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Should endangered antiquities be leased out?
Michael Kremer has another neat idea:
Most countries prohibit the export of certain antiquities. This practice often leads to illegal excavation and looting for the black market, which damages the items and destroys important aspects of the archaeological record. We argue that long-term leases of antiquities would raise revenue for the country of origin while preserving its long-term ownership rights. By putting the object into the hands of the highest value consumer in each period, allowing leases would generate incentives for protection of objects.
I'm all for trying this, as I see no major downside. But I don't think it would have a large positive effect. Collectors, being irrational creatures and "completists," wish to own rather than lease, even if the lease extends past their expected lifetimes. Museum donors wish to fund museum acquisitions more than museum borrowings. Similarly, it is much easier for a non-profit to raise money for buying a building than leasing one long-term. So the demand for leased antiquities won't be all that huge.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 26, 2007 at 07:12 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
How much does the National Zoo pay China to have the pandas in Washington? I believe no pandas are ever "sold" -- always loaned in exchange for large amounts of money. China even owns the babies born overseas.
There are differences between zoo animals and ancient vases -- but the similarity is that the public wants to see them on display, which makes money for the displaying institution.
Posted by: mae at Apr 26, 2007 7:54:21 AM
This is a GREAT idea! Step 1: Britain can lease the Elgin Marbles to Greece! I'm sure
there won't be any problem whatsoever getting them back!
Posted by: Person at Apr 26, 2007 9:18:12 AM
I believe the quote has two flaws. First that "illegal excavation and looting" damage the items. And second, that this practice "destroys important aspects of" the record. The notion of collective ownership of "antiquities" is socially constructed and bogus as far as I believe. The notion of "damage" is false because to the archaeological industry anyone getting their hands on antiquities beside themselves is "damage."
But I agree with the conclusion that leasing them is not very practical.
Posted by: ajkrik at Apr 26, 2007 11:19:27 AM
Interesting idea. I think it would work for high-value antiquities. I suspect a motivation for strict cultural patrimony laws is to avoid embarrassment. In Burton Berry's biography he talks about how collecting antiquities changed in the '40s and '50s. Dealers were bragging about the incredible profits they got buying coins in the Middle East and selling them in Switzerland. At that time they didn't have access to good information or good sales channels and were treated as rubes by dealers. At about the same time, socialist archaeologists showed up and flattered the locals by telling them that antiquities were too important for private ownership.
Unfortunately, patrimony laws deprive locals of access to sales channels, so the problem doesn't get fixed. Source counties should incent their populations to turn in looters by licensing legal dealers and encouraging those dealers to turn in crooked competitors instead of banning private ownership.
I have a small collection of ancient coins. The average value of my coins is about $20 each, although for ancient coins in general it is probably $1. I am curious about proposals with less than $1 of management cost per antiquity per decade, for objects that we don't want to visibly mark.
Posted by: Ed at Apr 26, 2007 2:59:24 PM
I am not sure leasing would have any effect on the antiquities trade, but the Van Gogh museum sent it's entire collection on tour for long enough, and for enough, to rebuild itself.
Posted by: Lord at Apr 26, 2007 4:08:19 PM
ajkrik: The mind boggles.
Many ancient objects are quite fragile; if they are excavated carelessly they break. Some are so fragile that exposure to air can cause visible damage within minutes (oxygen is quite reactive and some antiquities have been in essentially oxygen-free environments for millennia, such as the bogs underlying Vindolanda). Excavating them without immediate provisions for conservatorship results in damage.
And, yes, illegal excavation destroys important aspects of the record. A huge amount of the historically useful information of archaeology is not from the object itself; it's from the object's context. Without careful excavation and records, you lose the knowledge of where it was found (not just geographic area but depth) and in the company of what objects. This makes it harder to date it and makes it impossible to relate it to contemporary objects and integrate those objects into a complete picture of the culture that used them. You end up with disconnected shards of pottery -- maybe pretty to look at, but not much help in understanding the culture that produced and used them. Additionally, it destroys things that aren't pretty to look at; only the pretty ones are of interest on the antiquities market, but modern cooperation between archaeologists and chemists is yielding information from things until recently unnoticed, like grains of pollen, or residue in cooking bowls. These things are overlooked, broken, churned out of context without very attentive excavation, and once out of context they're worthless.
The developments in archaeology over the last century, in terms of standards of practice, have been tremendous. A century ago everyone stood where the looters stand now, nothing more than digging up pretty things for museums. And modern archaeologists and historians look back in shame and weep for the lost, irrecoverable, knowledge.
It is, of course, not impossible that illegal excavation would be carried out in a well-funded, professional manner, with excellent records subsequently made available to scholars or the public. But it does not seem to generally be the case, particularly as these excavators are motivated by profit, not by increasing the store of human knowledge.
So, sure, be as free-market as the next guy, but seriously, do you know anything about archaeology? At all?
(I am not an archaeologist; I have an MA in classics from a program which included a lot of classical archaeology students.)
Posted by: Andromeda at Apr 26, 2007 6:08:51 PM
I don't know why you say museums wouldn't want to borrow antiquities. They do already. At one point in my life, I had a job that included reviewing liability cover for large culturally-important tours to New Zealand.
Tours were quite common, and the objects coming ranged from Impressionist paintings to collections of dinosaur bones. The value of the assets in any one tour ranged from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions (large painting collections makes up the latter). Often these tours were sponsored by large corporates.
I have no special information about collectors.
Posted by: Tracy W at Apr 29, 2007 11:30:05 PM
So, sure, be as free-market as the next guy, but seriously, do you know anything about archaeology? At all?
To the comment above, feel free to offer your own solution.
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Posted by: 謝文豪 at Apr 2, 2008 2:27:05 AM
