MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED BY THE ANTIQUITIES
DEALERS ASSOCIATION
1. Our association, formed in 1982, represents
the leading UK dealers in classical and pre-classical antiquities
from Europe and the Mediterranean. We do not represent the coin
trade, or dealers in antiquities from other areas of the world.
A. THE IMPACT
AND SIZE
OF THE
ILLICIT TRADE
2. For historical reasons London has long
been a centre for the legitimate trade. Travellers on the Grand
Tour brought back large quantities of antiquities (for example
Sir William Hamilton amassed a collection of over 7,000 Greek
vases in just over five years), and this tradition was continued
over the next 150 years by thousands of people from many countries
who travelled and served abroad. Although many of these pieces
made their way into public collections, tens of thousands are
still circulating on the market.
3. Some suggest that London also represents
the major centre for illicit antiquities, but in fact the legitimate
trade, both dealers and auctioneers, has made great efforts in
the last decade to distance themselves from such traffic. This
is proven by the declining importance of London within the international
trade. Both Switzerland and America are now much larger markets
than the UK. We estimate that the turnover of London is less than
£20 million per annum, excluding "one-off" sales
such as the Canford relief, which realised £7 million alone.
This is out of a world turnover of classical antiquities of perhaps
£200-£300 million.
4. Whilst there is a world-wide problem
with smuggling therefore, we feel that the UK contributes little
directly to it. It is an international trade however, and we are
anxious to help in taking positive steps to improve the global
situation.
5. It has been particularly galling to see
the way in which misinformation quickly becomes accepted as fact;
for example an off-the-cuff pronouncement was made some years
ago stating that the trade in illicitly excavated material amounted
to some £3 billion per annum, and was second only to the
trade in drugs. This is clearly nonsense, as even the source of
the remark now admits, but journalists have seized on this figure
and so the myth is perpetuated. A recent article in The Guardian
applied this figure of £3 billion to annual thefts from
Saqqara, a single site in Egypt!
6. The implications of such attacks are
extremely serious; for what is at stake here is the whole foundation
on which the art trade is based, namely that the private ownership
of art and the connoisseurship which collecting inspires, are
desirable in a cultured society. This tenet has been held by almost
everyone for the last 500 years. It has had an enormously important
effect on the way in which the great museums of the world have
developed: most were founded by collector-patrons and drew, and
continue to draw, on private sources when expanding their collections.
Obviously museums in turn have been seminal in contributing to
a much wider appreciation of world cultural heritage.
B. CURRENT ATTEMPTS
TO CONTROL
THE ILLICIT
TRADE
7. Most source countries have some form
of control over the export of archaeological material; these range
from the pragmatic (the UK, Germany, the Netherlands) to the draconian
(Greece, Turkey, Egypt). The fiercest laws were passed at very
different times, (in the case of Egypt as late as the 1970s) but
are essentially chauvinistic, and it is interesting to note that
in almost all cases they have been enacted at a time of nationalistic
revival (in Italy under Mussolini, in Greece following the War
of Independence from Turkey, in Egypt following Nasser's rule).
8. These laws have been designed to foster
a belief in outside cultural imperialism, and are both a symptom
and a source of a deep emotional feeling. Unfortunately emotion
is a bad basis for legislation, and though these laws have proved
remarkably ineffective, their emotional basis makes it very difficult
for the relevant authorities to adjust them in a way which might
make them work.
9. These laws are also by no means uniform;
for whereas some countries (Egypt, Turkey) have taken the drastic
step of "nationalising" all antiquities (even when privately
owned for generations), others have allowed private ownership,
and dealing, to continue. The latter case usually involves a strict
embargo on export, and this has served to produce a false, two-tiered
market, but even where export licences were issued in the past
it was usually in the form of a single document for each shipment,
sometimes containing hundreds of objects. Such documentation was
inevitably parted from the material to which it related.
10. Given that such privately owned objects
were removed from their context years ago, and anti-trade academics
regard such objects as worthless, there is no archaeological argument
in favour of them being rigidly chained to their country of origin,
any more than all Georgian candlesticks should remain within the
United Kingdom. By encouraging smuggling, such laws are having
a diametrically opposed effect to that which was intended. Adjustment
to encourage the legitimate trade would go a long way towards
restricting the smuggling routes on which illicit trade depends.
11. It is legal to sell and collect antiquities
in countries such as Italy. The mechanisms are theoretically in
place for getting export licences, but in practice it is impossible
to do so. We have first-hand experience of this which we could
relate to the Committee if it was felt appropriate.
C. FACTORS CONTRIBUTING
TO THE
PROBLEM
12. Some archaeologists (it is important
to stress the strong divergence of opinion within the academic
community—please see the appendix to this submission[1])
regard a trade in antiquities as being wholly undesirable, since
they believe that the vast majority of objects on the market have
been illicitly excavated in recent times with a concomitant destruction
of archaeological evidence. Furthermore, many of them believe
that an object outside its context is valueless for the purposes
or scholarship. However antiquities have been collected for thousands
of years—for example the Romans were avid collectors of
Greek sculpture—and in this time, the number of pieces coming
onto the market ran to millions. Unfortunately their perceived
importance has fluctuated down the ages (for example the Arab
inhabitants of Egypt routinely used ancient wood sculptures to
light fires) and for this reason provenances for the vast majority
of these works have been lost.
13. Another area which deserves consideration
is the problem of chance finds. It is inevitable that a large
proportion of excavated material will be found during the course
of normal agricultural and economic activity. War, migration,
economic development and sheer indifference have all taken their
toll as well. The provenance of large numbers of objects has been
discovered by chance, long after they have been sold. Very often
the source of pieces is deliberately obscured for perfectly legitimate
reasons, where, for example, the inheritor of an object does not
wish his family to know that he is selling. The argument put forward
by some academics that lack of provenance means that a particular
object has recently been stolen is therefore wrong.
14. All these issues serve to muddy the
water and to create an environment in which it is possible for
those opposed to the trade to maintain the pretence that the majority
of objects are on the market illicitly. It is true that until
very recently, the importance of provenance was not fully understood,
except in the case of major collections. This is no longer the
case, and both dealers and auctioneers now take great care over
this issue. It must be stressed, however, that there will always
be large numbers of objects legitimately on the market which have
no provable provenance; this fact applies to the whole art market,
and indeed any market for second-hand goods. Due diligence on
the part of the trade is therefore of the utmost importance.
15. Draconian laws result in the destruction
of the archaeological record unless a proper system of reward
exists, since the finder will usually channel such objects into
an illicit market. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the penalties
for doing so are now so severe that finders are deliberately destroying
pieces rather than run the risk of being caught with them. This
is an absurd situation. In this respect the laws of the UK offer
a solution. Here a finder has an inducement to declare his discovery.
Either the state takes ownership and pays a reward equivalent
to the market value, or, if the piece is not of particular importance,
ownership is granted to the finder. Either way, the archaeological
information is preserved.
D. POSSIBILITIES
FOR IMPROVEMENT
16. As mentioned above, we regard UK law
as a model in this area. Unfortunately it is unlikely to be adopted
by other source countries. EU legislation already requires export
licences for goods leaving Europe, and allows adequate redress
for claimants of stolen works of art. We have considered the possibility
of a passport system for all objects to offer a guarantee of good
title, but such a system would involve an enormous international
administrative infrastructure. Including coins, the number of
objects in circulation runs to millions.
17. We feel therefore that a self-policing
trade is the only practical solution, and in recent years have
made great progress. We are signatories to a variant of the Council
for the Prevention of Art Theft code of due diligence. Amongst
the most important provisions of the code are the following points.
It requires dealers and auctioneers to be confident of the identity
of those from whom they buy, and to question the provenance of
pieces offered to them. Furthermore it requires payment to be
in a form which provides an audit trail.
18. There are now mechanisms in place to
help dealers check whether objects are stolen. The most important
are databases of stolen art. We are working with the Art Loss
Register on an agreement which would require members to check
all goods above a certain value threshold. This requirement has
been pioneered by the International Association of Dealers in
Ancient Art and has proved successful.
19. We do need more international co-operation
however: for example some years ago we learned that the Italian
authorities had obtained photographs of thousands of objects which
had been illicitly excavated. Incredibly they have refused all
requests by us for this information, even though we have approached
them at government level, and via Scotland Yard (this fact can
be supported by correspondence). We have also identified a number
of stolen items ourselves, which were successfully returned, but
have never received acknowledgement of our help. Unless we can
rely on co-operation from the authorities in source countries
our efforts to tackle the problem are severely hampered.
March 2000
1 Not printed. Back
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