Spotlighting Fake Antiquities with Record Keeping Laws

Fraudulent antiquities are sold in the same way that knockoff jeans, counterfeit medicines, and fraudulent sports merchandise are peddled to consumers.  The goal of the sellers is to maximize profits by selling worthless goods.

Fake Meryet Amun statue placed into evidence in U.S. v. Schultz.

Fake antiquities can be found on internet auction sites and other sales venues.  Moreover, there have been prominent cultural property cases featuring fakes, including the Arnold Peter Weiss case, where the convicted defendant possessed forged ancient coins, and the seminal case of U.S. v. Schultz, where a smuggler possessed a statue of the Egyptian princess Meryet Amun, which was a fake.

Just as record keeping laws can spotlight black market antiquities and bleach them from the legitimate marketplace, so too can the same laws protect consumers by helping authorities uncover fakes and forgeries offered for sale. A full description of the proposed statutes have been described in a prior blog post.  In brief, the laws would require auction houses, dealers, galleries, shops, and other entities engaged in the antiquities trade to maintain records of the following:

• Descriptions of the names and addresses of the parties involved in a transaction, a description of the cultural object, and the amount of money exchanged.

• All available import documents and export permits connected with the object.

• A description of the provenance/chain of custody/collecting history of the object known to the seller or consignor along with supporting documents, photos, affidavits, and the like when available.

• Any condition reports associated with conservation reports, insurance documents, shipping paperwork, etc.

Such record keeping would help identify fraudulent merchandise and uncover falsely created documents that purport to "authenticate" cultural objects. The information would assist consumer protection authorities located at the Federal Trade Commission and at state attorneys general offices to more easily investigate and prosecute suspected fraudulent merchants.

This post is researched, written, and published on the blog Cultural Heritage Lawyer Rick St. Hilaire at culturalheritagelawyer.blogspot.com. Text copyrighted 2012 by Ricardo A. St. Hilaire, Attorney & Counselor at Law, PLLC. Any unauthorized reproduction or retransmission of this post is prohibited. CONTACT: www.culturalheritagelawyer.com

Fakes on the Market, Looting on the Decline...

MSN posted an insightful piece of interest to collectors, dealers, and archaeologists. It is reported that the production of fakes is easier than looting authentic archaeoligical objects, thereby reducing looting from archaeological sites.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Ebay & Looting


Peruvian archaeology has found an unusual ally in the battle against looting in the internet and websites such as eBay. This is according to Charles Stanish, a UCLA archaeologist, writing in the June 2009 issue of Archaeology. Stanish has excavated for 25 years at fragile archaeological sites in Peru. It was feared that online auction sites would increase looting as the looter could sell directly to the buyer eliminating costly middlemen. In fact, online auction websites have actually helped reduce looting as the average looter or craftsman can now make more money selling cheap fakes online rather than spend weeks digging for the real thing and running the risk of not finding anything. It is less costly to transport a fake and the risk of arrest is removed. Moreover, workshops churning out cheap fakes and replicas can also produce elaborately detailed fakes which can be so authentic even experts are deceived. Locals can use original ancient moulds, often found during excavations but of no real value themselves, to create exact replicas using clay from original sources and local minerals to make paint fordecorating the pottery. The only way to know for sure if a piece is genuine is through thermo-luminescence dating which calculates when the pottery has been fired. But this is expensive for the buyer and many sellers will not offer refunds on pottery that has undergone “destructive” analysis. Ten years ago the ratio of real to fake Peruvian artefacts for sale online was roughly 50:50. It is now thought that only 5% of items are authentic, 30% are fakes and the rest are too difficult to judge from online photographs. This turnaround emphasises how paradoxically online auction sites have helped to combat the trade in illicit antiquities. Also, its not just Peruvian fakes that are flooding the illicit antiquities online market; Chinese, Bulgarian, Egyptian and Mexican workshops are also producing fakes at a frenetic pace.

Fakes and Forgeries

The Associated Press reported in today's NY Times that Italian authorities last year recovered thousands of looted art and antiquities valued at close to $240 million US dollars. The story said: "Police figures show the number of illegal archaeological excavations discovered in 2009 decreased dramatically, from 238 in 2008 to just 58 in 2009. But at the same time, the number of people charged with falsifying artwork rose more than 400 percent."

The fact is that forged art exists in the marketplace, and this newspaper report serves as a caution to stay alert. Authenticating artwork is an essential component to ethical collecting. One should take time to ensure that a piece is not just looted or illegally exported, but that it is genuine.