A tradeoff in the world of antiquities

Lauren O’Hara, Cyprus mail, 14-05-2011

Athens streets are littered, yet again, with glass from broken shop fronts:  another day’s protest. It’s last Wednesday evening and we’re walking to a lecture by the distinguished archaeologist, Colin Renfrew at the University. The destruction along Panepistimiou is curiously apt, as he shows us a photo of an ancient burial site, its valuable contents looted leaving simply discarded debris behind. His talk is about the money continuing to be made from the selling of stolen artifacts and the complicit web that encourages the trade in archaeological relics between the looters, dealers, collectors and, eventually, museums. It is a trade he tells us where ‘unprovenanced’ antiquities, those with no published source, are becoming more and more expensive. Last year, in one week, Christies and Sotheby’s in New York made 75 million dollars from the sale of these antiquities, including a record price for a Cycladic figure. It’s a trade, Renfrew forcefully argues, that needs to be stopped, because the puzzles of the past can only be solved if objects are left in situ. Context means everything to archaeologists: once objects are removed from sites, before investigations are complete, the story can only ever be half told.

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