The Egyptian papyrus Cairo 86637 calendar is probably the oldest preserved historical document of bare eye observations of a variable star, the “Demon star”, Algol, which seems to have influenced their predictions of good days.

You can find summaries of the four competitors for the title of oldest art in Europe at the Smithsonian blog.

New photographs reveal what lies beneath the surface of Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world — the carved bodies of the island’s 887 famous guardians, which are being excavated by Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project.

Ancient cuneiform tablets uncovered from beneath the wreckage of 9/11 have been restored and studied before being returned to Iraq.

The Times of Their Lives, led by Professor Alasdair Whittle of the and Dr Alex Bayliss of English Heritage builds on the ground-breaking success of combining expertise in Neolithic archaeology and Bayesian statistical analysis in mapping a precise chronology of causewayed enclosures, a type of early Neolithic earthwork, in Britain, and aims to construct a more precise chronology of Neolithic civilisations in Europe.

During the late Roman Empire, during a time when black magic was relatively common, two curses involving snakes and possible the goddess Hekate were cast, one targeting a senator and the other an animal doctor, says a Spanish researcher who has just deciphered the 1,600-year-old curses.

Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a 2,700-year-old clay seal with the name of Bethlehem, showing that the town existed centuries before it was revered as Jesus’ birthplace.

Pella is located in the eastern foothills of the north Jordan valley, around five kilometres east of the Jordan River in modern-day Jordan, and Past Horizons examines the site’s Bronze Age temple complex.

A team of archaeologists from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) has discovered a spectacular tomb in Peru containing more than eighty individuals of different ages. This discovery — provisionally dated to around 1000 years ago — was made at the site of Pachacamac, which is currently under review for UNESCO World Heritage status.

Excavation ahead of road work in Nine Mile Canyon, Utah had led to the discovery of many previously unknown sites, from pre-Columbian pit houses to early settlers’ ranches.

The first archeological research in Iceland this year will began at Hafnir in Reykjanes, southwest Iceland. Archeologists will continue their study of a hut which may originate from 770-880 AD, the latter part of the Iron Age, and predate the historical settlement of Iceland in 874.

Today’s mega forest fires of the southwestern U.S. are truly unusual and exceptional in the long-term record, suggests a new study that examined hundreds of years of ancient tree ring and fire data from two distinct climate periods.

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An Italian court has upheld an order for the seizure of a masterpiece of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s antiquities collection, finding that the bronze statue of a victorious athlete was illegally exported from Italy before the museum purchased it for $4 million in 1976.

The mystery surrounding the tomb of the last Inca emperor – and its reputed treasure – might be closer to being solved. Ms Estupinan, a researcher at the French Institute for Andean Studies (IFEA), says historical texts contain clues that indicate that the Inca emperor’s final resting place was in what is now Ecuadorean territory.

When military historian Dan Snow and a team of archaeologists unearthed a Second World War Spitfire from an Inishowen bog in County Donegal, it kicked off a remarkable, and often surprising, documentary journey to uncover traces of World War II in Northern Ireland.

Taking advantage of Egypt’s political upheaval, thieves are preying on the country’s ancient pharaonic heritage. Illegal digs near ancient temples and in isolated desert sites have swelled a staggering 100-fold over the past 16 months since a popular uprising toppled Hosni Mubarak’s 29-year regime and security fell apart in many areas as police simply stopped doing their jobs.

The oldest agricultural settlement ever found on a Mediterranean island has been discovered in Cyprus by a team of French archaeologists involving CNRS, the National Museum of Natural History, INRAP, EHESS and the University of Toulouse.

On a narrow beach of Virginia’s Eastern Shore, a humble pile of broken seashells is changing the timeline of history. Broken pottery mixed in with the shells may be the oldest ceramic of its type yet found in eastern North America, archaeologists said, perhaps 1,000 years older than expected. In addition, the site tells a story of biological diversity, sea-level rise, and a trade network between coastal natives and the mound-building peoples of the Ohio Valley.

It isn’t often that we hear anything about English archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter other than this groundbreaking discovery of King Tut’s chamber on November 4, 1922, but he was also a talented artist, often painting hieroglyphics before photography was widespread.

Archaeologists excavate a lost kingdom buried beneath volcanic ash, which was destroyed when the Tambora volcano erupted in April of 1815, producing the largest eruption in recorded history.

The band was ready, the champagne was on hand, Time Team’s Tony Robinson was there to record the historic event, and the crowds gathered to watch as a half-size replica of Dover’s Bronze Age boat prepared to take to the water. The only problem was, it failed to float.

For those working in the field(s) of ancient history, ancient literature, archaeology, or epigraphy there often seems to be a strong desire to associate some new archaeological find, or some recent epigraphic discovery, with some person or event known from literary texts discussing the days of yore.  This basic phenomenon has a long history with regard to literary texts.  For example, within the Hebrew Bible, the book of Lamentations is anonymous, but through the centuries many contended that it was written by the Prophet Jeremiah.  Similarly, the book of Ruth is anonymous, but through the centuries many argued that it was written by Samuel.  Or again, within the Greek New Testament, the book of Hebrews is anonymous, but many attempted to argue that it was written by Paul.  Similarly, the four Canonical Gospels are anonymous, but through the centuries, many have argued that these books were written by known figures of Early Christianity.  Fortunately, critical scholarship has pushed back against such positivistic assumptions and reasserted the obvious: the evidence for these assumptions is not convincing, but specious.

With regard to the field of epigraphy, there are similar attempts.  For example, W. Shea argued that the Izbet Sarteh Ostracon mentions Hophni, the son of Eli the Priest and that this ostracon gives an account of the movements of the Ark of the Covenant from the Temple of Dagon in Ashdod to Kiriath-Jearim (Shea 1990).  Significantly, the readings of F. M.  Cross  (among others) differ markedly with those of Shea, with Cross not even reading the personal name Hophni in this ostracon (Cross 1980).  Therefore, it comes as no surprise that L. Mykytiuk has argued that Shea’s proposal is simply not convincing at all (Mykytiuk 2004).  Along those same lines, M.C.A. Korpel has argued that a seal with only the letters yzbl preserved should be considered that of the 9^th century Queen Jezebel of the Israel (Korpel 2006).  But the evidence cannot carry the weight with which Korpel has saddled it, since this root (zbl) is well attested as a Northwest Semitic root, there is no patronymic, the word “queen,” is not present, Korpel’s restoration (’alep) is not at all certain, and there is a dearth of evidence for epigraphic stamp seals in the 9^th century BCE (Rollston 2009).

To be sure, sometimes the literary and historical data do converge nicely with the archaeological and epigraphic data.  For example, it is entirely convincing to argue that the “Mesha King of Moab” mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., 2 Kgs 3:4-5) is the same as the person who commissioned the Moabite Stone (Dearman 1989; Rollston 2006, 126).  Similarly, the “Bar Kokhba” (Dio Cassius; Eusebius) of the Second Jewish Revolt (132-135 CE), the “Bar Koziba” of the Misnha and Talmud (Yadin 1971, 255-259), and the “Simeon Bar Kosiba” (Yadin, et al., 2002) are one and the same (Rollston 2006).  Here is the main point, however: arguments for the association of epigraphic and archaeological data with events and people attested in literary and historical texts must be based on very good evidence.  It is one thing to suggest that there “may be” a connection, but it is much different to suggest that a connection is “probable” or “certain.”  Scholars must be careful to analyze the evidence in a disinterested manner, so that the possible connections are not overstated.  This leads naturally into a discussion of Qeiyafa.

The archaeological site of Qeiyafa is really very impressive, with some significant monumental remains.  Furthermore, the cultic artifacts which have recently been announced are certainly of some consequence as well (cf. www.biblicalarchaeology.org).  At this juncture (coming in the wake of these recent finds), I wish to make some comments on the ostracon itself, reiterating some critically important data-points (for more details, see Rollston 2011; Rollston 2012).

(1) The script of this ostracon is definitely not Old Hebrew.  Rather, it is a late stage of the Early Linear Alphabetic Script.  The Old Hebrew alphabet is a descendant of the Phoenician script, not the Early Alphabetic Script.  In short, this ostracon is not written in the Old Hebrew script and this is indubitable.

(2) The roots attested in this ostracon (i.e., those that can be read) cannot be considered distinctively Old Hebrew.   For example, the root mlk (king) arguably occurs in line 4. This is certainly a Hebrew root, but this root also occurs in numerous Semitic languages, including Ugaritic, Amorite, Phoenician, Punic, Moabite, Aramaic, Ammonite, Edomite, and even Palmyrene. Because this root occurs in so many ancient Semitic languages, it should be classified as Common Semitic. It definitely cannot be considered as diagnostic for Hebrew.   Similarly, as for the root `bd (serve, servant) in this ostracon (e.g., line 1), it cannot be considered distinctively Old Hebrew either.  After all, while it certainly occurs in Old Hebrew, it also occurs in numerous Semitic languages, including Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Nabatean, Palmyrene, Ethiopic, and Classical and even Modern Arabic.  The same thing can be said about the root špţ (judge), and nqm (avenge).  Indeed, the same can be said for every root in this ostracon.  To be sure, a critically important root for the original editors of the text (Misgav, Garfinkel, and Ganor 2009) is `sh (“to do”) in line 1. This root is their primary basis for the contention that the Qeiyafa Ostracon is Hebrew.   Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that this root is attested in the Moabite language (e.g., in the famous Mesha Inscription, on lines 3, 9, 23, 24, 26; Dearman 1989) and the great Semitist Z. Harris believed that the root ‘åh (‘śh) might very well be present in Phoenician as well (Harris 1936, 136).  Obviously, therefore, this root is not distinctively Old Hebrew.  In short, the language of this inscription is not something that can be determined with certitude.  The question must be left open.

(3) There does seem to be judicial terminology in the Qeiyafa Ostracon, but judicial terminology is attested throughout much of the ancient Near East (Weinfeld 2000).

(4) It should also be emphasized that within this ostracon there is no reference to a particular city or nation state and this absence must be factored into any putative suggestion about the significance and Sitm im Leben of this ostracon.

(5)  I am very disinclined to accept Puech’s problematic speculations that the Qeiyafa Ostracon should be associated with the coronation of a particular king, be it Saul or David.  Obviously, for this to be considered a cogent understanding of this ostracon there would need to be some reference in the ostracon to Saul or David! (Puech 2010)

(6) Finally, I should also like to emphasize that the decisive manner in which the site of Qeiyafa has been associated with a particular king or a particular “kingdom” (e.g., David) is pressing the data much harder than I would.  Or, to put it another way, even if we could contend that this site was Judean or Israelite, could we definitively state that it is to be associated with a particular king of one of these states?  I would suggest that without decisive epigraphic evidence, the answer must be no.  Rather, we must be content to refer to some possibilities, and to leave it at that.  Archaeologists will continue to debate and discuss this issue (e.g., Finkelstein and Fantalkin 2012 and the bibliography there), but it is caution regarding all such conclusions that I would urge.

In the final analysis, it must be said that there is a sincere human desire on the part of scholars to fill the gaps in our data, to fill in the lacunae.  That is honest and it is sincere.  Nevertheless, it is also imperative that we attempt to be sober, disinterested scholars, restricting our conclusions to the data at hand.  Thus, as for the site of Qeiyafa and its ostracon, I would suggest that both are important and discussions will certainly continue.  This is good, but caution about conclusions must be our modus operandi.  That is, it is imperative that a concerted effort be made to avoid going further than the data would allow.

Select Bibliography

Cross, F. M.
1980       Newly Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts.  BASOR 238: 1-20.

Dearman, A. (ed.)
1989       Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab.  Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Finkelstein, I., and Fantalkin, A.
2012       Khirbet Qeiyafa: An Unsensational Archaeological and Historical Interpretation.  Tel Aviv 39: 38-63.

Harris, Z. S.
1936       A Grammar of the Phoenician Language.  AOS 8.  New Haven: American Oriental Society.

Misgav, H.; Garfinkel, Y.; and Ganor, S.
2009.  The Ostracon. Pp 243-257 in Khirbet Qeiyafa Vol. 1. Excavation Report 2007-2008, ed. Y. Garfinkel and S. Ganor. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society.

Korpel, M.C.A.
2006       Seals of Jezebel and Other Women in Authority.  Journal for Semitics 15: 349-371.

Mykytiuk, L. J.
2004       Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E. SBL Academia Biblica 12.  Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Puech, É.
2010.  L’Ostracon de Khirbet Qeyafa et les Débuts de la Royauté en Israël. RB 117.2: 162-184.

Rollston, C.A.
2006       Inscribed Ossuaries: Personal Names, Statistics, and Laboratory Tests.  NEA 69:125-129.

2009       Prosopography and the Yzbl Seal.  IEJ 59: 86-91.

2011       The Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon: Methodological Musings and Caveats.  Tel Aviv 38: 67-82.

2012       What’s the Oldest Hebrew Inscription?  BARev 38: 32-40, 66-68.

Shea, W. H.
1990       The ‘Izbet Sartah Ostracon.  AUSS 28: 59-86.

Weinfeld, M.
2000  Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East. 2nd edition. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press.

Yadin, Y.
1971       Bar Kokhba: the Rediscovery of the Legendary Her of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome.  New York: Random House.

Yadin, Y., et al.
2002       The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Nabatean Documents).  Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society.

BU’s Professor Saturno has announced spectacular new finds from the Maya site of Xultun, including the oldest-known Mayan astronomical tables,  pre-dating other Mayan calendars by centuries. Click here to see high res pictures of one of the murals.

Hebrew University archaeologist finds the first evidence of a cult in Judah at the time of King David. ASOR member, Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, announced the discovery of objects from the archaeological excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, that for the first time shed light on how a cult was organized in Judah at the time of King David.

You can read more on the Khirbet Qeiyafa announcement here and here.

In Jerusalem, possible site of ancient church’s ‘miracle’ is revealed. In “The Buildings of Justinian,” the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea wrote at length about the churches the emperor built in the 6th century. He related a miracle that occurred during the construction of the Nea Church, in what is now the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, and now archaeologists may have found the site he wrote about.

Shards of pottery with traces of mare’s milk, mass gravesites for horses, and drawings of horses with plows and chariots: These are some of the signs left by ancient people hinting at the importance of horses to their lives. But putting a place and date on the domestication of horses has been a challenge for archaeologists.

Roughly 3,500 years ago, folding chairs remarkably similar to ones found in Egypt suddenly became must-have items in parts of northern Europe. Scholars are now looking into this potential case of ancient industrial espionage.

The Ministry of Defence is facing a legal battle and parliamentary questions after letting a US company excavate a British 18th-century warship laden with a potentially lucrative cargo.

British archaeologist Howard Carter, the man responsible for discovering the lost tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, was honored with a Google Doodle on his 138th birthday.

In the first exhibition of its kind, the Fitzwilliam Museum will relate the story of the quest for immortality and struggle for imperial legitimacy in ancient China’s Han Dynasty.

Since the discovery of James Fort, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, excavations have revealed remarkable insights about the earliest successful English colony in America. But because much of the original fort is buried underneath a Confederate earthwork called Fort Pocahontas, these discoveries forced a painful historical and archaeological trade-off.

 Italian archaeologists have recently inaugurated new flower gardens in the ruins of ancient Roman palaces on the Palatine Hill in a colourful reconstruction of what the area may have looked like 2,000 years ago.

University of Nevada, Reno researchers G. Richard Scott and Simon R. Poulson discovered that very small particles of plaque removed from the teeth of ancient populations may provide good clues about their diets.

Traces of blood and fragments of muscle, tendon, skin and hair found on 2,000-year-old stone knives have given researchers the first conclusive evidence that the obsidian blades were used for human sacrifice so long ago in Mexico.

An article in the latest issue of theAmerican Journal of Human Genetics shows how the Near East was a major source of replenishment when huge areas of European territory became habitable again after the Last Glacial Maximum, up to 19,000 years ago.

What evolutionary forces drove the dramatic increase in brain size that makes modern humans so unique?  A new analysis suggests that human brain evolution may have been shaped by changes in the female reproductive system that occurred when our ancestors stood upright.

The Olympic flame has been lit in a ceremony at the Temple of Hera in Olympia.

Site ravaged by looting, SE corner of the enclosing walls of the inner city, Al Resafa, Syria. Image, courtesy of the photographer, Thomas Schutyser

ASOR WORKSHOP
ANNUAL MEETING 2012 (Chicago)
SECONDARY CONTEXT II
Considering Theory and Method for The Study of Objects of No Known Origin

Having examined the complex issues involved in research ethics and the study of unprovenienced material in 2011, we focus on Theory and Method in 2012.

Rather than asking “Should we?” or “Shouldn’t we?” study, present, publish, or exhibit objects of unknown origin, we look forward to considering how best to determine guidelines or suggested practices in an arena where opinions are admittedly complex and often contested.

In 2012, our presenters address the conscientious treatment of unprovenienced artifacts, corpora and collections. New, responsible ways to exhibit and/or publish such works are also considered.

Discussion is key.  These provocative, well-considered position papers  aim to contribute to collegial dialogue about these difficult issues and perhaps provide a blueprint for change.

If you have any further questions about the session, please contact any of the co-chairs by email.

Christina Brody (cbrody@sfmoma.org)
Rick Hauser (beyond.broadcast@mindspring.com)
Christopher Tuttle (Christopher_Tuttle@brown.edu)

We are anxious to work with the ASOR membership in order to craft a session that will provoke thought and stimulate meaningful exchange about the issues.

It was relatively recently that our first histories of the ancient Near East were written.  In the early years of scholarship, unprovenienced finds played a central yet unproblematized role in the construction of sweeping narratives.  As such, these objects have unconsciously remained at the core of what we perceive to be ‘Near Eastern’, and still form the basis against which we gauge new finds and theories.  This workshop presentation proposes that in order to assess fully the phenomenon of the unprovenienced object – including how we publish or display such objects – we must first excavate our own intellectual history and thus the presence of these objects in our canonical texts.  As an example, this paper deconstructs one such text, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient by Henri Frankfort.  Now in its 5th edition and still used widely in graduate training, this book might have told a different story if the unprovenienced objects had been omitted.  This paper identifies the role of such objects in the text, and then speculates on the possible ways that various new versions of this text – with or without the unprovenienced objects – might read.  This paper then invites for discussion the pivotal role of other canonical texts and their objects.  Ultimately, it is hoped that a more critical awareness of our own academic history might lead to more creative solutions for our current dilemmas.

II. THEORY
Defining Principles, Determining Value
Sarah Kielt Costello University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

            ASOR has, at present, a fairly clear and unequivocal statement regarding the treatment of artefacts illegally excavated or exported from the country of origin after 1970. A clear statement, yet objections are raised that it leaves too many objects “orphaned.” Despite our efforts, objects continue to “surface” without provenience. It is argued that we cannot ignore these pieces; they have too much aesthetic, intellectual, or cultural value. It has been argued that we should make exceptions for tablets, for inscriptions, for ostraca, for material that is now in museums, and isn’t going away. Shouldn’t we deal with it? There are many compelling arguments to be made in favour of “dealing with” these pieces.

Ideally, we would find a way to extract information from an artefact without adding to the object’s financial value, so that we don’t inadvertently encourage further looting. I believe that has been the principle guiding us in recent years, and the root of the many exceptions people seek to make to the principles behind our organization’s guidelines. However, I argue that a conciliatory approach will never stop the looting. We lose too much from looting to justify any compromise. Some material may go unstudied as a result. But those losses would be offset by the gains in knowledge if we could stop further looting. We must send a clear message that unprovenienced artefacts will find no harbour.

III. THEORY
Beyond Provenience and Towards a Post-archaeological Practice: an Example of Prehistoric Figurines
Douglass W. Bailey San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA

            Does artefact provenience matter? This contribution presents a case-study of interpretation that succeeds without recourse to artefact provenience: a study of prehistoric figurines from southeastern Europe and Jōmon Japan. While not encouraging or validating work with looted or illegally obtained material, the argument presented here is that provenience does not matter. The important dimension is context, though context is not to be found in the precision of recording methods or the detailed mapping of artefact associations.

The question to address: what is it that we intend to produce when we construct archaeological interpretations and explanations? My suggestion is that we should explore new forms of archaeological output. These alternatives (possible supplements to traditional forms of archaeological publication and presentation) move the debate beyond zero-sum arguments over “should we / shouldn’t we” and into a new territory of post-archaeological practice.

IV. THEORY
Guidelines from the Museum Field: An Assessment of Ethical Standards for the Acquisition, Study, and Display of Unprovenienced Artifacts from the ICOM, AAM, and other Museum-Oriented Institutions
Helen Dixon University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

            As ASOR works to establish new guidelines and suggested practices with regard to presenting, publishing, and working with objects of unknown origin, it may be useful to examine the policies already in place within the national and international professional organizations of the museum field. The guidelines put forth by various committees of the American Association of Museums (AAM), the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and other organizations have already struggled with these issues and have crafted a series of policies to guide museums in navigating international legislation (from UNESCO / UNIDROIT), establishing “best practices,” and in making case-by-case decisions about acquisition and display.

Examining these museum-oriented policies will assist not only in crafting our own guidelines for academic “best practices,” but will also highlight the dangers of relying on decisions made by museums in determining what “should” or “shouldn’t be” fair game for study and publication. As we continue to wrestle with the questions that came up in last year’s workshop – Do museum catalogues count as a “first publication”? Are items on permanent loan from private collections subject to the same ethical standards as other museum collections? Is “public access” to artefacts more important than their “cultural patrimony” or the integrity of the archaeological record?

A closer examination of how the museum field has envisioned and articulated its own ethical role seems a crucial next step.

V. THEORY
The Afterlife of Commercially Salvaged Underwater Cultural Heritage
Elizabeth S. Greene¹, Justin Leidwanger², Richard M. Leventhal³, Brian I. Daniels³
(¹Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada, ²Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York, NY, USA, ³Penn Cultural Heritage Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA)

            The rise in commercial shipwreck salvage, particularly in waters beyond the reach of the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, has created a problematic category of artefacts: those that may have been legally—but not archaeologically—recovered. What principles should guide the study and display of such objects? The duty of museums as public stewards requires extreme caution in treating artefacts as shipwrecked treasure, rather than as markers of heritage. We strongly advocate against museum displays of commercially salvaged material unless they are explicitly framed within the context of responsible heritage management, collaborative research, and local community interests. Such displays should offer a primary experience to viewers about the history lost through salvage, and the intellectual meaning of responsible archaeology over aesthetic appreciation of objects.

The 2001 UNESCO Convention and the 1996 ICOMOS Charter for the Protection and Management of the Underwater Cultural Heritage stipulate against the disturbance of archaeological sites for commercial exploitation. Such activity, which profits few at the expense of many, is “fundamentally incompatible with the protection and management of the heritage” (ICOMOS 1996, Introduction). Article 2.4 of the International Council of Museums’ Code of Ethics for Museums (1986, rev. 2004) states: “Museums should not acquire objects where there is reasonable cause to believe their recovery involved unauthorised or unscientific fieldwork.”

No profit-driven activity based on the sale of objects can satisfy requirements of scientific fieldwork, nor should museums salvage the reputation of such heritage and implicitly legitimize commercial exploitation through exhibition.

VI THEORY  /  METHOD
Provenience Research and Methodology—Don’t Forget the Laws and Ethics!
Christina Brody San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, USA

            Studying unprovenienced archaeological objects can be tricky.  As the objects by definition lack reliable contextual information, traditional archaeological research methodologies may not be the most appropriate.  Stylistic approaches do not place enough emphasis on the object’s role and use in society. Given their unique concerns, unprovenienced objects also require legal and ethical research.  This presentation offers an abbreviated methodology for use in studying unprovenienced archaeological collections.

The presentation will highlight a model for 1) recontextualizing an unprovenienced archaeological object; 2) researching appropriate legislation to determine the legality of the objects; and 3) studying relevant ethical codes to note the stance of professional organizations on the subject.  A material cultural model develops a secondary context for objects to determine which laws and ethics are appropriate to study.  The legal and ethical model outlines specific questions to note when examining legislation and ethical codes so that relevant information can be applied to unprovenienced archaeological material.  Asking these questions teases out the vital background necessary to determine the legality of the objects and to highlight the ethical concerns with regard to archaeological objects lacking primary contexts.

The nature of unprovenienced archaeological collections requires that legal and ethical research be an integral part of their study.  This research is paramount in determining whether or not the work should be published and or exhibited.

VII METHOD

The Fly in the (Epigraphic) Ointment: A Palaeographer’s Reflections on Market Inscriptions
Christopher Rollston Emmanuel Christian Seminary, Johnson City, TN, USA

            Although some have protested loudly to the contrary, the fact of the matter is that Northwest Semitic inscriptions from the antiquities market are a serious problem.  This problem has been compounded by the fact that some scholars have deemed some modern forged inscriptions to be ancient, and some scholars have deemed some ancient inscriptions to be modern forgeries.  Obviously, the epigraphic dataset is corrupted by such proclamations.

Building on some of my previous publications on this subject, this paper will emphasize the methodological procedures necessary to protect the purity of the dataset.  Furthermore, some attention will be given to the use and the misuse of laboratory testing of epigraphic objects.

Caveat Eruditus.

VIII METHOD
From Judah to Berkeley:  Pillar Figurines on the Move
Aaron Brody¹, Benjamin Porter², Stephanie Brown⁰
(¹Pacific  School of Religion, Berkeley, CA, USA, ²University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA)

            In the fog-brushed hills of the San Francisco East Bay, caches of Judean pillar figurines have been discovered in ritual curation contexts that are nominally classified as ‘museums.’  What does their presence in these conspicuous zones of twentieth-century consumption tell us about their use and associated meanings?  The authors consider two different figurines, both associated with remarkably different and complex storage facilities. The object in the Bade Museum of Biblical Archaeology (M1608) was found with other artefacts whose provenience documents suggest is linked to a now-ruined Levantine settlement called Tell el-Nasbeh.  The other figurine (n=1), located in the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, has no associated written sources, but was found adjacent to other objects from Near Eastern, Egyptian, and Mediterranean societies.

These different find-spots of similarly fashioned figurines, only blocks away from each other in space, give rise to different narratives of curation.  The guardian curators of these figurines will decipher the strange and exotic disciplinary practices that led to their deposition.  They will also consider the limits and possibilities of interpreting these figurines given what is known of their circulation from Judah to Berkeley.

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A great new tool, ORBIS expresses Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity.

Evidence that a Florentine merchant house financed the earliest English voyages to North America, has been published on-line in the academic journal Historical Research.

The website Open Context is a free, open access resource for the electronic publication of primary field research from archaeology and related disciplines.

A team led by Spanish scientists has interpreted records written in Iraq by Arabic historians for the first time and has made a chronology of climatic events from the year 816 to 1009, when cold waves and snow were normal.

Satellite images have revealed that a network of ancient rivers once coursed their way through the sand of the Arabian Desert, leading scientists to believe that the region experienced wetter periods in the past.

An analysis of 5,000-year-old DNA taken from the Stone Age remains of four humans excavated in Sweden is helping researchers understand how agriculture spread throughout Europe long ago. According to Pontus Skoglund from Uppsala University in Sweden and colleagues, the practice of farming appears to have moved with migrants from southern to northern Europe.

To the east of the famous Isis temple on the island of Philae in Upper Egypt, workers and archaeologists are busy at work. They are cleaning and restoring the massive stone blocks that once formed the temple of Hathor, which is being rebuilt and restored in order to be officially inaugurated next month.

“]

Temple of Hathor [Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Dirty pages of centuries-old books have revealed the reading habits along with the fears, desires and humanity of medieval Europeans, suggesting that they were as self-interested and afraid of illness as people are today.

On a street corner, under a garbage dump, at a construction site — pre-Inca archeological sites abound in Lima, where the ruins of hundreds of sacred places, or “huacas”, are at the mercy of urban growth and public indifference.

More than 200 ancient fortresses dating to the Ming dynasty have been found in a mountainous region in northern China. The fortresses were discovered in the Qinling mountains in Shaanxi province during the recent third national cultural relic survey.

It was one of the bloodiest battles of the Thirty Years’ War, but until recently there was no trace of those who died there. Now the excavation of a mass grave is shedding light on the Battle of Lützen.

“Reading the bones” is being given a new twist for a group of people who lived on the Caribbean island of Antigua more than 200 years ago using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron at the University of Saskatchewan.

A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explores archaeology’s place as a social science, incorporating ideas and methods from other sciences and social sciences to understand the past.

Around 2,900 years ago, an ancient Egyptian man, likely in his 20s, passed away after suffering from a rare, cancerlike disease that may also have left him with a type of diabetes, x-rays of his mummy show.

As she notes in this clip, in spite of rising depredations, there are signs of hope on the horizon—management plans  that promote collaboration between states and within states among governmental agencies and urban planners and other national entities to curtail the illegal trade of antiquities. Another promising if controversial area is the licit sale of antiquities.

Dr. Luke’s remarks are an admirable addition to those of Dr. Lynn Swartz-Dodd, recently posted, regarding practical measures that can be put in place to discourage looting.

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All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

Euphronios Krater, returned to Italy by the Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Dr. Lynn Swartz Dodd

A growing body of literature documents the reality that the ancient, buried landscape of Israel, including the areas known as the West Bank and Gaza, are being inexorably and irretrievably looted. Looting refers to a process by which objects are removed without official permission or archaeological oversight and documentation. [1] Some positive outcomes may devolve to those who participate in such activities (money from selling artifacts, cultivation of buyer/dealer networks, prestige from owning objects that are old and in increasingly short supply).  In every single case, there is a parallel negative result that occurs, which is the loss of context for an ancient object and the loss of association between those certain artifacts and the place they last were laid by an ancient actor. Anyone who denies that this outcome is the reality is, in this author’s mind, uninformed about the consequences of looting.

A certain number of collectors of antiquities, whether inside Israel or outside, take pride in showing others their personal antiquities collections. Many such collectors take pains to purchase artifacts that are represented as genuine, and sometimes they have the objects authenticated by well respected experts, and furthermore they believe they are buying artifacts that are legally sanctioned for sale. In many cases all these assumptions are 100% true. So from the perspective of a collector, they have a reason to boast to people who visit them and their collection. They own something very old and, hence, very special in a certain way. They care for the objects to the best of their ability, often in controlled environmental conditions with good labels and nice lighting.

One can understand this urge to collect the products of human creativity and experience. For instance, collectors who still buy artifacts from Israel typically buy objects that are intriguing, historic and sometimes very beautiful. They are remnants from the past that can be linked to an exciting, persuasive narrative of an ancient nation. It is a compelling connection to our shared past. I have visited many collections owned by people with a discerning eye who genuinely enjoy, curate, protect and value the artifacts they own.

But this is not what this post is about. This post is about something none of these collectors ever does when they show me their collection. No collector has ever boasted by showing me their pictures of the plowed field or the rifled, destroyed ancient tomb or mound from which their artifacts were pulled. Many collectors do not visualize the connection between their actions in the market, the collection in which they take pride, and the open, gaping holes in fields and hillsides all over Israel. Perhaps another reason that nobody shows me such pictures is because no dealer in their right mind provides them to a buyer (with a few famous exceptions that landed the people in hot water).

Weary Herakles statue returned to Turkey by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In the public at large, there is an emerging popular disdain for tomb invasion and cultural patrimony thievery.  Despite the popularity of Indiana Jones, who grabs the goods and runs on film, we members of the public have started to become aware of the claims of various countries for the artifacts found in their national territory, which their laws stipulate is their property, their national patrimony. Recent public pressure was placed on curators of famous museums (Getty, Met, Princeton, Boston) because the trials moved into the court of public opinion, not because these countries prevailed in law courts.

It will take a substantial time for attitudes about preserving heritage to change so that artifacts dug out of their place in the earth will be seen as less authentic, of diminished value, representing an ignoble desire to posses something that belongs more properly to national patrimony.    Without meaning to demean the importance of ancient artifacts in this comparison, an analogy for this potential transformation may be found in the changed attitudes toward fur or grocery bags in the USA. Over the past generation, a series of small, sustained efforts succeeded in changing fashion in a dramatic way. Today, few American women dare walk down the street wearing mink. Similarly, only a couple decades ago everyone received grocery bags made from new paper. In the USA and elsewhere, this practice became connected with gross overconsumption and unsustainable environmental exploitation. Soon, stores introduced cheaper bags made of recycled paper or plastic, which could be recycled too; and finally, stores started selling reusable bags, which customers buy from them and carry back to the store time and time again, as a display of sensitivity to limited resources and overconsumption.

When we achieve this advanced social discourse about antiquities sales, then the powerful private interests that support a legal market will find themselves faced with a counter argument when they try to persuade the archaeology advisory committees of Israel, which includes highly-respected archaeologists who have spent their lives finding objects in intact contexts, to continue the legal market for antiquities sales.

I wonder whether we would be so complacent about antiquities sales if we could see the damage being done to the non-renewable ancient traces of past human history.  Few people are aware of the scale of heritage destruction; hundreds of tombs and other ancient sites may be destroyed annually according to reports in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.[2] To visualize this, let’s imagine the lovely Old City of Jerusalem with the Western Wall of the Temple Mount (which is known in Arabic as the Haram el-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary). If every artifact taken from the ground were instead a little bit of stone from Old City buildings, with each visitor taking a piece and an occasional deep pocketed person lugging off a big stone, after a while, with chip after chip falling into the hand of each tourist as a memento of their trip, Jerusalem will be denuded of its stone structures and walls, including the Western Wall.

Likewise, the buried heritage resources are finite and non-renewable resources, and they require protection.[3] As recently argued in an ICOMOS report about historic ancient cities, once it is lost, it is lost forever. For this reason, it is essential to emphasize the ‘inter-generational nature of heritage conservation. Heritage resources must not be sacrificed needlessly to suit the passing needs and aspirations of any one generation.’[4]

In 2005, the ASOR Board of Trustees voted to update ASOR’s 1995 policy on Preservation and Protection of Archaeological Resources. According to the web page on the ASOR website where this policy was published, the text that appeared in italics reflected the 2005 additions (see http://www.asor.org/excavations/policy.html for the complete text).

The second of these italicized portions reads:
“ASOR will continue to explore innovative strategies and support legislation designed to eliminate the illicit trade of antiquities and enhance the protection of the world’s archaeological and cultural heritage.”

The question this ASOR blog editor would like to pose to you at the conclusion of the month in which we have considered a range of topics related to looting and objects without provenience is this:

What innovative strategies can you think of that would eliminate or reduce the illicit trade of antiquities and enhance the protection of the world’s archaeological and cultural heritage?

Let us know in the comments.

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All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

The Dead Sea is drying up, check out more pictures here.

The International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management, or ICAHM, held its first conference on how to manage the world’s myriad archaeological World Heritage sites. And the current ICAHM co-President has said the World Heritage Committee has been approving too many applications based on economic and “radically political” expediency.

The exodus of residents from Detroit has left behind vacant lots and derelict buildings. And while abandoned spaces are generally bad news for a city, they offer opportunity for a soil scientist to study the evolution of the city’s soils.

Moles have been so busy at  Epiacum, which was a Roman fort in northern Britain, that English Heritage has drafted in 37 volunteers to sieve through their molehills and carefully take out anything ancient which has been brought to the surface. A previous search turned up nails and a delicate dolphin-shaped piece of bronze which is thought to have been part of a tap.

During its golden age in medieval times, Timbuktu was a thriving desert trading capital, as well as an intellectual and spiritual center, from which Islam spread throughout Africa.  Since then, the city has fallen into serious decline, suffering from poverty and desertification.  Now it faces another threat:  war and conflict.

A California man will spend two years in jail following his sentencing Monday in federal court on charges he embezzled close to $1 million in rare coins from a Colorado museum, the American Numismatic Association Money Museum, authorities said.

Evidence of ancient smuggling activity has emerged from a Roman shipwreck, according to Italian archaeologists who have investigated the sunken vessel’s cargo. The vessel itself is also remarkably well preserved and probably the most complete Roman ship ever found.

Ancient Scandinavians dragged 59 boulders to a seaside cliff near what is now the Swedish fishing village of Kåseberga. Archaeologists generally agree this megalithic structure is about 1,000 years old, but now some scholars  argue it’s really 2,500 years old, dating from the Scandinavian Bronze Age.

Archaeologists in Bulgaria’s Black Sea coastal town of Sozopol have found an ancient Greek vase depicting an erotic group sex scene, according to Bozhidar Dimitrov, director of the National History Museum in Sofia.

Another Harappan site has been excavated in the Indian province of Gujarat. Khirsara shows evidence of bead making, and the use and exportation of valuable raw materials.

Unexpected medieval treasures have been discovered in a grave at a what was once a wealthy and powerful UK abbey along with the bones of the abbot they belonged to – probably a well-fed, little exercised man in his 40s who suffered from arthritis and type 2 diabetes.

Archaeological excavations are showing there may have been a competing Temple in ancient Israel, built on Mount Gerizim by the Samaritans 2,500 years ago.

Archaeologists have reportedly unearthed nearly 3,000 Buddha statues, which could be up to 1,500 years old, in Hebei, China.

Salford scientists have done tests at the full size replica of Stonehenge in Washington state to reveal the sound of Stonehenge.

And now the latest issue of NEA is online as well. Sign up or sign in to check out NEA 75.1 before the print copies have even reached their destinations!

Please take the time to check out our publications for free! If you enjoy them during the month of the April please consider subscribing or becoming a member, both of which are great ways to continue your access after this promotion ends.  You can join ASOR by following the links at www.asor.org.

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Egyptian archaeologists find four Greek and Byzantine-era tombs in old Alexandria’s eastern necropolis, bringing a halt to planned residential project.

Mesolithic artefacts from a lost settlement are coming to light after 6 millennia after currents scoured sand from the seabed just of the coast of Denmark in Horsens Fjord.

Monkeys banging on typewriters might never reproduce the works of Shakespeare, but they may be closer to reading Hamlet than we thought. Scientists have trained baboons to distinguish English words from similar-looking nonsense words by recognizing common arrangements of letters. Go to the link to see a video of a baboon performing the test.

A bronze, Viking-era “piggy-bank” containing thousands silver coins dating from the 11th century has been unearthed on the Baltic island of Gotland in what Swedish archaeologists have described as a “fantastic” treasure find.

Mexican archaeologists believe they have identified an unknown son of the Maya king Pakal II after reconstructing the inscriptions of the Northern Tableau of the Temple of the Sun Sanctuary, in Palenque.

UC students at the Vashtëmi excavation

The skeletal remains of at least 44 American Indians have been unearthed during construction of a new state office building in downtown Logan, and some people say West Virginia officials should have known they might be there.

University of Cincinnati research is revealing some of the earliest farming in Europe at the site of Vashtëmi, a former wetlands region that was largely cut off from Western researchers until recently.

Two thousand years ago, an Egyptian purchased a mummified kitten from a breeder, to offer as a sacrifice to the goddess Bastet, as shown by radiographs of a cat mummy.

Researchers at the Chotuna-Chornancap archaeological digs near the Peruvian city of Chiclayo have found the funerary remains of a woman who was a priestess of the Lambayeque or Sican culture, who lived during the second half of the 13th century A.D. in the waning days of the Sican culture on Peru’s northern coast.

More than 50 ancient and rare relics were uncovered in a tomb excavation in Guxian County, Anhui province. The 53-tomb complex is believed to have been under construction over many dynastic periods dating back to the Eastern Han Dynasty nearly 2,000 years ago.

One of Italy’s top culture officials has pushed private investment in the country’s museums and galleries and the Chinese and Indian appetites for art and archaeology as the way to pull the country out of its recession.

The earliest evidence of human tool use may be written on the bones of other animals, but in order to produce reliable conclusions, researchers are calling for improved tools and analysis, including an easy-to-access large collection of sample specimens and more unified standards.

American archaeologists are heading back to the site of Shengavit in Armenia, a 4th to 2nd millennium site thought to have trade links across Mesopotamia and the Near East.

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a Neolithic portal dolmen, one of Western Europe’s oldest ritual burial chambered monuments, in an isolated field in Wales. The tomb is thought to date from 3,800 BCE, and rarely for the region still contains human remains.

A Washington, D.C.-area collector and his family have donated more than 1,000 Civil War photographs to the Library of Congress and at NPR they go on a search to identify one of the soldiers from the photographs, with a misidentification and then a new possibility.

David I. Owen is the Bernard and Jane Schapiro Professor of Ancient Near Eastern and Judaic Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. Dr. Owen contributed several filmed commentaries to both the CSIG (Coroplastic Studies Interest Group)-sponsored Round Table (2010)  and the SECONDARY CONTEXT I Workshop (2011) at the annual meetings. What follows is an excerpt of his conversation with Rick Hauser on the intrinsic value of unprovenienced artifacts.

Below is a transcript of the recorded SKYPE conversation between Owen and Hauser:

RAH The object torn from context—does it have value?

DIO Every object has value, regardless of whether it has context or not. The degree of value, of course, varies. Tablets inevitably have a value devoid of context—it transcends context. When you have an archive like I have published recently on Garšana (Heimpel, Wolfgang. 2008.  Workers and Construction Work at Garšana. Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 5 [CUSAS]. Bethesda, CDL Press) . . .—these provide a window on the world of the period that even archaeology cannot provide.

If you saw Heimpel’s analysis of the Gar¡ana material—every archaeologist working on the Middle East has to use that book almost as a bible. It describes in exquisite detail the building of mud-brick structures from the creation of the bricks in the ground to the water-proofing of the roofs—

RAH — in the tablets?

DIO In the tablets—in absolute detail.

RAH That’s rare.

DIO Most mud-brick sites, you don’t have much beyond the foundation. This tells you how they built the walls, how much wood they used, the reeds they put in between the mud-brick levels—I mean, everything in detail—the tools that they utilized . . .—and, most remarkably, the number of women who were involved in the construction and the making of bricks, and the carrying of bricks! Does that have value? Of course it has value nobody’s going to deny.

Yes! Would we have liked to have found them in the building in which the archives were stored? Absolutely. But—how many texts have been found in excavations that are devoid of their original context—used as fill in later periods? They have no real context in terms of the period in which they were written, but they have intrinsic value because they tell you about the period in which they were written.

So, yes, objects have value outside of context. And this bugaboo that has been promoted by a small number of archaeologists that context is everything is exactly that—it’s absolute nonsense!

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All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

B. Porten at Institute of Archaeology Hebrew University Jerusalem

Dr. Bezalel Porten, Emeritus Professor at Hebrew University (Jerusalem) has devoted much of his recent research to a large number of Idumean ostraca said to come from Khirbet el-Kôm. The following brief remarks are taken from his commentary at ASOR Workshop SECONDARY CONTEXT I. His comments centered on the imperative need to study such material, even if the original find-spot is lost. Dr. Porten’s stance challenges publication policies of some scholarly journals.

-Rick Hauser, Research Associate, IIMAS The International Institute for Mesopotamian Area Studies

“There are about 1800 [of these unprovenienced pieces]. . . . [W]e’re grateful to the industrious Arabs who went and found what the archaeologists couldn’t find! They deserve whatever funds they gained in bringing them to the Antiquities Market.”

Interestingly, “‘recent evidence indicates that at least a certain number of these unprovenienced texts come from Maresha, where there are ongoing excavations. In which case, [the appearance on the market of these texts would point to] outright theft.

“’It is, therefore, an open question—‘How did 1900 Aramaic ostraca turn up  without any Greek or Hebrew mixed in, as in other loci at Maresha?’

“’The plot thickens’ “(personal communication, 12 april, 2012).

Dr. Porten continues—

“Are the objects [such as these] that . . . museums have crown jewels that have to be kept under seal and be guarded and rarely be displayed and shown to the public? Because—what is the alternative? The pieces are already ‘out there.’ Are we to put them back in the ground? Are we to keep them buried in the museums in their drawers, never to see the light of day—and to deteriorate?”

Dr. Porten will deliver a new paper at ASOR 2012 in Chicago entitled “Idumean Ostraca: Fakes, Forgeries, Scribal Exercises, and the Real Thing.”

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All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

The Titanic will fall under UNESCO’s protection and the 2001 Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage once it passes the 100th anniversary of its sinking on 15 April.

Two deep-frozen settlements, Qeqertasussuk and Qajaa, were among the traces that some of the very first immigrants to western Greenland, 4,500 years ago, left behind at Disko Bay and their excavation  in the 1980s brought countless perishable tools and objects to light – including harpoons and lances, tools with shafts, parts of skin clothing, and pieces of ancient drums.

An international team of archaeologists and paleoecologists analyzing records of pollen, charcoal and other plant remains like phytoliths spanning more than 2,000 years has created the first detailed picture of land use in the Amazonian savannas in French Guiana, showing that ancient amazonians used sustainable raised-bed farming instead of slash and burn.

Dr. Joel Klenck, conducted an ethnoarchaeological study of modern Bedouin sacrificial practices in the Levant to provide insight on the deposition of remains at ancient cult sites.

San Francisco Presidio archaeologists are working to clean and analyze artifacts uncovered the nation’s only urban national park before their new new lab facilities open to the public.

Archaeologists working in the Mansuli Valley in east Malaysia believe they have found the oldest human settlement in east Malaysia with more than 1,000 stone tools that are believed to date back 235,000 years.

The archaeological site of Akrotiri on the island of Santorini will reopen its gates to the public after remaining closed for almost seven years.

Late last month, anthropologist Robert Benfer announced that he and his team of researchers had discovered several enormous, earth-formed animal shapes in Peru, including the orca-shaped mound you see up top. Now, thanks to some clever folks over at Google Earth Blog, you can actually explore two of these mounds for yourself.

The Italian government has launched a 105m euros (£87m) project to save one of the world’s greatest archaeological treasures, the ancient city of Pompeii.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth is planning an exhibition in July featuring 16 scroll fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The first Homo sapiens appeared on the planet some 200,000 years ago. But even though they looked fully human, they didn’t act fully human until they began creating symbolic art, some 100,000 years later. Paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall discusses those human origins on NPR.

Two decorated covers of coffins that once contained mummies have been seized by Israeli authorities, authenticated and dated to thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt. Inspectors of the Unit for Prevention of Antiquities Robbery found the artifacts while checking shops in a marketplace in the Old City of Jerusalem. The inspectors confiscated the items under suspicion of being stolen property.

Next week I will be taking the students in my “Politics and Archaeology” course to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We’ll be going as part of our unit on unprovenanced artifacts, collecting, looting and forgeries.

The assignment I give the class is simple: With a partner, choose a section of a gallery of antiquities—Egyptian, Greek, Roman or Mesopotamian. Walk around and write down the pertinent information for every artifact you see there, whether it’s a tiny bead, or a huge piece of architecture, using the museum display cards as your source. For every artifact, make sure you record: 1- the date when the museum acquired it, 2- whether it was uncovered by an archaeological excavation (and which one), 3- whether it is part of a named collection, 4- whether the museum owns it, or whether it is on loan, 5- the period or century to which the artifact dates, and 6- the artifact’s provenance. Then, quantify your results.

In the weeks leading up to our museum trip, my class has engaged in detailed discussions about public presentations of the past (think Masada, City of David, the Discovery Channel and the “Jonah” ossuary, and also Colonial Williamsburg), the role of UNESCO in archaeology, and repatriation. In the last two weeks, in immediate preparation for the outing, they are reading several articles about the antiquities trade (including ones by Morag Kersel, whose new blog post I will refer them to as well).

My undergraduates, like most of the public, have never before thought about the issue of where museum collections come from. The readings they did about the antiquities trade at first seemed irrelevant to a trip to see the Met’s collections. As one student put it, “Museums aren’t private individuals. Museums have to know exactly where all their artifacts originate, and wouldn’t end up with looted material.” In response, other students reminded the class about our discussions and readings on repatriation of artifacts, and looting during wartime. But then a related question came up, “Even if other museums might have questionable artifacts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art doesn’t—after all, it’s the Met!”

The last group of students I took to the Met two years ago was shocked as they walked around the galleries and tallied things up. They had expected most artifacts in a world-class museum to have been excavated by archaeologists, but instead found that the majority of artifacts were originally part of private collections, either on loan to the Met, or given as a gift to the Met, or purchased with funding given to the Met to expand a specific collection. This made them appropriately wonder how the lenders or the donors came to possess the artifacts in the first place. No one had thought about where museums get their materials, or their funding, prior to our class discussions about it.

This previous cohort of students noted the disturbingly high percentage of unprovenanced artifacts in the Met, with display cards that commonly gave “Greek, Attic” as a general location, and nothing more. Others cards read, “probably from Heliopolis,” or “Greek, South Italian” or “said to have been found…near Rome,” or “said to have been found near Kerameikos in Athens.” Some simply state “no provenance.”

When that class of students tallied their results, they found that more artifacts were unprovenanced in the Greek and Roman galleries than in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian ones. After our trip, we discussed why, and talked about issues such as Western interest in collecting Greek and Roman artifacts since the Renaissance, versus the somewhat more recent Western interest in Mesopotamia and Egypt, which coincided with the birth of archaeology in the 19th century. We talked about how the existence of these artifacts without provenance implies looting, recent or past, and whether or not even big museums like the Met are complicit in looting by acquiring and displaying such artifacts.

These are dicey issues indeed. It will be interesting to see what my current class sees next week, as they walk around the same galleries with their eyes focused on what the public does not usually notice. This class has been prepared differently than my last cohort. This class, as a group, has lived through the “Jonah” ossuary controversy last month. This class has lived through the recent verdict on the James Ossuary. I’m curious about how these students will react as they tally the unprovenanced artifacts in the Met.

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All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

It has come to the attention of the ASOR Blog that a newspaper article about the so-called “Patio Tomb” in East Talpiyot was published in Hebrew in DAVAR on May 22, 1981 (this tomb has also been called “Talpiyot Tomb B”). The article was entitled, “Haredim Prevent Removal of Ossuaries from Ancient Tomb,” written by the late archaeologist and journalist, Zvi Ilan. Within the article, Ilan notes that religious extremists prevented the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) in 1981 from excavating the tomb. Although Amos Kloner (the excavator for the IAA) wished to excavate the tomb, he was not permitted do to so, nor was he even permitted to remove artifacts from the tomb (although he managed to remove a small ossuary belonging to a child). In fact, he was forced to abandon his attempt to write a full scientific report. Kloner’s incomplete report is mentioned briefly in Tabor and Jacobovici’s book.

One of the ossuaries in this tomb has been dubbed by Tabor and Jacobovici as “the Jonah Ossuary,” because of Tabor and Jacobovici’s interpretation of the ornamentation on the ossuary as that of “Jonah and the Whale” (This ossuary in Kloner’s incomplete report is labeled #1). Significantly, however, it is clear from the article in DAVAR that the ornamentation on the ossuaries identified in 1981 include the following: (1) Architectural features (perhaps of the Second Temple?) and (2) An amphora (Heb.agartal). These two understandings of the ornamentation are the very interpretations that were proposed on the ASOR blog (in March 2012). Tabor and Jacobovici did not mention in their book that the ossuary had been previously discussed in print and (most importantly) that the design was long ago suggested to be an amphora. Should one assume that they had not seen this article?

click to enlarge

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All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.
 

The Public Impact
Giorgio Buccellati
Co-Director
Mozan/Urkesh Archaeological Project (Tell Mozan, Syria)
March—June 2011

Times of turmoil encourage an intense reflection on the ultimate validity of our field work in foreign lands. Identified as we become with the people, committed as we are to recover their territorial past, engaged as we still remain in the more esoteric dimensions of our research — the question of relevance emerges with urgency.

It is the case, today, with regard to our field work in Syria. We are identified, we are committed, we are engaged — we definitely have come to feel foreign no more. Because of our attitude, because of their openness. Our heart is very much in Mozan while our mind dwells on Urkesh. Our heart is in the streets of Syria today even while our mind seeks to define something as seemingly remote as Late Chalcolithic 3 pottery.

“Seemingly” remote? How could such abstractions not be remote when people are dying in the streets? But they do, strongly, matter, because the whole effort ultimately evokes and nurtures the sense of dignity that sustains us humans when everything else collapses around us.

Archaeologists, we serve as purveyors of a past in which the present sinks roots that are all the deeper when the sense of identity is under attack. We come to feel that in some unexpected way, the Syrians of today can also lean on the Syrians of yesteryear we help bring back to light.

We have, unwittingly, prepared for this. We have prepared as we have been striving to conserve the fragile mudbrick walls of four and more millennia ago, as we have been endowing this remote past with faces and names, as we have been showing how the delicate disentangling of ruins from the grip of the earth is laden with meaning.

We have prepared because, in doing this, the people affected — we who dig, and they who live the results – have become jointly empowered with the richness of memory. And this memory is treasure to be defended.
Thus it is that we feel confident that, having become the guardians of memory, the Syrians of Mozan will protect the Syrians of Urkesh. Thus it is that the Syrians of yesteryear can in turn lean on the Syrians of today.

Communication is the start of preservation. Alongside conservation, alongside interpretation. Communication conceived as education. An education that educates as much as “them,” as we all learn, together, that to attribute meaning is to affirm relevance.

~~~

Permission to reprint this essay from The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press and Dr. Giorgio Buccellati is gratefully acknowledged.

All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

Foreword

In comments to Dr. Kersel’s article (Buyer Beware: Shopping for Artifacts in the Holy Land), I expressed disappointment over the undocumented, arbitrary nature of her claims, which amount to an opinion based on hearsay, and contribute little if anything towards scientific knowledge. Herewith, I will present a well-documented firsthand account of my own experience in shopping for artifacts over the past decade in an effort to balance the discussion.

Why Shop for Artifacts?

As one begins earning money, a variety of investment options appear: interest-bearing bank accounts, dividend-paying stocks, income-generating real estate, etc. Aside from the financial considerations, hobby-related investments such as numismatics (rare currency) and philately (rare postage) offer educational/historical contexts, along with tangible gratification: you can easily see their value, show them to others, discuss their relationship to local/national political history, and transport them virtually anywhere in the world in times of financial instability or crises. For example, their value remains immune to a bank collapsing, a stock-market crashing, and the immobility of real estate along with its government restrictions [1].

Among an array of collectible objects [2], antiquities represent yet another such hobby, combining historical value, artistic qualities, preservation level, and production rarity, all being key components of wise investments. But as with any of the aforementioned forms or any valuable venture in life, certain risks exist, and it helps if you study the field before making a purchase.

My own collection/investment began with leaves from medieval Bible editions. At one Beverly Hills bookseller, I was introduced to antiquities by being offered a hand-sized cuneiform tablet for $850. Its accompanying translation described it as an ordinary rations tablet, naming individuals from the famous Mesopotamian town of Ur. For years it was a prized possession of mine that I exhibited (along with other objects) at local public libraries. But alas, for reasons I don’t fully understand, but which I probably could have prevented, a few years ago it suddenly crumbled into worthless dust! Fired pottery (especially jar handles bearing seal impressions) has proven to be a more stable investment.

A Philatelic Seal Impression

When Israel became a renascent nation in May 1948, they needed new postage to be printed prior to announcing their name. Hence, “DAR OBRY” (Hebrew Post) appears on their first official stamps. Several months later, and while engaged in their first national war to survive, they printed a new set of stamps bearing for the first time their name in Hebrew, English, and Arabic. The Israel Postal Authority issued a complete set of the stamps in September 1948 with commemorative postmarks from Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem:

Fig. 1: Haifa first day cover (FDC) with upside-down stamp

This particular specimen bears exceedingly more value than the thousands of others available on the market, due to the fact that the postal workers misaligned the 65-mil stamp, and postmarked it without notice, thereby certifying its authenticity. Whereas these FDCs normally sell for about $5 from philatelic dealers, at a prestigious auction my example might command a hammer price well over $1,000 [3].

A Genuine Seal Impression

Biblical archaeologists will quickly recognize the image in those 1948 stamps as belonging to the LMLK seals [4] with 2-winged icons. Dating primarily to the reign of King Hezekiah [5], thirteen varieties with this basic seal design are known, plus eight others bearing 4-winged icons (Grena 2004 Fig. 39). Hundreds of these impressions have been documented from scientific excavations and from unprovenanced private collections [6]. Some are rarer than others (for reasons unknown), hence their investment value to collectors.

Fig. 2: Unprovenanced handle #21 from my Redondo Beach collection {7}

This particular handle ties indirectly to the trial Dr. Kersel mentioned at the beginning of her article. I purchased it in February 2003 from Robert Deutsch, the scholar and antiquities dealer who was charged, tried, and fully acquitted on all counts [8]. Deutsch, like all dealers in Israel with whom I have conducted business, is properly licensed by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), and obtains the appropriate export permits to send artifacts to me in America.

Fig. 3: Export permit accompanying the purchase of handle #21 in 2003 {9}

I had some doubts concerning the authenticity of this handle when I first saw it in December 2002. Aside from being one of the rare types (only three others had been published previously [10]), its clay color-tones looked different from others I had seen [11], and its unusually deep impressions preserved design details not seen in published excavation reports. My doubts disappeared when I visited the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in May 2003, and was allowed the privilege of studying James Pritchard’s notes from his landmark 1956-7 excavations at el-Jib (undoubtedly the pool of Gibeon recorded in 2Samuel 2:13). Therein I discovered an unpublished photo [12]of a specimen kept in Amman exhibiting traits similar to mine.

Since the famous forgery trial began, the IAA changed their policies and documentation formats to include photos of the objects being exported, so I feel obligated to show a very recent example for a Rhodian amphora I purchased (I know it’s Rhodian because one of its handles bears a common Rhodian rose impression with a circular border; its other handle bears a common Greek epigraphic stamp with a rectangular border).

Fig. 4: Export permit accompanying the purchase of an amphora in 2012 {13}

A Fake Seal Impression

I had been told by two dealers (one in America, one in Israel) with extensive experience that forged LMLK impressions existed, but until August 2009 I had not actually seen any.

Fig. 5: Unprovenanced handle formerly in the Michael Welch collection {14}

The handle’s basic elements (formation, colors, grits) match provenanced specimens, and raise no concern as to it being ancient. Several characteristics of the impression, however, immediately indicated its illicit construction:

1. Its design matches no provenanced specimens; it doesn’t even come close to any.
2. Its impression is deep enough to preserve all of its letters, icon, and border (a quality seldom seen in provenanced specimens), meaning its borders should be raised as the clay was squeezed out (as seen near the bottom of my Fig. 2 specimen), yet its overall region remains flush with the height of the handle’s original contours.
3. Its internal features look like they were carved into fired clay, rather than impressed into wet clay (i.e., their edges are rough rather than smooth).

That being said, it’s worth emphasizing the paucity of these forgeries relative to genuine specimens (1 in 1,000 is hardly cause for a buyer to panic). I tend to expect this since LMLK handles appear so common on the surface throughout Israel, particularly the southern territory that originally belonged to the tribe of Judah [15].

Collectible Artifacts with Provenance

Dr. Kersel asserted that all “artifacts that are purchased on the market are entangled in webs of intrigue.” Is that unequivocally true?

As she noted, prior to 1978 less restrictions existed on the export of antiquities from Israel, and my collection includes two important examples from diverse contexts: a high-ranking official in the government of Israel, and a prominent educational institution in Israel.

The first is a remarkably intact jug, with a March 1962 letter from Harry Philipps, Official Expert on Arts and Antiquities for the Office of the Prime Minister (David Ben-Gurion), State of Israel in Jerusalem certifying that it came from Lachish:

Fig. 6: Jug from Lachish presented as a gift to a philanthropist {16}

Fig. 7: Letter accompanying Lachish jug certifying its provenance

The second is a significantly less-intact piece of pottery from Lachish; however, its value lies not in its poor state of preservation, but in its intended use to promote and stimulate financial support for the renewed archeological excavations at Lachish, led by Tel Aviv University professor, David Ussishkin during the mid-1970s:

Fig. 8: "Original pottery fragment from the biblical period excavated in Lachish by Tel Aviv University" {17}

Summary

By shopping for artifacts from the Holy Land, I have utilized my God-given talents to preserve historical treasures (especially ones that illuminate God’s message to us in the Holy Bible [18]) and promote research associated with them [19], while simultaneously building a relatively secure financial investment. Although some people may break the law to acquire wealth (e.g., by looting ancient sites, or selling antiquities without obtaining the proper permits, or not paying taxes), that’s primarily their problem, not mine. It’s between them and the local and national authorities responsible for preserving cultural heritages and enforcing relevant laws.

Just as I do not enquire about the personal faults of grocers from whom I buy food, or investigate who farmed the food, or whether the people (from farmers to truckers to grocers) obeyed the relevant laws in the process, I am under no obligation to trace the background-chain for items coming into my collection. I don’t understand why any rational scholars would want to hear unsubstantiated tales about how their food came to be on their dinner table, or similar folklore associated with the antiquities market.

If (as Dr. Christopher Rollston asserted in his comments on Dr. Kersel’s article) Dr. Kersel needs “to maintain certain confidences” to perform her research while cooperating with criminals [20], then I would expect other researchers such as I and Robert Deutsch be afforded the same privacy while studying antiquities via legitimate business transactions.

Bibliography

Barkay, Gabriel
1992 “A Group of Stamped Handles from Judah (Hebrew).” Pp. 113-128 in Eretz Israel vol. 23, eds. E. Stern, T. Levi. Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society and Hebrew Union College.

Barkay, Gabriel and Andrew G. Vaughn
2004 “Section C: The Royal and Official Seal Impressions from Lachish.” Pp. 2148-2173 in The Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973-1994) vol. IV, ed. David Ussishkin. Tel Aviv: Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology, Tel Aviv University.

DiNoto, Andrea
1978-80 The Encyclopedia of Collectibles (16 volumes). Chicago: Time-Life Books.

Diringer, David
1941 “On Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions Discovered at Tell ed-Duweir (Lachish)–II.” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 73 (July): 89-106.

Grena, G.M.
2004 LMLK–A Mystery Belonging to the King vol. 1. Redondo Beach: 4000 Years of Writing History.

Grena, George M.
2005 “What Are lmlk Stamps and What Were They Used For?” Bible and Spade 18 #1 (Winter): 19-24.

Hudon, Jeffrey P.
2010 “The LMLK Storage Jars & the Reign of Uzziah: Towards a Mid-eighth Century B.C. Terminus a Quo for the Royal Jars of the Kingdom of Judah.” Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin 55: 27-44

Kochavi, Moshe
1974 “Khirbet Rabud = Debir.” Tel Aviv 1 #1: 2-33.

Lipschits, Oded, et al.
2010 “Royal Judahite Jar Handles: Reconsidering the Chronology of the lmlk Stamp Impressions.” Tel Aviv 37 #1 (June): 3-32.

Malloy, Alex G.
1997 Official Guide to Artifacts of Ancient Civilizations. New York: House of Collectibles.

McAlpine, Alistair and Cathy Giangrande
2001 The Essential Guide to Collectibles: A Source Book of Public Collections in Europe and the U.S.A. New York: Viking Studio.

Vaughn, Andrew G.
1999 Theology, History, and Archaeology in the Chronicler’s Account of Hezekiah. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

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[1] Last week we witnessed the government of Israel deciding to evict Hebron residents from property they legally owned. See http://www.hebron.com/english/article.php?id=776 for details. Apparently the Israeli government considered the expulsion of Jews from their homeland to be a more important expenditure of resources than the policing of Jewish archeological sites to prevent looting.

[2] For a broad overview of collectibles, see DiNoto 1978-80; Malloy 1997 (esp. the Holy Land section, pp. 72-98); McAlpine and Giangrande 2001.

[3] My purpose in showing these items from my collection is not to increase their value, but to illustrate the discussion, unlike Dr. Kersel’s article where artifacts are shown with no context or relevance to what she wrote. Since beginning to collect valuables in the 1990s, I have not sold anything for a profit, nor do I intend to (unless for obvious reasons, I suffer an unforeseeable financial hardship). Ideally I’m hoping to live long enough to some day distribute them to museums and young collectors to ensure their preservation.

[4] See http://www.lmlk.org, which redirects to the website I originally built in 2002, and have been steadily editing ever since.

[5] Some scholars believe these seals were made/used during the reigns of other kings, spanning anywhere from Uzziah to Manasseh (see Lipschits et al. 2010 and Hudon 2010).

[6] I maintain a segregated corpus list at http://www.lmlk.com/research/lmlk_corp.htm, which builds upon the one published in Vaughn 1999, pp. 185-197.

[7] Additional photos can be seen at http://www.lmlk.com/research/lmlk_gg21.htm.

[8] Note that there was no evidence presented at the trial indicating that Deutsch was in any way involved in the production of forged antiquities, though he had published items from the collection of the other defendant, Oded Golan. If that’s the only circumstantial evidence the prosecution could connect between Deutsch and Golan, it’s a wonder the IAA didn’t also indict Golan’s family and neighbors and put them on trial!

[9] The quantity reflects five additional handles I purchased at the same time.

[10] The others appear in Diringer 1941 Plate VII:3, Kochavi 1974 Plate 4:2, and Barkay 1992 Fig. 14.

[11] My first experience examining provenanced LMLK handles occurred in May 2002 at the Bade Museum of Biblical Archaeology, which houses artifacts excavated from Tell en-Nasbeh between 1926 and 1935. The fruit of that labor appears photographically online at http://www.lmlk.com/research/lmlk_nasbeh.htm.

[12] See Photographic Archives Negative #535-77607:31, which along with the entire corpus of LMLK handles kept in Philadelphia, I was granted permission to publish on the LMLK Research website. This specific one is online at http://www.lmlk.com/research/lmlk_ej-335-s89.htm. Lest anyone think some forgery artist had been there prior to me, note that the archivist told me I was the first person to examine these particular archives since they had been deposited there by Pritchard (the archival room used to be his office), as evidenced by their disorganized state, which I gladly helped organize.

[13] To see an intermediate permit format from 2008 signed by Amir Ganor, the IAA Director of Robbery Prevention Division, visit http://www.lmlk.com/dealers, which I put online in response to false accusations by Joe Zias, an IAA curator with expertise in anthropology. Since my purpose in showing this 2012 permit is to contrast its format with the older ones, I intentionally erased the dealer’s name from the Sender Courier [sic] field, as well as the dealer’s street address number in the Address field. I do not want to be accused of advertising particular dealers in this ASOR forum, and only mentioned Deutsch for the context of Fig. 3 as this relates to Dr. Kersel’s opening remark, and her obscure innuendo mischaracterizing dealers as people to be feared, rather than respectable business owners. Note also that the object shown in the 2012 permit is of an ordinary-shaped amphora, but the IAA’s form digitally compressed the pixels to make it resemble a whale about to vomit something onto the dealer’s dry floor, though some ASOR scholars may claim that it’s really an image of a nephesh monument like Absalom’s Tomb incorrectly shown here upside-down. But I digress…

[14] As most dealers offer money-back guarantees if an item’s authenticity gets disproven, Welch took advantage of this policy and returned it for a refund following my examination and documentation. For additional images, see http://www.lmlk.com/research/lmlk_mw-f01.htm.

[15] Vaughn’s landmark 1999 publication (which built upon an unpublished dissertation by Gabriel Barkay) documented many surface finds, including one by a group of children (see his footnote #69 on p. 195). An astounding 92 of 415 (22%) were documented as being found on the surface of Lachish alone (Barkay and Vaughn 2004, Table 29, supplemented by some minor corrections by me at http://www.lmlk.com/research/lmlk_lachish-corp.htm). For a recent example of how easy it is to find one, see http://gath.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/we-had-another-wow-day-lmlk-handle-eb-cylinder-etc. With so many genuine valuable objects available to be found, it’s easy to understand why so few forgeries exist. However, since the ratio of unstamped to stamped handles of this type is about 10:1 (Grena 2004 pp. 377-8), it is easy to understand why someone with criminal intentions might tamper with a genuine unstamped specimen than attempt to make an entire jar from raw materials, fake a seal, fire the jar, smash it, and peddle its handles.

[16] Its overall dimensions are approximately 10 cm wide, 11 cm tall, with a 7 cm opening. A specially constructed wooden box containing the jug and the letter bears an engraved metallic placard stating: “This ancient pottery from the state of Israel is presented to Joseph Bock in recognition of outstanding devotion and inspiring leadership in [sic] behalf of the economic development of Israel. Awarded at a dinner in his honor under the auspices of The State of Israel Bond Organization. April 1, 1962.” It’s a wonderful coincidence that I was able to draft this article for the ASOR Blog so close to the 50th anniversary of the event!

[17] The text of the image appears doubled because of its being embedded within a clear acrylic housing, which then casts a shadow onto the white background.

[18] See Grena 2005 where I argue that LMLK seals present evidence of Hezekiah’s continued independence following the devastation from Sennacherib’s military campaign.

[19] See references to “Garena” [sic] among footnotes 15, 17, 19, 22, 24-8, 31, 36 within Lipschits et al. 2010.

[20] Owen Jarus reported that she interviewed “residents engaged in looting” and dealers who “admitted to engaging in an elaborate scheme that allows recently looted artefacts to be sold to tourists.” See “Looted Artefacts Sold to Tourists in Israel Antiquities Scam” at http://heritage-key.com/blogs/owenjarus/looted-artefacts-sold-tourists-israel-antiquities-scam. Dr. Rollston defended her actions as “standard practice” for investigators. Actually, it’s standard practice for undercover investigators who intend to get the suspects arrested so they can be tried and convicted. According to Jarus, she “guaranteed anonymity” to the criminals.

~~~

All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

Toyozo Nakarai Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Studies, Emmanuel Christian Seminary

I. MOTIVATIONS FOR THE PRODUCTION OF FORGERIES

            Forgeries have been produced for many centuries (Metzger 1997, 125-139; Rollston 2003; 2004; 2005; 2012; Ehrman 2011) and it would not be prudent to believe that the future shall be different from the past in this regard.  After all, there are timeless, discernible motives for the production of forgeries, and these motives can be detected on the basis of actual forgeries from Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Modern Period.  (1) Of course, venality is certainly a motivation for the production of forgeries.  During the modern period, for example, non-provenanced inscriptions (i.e., from the antiquities market) routinely sell for four, five, and even six figures.  Some recent non-provenanced inscriptions have been valued at seven figures.  Prior to the modern period, forgeries also garnered substantial amounts of money as well (cf. Metzger 1997, 125-126).  (2) Some forgeries are arguably the result of “sour grapes” (e.g., a student purged in the modern period from an epigraphy program) or professional rivalry, with the forger hoping to “dupe” or “correct” the “offender.”  (3) Similarly, sometimes a forgery can be a prank, a Witz of some sort (e.g., Coleman-Norton’s “Agraphon”).  (4)  Moreover, there is a certain amount of prestige associated with being the person who “collects,” “vets,” or “finds” a significant “ancient epigraph” from the market.  Indeed, the public (and even scholars within the field) can sometimes lionize such people because of “sensational” non-provenanced epigraphs (e.g., William Shapira; cf. Silberman 1990, esp. 132-140).  For this reason, it is my position that forgers throughout history sometimes produced (i.e., forged) inscriptions so as to be lauded as the one who “found” “vetted,” or “owned” a sensational epigraph.  (5) Religio-Politico matters are sometimes strong motives for the production of a forgery (e.g., the Comma Johanneum of 1 John 5:7-8; cf. Metzger 1968, 101; the Shapira Fragments, the Jehoash Inscription).  (6) Ultimately, forgers are arguably motivated by a combination of such factors, and, of course, with each success, hubris is fostered.  The main point is that forgers have now, and always have had, substantial “motive.”  At this juncture, I shall turn to a brief consideration of some of the most interesting forgeries of the past.

II. SELECT FORGERIES AND PRINCIPLES DISCERNED FROM THEM

During December of 1970, some inscriptions appeared on the antiquities market and they were “reported to have been found in the region of Hebron.”  William Brownlee and George Mendenhall considered them ancient, and even argued that they were “Philistine” (Brownlee and Mendenhall 1970; Mendenhall 1971).  During the initial presentation of these “finds” at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Frank Cross was present, noted the striking similarities with the Siloam Tunnel Inscription, and declared the “Hebron Documents” to be modern forgeries.  In response, Mendenhall replied in print that: “It is very difficult to believe that scholars capable of putting such an enormous range of information into these documents would also be capable of such irresponsible misuse of learning.”  He then went on to say that “those who perpetuate the rumors have the obligation of common decency to produce the evidence concerning those alleged forgeries if in fact they do exist” (Mendenhall 1971, 101-102).  Mendenhall also countered that some of the laboratory tests were consistent with antiquity (Mendenhall conceded that the ¹⁴C tests yielded a modern date, but he argued that the ¹⁴C tests were compromised because of variable storage and handling practices).  He noted that attempts at decipherment continued, and he was able to affirm that progress had been made.  He also indicated that the alphabetic signs used in these “Hebron Inscriptions” numbered approximately thirty-one.  Regarding orthography, he stated that there was not a “rigidity of alphabetic forms and rules of spelling,” but attributed this to the fact that the documents were early, non-professional exemplars of the alphabet.  Computer analyses were employed and were said to be very helpful in “isolating morphemes” (Mendenhall 1971, 99-100).  Although nearly all scholars had accepted Cross’s conclusions (i.e., these documents were modern forgeries), some persisted in contending that these documents from the “antiquities market” were actually ancient.

During the early 1980s, therefore, Joseph Naveh did a detailed analysis of one of the “Hebron Philistine Documents,” demonstrating at length that these were modern forgeries.  In fact, he demonstrated that the forger had, in essence, simply copied large portions of the Siloam Tunnel Inscription, but had done so (essentially) from left to right, that is, basically “backwards”! (Naveh 1982, 53-58).  Naveh also affirmed that the document (he analyzed one in particular) had been done by a “clumsy hand,” an incisive reference to the poor forger.  Because all of the documents were similar (in terms of medium, script, and content), it was readily apparent that all were forgeries.  It should be emphasized that Mendenhall is a gifted scholar, but his defense of the antiquity of these texts was simply wrong.  They were modern forgeries, and rather poor ones at that.

One of the most intriguing twentieth-century forgeries was, according to the late Bruce M. Metzger of Princeton Theological Seminary, produced by Paul R. Coleman-Norton, a classics scholar at Princeton University (who was sometimes accustomed to enlivening his classes with a humorous anecdote or wisecrack).  Basically, Coleman-Norton claimed to have found a copy of a Greek translation of a portion of the Latin Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum (a collection of some fifty-four homilies on the canonical Gospel of Matthew) in a mosque in the North African town of Fedhala in 1943.  He said he found it there during his time in the United States Army and that he had made a hand-copy of it then.  Especially significant was the fact that this Greek text contained a unique reference to weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Here is Coleman-Norton’s translation: “And behold, a certain one of his disciples standing by said unto him, ‘Rabbi’ (which is to say, being interpreted, Master), “how can these things be, if they are toothless?”  And Jesus answered and said, “O thou of little faith, trouble not thyself:  if haply they will be lacking any, teeth will be provided!” (Coleman-Norton 1950).  It is imperative to note that this “plus” is not only absent from the Latin text of the Opus, but is also without parallel in patristic literature!  In any case, some years after returning to the States, Princeton’s Coleman-Norton prepared an erudite discussion of “the Greek text” and its plus (though the original manuscript itself “disappeared”).  He submitted his article to Harvard Theological Review, then the Journal of Biblical Literature, and Chicago’s Journal of Religion.  The article was rejected by these journals.  Ultimately, it was published in Catholic Biblical Quarterly (Coleman-Norton 1950). Metzger, however, noted in his autobiography that before World War II (and thus before the “manuscript discovery” with the unique plus), he (Metzger) had been in class when Coleman-Norton told the students about a query of someone who had been puzzled by Jesus’ announcement that the wicked would suffer amid weeping and gnashing of teeth.  “But Master,” asked a disciple, “what if a man has no teeth?’  The response of Jesus was “teeth will be provided.”  Metzger concludes by stating that he “is convinced that this is a pia fraus” (Metzger 1997, 136-39).

Sometimes forgeries are primarily about venality and the pursuit and retention of power (e.g., political, religious), rather than as humorous or satirical ploys.  Such is the case with the famed document called the “Donation of Constantine.”  According this document, the Emperor Constantine the Great, on the fourth day after his baptism (ca. 337 CE), “yielded his crown, and all his royal prerogatives in the city of Rome, and in Italy, and in Western Parts, to the Church (see Coleman 1922, 11).  Within the Donation of Constantine itself, it is stated that Constantine’s conferral is noted in the “Acts of the Blessed Sylvester,” that is, Pope Sylvester I (314-335 CE).  Significantly, the wording of the Donation of Constantine readily conveys the document’s import and purpose.  For example, it is stated that “Constantine…conferred this privilege on the Pontiff of the Roman church: that in the whole Roman world priests should regard him as their head, as judges do the king” (Coleman 1922, 12-13).  The Donation continues with words such as the following: “the Sacred Seat of the Blessed Peter shall be gloriously exalted….we ordain and decree that he shall have the supremacy as well of the four principal seats, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, as also over all the churches of God in the whole earth.”  Furthermore, the Donation notes that “we have granted him [Peter] of our property in the east as well as in the west, and even in the northern and southern quarter; namely, in Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, Africa, and Italy and the various islands” (Coleman 1922, 15).  Along those same lines, the Donation of Constantine also states that “We give over and relinquish to the aforesaid our most blessed Pontiff, Sylvester, the universal Pope, as well our palace, as has been said, as also the city of Rome, and all the provinces, places and cities of Italy and the western regions, and we decree by this our godlike and pragmatic sanction that they are to be controlled by him [Pope Sylvester] and by his successors, and we grant that they shall remain under the law of the holy Roman Church….and we decree…that all these things…we have established and confirmed, remain inviolate and unshaken unto the end of the world” (Coleman 1922, 17).  The Donation concludes by stating that “all the emperors our successors, and all the nobles, the satraps also, the most glorious senate, and all the people in the whole world, now and in all times still to come” shall not be allowed to “break these decrees.”  Those that do “shall be subject and bound over to eternal damnation” (Coleman 1922, 18-19).  Thus, according to the Donation of Constantine the Church was to govern the Roman Empire.

Nevertheless, the brilliant Italian humanist scholar named Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457 CE) was convinced that it was a forgery, that it was certainly not from Constantine, and that it did not hail from the 4^th Century CE.  Valla’s devastating critique of the Donation of Constantine is entitled “De falso Credita et Ementita Constantini Donatione Declamatio” (written ca. 1440 CE), translated into English as “The Discourse of Lorenzo Valla on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine” (Coleman 1922).[2]

Valla began his historical-critical analysis with the following words: “I have published many books, a great many, in almost every branch of learning.  Inasmuch as there are those who are shocked that in these I disagree with certain great writers already approved by long usage, and charge me with rashness and sacrilege, what must we suppose some of them will do now!  How they will rage against me, and if opportunity is afforded how eagerly and how quickly they will drag me to punishment!  For I am writing against not only the dead, but the living also, not this man or that, but a host, not merely private individuals, but the authorities.  And what authorities!  Even the supreme pontiff” (Coleman 1922, 21).  Although the words of Valla may seem to be laden with hubris, one could also frame them as an apologia of sorts.  After all, he was about to besiege a font of power and wealth, and he anticipates that he will endure the ire of those that wish to cast doubt on his demolition of the Donation’s authenticity.  In any case, at that juncture, Valla throws down the gauntlet in a decisive fashion: “I know that for a long time now, men’s ears are waiting to hear the offense with which I charge the Roman pontiffs.  It is indeed, an enormous one, due either to supine ignorance, or to gross avarice which is the slave of idols, or to pride of empire of which cruelty is ever the companion.  For during some centuries now, either they have not known that the Donation of Constantine is spurious and forged, or else they themselves forged it, and their successors walking in the same way of deceit as their elders have defended as true what they knew to be false” (Coleman 1922, 27).  Valla then begins in earnest to argue against the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine.  And his critique is both brilliant and cogent.  It is philological and historical in nature, demonstrating that the content is entirely implausible and also that the Latin used in this document is full of features that are not fitting for a document from the 4^th century CE.  And although some resisted his conclusions at the time, I know of no modern scholar who considers the Donation of Constantine to hail from Constantine himself.  Rather, it is clear that its origins were from centuries after Constantine, and it certainly hailed from those within the Church who had a vested interest in the money and power the content of the Donation could produce.

It is instructive to emphasize certain aspects of these three forgeries, one Northwest Semitic, one Greek, one Latin.  (1) Forgeries have been produced in a number of ancient languages, not just one or two.  (2) The argument that “no one with the knowledge of producing a forgery would ever do so” is a romantic, naïve notion.  Mendenhall simply did not think it realistic to believe anyone would do this, but the Philistine Hebron Documents demonstrate that someone did.  Moreover, the same is true for Coleman-Norton’s “Agraphon.”  (3) Forgeries are often purported to hail from particular places.  This is true of the Hebron Philistine Documents, and it is also true of Coleman-Norton’s “Greek translation of a portion of the Latin Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, said to have been found in a mosque in the North African town of Fedhala in 1943.  Naturally, forgers and those marketing them have a vested interest in suggesting that a forgery came from a particular region or site.  After all, making a confident statement about the origin of an inscription is often understood to lend credence to its authenticity.  Such “find spots” are basically “smoke and mirrors,” intended to give these documents a legitimate pedigree, fictive though they are.  (4) Forgers of inscriptions often attempt to model their logia on those of actual ancient texts.  After all, this is the easiest way to do it, and helps to ensure that the forger does not produce an inscription with glaring philological or syntactic errors.  Fortunately, forgers often still make mistakes (e.g., with regard to lexemes, syntax, idioms, orthography), but that does not change the fact that they often attempt to mask their forgeries by using phrasing from actual ancient texts.  Such is the case with the Jehoash Inscription (Greenstein 2012, 83-92; cf. Rollston 2003, 146-158, 175-182) and also with the Donation of Constantine.  (5) Forgers sometimes produce forgeries that are intended to be satirical (and sometimes obvious) jokes.  That is, it seems most reasonable to suggest that the forger of the “Hebron Philistine Documents” was not making a serious attempt to produce a fine forgery (i.e., one which would be difficult to detect).  After all, it is not that hard to determine that an inscription that is basically the Siloam Tunnel Inscription written backwards is a forgery.  Obviously, Princeton’s Coleman-Norton intended for his forgery to be a joke (although Harvard’s rejection of his manuscript must have been most disappointing to him!).  (6) Those that wish to consider an inscription ancient will sometimes disregard good laboratory evidence, with statements about the “variable handling and storage practices” (for more discussion of laboratory testing, see Rollston 2003: 182-191).  (7) Sometimes forgeries can fool, at least for a time, even the best of scholars (e.g., the Hebron Philistine Documents).  (8) At this juncture, I wish to turn in particular to inscriptions that hail from the modern antiquities market in order to discuss some basic methodological protocols for these inscriptions.

III. RESPONSES FROM THE FIELD TO MARKET ANTIQUITIES

            Fortunately, although forgers now have numerous tools at their disposal (e.g., very fine lexica, grammars of ancient languages, reliable palaeographic discussions, sophisticated software to assist in script production), they normally still make mistakes.  Trained scholars can normally detect these mistakes through detailed analyses, and they can then expose such texts as forgeries.  Nevertheless, certain protective measures are useful so as to ensure the purity of the dataset upon which constructs about the past are based.  That is, because some forged inscriptions may not always be detected, it is of critical importance to have some protective measures in place to differentiate inscriptions that hail from a secure context (e.g., a scientific excavation) from those that “appear” on the antiquities market (and thus are potential forgeries).  I have discussed such things in some detail in the past and shall summarize them here.  Readers may wish to consult the more detailed statements for fuller analyses of these proposed methodologies (Rollston 2004, 71-79; Rollston 2005, 71-72).  Moreover, it should also be noted in this connection that the principles that I am suggesting are similar to those which have been used in the field of classics for some time (cf. Metzger 1997, 125).

A. The principle of Separation.

(1) First and foremost, it is readily apparent that those discussing (a) specific non-provenanced epigraph(s) should articulate the fact that the source of such (an) epigraph(s) was not (a) controlled archaeological excavation(s).  Nevertheless, scholars have sometimes been remiss in this regard (e.g., within various treatments of the Ivory Pomegranate).  This practice is particularly problematic because some readers might reasonably conclude, therefore, that such inscriptions are definitively provenanced and ancient.  Ultimately, I would suggest that those discussing an epigraph should clearly refer to the “circumstances of discovery and recent history” in a precise manner so as to avoid causing readers to make erroneous conclusions about the actual or putative origins.  (2) For some time, there has been a tradition of including non-provenanced epigraphs side-by-side with provenanced materials.  Not separating provenanced and non-provenanced materials was a convenient utilitarian practice in the past.  However, I would posit that combining the data in this fashion is problematic: it implicitly (and erroneously) suggests to many readers that the data from non-provenanced materials and provenanced materials are on a par.  Therefore, I would argue that at this juncture, for methodological reasons, provenanced and non-provenanced epigraphs should be separated, placed in distinct sections of handbooks and collections, and be given descriptive labels such as “Provenanced Epigraphs” and “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs.”  In short, the field must simply be(come) very intentional about “presentation” in handbooks and collections.

B. The Principle of “Flagging”

Within certain types of works (e.g., lexica), it may not be practical to “present” the provenanced and non-provenanced materials separately (i.e., with completely separate entries of some sort for the provenanced and non-provenanced evidence).  Therefore, I would suggest that non-provenanced epigraphs cited in the entry be “marked” or “flagged” in some fashion so as to signify their status as non-provenanced.  This system will allow the reader immediately to understand that this non-provenanced epigraphic data may need to be weighted differently (i.e., it is not necessarily of the most pristine sort).  Several potential methods of “marking” are possible.  For example, the reference could be preceded (or followed) by the mathematical symbol Ø, signifying in this case the absence of provenance.  Hence, “ØMoussaieff Ostracon 1” would convey to the reader that this particular ostracon is non-provenanced, as would something such as “[non-prov]Moussaieff Ostracon 1.”  The section on sigla or abbreviations within the volume or article could be used to communicate the author’s system of flagging.

C. The Principle of Relegation

It is readily apparent that epigraphic materials without secure provenance and without certain antiquity are normally compromised, problematic, and precarious bases for “reconstructing” the past (e.g., scripts, orthography, languages, religion and culture, etc.).  Nevertheless, scholars sometimes do continue to base certain conclusions about various aspects of antiquity on non-provenanced materials.  It seems prudent to suggest that constructs about the past should normally be based on the purest data, that is, inscriptions that are known to be absolutely authentic (e.g., from a scientific excavation).  There are always exceptions (e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls), but for the most part it seems quite prudent to relegate data from the market to a secondary or tertiary status.

D. The Principle of Categorization

Although several caveats and provisos must be present, I would suggest that specialists must begin to begin to be more intentional about categorizing non-provenanced inscriptions.  That is, although it is not pragmatic to ignore non-provenanced inscriptions, neither is it prudent to assume that all non-provenanced inscriptions are of equal status (e.g., in terms of possible authenticity).  I would propose the following categories of assessment regarding the antiquity or modernity of (an) inscription(s): (1) Modern Forgery, (2) Probable Modern Forgery, (3) Possible Modern Forgery, (4) Probable Ancient, (5) Ancient.  Inscriptions that reflect no real aberrations (in terms of script, orthography, etc.), and for which it is certain that laboratory anomalies are absent, can be considered probable ancient, or ancient inscriptions.  Inscriptions that reflect serious or egregious problems or deviations from the provenanced corpus are to be considered modern forgeries or probable modern forgeries.  Scholars will sometimes differ on such things, and this too should be noted in all discussions.

CONCLUSIONS

In sum, forgeries have been produced for some time.  Forgers have long had the means, motive, and opportunity for the production of forgeries.  Furthermore, very fine scholars have sometimes been fooled into declaring that a forged inscription is actually genuine.  However, trained epigraphers, palaeographers, and philologists have always had a substantial counter-arsenal; therefore, they can normally ferret out forgeries; moreover, the history of the field is replete with many demonstrations of this fact.  Nevertheless, because it is important that our constructs about ancient history, society, language, and script be based on the best possible evidence, rigorous protocols are important to put in place so as to protect the purity of our datasets about antiquity.  That is, methodological doubt and rigorous protocols are desiderata now more than ever.  Caveat Eruditus.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brownlee, W. H. and George E. Mendenhall
1970. An Announcement Published by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan and the Archaeologists Dr. William H. Brownlee and Dr. George E. Mendenhall regarding the Decipherment of Carian Lether Manuscripts found in 1966 in the Hebron area, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.  Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 15:39-40.

Coleman, Christopher B.
1922. The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine. Renaissance Society of America Reprint Texts 1. University of Toronto, Toronto.

Coleman-Norton, Paul
1950. An Amusing Agraphon. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 12:439-449.

Ehrman, Bart
2011. Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. HarperOne, New York.

Greenstein, Edward L.
2012.   Methodological Principles in Determining that the So-Called Jehoash Inscription is Inauthentic.  Pp. 83-92 in Puzzling Out the Past: Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in Honor of Bruce Zuckerman, eds. M. Lundberg, S. Fine, W.T. Pitard.  Leiden: Brill.

Mendenhall, George E.
1971. The Philistine Documents from the Hebron Area: A Supplementary Note.  Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 16:99-102.

Metzger, Bruce M.
1968.   The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 2^nd ed.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Metzger, Bruce M.
1997. Reminiscences of an Octogenarian. Hendrickson, Peabody, Massachusetts.

Naveh, Joseph
1982. Some Recently Forged Inscriptions. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 247:53-58.

Rollston, Christopher
2003. Non-Provenanced Epigraphs I: Pillaged Antiquities, Northwest Semitic Forgeries, and Protocols for Laboratory Tests. Maarav 10:135-193.

2004. Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status of Non-Provenanced Epigraphs within the Broader Corpus of Northwest Semitic. Maarav 11 (1):57-79.

2005. Navigating the Epigraphic Storm: A Paleographer Reflects on Inscriptions from the Market. Near Eastern Archaeology 68:69-72.

2012. “Forging History: From Antiquity to the Modern Period.”  Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology and Ethics, eds. Matthew Rutz and Morag Kersel.  Joukowsky Institute Publication Series of Brown University, Oxbow Books, forthcoming.

Silberman, Neil A.
1990.   Digging for God and Country: Exploration, Archaeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land, 1799-1917.  New York: Doubleda

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