8.4: Selling Archaeological Finds

In many countries the private ownership of archaeological finds is restricted or forbidden by law. In those countries where the selling of archaeological finds is allowed, archaeologists see it as unprofessional to engage in it and tend to see this as one of the features that defines the discipline. Calvin Cummings (1983)in a paper titled “A Matter of Ethics” summarised the positions taken by eight of the main archaeological societies in America. All of them opposed the selling of artefacts from sites for profit or to enhance personal collections.  Interestingly, the Code of Conduct of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists does not contain any reference to this, presumably taking it as granted. It does however (1.7) contain the following:

A member shall not knowingly be employed by, or otherwise contract with, an individual or entity where the purpose of the contract is directly to facilitate the excavation and/or recovery of items from archaeological contexts for sale, and where such sale may lead to the irretrievable dispersal of the physical and/or intellectual archive, or where such sale may result in an undispersed archive to which public access is routinely denied.

While accepting that the practice is not illegal, it is widely disapproved among archaeologists in  the English speaking world on several grounds. The sale of archaeologically procured finds means that they disappear into the private domain, where their integrity is no longer assured. Furthermore, there are no constraints over what then happens to them, there are no international legal protections and no accepted obligations related to ownership of cultural property in private possession (Stevenson 2017). Another area of concern is that such sales confer an air of legitimacy to the whole antiquities trade, yet this market is in fact to a large extent a “grey” one. Alongside material arguably of licit origins there are on the same market illicit items (artefacts with no known provenance or with opaque ownership histories, accompanied by fake documents, or outright fakes). The most serious issue is that making material available fuels market demand in Europe, North America and Asia and become an incentive for looting. For the trade, see among others, Brodie 2006.

Some artefact hunters keep all the artefacts they find, but others intend to build a more selective collection and therefore decide to sell surplus items to other collectors.

The Portable Antiquities Scheme gives advice for people buying archaeological objects from the UK. Unfortunately, instead of "don't, because...", it is to advise the responsible buyer to make certain determinations of the circumstances of the sale for each object offered for purchase:
1. The responsible purchaser should be supplied with proof of legal title to sell. If the object has been recently discovered and the person selling the object is the finder, then they will need to document the permission of the landowner on whose land the object was found before they can sell it. If the person selling the object is not the finder or landowner, then the purchaser must have proof that the seller in fact has legal title to sell.
2.The responsible purchaser should determine and obtain documentation of where and when the object was found, and from this ascertain what laws applied at the findspot. The seller must have documentation verifying their account of the item's provenance and their legal title to sell.
3  The responsible purchaser should determine whether there was a legal obligation to report the find, and whether it was before it came on the market. A copy of all appropriate documentation should be made available if there was a legal obligation to report the find.

Obviously, the responsible artefact hunter is one that - if the objects are sold - can provide the full details and documentation along the above lines of each and every object they regard as superfluous to their own collection.

In Our Portable Past (Section 5) Historic England addresses the question of 'Trade in Antiquities':

Historic England strongly supports the United Kingdom Government’s position that trade in illicit antiquities should be stopped, and this statement conforms to the standards set out in international conventions [...] To facilitate this:
- Historic England will not participate in or condone any illicit international or national trade in material arising from archaeological activities or fieldwork;
- Historic England will support the general principle that archaeological material should not be sold for profit (in exceptional cases such sales might be acceptable as part of a properly formulated and agreed disposal policy);

References
Brodie, Neil, ed. 2006. Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities Trade. Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida.

Cummings, Calvin 1983, 'A Matter of Ethics. SOPA Newsletter 12(2) 1-3.

Cummings, Calvin R. 1986 'A Matter of Ethics'. In Underwater Archaeology: Proceedings of the 14th Conference on Underwater Archaeology, edited by C. R. Cummings, p. 1-5, Fathom Eight, San Marino, California.

Historic England 2018, 'Our Portable Past: Guidance for Good Practice' (3rd edition, 20 February 2018)

Stevenson, Alice 2017, ' Why archaeological antiquities should not be sold on the open market, full stop', The Conversation July 13, 2017



Tamara Kroftova comments:
"Again, it is difficult to see why the responsible collector is not taking the lead in setting patterns that would aid cleaning up the antiquities market, yet they are consistently failing to do so."