was very sorry to read today that Liz Brumfiel passed away last week.

I saw Liz give the 1991 distinguished lecture at the AAAs in Chicago.  I was halfway through my first year at Arizona and had come to the meetings to beg for a spot on Phil Kohl’s project in Armenia–the project that would introduce me to the Caucasus and begin my work there.  But the intellectual high point of the meetings was Liz’s remarkable lecture.  Delivered in a direct argumentative style, the paper served as an epitaph for the rancorous (and often tedious) processual/post-processual debates that preoccupied the 1980s and inaugurated a new era of avowedly social archaeology.  It was a tour de force that served to affirm the possibilities of archaeological thought and practice.  A kind and generous scholar, Liz will be missed.

Rosemary Joyce has a nice personal tribute on her blog: Liz Brumfiel will always be remembered « Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives.

Two Upcoming Events: Archaeology of the Caucasus

Archaeology, The Caucasus and EurasiaLeave a Comment on Two Upcoming Events: Archaeology of the Caucasus

The Interdisciplinary Archaeology Workshop at the University of Chicago is hosting two upcoming events related to the archaeology of the Caucasus.

Thursday January 5, 2012 at 4:30 pm in Haskell M102

Dr. Roman Hovsepyan

Research Scientist, Institute of Archaeology & Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences, Armenia and Fulbright Visiting Scholar, Department of Anthropology, Ohio State University)

The Practical Significance of Archaeobotanical Investigations for Archaeology and History of the South Caucasus

And:

Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 4:30 pm in Haskell M102

Kathryn Weber

Graduate Student, Anthropology, Cornell University

Orientalism in Russia: The Caucasus, Historical Narrative, and the Formation of a National Identity

This paper investigates Orientalism in the Russian context, from Imperial Russia into the Soviet Union, focusing on the production of anthropological and archaeological knowledge of both the “Orient” and Russia’s East (the Caucasus and Central Asia). In the Western European context, the critique of Orientalism sees the conception of the Orient as a reflection of the West, in which the Self is both recognized and created in opposition. At the same time, Western European Orientalism makes the Oriental past the originary site of history, with an infantile civilization birthed there before passing to and maturing in the West. Though the East was similarly intertwined with the past in Russia, the narrative of the relationship with the past was not one of transition, but of incorporation. The place-making implicated in Russia studies of the East contributed to the articulation of a Russian nation identity as well, but the East was less straightforwardly Other.

I contrast the Orientalism of Imperial and Soviet Russia; in Imperial Russia, both the East and the West constituted and contrasted with the Russian identity, whereas the narrative of expansive multiculturalism in the Soviet period integrated an academically produced, essentialized Other into the production of the national identity.

Socialism in Ruins

Aesthetics and Representation, Archaeology, The Caucasus and EurasiaLeave a Comment on Socialism in Ruins

Michael Shanks discusses two recent studies of the archaeology of socialist worlds: World Crisis in Ruin: The Archaeology of the Former Soviet Missile Sites in Cuba by Mats Burström, Anders Gustafsson and Håkan Karlsson and Persistent Memories by Elin Andreasssen, Hein B. Bjerck, and Bjørnar Olsen.   The photos are deeply striking and hauntingly familiar for anyone who has worked in the former USSR or other now post-socialist communities.

See Ruin memories – Michael Shanks.

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