Elizabeth Marlowe is justly concerned about the matter of the provenance of antiquities in museum and private collections. Her emphasis on the importance of knowledge of origins for our understanding of an ancient work is admirable and correct. For students and scholars, she raises the epistemological question of how to proceed when provenance information is insufficient, untrustworthy, or entirely lacking. The study of what one might call compromised antiquities requires both skepticism about unreliable information that may have accrued from self-interested dealers or reticent owners and the regular use of comparanda with well-established sources. She makes a valid defense of stylistic analysis as a legitimate tool for placing and dating works without provenance. Such knowledge is based on generations of learning and should not be discarded as unscientific or devalued by distrustful designations such as “by affinity.”

In her discussion of exhibition catalogues that do not provide accurate provenance information, Marlowe raises the question of the responsibility of museums and collectors to be open and forthcoming about what is known of the history of an object or a work of art. One might assert (going beyond Marlowe) that the object from a remote past has a right to as much of its history as can be known—from manufacture to discovery—and that it is unethical for an owner to withhold information that is essential to such a full understanding. Data on provenance should in fact always be sought out at the time of acquisition, always be prized, and always be made known in publication and to the enquiring public. This requirement also means that there should be corresponding candor if a work lacks provenance. If museums today continue to accept gifts of antiquities without provenance (as is happening, for instance, at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art), the absence of knowledge about origins should at least be honestly stated, both in publications and in exhibition cases—if only to make clear to the public and possible countries of origin that the museum is conscious of the moral issues raised by the illegal market. Due diligence calls for museums and collectors to try actively to recover the full histories of acquired works and to make such information known openly and forthrightly.

In her concern for accuracy of information on provenance, Marlowe is wary of rating systems that quantify degrees of reliability provided by museums and collectors. She expresses this position in criticizing the categories devised by Chippindale and Gill in their excellent and well-known article published in 2000. ^{Footnote 1} In Marlowe’s view, their six categories are at once insufficiently skeptical and lacking in precision in the evaluation of published information. Even the highest rating p1 accepts unreliable assertions. She seems to be concerned that the Chippendale–Gill categories will be widely used by students and scholars to determine the reliability of provenance information, and she proposes instead that the simpler categories of “grounded works” (provenance known) and “ungrounded works” (provenance unknown) be employed. In their analysis of seven exhibition catalogues from the 1990s, Chippendale and Gill describe in detail the extent and consequences of the trade, employing the six-level scale to categorize the amount and nature of information on provenance provided for approximately 1,400 objects. The authors state that the information on actual archaeological provenance (what we should really be concerned about) was exceedingly rare. Their system was intended to demonstrate (or, more accurately, resulted in demonstrating) that a very large majority of the total number of objects had little or no secure data on origins and, consequently, that those works were likely to have been looted. It was an effective ad hoc scale invented for the purpose of the article, with no indication that it was intended to become a future standard of reference either for the objects in the seven catalogues or for application to other materials by other students and scholars. Marlowe’s demand for higher standards of evidence in the study of the history of an antiquity is an epistemological issue; Chippendale and Gill’s scale was a useful and effective investigative tool, and her dissatisfaction with it is unconvincing.

The root cause that lies behind the matter of inaccurate data on provenance remains the looting that deprives archaeological sites of their material record and stolen works of their functional history. A truly “grounded” work is one recovered through legitimate excavation; knowledge, however secure, that an object was found in Rome or Antioch is not an acceptable indication of provenance. The problem of looting offers at least some practical solutions. The sites can be effectively protected by civil authorities, and looters can be apprehended. Authorized excavations can be encouraged, and local museums and storerooms established for the exhibition and preservation of antiquities. Archaeology often produces economic benefits in employment and tourism, and active efforts to preserve and study an archaeological site can demonstrate its significance and value to local populations. School programs and organized tours foster pride in local monuments and sites.

As for the trade in antiquities, it can be discouraged both by international agreements and by the refusal of collectors and museums to enter into it. Here, even Chippendale and Gill were in my view insufficiently firm on the need for rigorous application in the countries of origin of existing legal protection for antiquities and sites. ^{Footnote 2} The antiquities market is not some preternaturally legitimate phenomenon; museums and collectors do not have supra-legal rights to possess illegally excavated and exported antiquities. Critics like James Cuno find fault with “retentive” legal regimes that protect sites and limit the export of antiquities, without recognizing both the potentially destructive effects of a more open market fueled almost entirely by works recently removed from the earth and the serious responsibilities of nation-states to protect their heritage. ^{Footnote 3} The antiquities market should itself become a thing of the past. The proper course (in addition to the abstention of buyers) lies in restricting the illegal trade, as exemplified in the national import controls resulting from the 1970 UNESCO Convention, in repatriations, and in the recent widespread restrictions in many countries on the import of near eastern antiquities that have entered the market because of disorder in Syria and Iraq. ^{Footnote 4}

Although not directly related to the issues raised by collecting, the recent intentional destruction of ancient monuments for ideological reasons, which erases both sites and works, is in its nihilistic effects certainly an even worse phenomenon than looting. The consequence of iconoclasm is the loss of unique products of human imagination and achievement, of looting valuable knowledge about such works. For the human past to be preserved and understood in its richness and complexity both of these lamentable practices should be strongly combatted.