Oscar Muscarella's "Fifth Column" of Plunder Culture

All too often, debates about cultural property are made to look simply like battles between curators/collectors/dealers and archaeologists. In an article published in Studies in Honor of Altan Çilingiroglu. A Life Dedicated to Urartu on the Shores of the Upper Sea, Eds. H. Saglamtimur, et al. Arkeoloji ve Sanat Yayinlari, Istanbul, 2009, "The Fifth Column Within the Archaeological Realm: The Great Divide," Dr. Oscar White Muscarella looks at the network of plunder in all the complexity it deserves, and pays special attention to an overlooked accomplice in the continued destruction of the past.

According to Muscarella there are four visible mutually supporting columns operating within the realm of "Plunder Culture." These groups, in order, are: on-site looters or tombaroli, smugglers and local dealers, professional antiquities dealers, and lastly, wealthy collectors, including museums and universities, both public and private.

Cultural heritage may be endangered most, however, by the fifth invisible column whose members are within the archaeological community. Muscarella illustrates the ways in which professional archaeologists facilitate Plunder Culture, and their participation does not just include the more obvious examples of performing authenticity evaluations for wealthy collectors. Members of the archaeological community also enable plunder by accepting money, invitations, committee memberships and appointments from fourth column institutions with dishonorable acquisition policies and compromised attitudes toward the value of context.

The hypocrisy in these affiliations has yet to be broadly acknowledged by the media and by the field of archaeology. The members of the fifth column have yet to be publicly denounced, and as a result:

They continue to flourish, their activities proceed successfully and unabated, they get awarded - revealing that the discipline of archaeology has no comprehensive sense of itself, no unclouded self-knowledge, no awareness of its moral and academic weakness.

Muscarella is unafraid to name names (of both the good and bad, the individuals and institutions) and avoids ambiguous and ineffective discourse about the problems of cultural property. He urges archaeologists to reconsider the consequences of their professional, academic, and personal associations, and to those who consider themselves clean, he urges active participation in the protection of cultural heritage.

To join Dr. Muscarella's SAFE tour at the Metropolitan Museum on Friday, October 23 at 6:30 PM, you can buy tickets from our website.

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