Understanding the 1970 UNESCO Convention

There appear to be common misconceptions about a Convention adopted at the 16th General Conference of UNESCO on 14 November 1970 in Paris. Its full - and somewhat unwieldy - title is 'Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property'. (I'm hoping to propose a 'Convention on the Benefits of Not Trying to Cram an Entire Synopsis into a Title' at the next General Conference.) Its purpose was to combat the illicit trafficking of cultural property (including of course ancient artefacts).

The Convention came into force on 24 April 1972 but it is important to bear in mind that it was just an agreement and was not in itself a law. It was left up to individual nations to implement the Convention in their own laws upon ratifying or accepting it. Since laws are not usually retroactive, compliance with them typically dates from the year each of those laws was passed, not that of the Convention. A chronological list of the years that nations ratified or accepted the Convention is published on the UNESCO website.

Although many museums and other institutions have adopted the year 1970 as a cut-off point in the acquisition of antiquities, that year is purely voluntary - based on ethical rather than legal considerations. The Convention itself (Article 7a) advises that they should be prevented from acquiring cultural property which has been illegally exported after the date that both the country of origin and the country of the institution ratified or accepted the Convention. In the case of the UK acquiring an object from Turkey, for instance, that date would be 1 August 2002 (although Turkey ratified the Convention in 1981, it was not accepted by the UK until 21 years later). It is of course up to the institution to determine if an object is likely to contravene that rule and, as said, most set a much earlier date for ethical reasons.

A similar responsibility (and ethical awareness) is placed on dealers and collectors to ensure they do not acquire illicit cultural property (Article 5e). Although nations are exhorted to keep an up-to-date inventory of their national heritage (Article 5b), that cannot of course include individual objects as yet unknown in archaeological sites (Article 1c) and it is therefore incumbent on dealers and collectors to establish that an archaeological object was legally exported.

If a nation declares that its archaeological material is under threat of pillage, other signatories undertake to control international trade in the relevant material (Article 9). In the US, such measures are normally effected by means of a bilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) under its implementation of the Convention (Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act 1983). A summary of that Act is published by the US government.

The Convention also seeks to prohibit the import of cultural property stolen from a museum or similar institution or from a public monument (Article 7b), and return the property to its country of origin providing that it was documented and that compensation is paid where appropriate (the latter provision subject to certain conditions in the US). The UK stipulated that, in its own case, return was subject to its rules on limitation to claims (typically six years under the Limitation Act 1980). 

Misconceptions

As said, there appear to be common misconceptions about what the 1970 UNESCO Convention is and what it is not. This was recently highlighted by the comment submitted by an archaeologist to an online article regarding the questionable collecting habits of an elderly Australian digging up artefacts in the Middle East:

“The short answer is, yes, it was illegal [...] International law sets the deadline at 1970 — the date of the 1970 UNESCO Convention — for the removal of artifacts from the ground for collection. So if she began in 1967 and continued for 11 years (as the article states), then she was breaking the law.”

The archaeologist was right to be outraged but, in fact, he was wrong about the 1970 UNESCO Convention. It is not "international law". Nor is there any "deadline at 1970". Australia did not accept it until 1989. Neither of course does the Convention have anything to do directly with "the removal of artifacts from the ground for collection". As its full title suggests, it concerns import, export and transactions.

The laws that the elderly Australian was probably breaking were those of the countries she was digging in. Her blatant disregard of those laws is reprehensible but it is important to employ the correct framework to condemn its illegality. In the case of Australia, the pertinent legislation is the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986, which sets no time limit for "unlawful imports".

Still waiting ...

Paul Barford has recently mentioned my draft proposal for an International Antiquities Registry (IAR). As he points out, it has now been over four years since I made the proposal. It was quite widely publicised at the time but there was no response from the antiquities trade.

To pre-empt a possible objection, I should point out that the scheme was never intended to satisfy (or replace) the demand for a cut-off date based on the UNESCO Convention 1970, the year accepted by most museums and archaeological organisations as the date beyond which no antiquity should be acquired without an Export Licence from the country in which the antiquity was found. Neither is the scheme intended as a carte blanche amnesty.

The scheme is designed as a goodwill gesture that will accomplish three objectives ...

1. Being able to distinguish between artefacts that have been circulating for years and those that have been freshly dug up
2. Diminishing the destruction caused by ongoing looting by being able to avoid making any contribution to it
3. Public Relations: dealers and collectors would be seen to be actively doing their part to preserve the archaeological heritage – a far better image than the current one of being perceived by many as selfishly contributing to its destruction

In other words, the scheme is a start in the right direction. And who knows what the situation will be in twenty or thirty years time? Certainly, an artefact that has been conscientiously recorded in the database is likely to be far better regarded than one whose owner didn't bother and left it without any demonstrable collecting history at all.

But the response from the antiquities trade (both auction houses and dealers) has so far been unanimous in one respect: the silence is deafening. I summed up three consequences of that cavalier attitude. It might be worth pondering them - particularly my third point. Time is running out.

Minor antiquities: the importance of keeping records

Paul Barford, an archaeologist with a keen interest in protecting the archaeological record from looting, recently observed: Surely there are more than enough shabtis on the market with verifiable provenances showing licit origins ...

No, Paul. Sadly, there are not.

The big impressive shabtis with lots of hieroglyphs are 'high-end', in a similar category to other major antiquities. If you happen to be an oil magnate it is relatively easy to find and insist on those with a long provenance to the Bagsofmoney Collection and illustrated in Sothebys/Christies catalogues. No problem.

But the run-of-the-mill (affordable by those who aren't millionaires) shabtis are in a similar league as other 'minor' antiquities: ordinary scarabs, pots, amulets, lamps, fibulae, etc. The huge majority don't have even hearsay provenances, let alone verifiable ones. Vast quantities of such things came into Western Europe and North America in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Many were bought as souvenirs or knick-knacks long before export licences were needed. Many of the things themselves were probably thrown out unrecognised by heirs and certainly most of the early receipts have long gone. If such low-money stuff ever went through any major auction house at all (very little did) it would have been in unillustrated multiple lots. Problem.

Collecting
I imagine Paul's remark was actually rhetorical (as was my reply) - in fact he is of course thoroughly aware of the issues regarding collecting - but it makes a useful springboard for discussion since it does succinctly encapsulate the views of many worried about heritage conservation and the effects of unbridled collecting on a fragile archaeological resource. I share that concern and I'll comment in general on the situation from the collecting point of view.

It seems easy to insist that only objects with a documented history before 1970 can be collected. But that would condemn nearly all the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of minor artefacts already in circulation to oblivion.

The only sensible option is a more pragmatic approach, a middle road, one which embraces the notion that unrestricted and irresponsible collecting will encourage the destruction of a finite and fragile resource, yet one which also acknowledges that the huge heritage of undocumented artefacts which already exists must be cherished.

Objects without context
The view expressed by some that objects without context have no value is patently nonsense, a blinkered view held only by those too biased to see beyond their own goals. Context is king - it is not only how we can learn about the ancient world in general but even how we advance our knowledge of the objects themselves - and an object divorced from it is a frustratingly missed opportunity - but that object is still by no means meaningless. In an ideal world every artefact would be carefully recorded in its context - and we increase the chances of that by collecting responsibly - but it would be madness to spurn those artefacts collected by earlier generations simply because their context was lost.

Cut-off date
The problem lies in distinguishing between those thousands of objects inherited from old collections and those objects which are being ripped from the ground today and obliterating archaeological evidence in the process.

It's no good indiscriminately insisting on a documented provenance going back before an unrealistic and arbitrary cut-off date such as 1970 (even the UNESCO Convention itself didn't come into force until 24 April 1972, the USA didn't accept it until 1983, the UK accepted it in 2002 and Germany ratified it in 2007). That arbitrary year may serve for museums acquiring major objects which are more likely to have records. It is not realistic for minor objects.

We have seen that it is pointless to naively insist on old pre-1970 documentation for the majority of low-value antiquities; most minor artefacts no longer have early receipts or other records and many were around long before export licences.


But equally it is clear that the status quo cannot go on. An increasing population with increased leisure time, aided by modern technology such as metal detectors and the internet market, is gobbling up artefacts and destroying the archaeological resource faster than anything our forefathers could have imagined.

Impasse
As long as conservationists insist on an unrealistic and largely unworkable cut-off date and collectors insist on not coming up with an achievable alternative, we will have stalemate - an unsustainable impasse which will eventually doom collecting in public opinion. It is the merits of heritage conservation that will win public opinion, not the protests of a minority that selfishly ignores them.

Action
There has to be action - and the initiative has to come from those who wish to carry on collecting. The only way to both discourage the destruction of the archaeological resource and preserve the undocumented 'orphaned' artefacts we already have (rather than throwing them out) is twofold:
1) to perform as much 'due diligence' as possible to determine if an item is likely to have licit origins, and in the absence of any documentation, to use informed judgement,
2) to properly record the item now as far back as possible.

By recording objects now, and then at some point insisting on acquiring only those objects which have been recorded by a certain date, collectors will help to eliminate a market for freshly excavated (and thus unrecorded) objects in the future. Voluntary recording is infinitely preferable - none of us would wish the potential alternative of recording forced by legislation - but it must be done if we care about both the archaeological resource and the heritage of orphaned objects. And the sooner the better.


The general public in the 39 years since 1970 has not been aware enough or dedicated enough to appreciate the reasoning behind the importance of recording artefacts - it's too late to change that - but a more conservation-aware present and future generation will have a less cavalier attitude. They will increasingly insist that any artefact they buy (or even respect) will have some kind of provenance to show at least that it has not contributed to recent destruction. The further back - even if only to 2005 or whatever - that provenance goes the better it will be.

People are becoming increasingly aware of heritage conservation and the day will certainly come when an artefact without even an attempt at documentation will be as shunned as ivory and fur. An irresponsible collection of unrecorded artefacts will have the same stigma (and the same worthlessness) as a collection of birds' eggs (another pasttime considered harmless until it was realised how much damage was being done).

A fascinating history of a hobby that became socially unacceptable.


Collectors have the opportunity to maintain the appeal and restore the respectability of artefact collecting - but that calls for an attitude which differs from the status quo: an attitude which clearly demonstrates that instead of traditionally turning a blind eye to the problem that threatens to make artefact collecting socially unacceptable, collectors are actively working to help eliminate that problem themselves.

Collectors can, and must, show that instead of working against conservation, they are working with it.