Examination of Witness (Questions 80 -
96)
THURSDAY 13 APRIL 2000
PROFESSOR THE
LORD RENFREW
OF KAIMSTHORN
80 One other question arises from what you have
said to me about the importance of heritage and built heritage,
tourism. You told us how in Cambodia the temples at Angkor and
elsewhere are actually being dismantled. Ought there to be some
action either by the host government or in countries where they
cannot afford it to assist those in safeguarding their heritage
through clamping down on this trade and assisting them to have
people who can do it if they cannot afford to do it themselves?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) I think
it is very difficult to police, as it were, a country like Cambodia.
What you said in the second part of your question is right, it
is the trade one has to target. I do not think one can police
every site in every country. Even a well organised country cannot
do that, because you do not know where things are going to be
found: in the case of temples you may do but underground things
you do not. Yes, it is the trade that one has to try to target
and to give encouragement to such countries to clamp down on the
trade. I am sure it is a difficult job because, particularly in
the Orient, it is linked with gun running and drugs and so on.
That may be exaggerated as a claim in some cases but I think it
is well documented in Cambodia and Thailand. When you have states
that are run by the military, by powerful Generals and so on,
it is very difficult to get a grip on it. I would support that
view. Also my own view is that it is incumbent upon us to put
our own house in order and the same would go for the Americans
and the other big buyer countries, for Europe as a bloc also and
Switzerland. If there were not the strong market there would not
be the strong pull to get the stuff out of the source countries.
Mr Maxton
81 Of course that is true but some countries,
particularly Greece and Italy and Turkey, have very, very strict
rules, as Mr Fearn alluded to. Do these strict rules not make
the illicit trade more likely rather than less in that if somebody
finds something, they know they have got to give it away, they
know there is a market for it, they know also there are hundreds
of these objects in the local museum already, so the local museum
will not want it? Would it not be better if these countries actually
did have more relaxed and regulated laws about antiquities which
are found and allowed some of them, maybe a fairly large proportion
of them, to go on to the open market and to be sold with the benefit
of provenance so you would then know where they came from, exactly
the site they came from, rather than having these very strict
rules that say "everything goes to the state, you may be
compensated, you may not be", and that is the end of it?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) I have heard
that argued very seriously by well informed people. I can see
that if a nation like Egypt, say, felt it could sell some of its
duplicates and if they were very fully documented and so on, it
might work as you suggest. But I do see what a nightmare it would
be for such a country to organise such a process without corruption
entering into it. When any nation sells state property one runs
into severe difficulties. If we are talking in relation to illicit
excavations this slightly misses the point because the real damage
is not done so much by the antiquities leaving the country as
it is by the looting process where objects are excavated clandestinely
from sites which are thereby destroyed and all the information
is lost. That is how we can find out about the human past. Once
they are out of the ground, in a way the damage is done, you cannot
put the toothpaste back in the tube. So any process that would
somehow legitimise the digging up of sites to produce artefacts,
(including minor artefacts, because the diggers do not know when
they start digging what they are going to find), no. I have heard
it said that, for instance, in Israel when there is a bit of a
shortage of small antiquities they go out and dig some more: "we
have not got enough Roman lamps in stock this week, let's go and
dig some more up". That certainly does a great deal of damage.
Although the view you are putting forward has been very seriously
advocated it is not my own view. I think it would be better if
we could make it less fashionable to collect antiquities. I get
very annoyed when major collectors like Leon Levy, Shelby White,
George Ortiz, put their exhibitions on public show and are encouraged
to do so by the Metropolitan Museum of Art with fashionable cocktail
parties and so on. There was a disreputable event of that kind
in the Royal Academy here in Britain a few years ago. When the
smart set say "let me see your Tang figurines or your Greek
vases" this is really where a lot of the trouble comes from.
I would like to see it all damped down.
82 I can understand that because you are an archaeologist
but at the end of the day there are thousands of artefacts, in
fact you could argue that in almost every field in every area
in the country there is some artefact, even if it is just from
the last century. How many archaeologists actually practise in
the world?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) We do not
want to dig it all up at once, we want to leave it for posterity.
I do not think it is our mission to dig it all up. Your point
is absolutely right, there is a lot of stuff. There is a line
well worth exploring. This is where we might agree. If it has
been illicitly dug up I think it is bad because if you permit
that then you are permitting the looting process. On the other
hand, if material has been produced in controlled excavations,
has been recorded, and then people say "we do not need this
in our museum, let us sell it" and we might even know where
it is going to, where it could be consulted, along those lines
a system could be constructed, and that would fall in with what
you are saying to some extent.
83 Basically what you are saying is that there
are archaeological sites which should be left alone, we know they
are there, they should be left alone and never touched until some
time maybe in the future one hundred years from now, if you take
the timescale of a number of these archaeological sites, and some
time in the future an archaeological survey will be done and somebody
I imagine will dig it up.
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) I am saying
two things and that is one of them. First of all, I am saying
that it is wrong to go and dig up an archaeological site in an
uncontrolled way clandestinely to produce material without publication.
That is simply destroying information about the past. I realise
that is not what you are saying, but for me that is the main point.
To address your second point, it is only a few years since radiocarbon
dating became available and those sites which were completely
excavated prior to the development of radiocarbon dating remain
undated. Just recently we have had the development of molecular
genetic studies, ancient DNA and so on. There is no doubt that
in the future we will have the potential to learn more from certain
sites than we do now. It is a matter for regret that so much of
Stonehenge was excavated officially in the 1920s and not a great
deal was learned from it. Although you make it sound rather foolish
to leave this as a resource for the future, it is not like elephant
ivory. If elephants survive in sufficient numbers you can go on
trading elephant ivory so long as you get the balance right, but
the archaeological resource is a diminishing resource and is not
replaceable.
84 It has been destroyed over centuries. Let
us be clear about this, every generation destroys a very major
part of the archaeological remains of the previous generation.
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) That is
absolutely right. What I think is to be lamented is that we may
feel we are learning more but the situation is getting worse,
not better. That is not only because there is less left but because
the volume of destruction has increased in recent decades and
I think that is a matter of concern for us all.
85 Although I take the point very much about
looting, is it not a slight exaggeration to say that it is the
most serious threat to the world's heritage today? Is development
not the major threat, in other words constant building of new
hotels, new whatever it might be, on sites? Is that not a much
greater threat?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) I think
that is very arguable. I am not sure that the two have been quantified.
The great thing is in many countries there is now mitigation of
such developments. In this country I think we have a good system
whereby if a motorway is going to go through or a building is
being built there is rescue archaeology following a survey, so
that every effort is made to extract as much information as possible.
I think that is quite a successful enterprise. It is difficult
to quantify these things but what is so offensive—it may
be a moral point—about the looting is that it is deliberately
done, and the irony is that it is done to provide antiquities
for people like these rich collectors I mentioned who actually
do have a sensitive feeling for them but do not realise that they
are destroying our information about the past by buying them.
86 Going back, linking the first and the last
question, if you like, on the draconian laws, is that not one
of the impacts of the very strict draconian laws which say everything
goes to the state? Where a crane goes in and pulls up some antiquities
and the developer knows that could hold up development for six
months or a year, and they are obviously cash strapped and want
to get it done, is there not a very great danger in those sorts
of situations that they immediately put the bulldozers in, get
it done and make sure that nobody tells, gives the crane driver
a small bribe to stop them taking it further?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) I think
that is true but I think these temptations apply anywhere, not
just where there are draconian laws. Any developer knows it is
going to cost money if he is held up for a month or two. This
has been a great worry in rescue archaeology in this country but
I think the rescue archaeologists have got sufficiently well organised
that they can actually guarantee "give us four weeks on the
site and we will leave the site after four weeks". That is
a universal problem and you are absolutely right in what you are
saying.
Chairman
87 Following on from your exchanges with Mr Maxton,
can I ask you a very large question which you may regard as a
question that you are not capable of answering. On the one hand
we have damage to sites, and that can be done either by what the
Italians call scavatori clandestini, people who pillage
the site for what they can get out of it, or you can have it done
by grandiose governments, Saddam Hussein damaging Nineveh in order
to turn it into a monument for himself and what Mussolini apparently
did with Roman remains in Libya. Clearly the preservation of those
for knowledge is important to you, understandably, but, on the
other hand, the actual trade in objects, whether they are objects
taken from sites or objects that are stolen, is not only damaged
in itself and, so we were told by the Metropolitan Police, is
not only second only in the world to the drug trade but also is
used for the drug trade as a laundering activity for drug money.
If I were to ask you which you regard as the more damaging and
the one requiring more urgent action, would it be the preservation
of sites in order to obtain information about them or as stringent
action as is possible to prevent illegal trading?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) Of course
both are desirable, it does not have to be an either/or, I suppose.
The most serious enterprise is the deliberate destruction of sites
and that works to provide the goods for the trading. I do feel
that the solution is to clamp down on the illicit trade, the trade
in illicit antiquities. To go back to your point about Saddam
Hussein or whatever, I think the truth is, sad to say, private
enterprise is much more powerful. You find in Peru, for instance,
that every time a cemetery becomes known it is looted, and this
is true in many South American countries. No government can wreak
destruction as effectively as the totality of the populace. Or
in Jordan where complete cemeteries have been looted, complete
areas devastated. This is to supply goods for the illicit trade.
I do see that as the main problem. I do not see it as in any way
conflicting with what you were saying earlier, could we not support
some countries to have a better antiquities service, do a better
job of maintaining their own sites and so on? I do not think that
the two are necessarily in conflict.
Mr Keen
88 This is an early stage of our inquiry and
I would like to ask a couple of basic questions relating to something
you touched on when answering Mr Maxton's questions. I can understand
poor people in Mali looting because they need the money desperately,
I can understand the dealers dealing for money as well as having
a degree of interest and I can understand the reason for having
antiquities to learn about our past, but the area that I have
little understanding of—my culture is more football and
beer—is the private collectors who want these things to
keep for themselves. You mentioned they do put them on display
now and again. Can you paint us a picture of that sort of world
to help us understand it?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) I am sure
I can. When I was a schoolboy I was a collector of coins, for
instance. I have not collected coins of late. Many people find
a fascination in collecting things, coming into touch with things.
There is a certain very valid romance you have with a piece of
Roman pottery in your hand and it has just emerged from the earth:
it has been there for 2,000 years, who used it and so on. There
is an immediacy. The collecting passion has been there for a long
time and it must be said that in the early development of archaeology
it was very positive. That was how attention was first directed
to the past in, say, renaissance Rome with these wonderful sculptures
being dug up and the Pope, his Cardinals and Princes in competition
as to who was going to buy these wonderful sculptures. It becomes
very competitive. They do become status symbols. To go back to
one aspect of your question, I named one or two collectors but
there are many more—perhaps I should not be naming individuals—people
of great wealth who establish a collection. It is very much an
American syndrome but you see it now in Japan also with the foundation
of the Miho Museum, which I do not know much about but it seems
disastrous. Just as it is very high status to own your Van Gogh
"Sunflowers", if you can afford them, so it is very
high status to have a nice collection of classical marbles or
Greek vases or whatever. It nearly always has been so. One of
the advances that one has to bring about is to suggest that it
is not a good idea, it is not smart, it is not a good thing to
have looted antiquities on your mantelpiece. Since the UNESCO
Convention, since 1970, that is how one of the total failures
in this country has been for the Government not to enunciate this
principle which I think most of us would agree with, that the
looting of antiquities is bad. It is ironic, as I mentioned, that
just a few years ago there was the Royal Academy putting on an
exhibition of a private collection. Most of the pieces there were
unprovenanced, many of them were clearly looted, some were demonstrably
looted. The owner of the collection wrote a catalogue entitled
"The art of the absolute" and everybody came and admired.
I wrote an article in The Guardian criticising this and
some art critics wrote back and said "these antiquities are
the common heritage of humankind, some mere archaeologist should
not criticise that they do not have a decent provenance".
Of course they are beautiful and they do attract people but we
admire them and we value them precisely because we know something
about them and we know something about them because we have learned
about that from proper excavations and proper publications. A
rather rambling answer but I hope it addresses itself partly to
what you have said.
89 I am just trying to get a picture of these
people who may come from a different culture.
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) I think
you may want to go to a few cocktail parties at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, if I may say so.
90 Only if there is draught beer. Even if there
is I can drink white wine as good as anybody.
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) It will
have to be a pink gin or something like that at the Metropolitan
Museum, a dry martini.
91 Despite the culture I come from there is nobody
in the world who cares more than I do about preserving these things
and using them for education. What would you like us to recommend
in our report in order to improve the situation?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) Thank you.
I would like you to recommend first of all that the Government
take a really strong position. In order to take a strong position,
unless there are good reasons not to, it would have to subscribe
to the UNESCO and UNIDROIT Conventions. I have never heard a single
good reason why the Government cannot subscribe to the UNESCO
Convention, unless the suggestion that there would be an obligation
to make a list. Yet if you consult the UNESCO officials you will
find that the categories the Government already uses do constitute
a list. I do not think there are good reasons against the UNIDROIT
Convention. As an aside, if I may say so, I think you might do
very well to try to find out from the Government if it really
does have detailed objections and what those are. Then, having
established that position would bring us into an international
framework which would also protect our own antiquities when they
turn up in New York. At the moment we cannot get them back, there
is no international framework. Then I think something very much
along the lines of what the Chairman was saying, trying to ask
how we do clamp down in practice on secrecy and introduce the
notion of having transparency in these areas. Also there is more
to be done in examining the way the licensing system works. I
will not go into detail on that because I have seen Dr Brodie's
submission and I think he has addressed himself in some detail
to that. It could well be that if one had a threshold and if any
antiquity leaving this country had to get an export licence if
it was more valuable than, say, £1,000, £1,500, £2,000,
not trivial figures, and if in order to get a licence there had
to be some information about where it came from, so that this
country was not being used as a clearing house for laundering
illicit antiquities, I think that would be quite practical and
would be a very constructive move.
Mrs Golding
92 Following on from that, you say in your submission
to us: "Britain is making absolutely no contribution to the
worldwide protection of the archaeological and historic heritage
. . ." Is that a bit strong? Are we doing absolutely nothing?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) We are protecting
our own heritage in Britain. Our own Treasure Act in Britain is
good. I would like to mention the voluntary scheme for the reporting
of portable antiquities found in this country which has been very
much supported by the present Government, and by Mr Howarth. I
think that is excellent. That is a way where information is being
gathered. Also the rescue archaeology provisions in this country
in many ways are quite good. We are making not a bad job of looking
after our own British heritage. But with that exception I think
it is a scandal, that it is a thieves' kitchen, or it could be
so described, the freedom with which illicit antiquities may enter
this country, and it is not even officially disapproved of in
any way. I would stand by that statement except for the British
case where I think there is a decent effort being made.
93 We look after our own.
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) That is
a good place to start. Charity begins at home but I think it has
not got much further yet.
Mrs Organ
94 If London is as you have described, the centre
of the thieves' kitchen, and it is the clearing house for much
of the illicit trade, and you have made it quite clear there is
a need to clamp down, can we just investigate what we can do about
the material physically coming into the country. When we were
in Rome we heard that in the United States, for instance, they
have a recent policy of physically checking stuff that is coming
through the ports. We have a problem here, do we not, because
we are in the European Union and goods may move freely between
one European country and another and consequently our Customs
officers are not unpacking crates if they come from Italy, Greece
or Brussels? You mentioned Switzerland earlier as the centre—it
seems to go Greece, Italy into Switzerland and then to London—who
are not in the EU. Are you advocating that we should be unpacking
any sort of shipment that is coming from Switzerland on the basis
that there is a high percentage of illicit antiquities coming
via that route?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) Not physically,
no, but in a legal sense very possibly. I would not want to say
that London is the leading clearing house, it is one of the leading
clearing houses. I do not want to exaggerate the position. As
I said earlier, there are a number of centres in the world and
London is prominent among them, let us put it that way. Secondly,
I understand that Switzerland is considering joining UNESCO and
joining UNIDROIT, whereas we are not, so we do not want to paint
Switzerland much blacker than Britain because Switzerland has
not yet formally rejected that. You referred to the European regulations.
There is an obligation on us, which I do not think we discharge
very well, to check. When material from the European Community
comes through Britain and is exported we are supposed to check
that it has left the country of origin within Europe appropriately.
There is an agreement between the European Community countries
to clamp down on the illicit export of cultural property originating
in Europe. I do not think we do that very effectively. You paint
a picture of burly men opening crates and so on, but let us remember
that in order for the trade in illicit antiquities to work at
some point it has ultimately to become open, it has to be sold
through the sale room, it has to be sold through the gallery,
and it has to end up in the smart collection, and the smart collector
has to feel that he or she has bought it legally. If you set up
a framework whereby it is against the law to do these things and
if you have some monitoring system for the auction houses and
the galleries, as has been discussed, to some extent that fits
the bill. There are cases where Customs do discover things and,
as you will have heard if you have been speaking to the police
or to Customs, sometimes they infer, probably rightly, that it
has been illicitly excavated but they cannot demonstrate that
it has been stolen from a particular site—that is the whole
Catch 22 business—so often they cannot do much about it.
To give you one example: the Sevso Treasure, which is one of my
favourite examples, which was purchased by a private collector,
a wonderful hoard of Roman silver, (and it is not known whether
it came from Hungary or Croatia or the Lebanon), was going to
be sold publicly. It was going to be auctioned by Sotheby's in
Switzerland but when it got to New York there was a court case
because those countries that were claiming it, and unfortunately
there were rather a lot of them claiming it, said "it is
our's" and in New York something could be done. They could
not bring this action in London because we have no legal framework.
Britain is worse at the moment than most of these other countries,
but I do not think one needs to have a circus of opening crates
at the borders. If there were a proper legal framework it would
begin to have its own effect because the good thing is that most
of the collectors want to buy stuff legally and if they cannot
get good title they do not want it. I think if we can prevent
them getting good title by appropriate legal instruments we can
do the job.
Chairman
95 I suppose good title means that there is a
greater chance for the purchasers that what they are buying is
actually genuine?
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) That is
right. A field that I am interested in is the early Cycladic figurines
which you may have seen when you were in Greece. There is actually
no way of authenticating those, they are made of marble and it
is not a material that you can do more than say "yes, it
came from that quarry". It is thought there is a huge number
of complete fakes there. If you have the opportunity with any
antiquity to see if it has a good provenance that takes it back
to where it came from out of the ground, (and that might relate
to what Mr Maxton was saying): where there is a certificate, "this
is sold by the Egyptian Government", and you know where it
came from, then you also have a fair hope that it is genuine.
96 Lord Renfrew, thank you very much.
(Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) Thank you
very much, Mr Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.
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