In a depressing series of news reports last month, senior employees of Sotheby's were alleged to be engaged in the smuggling of artefacts into Britain for sale, against the laws of their countries of origin. In a book by Peter Watson, Sotheby's: Inside Story, and in two devastating editions of Channel 4's Dispatches, it appeared beyond reasonable doubt that some of the company's employees smuggled Italian Old Master paintings out of Italy.
Dispatches also alleged that illegally exported Indian antiquities, some subsequently sold by Sotheby's at auction, had left India in a countainer- load dispatched by middlemen under diplomatic cover. A senior Sotheby's employee, the programme claimed, indicated he regularly obtained supplies from the middlemen concerned. Other well- known antiquities from India sold in Sotheby's were shown to have been looted from their provenance.
Claiming that the reputation and integrity of Sotheby's are the two things that matter most to them, Diana Brooks, President and Chief Executive of the company, told employees that a committee of Sotheby's independent directors had been created to conduct an internal review of the firm's practices. She could hardly have done less.
Whatever such a review does for Sotheby's own peace of mind, it will certainly not allay the feeling that Britain's relaxed attitude to the import of antiquities for resale is now a major contributory factor to the looting of archaeological sites all over the globe. Objects are accepted for auction or for sale by dealers with the most opaque of ownership pedigrees and the vaguest of provenances, if any at all. The flow of exceptional artefacts unknown to scholarship cannot but suggest to dealers and auction house experts that illicit excavation and export has taken place. Some looted material is so wellknown that its inclusion in auction catalogues can only be disingenuous - or the result of less than diligence by the experts concerned.
The recent revelations only serve to corroborate what the scholarly world has long suspected: that London is a safe place to market stolen antiquities or artefacts looted from archaeological sites.
The British antiques and antiquities trade is a vast and lucrative one, regulated by codes of practice which should guaran tee probity. Dealers usually undertake not to handle objects they have reasonable cause to believe have been acquired illegally under British or other law. Despite this, many seem to operate a no- questionsasked policy, possibly because there are no legal sanctions in Britain against offering for sale antiquities which have been illegally exported. The worst that can happen under an EC Directive and Regulation is that community states have a right to recover from each other defined categories of cultural object which have been unlawfully removed from their territory. On a world scale, the sanctions are even less. Britain has still to ratify the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export or Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which, broadly, requires signatory states to return artefacts illicitly imported after 1970.
What should we as a nation do about this dreadful trade in looted antiquities? We need information, and the new research centre in Cambridge (see page 4) may well provide this. We also need to explain to collectors and museums worldwide how their collecting activities promote the destruction of sites.
Most useful, however, would be a tightening of our current practices - turning for guidance to recent experience in a related field. In 1993 the CBA, with other national bodies, promulgated a Statement of Principles on Portable Antiquities that set out the case for bringing portable antiquities found in England and Wales under the protection of the law. Subsequently the Department of National Heritage took a number of admirable initiatives, including the Treasure Act 1996, their Portable Antiquities discussion document, and a pilot recording scheme. The UK trade in foreign antiquities could well be submitted to a similar process: an establishment of principles upon which an acceptable trade could be based; a consolidation of the law relating to it; and codes of practice that can be made to stick.
We should not seek to outlaw the private ownership of portable antiquities, nor any legitimate trade in them. However, we would do immense service to the cause of world archaeology if we treated portable antiquities that have no known provenance, or no guarantee of legitimate, longstanding private ownership, in the same way that we treat certain narcotics, paedophile pornography and other such undesirable material: we ban them altogether from entering our country.
Dr Peter Addyman is the Chairman of the Standing Conference on Portable Antiquities, and a former President of the CBA
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