Monday, July 28, 2008

Israel's antiquities registry

A citation by Nathan T. Elkin lead me to "From the Ground to the Buyer: A Market Analysis of the Trade in Illegal Antiquities" by Morag M. Kersel (in Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities Trade (2006)).

My main interest in the paper is how dealers avoid registries. I've been trying to design a registry and need to understand common attacks.

Background: Israeli antiquities dealers are allowed to buy and sell antiquities registered before 1978. Antiquities not in the registry are the property of the state of Israel.

Kersel claims that dealers re-use the same registration for similar antiquities, using the example of a Herodian oil lamp, 'registry #147'. When the lamp is sold the buyer receives a certificate of authenticity (CoA) from the dealer and perhaps an export license 'issued by the [Israel Antiquities Authority]'. A description and registry number appear on the export license. Kersel claims that if the buyer doesn't ask for the license the dealer can continue using the registry number without fear of detection.

A request to my readers. If any of you have bought a coin in Israel and obtained either the certificate of authenticity or the export license I'd like a scan (and English translation). If any of you have bought a coin by mail from Israel I'd be curious to know if the export license arrived with the coin and if you had to ask for it.

Kersel doesn't say if the CoA includes or excludes the registry number. It must not because if it did a police detective could easily buy similar items from the same shop a month apart and receive proof of the scam. Yet I would think a knowledgeable Israeli collector would insist on receiving the registry number for coins he planned on keeping in Israel, if only to be assured of the legal status and to have the possibility of one day selling or donating to a foreign museum.

The attack Kersel documents makes use of the non-specificity of the registry descriptions. A registry including photographs would be much harder to scam, or one recording weights down to the tenth of a gram (noting that items do gain and lose a bit of weight due to moisture or poorly calibrated scales.)

Kersel includes a colorful story of a shoeshine who moonlights as an illicit antiquities dealer. Kersel claims that Palestinian female herb growers in Hebron find coins while gardening and sell them to the shoeshine for less than 2% of retail. The shoeshine sells them to dealers for 20% of retail.

It should be easy to detect this! A detective could photograph a legally excavated coin and drop it in a Hebron herb garden. If it was a scarce coin it would soon appear in the trays of the dealers who patronize the shoeshine. The detective could then buy it with the bogus registration number.

I don't know how many antiquities, specifically ancient coins, appear in the pre-1978 registry. I'd be very curious to know! Ten-thousand? A million? Detecting suspicious activity on large and small registries have different problems.

It would also be interesting to know if the export license database is kept digitally. If so, it should be easy to check for re-use of numbers. This wouldn't detect clever dealers but should foil the clumsy or inattentive.

The scam Kersel documents, though somewhat clever, seems easy to unmask. Perhaps Israel's police detectives lack the time or the will. Kersel admits the Antiquities Authority is understaffed and illegal antiquities are a low priority. That's valid. However, Kersel quotes O'Keefe (Trade in Antiquities (1997)) saying that the effectiveness of licensing dealers and having registries is questionable. I think that's unfair. When the pro-collecting community suggests licensing and registries for countries with looting problems we mean ones with enforcement — a least spot checking. We don't mean the paperwork itself solves the problem!

2 comments:

Jim said...

Here is my own idea pretty much verbatim that I listed on UNIDROIT-L.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Unidroit-L/message/2688

Greetings,

We all have discussed (and bickered) about how to solve the problem of
coins and looting. I think this is a problem that has several key
component parts.

1) One big problem with looting is that in source countries with
confiscatory laws, 'finding' an object intentionally or
unintentionally can land you into trouble with the authorities and
lead to confiscation. There is no incentive to properly report a find
but every reason to go to a black market dealer. I think we need to
look at a looter's motivation to dig - to make money. The laws should
be changed to both honor private property concepts such as rewarding
the finder and property owner for one thing so people are compensated
fairly and do not turn to the black market. The other is to co-opt the
diggers/looters to learn proper archaeology from the archaeologists,
at least in some rudimentary basic way and bring the archaeologists in
as both teachers and as monitors creating a symbiosis between the
archaeologists and the citizens of the source country.

Write the laws so that the symbiosis carries benefits and higher
profit and independent, illicit looting is less profitable and carries
punishments. However, intelligent persons who are deemed to have
genuine gifts for archaeology and meet certain competencies may be
certified to work on their own or with reduced supervision.

2) Create a universal form for finds. Each form could have it's own
alphanumeric number that is entered into a database, data would
include a snapshot of the find in situ and if immediately conserved,
an item such as a coin could have a photograph of each side taken as
well. To address the possibility of this becoming cumbersome, if the
archaeologist in charge determines all or most of the coins would be
the same or similar and of low to moderate value, a percentage sample
could be individually shot and the rest put on the market sold as a
lot with a general provenance ticket. You would wind up with something
like this:
-----
Ticket #: ABCD0009876
Country: United Kingdom
Area: Colchester
Items: 245 bronze coins of Constantine I (#76), Constantine II (#58),
Constans (#61), Licinius (#30) & unidentified slugs (#20).
-----
Individual coins worth recording could each have their own separate
ticket and have the usual archaeological & numismatic info such as
date of find, find spot, strata level (if applicable), country, ruler,
obverse, reverse, size, weight, grade, denomination, metal, die axis, etc.

All ticket data would be entered into a searchable database that
includes those categories and photos.

If so desired, for an extra fee a coin could be slabbed. (Ugh!)

A similar format could be applied to any other artefact, both those
that are unique such as statuary, mummies, weapons, etc and others
such as oil lamps, buckles, pins, arrow heads, etc that are more common.

3) Tax it all. I know some of us have an aversion to taxes, maybe call
it an 'antiquity collector's user fee' (ha-ha!). Keep the fee low
enough so it does not discourage sales but high enough to continue to
fund the things archaeology needs like site security, funds for
further expeditions, publishing, etc. Oh, and of course to pay those
people building and maintaining the database! I envision it as a
percentage sales tax of a rate between 5 to 9%. So if an archaeologist
or a certified/licensed person would find a hoard of 100 silver coins
valued at $50 each (to use a round number) and the lot was sold for
$5000 then a 5% tax would create a $250 revenue. Of the $5000, the
property owner would get $2500 and the finder or archaeological team
would get $2500. The tax would be paid by the buyer like when the
winner of an auction pays a hammer fee.

4) Give private collectors a way to enter their unprovenanced coins
and antiquities into the database so their item has a number and a
place in the database in the future. This makes sense because while
some collectors collect everything they like, most specialize and
those who specialize will have knowledge to impart as items are
entered into the database. As items are sold and resold a trail of
ownership (pedigree) can be built and established. When a sale is
made, a dealer can immediately enter the transaction into the
database. When a private individual gives an item or collection to a
museum, the museum can refer to the database and make any needed
entries. Likewise when a museum sells off deaccessioned items, again
the record can be made to reflect that in the database. After this
becomes normative practice if a seller tries to sell an item with no
credentials of provenance nor pedigree to a buyer, the buyer will shun
him. Hence looting and the sale of looted items will become
unprofitable and the sale of ones with a known title will become not
merely profitable but normative.

5) Collectors and dealers with items valued at $25 or less will be
encouraged *but not required* to enter said items into the database.
No criminal penalties will apply to the sale or ownership of low
value, untitled items. I suspect if the fee to enter an item is
minimal, a collector might do it if for no other reason than to raise
it's value just as American coin collectors do when they 'slab' a
modern US coin. In the end only the most abysmal and common examples
will end up unrecorded.

6) Make use of the database for ancient coin dealers & antiquity
dealers mandatory by law. Also dealer members of coin groups like the
ANA, ACCG, PNG, etc who are ancient coin dealers would be required to
regularly record their sales into the database or have their
membership revoked. This would keep dealers accountable. This measure
should be introduced gradually. It would be worthwhile to put some
time and effort into having training seminars annually or semiannually
even in different regions so dealers would have a chance to learn how
it worked and how to use it.

There would be a penalty free phase-in period for several years while
such an apparatus was phased in. I say this mainly because if it was
done tomorrow, there would be a large number of older dealers who are
so averse to computers and modern technology that it would be
draconian in the extreme to force them to use such a thing. More
computer literate people around my own age and younger would probably
feel entirely at home with such a system.

I am sure I am forgetting something but I think this would be a good
solution. To start with I think the database and form should be
created 1st. If we make it normative practice in the world of
numismatics and eventually museums and antiquity sales, it may just
catch on and the laws will catch up to us.

I think a system like this would be a mutually agreeable answer to our
current dilemma. I think once we drop our swords, we might realize we
have more in common than we think. We both love the past, we both are
concerned with conservation of ancient items. We just gotta toss out
all the class warfare and give each other the benefit of the doubt.

Best to all (even Nathan and Paul),

Jim McGarigle

************

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Unidroit-L/message/2689

My Own Solution - An Addendum

Comments interspersed below,

[snipped for brevity]
>
> 2) Create a universal form for finds. Each form could have it's own
> alphanumeric number that is entered into a database, data would
> include a snapshot of the find in situ and if immediately conserved,
> an item such as a coin could have a photograph of each side taken as
> well. To address the possibility of this becoming cumbersome, if the
> archaeologist in charge determines all or most of the coins would be
> the same or similar and of low to moderate value, a percentage sample
> could be individually shot and the rest put on the market sold as a
> lot with a general provenance ticket. You would wind up with something
> like this:
> -----
> Ticket #: ABCD0009876
> Country: United Kingdom
> Area: Colchester
> Items: 245 bronze coins of Constantine I (#76), Constantine II (#58),
> Constans (#61), Licinius (#30) & unidentified slugs (#20).
> -----
> Individual coins worth recording could each have their own separate
> ticket and have the usual archaeological & numismatic info such as
> date of find, find spot, strata level (if applicable), country, ruler,
> obverse, reverse, size, weight, grade, denomination, metal, die
axis, etc.
>
> All ticket data would be entered into a searchable database that
> includes those categories and photos.
>
> If so desired, for an extra fee a coin could be slabbed. (Ugh!)
>
> A similar format could be applied to any other artefact, both those
> that are unique such as statuary, mummies, weapons, etc and others
> such as oil lamps, buckles, pins, arrow heads, etc that are more common.

If there was a desire on the part of a seller to record the resale of
a bulk lot he purchased, he could apply a Sub Number (SN) to the
original number hence if he sold 5 coins to John Doe from Ticket #:
ABCD0009876, they would be numbered, ABCD0009876SN1, ABCD0009876SN2,
ABCD0009876SN3, ABCD0009876SN4 & ABCD0009876SN5.

ALSO - The universal form and the database would be used to record all
finds - both those headed strictly for being housed in museums or in
the case of common items like coins - items for sale. The form and
database are not just for the benefit of collectors and dealers but
for all involved.

> 3) Tax it all. I know some of us have an aversion to taxes, maybe call
> it an 'antiquity collector's user fee' (ha-ha!). Keep the fee low
> enough so it does not discourage sales but high enough to continue to
> fund the things archaeology needs like site security, funds for
> further expeditions, publishing, etc. Oh, and of course to pay those
> people building and maintaining the database! I envision it as a
> percentage sales tax of a rate between 5 to 9%. So if an archaeologist
> or a certified/licensed person would find a hoard of 100 silver coins
> valued at $50 each (to use a round number) and the lot was sold for
> $5000 then a 5% tax would create a $250 revenue. Of the $5000, the
> property owner would get $2500 and the finder or archaeological team
> would get $2500. The tax would be paid by the buyer like when the
> winner of an auction pays a hammer fee.

For items that would be put into govt museums, I'd follow the example
of the UK and give a fair market reward to the finder and property
owner and tax the reward as income targeted for archaeology expenses.

[snip]

> Best to all (even Nathan and Paul),
>
> Jim McGarigle

************

Here, Ed, I hope that is readable for you. Let me know what you think.

Best Wishes,

Jim McGarigle
Polymath Numismatics
ANA, ANS, ACCG

Cultural Property Observer said...

Ed- I am by no means an expert on either ancient Jewish coinage of Israeli law, but I understand from several dealers that Isreal only issues generic export licenses, i.e., ones that allow for by way of example the legal export of 150 denarii. There is typically no effort to list the coins separately or to picture them. I suppose practical considerations are paramount in this process.

Best regards,

Peter Tompa