Buying antiquities from Iraq and Syria “saves” them

Many well-meaning collectors and collecting institutions^{Footnote 5} feel that their purchase of antiquities—especially from volatile regions where looting or other kinds of archaeological destruction is a problem—is preferable to leaving those items to uncertain fates or to fall into the hands of people who might not care for them adequately. In response to this claim, archaeologists tend to argue that an object taken from its context is effectively meaningless, as the information it could impart is lost and could very well be forged.^{Footnote 6} Both views have a point. Archaeologists (of which I am one) are correct to assert that objects with documented findspots (ideally, from a controlled excavation, properly published) can tell us a lot more than ones without such information. At the same time, it is also true that in the face of destruction such as that caused by IS, we should all be thankful for the objects obtained by collectors and collecting institutions that reside safely outside the conflict zone (more on this below).

That said, it is important that we not let our concern for Syrian and Iraqi heritage cloud our judgment. Regardless of whether one believes that supply or demand drives the black market in antiquities (and I believe that there is much good evidence to support the demand-driven explanation; see, e.g., Elia Reference Elia, Brodie, Doole and Renfrew2001), it is increasingly clear that terrorist groups and other organized crime networks are using the sale of antiquities as a revenue stream.^{Footnote 7} Several recent reports have revealed that IS has been selling antiquities as part of its funding strategy, with one report from July 2014 stating that they had raised $36 million from selling artifacts from a single site.^{Footnote 8} Even if this number is inflated, there is a great deal of evidence that looting is being undertaken on an industrial scale in IS-controlled territory, and that sales of artifacts are likely going to feed the coffers of that group. Collectors of antiquities must therefore be mindful of their potential complicity in supporting groups such as IS, and that rather than “saving” heritage, collecting objects with questionable provenance (from northern Mesopotamia at least) might in fact serve to support IS’s violent and destructive agenda.

The destruction of antiquities cannot be compared with the destruction of human lives caused by the wars in Iraq and Syria

The last decade or so of conflict in the Middle East and North Africa has brought a great deal of attention to the vulnerability of archaeological sites and museums in conflict zones. The looting of the Iraq Museum following the US-led invasion in 2003, the destruction of sites in Afghanistan and Syria, and the concerns over the Cairo Museum during the Tahrir Square uprising in 2011 each engendered calls from archaeologists and lovers of antiquity for increased efforts to safeguard sites and monuments. A growing number of archaeologists, however, have become uneasy with concern over heritage preservation in the face of human devastation and what Yannis Hamilakis has termed the “military-archaeological complex” of archaeologists collaborating with armed forces to minimize damage to ancient sites.^{Footnote 9} They make the important points that acting to preserve cultural heritage while neglecting the plight of living people is morally questionable, and that archaeologists should speak out against all injustices (of war and otherwise), and not simply the destruction of heritage. Neglecting people for the sake of objects makes claims of “idolatry” seem not so far-fetched, and at the very least may reinforce the notion among affected communities that archaeology and discourses concerning “world heritage” are simply the latest constructs of Western imperialism used to justify intervention in the region.^{Footnote 10}

But again, these issues are not quite so black and white, and to present the situation as either-or implies that human rights and archaeological preservation are mutually exclusive. Moreover, doing so assumes a universal “ranking” of rights that places the preservation of cultural expression and resources below “basic needs” such as food, clothing, shelter, etc.^{Footnote 11} Of course, we do not want to protect objects at the expense of living people, but to minimize the significance of cultural materials represents a static way of thinking that leaves no room for the importance of cultural meaning in promoting and securing human well-being, a way of thinking that has been increasingly challenged in contemporary development theory.^{Footnote 12} Ranking rights in a universal framework risks being just another kind of paternalism, not allowing room for those who would, as Sir Harold Nicolson once infamously claimed, “be prepared to be shot against a wall if I were certain that by such a sacrifice I could preserve the Giotto frescoes.”^{Footnote 13} History and our contemporary world is full of examples where people are willing to risk their lives for the sake of preserving cultural monuments and objects: during the 2011 uprisings in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, for example, young protesters were instrumental in securing the perimeter around the Cairo Museum.^{Footnote 14} If “freedom and opportunity for cultural activities are among the basic freedoms”^{Footnote 15} of a good life, surely, then, acting to safeguard cultural monuments need not be seen as incompatible with efforts to secure the well-being of affected people.

The continued possession of world cultural treasures by Western collectors and museums is justified because they are safer there

While many collectors and collecting museums see themselves as “rescuing” objects that might otherwise be destroyed, the other side of this is that the same museums resist calls to “repatriate” or return cultural objects to their countries of origin on the grounds that they are safer in the museums’ display cases and storerooms than in the country where the objects were discovered. The classic example of this is the “Elgin” Marbles, the name often given to the sculptures that adorned the monumental Parthenon in Athens and were taken to England by Lord Elgin to be placed on display in the British Museum, where they have been since 1816. Arguments in support of the British Museum’s retention of the Marbles often cite the history of social unrest in Greece as well as Athens’ terrible pollution (which has badly damaged the sculptures that remained there) as reasons why they are better off in London. Similar arguments are made in other cases, and certainly IS’s destruction of the monumental Neo-Assyrian palace gates at Nineveh and in the museum in Mosul makes one thankful that similar gates stand intact in the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and elsewhere.

But just because objects are generally safer in Western “international” cities does not justify the retention of all such objects over legitimate claims for repatriation. As Lyndel Prott once pointed out in the pages of this journal, “[t]he one-sidedness of … cultural internationalism … looks far more like cultural imperialism, based as it seems to be on the activities of those from wealthy countries with each other and with poorer states whose cultural resources are flowing in one direction, without an equal exchange.”^{Footnote 16} Separating communities from key products of their history and symbols of their cultural identity, such as in the case of the Parthenon sculptures or the Afo-A-Kom (an object that meets the test that scholar John Merryman termed “essential propinquity”^{Footnote 17}), perpetuates a kind of symbolic violence against those communities that may not be worth sustaining for the sake of an object’s relative safety.^{Footnote 18} And it doesn’t give local communities a chance to show that they can protect their own objects (as both the Afghanis and Iraqis did during the US invasions of 2001 and 2003).

This is not to say that all objects should be returned to their places of origin or that there is no place for collecting antiquities in any form. Among other issues, returning all objects would serve to reinforce tribalism and concentrate rather than mitigate risk of total cultural destruction. The circulation of objects, whether through loans, exchanges, or a legal and regulated antiquities market, has the capacity to generate important social relationships and promote values of sharing and understanding, in addition to increasing the chance that at least some examples of each culture’s heritage will survive into the next century.^{Footnote 19} A true cosmopolitanism, which can act to promote values such as tolerance and diversity—as necessary today as ever—means experiencing and understanding a range of cultures and ideas and is “among the most important features” of human development.^{Footnote 20} It is vital, however, that we do not react to the recent destructive acts by IS by simply retreating into old and easy zero-sum positions of “us” vs. “them,” and use their vandalism as an excuse to collect and retain as many cultural treasures as possible. For such an approach would only serve to enrich their pockets and accede to the clash of civilizations worldview that they espouse.