The Value of Unprovenanced Antiquities

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antiquities, archaeology, art market, artefact, artifact, collecting, cultural preservation, excavation, looting, provenance, research, value

“Regarding the issue of unprovenanced antiquities: surely even without substantiated provenance, there is still some factual knowledge to be derived– the approximate age of the item, for instance, and its general geographic origin? As a layperson in this area, I understand the additional value of confirmed provenance, but should that also mean that an item lacking provenance has no value at all?”

This was a great question in response to my last post, discussing a magazine editorial on scholarship, ethics, and artefacts lacking in proper archaeological provenance. (An unprovenanced artefact is one with an incomplete or unscientific record of its origin). The one-sentence answer is yes, there is always something to be gained from any existing piece. The more complete, complex answer has to do with the importance of knowledge and the nature of scientific inquiry. In archaeology, consider provenance another word for context. The moment something is pulled out of the ground, 90 percent of its meaning is lost.

Unprovenanced Artifacts—Publish or Perish?

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antiquities, archaeology, art crime, art market, artefact, artifact, authenticity, Biblical Archaeology Review, Biblical Archaeology Society, collecting, cultural preservation, excavation, provenance

Click to read the editorial

This editorial from the most recent issue of Biblical Archaeology Review does an excellent job of summarizing the concerns raised by studying artefacts that were inadequately, improperly, or even illegally excavated. Within this example, comparing two scholarly books, author Hershel Shenks outlines every major problem currently being debated; I highly recommend it as a brief introduction to a typically abstruse discussion.

What to Do with Unprovenanced Artifacts—Publish or Perish?

Artistic Pinspiration!

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antiquities, art crime, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, board, heist, looting, Pinterest

Practical people, on hearing that one’s chosen field is something like art history or anthropology, will often ask (perhaps not unreasonably), “but what can you do with that?”. If an archaeologist or other rare species seems frustrated by the question, it is not for lack of an answer, but rather, because the questioner is missing the point. No one plunges deeply into an abstract academic profession because a magazine article listed it in “Top Ten Careers for Wealth and Prestige”; we do it because we love it. When I was a student, and still now when I work, whenever I get caught up in the effort, or am sick of stumbling on a problem-block, I always come back to the art, and am always cured. An hour in a gallery, or a museum, alone with something a thousand years old, and the wonder, the amazement at humankind and its history remind me why I wanted to do this.

The Problem of Public Awareness

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archaeology, art crime, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, collecting, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, excavation, interdisciplinary, looting, public awareness

It is in the nature of research to take one in unexpected directions; what I was not prepared for was a single, simple idea that struck to the heart of a major problem of art crime. I was working on a post recently on how to recognise and protect archaeological sites for the general public; especially in North America, sites can be very hard to detect on the surface and artefacts hard to identify. Sometimes sites are damaged by people who don’t even realise they are on top of archaeology. Trying to develop a simple explanation of what sites and artefacts might look like, I realised I had a deeper question: what might be the consequences if I did?

Authenticity and Value

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art, art history, art market, artefact, artifact, authenticity, collecting, cultural preservation, museum, provenance, reproduction, value

After my last post, on forgery, I found myself still thinking about the meaning of authenticity, and the questions it raises; questions for which I have no answers. During the 19th century, it was common for art, especially sculpture, to be “restored” to make it more beautiful. Broken-off pieces like arms, feet, even heads, would be replaced with new pieces and seamlessly added to statues, with little concern for the piece’s original composition. The intent was usually not to produce an accurate restoration, but to make the piece as aesthetically pleasing as possible, according to the standards of the day. Many such pieces are now considered hopelessly inaccurate, not just because of modern knowledge, but by modern standards. In other centuries, a work of art’s great value lay in its beauty; in ours, art’s greatest value is in its authenticity.

Links: AIA and Archaeology Day

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antiquities, archaeology, artefact, artifact, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, excavation, in situ, museum

For a bit of a field trip from A Year in Provenance’s usual topics, this Saturday, 20 October 2012 is National Archaeology Day, the second annual event from the Archaeological Institute of America, encouraging interest in archaeology. Local chapters of the AIA and affiliated organisations put on events throughout the country, for children and adults (archaeology is one of the few professions that let adults have fun, too—why should children be the only ones who get to play in the dirt?). Search for events or read the related blog at www.nationalarchaeologyday.org.

What Provenance Doesn’t Do

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archaeology, art, art crime, artefact, artifact, conservation, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, museum, provenance, research, restoration

After the complexity of explaining the scale of art crime, the impact on art and archaeology, and the difficulty of solving the resultant problems, the next challenge is explaining the limits of art crime research. Provenance is only one of the fields critical to preserving the material culture of the past—conservation, restoration, and scholarship are also essential. All are specialties within other specialised fields, and they can overlap, be compartmentalised, be blurred together, and be at odds as only facets of the academic world can. Even for people in that world, it can be confusing.

Glossary: In Situ

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antiquities, archaeology, art, artefact, artifact, cultural preservation, excavation, in situ, provenance, research

In situ, a Latin expression used in English and other languages, is possibly the most important term in archaeology. It means the original site, spot, or context, and is usually mentioned when discussing an excavation, where an object’s findspot must be accurately recorded. In archaeology, the value of an object is in its relation to the space and the other objects around it; analysis and technology can reveal what something was made of, how, and when, it could even hint at how it was used, but only the context can tell us what it meant to the people who used it. This is a crucial concept in studying provenance, the history of an object—knowing where something came from means little without knowing where it started. (N.B. the term doesn’t really have any application in the fine art world, only archaeology).

Why is it important that an artefact be discovered in situ? As one archaeologist said, “it’s not what you find, it’s what you find out.”

The Impact of Art Crime II: Cultural Loss Is Forever

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antiquities, archaeology, art, art crime, art market, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, in situ, looting, provenance

In economics, there is a model called the broken window fallacy. The example is a thug that breaks a store window: a new window, supplies, and labour all have to be expended to repair the damage, none of which would have happened without that crime. Money is spent, things are happening; doesn’t that stimulate the economy? Two seconds’ thought shows the absurdity; destruction is not productive, and crime does not create prosperity. (If that still seems abstract, imagine being the owner of that store). Now imagine that there were no windows on earth that could replace the broken one. People could offer different kinds of walls, a door installed in the hole left by the window, or a security grill, but there could never again be a window for people to look into.

New Glossary Feature

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antiquities, archaeology, art, art crime, art market, artefact, artifact, cultural preservation, excavation, interdisciplinary, provenance, repatriation

Thanks to recent comments- and a few blank looks- A Year in Provenance now features a glossary page (see the menu bar at the top of each page, above the header, or Menu, below the header on the mobile version). Researching a subject that crosses boundaries, disciplines, and frequently, languages, flings a host of terminology at the reader; this new glossary project hopes to make this less baffling, if not actually clear! Even the specialists don’t always agree on meanings or usage of terms, so I shall do my best. Each new term will be added with a short post discussing what a term means in context, and what ambiguity, if any, remains; the glossary page will have the brief, precise definition for quick reference, and each term will be linked back to its explanatory post.