In advance of a longer, more detailed post that I am currently researching regarding the legal and contextual differences inherent in the selling of archaeological "antiquities" vs. ethnographic/historic "antiques," let me present a case study that has just come to my attention. According to an article in The Times of Malta, a private seller has attempted to list an "antique" amphora (photo at left) recovered from a shipwreck, age and exact cultural provenance unspecified, on the local all-purposes classifieds website maltapark.com. A local diver and "marine activist," one Antonio Anastasi, expressed outrage at this theft of perceived 'national heritage,' and seemed readily able to cite local law dictating that nothing over 50yrs old (i.e. "antiques," including more ancient antiquities) could be privately claimed or sold in Malta. Apparently, police and the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage have been notified, an investigation has been launched, and there's hopes that the artifact might soon end up in a local museum (where at the very least, more archaeologically relevant details and context can be presented to the public).
What struck me more was the diversity of positions taken by those who've commented on the story to date. Setting aside the ones in Maltese which I can't read, those in English run the gamut from apathetic ("heritage....gimme a break") to challenging the Time's reporting of Mr. Anastasi's legal claims (apparently no such law is cited in the Territorial Waters and Contiguous Zone Act of 1971), to further outrage over the loss of information this act represents ("the value of an antique is not in the object itself so much but in its history, its provenance"). This case reminds us that, depending on the region and artifact type in question, there may be very blurry boundaries indeed between antiques and antiquities, and laws in general (both local and global) might consider them almost one and the same, despite the very real differences in context lost when isolated archaeological artifacts, even from clearly historic periods such as the amphora in question, are lifted from their contexts. In the longer post to come, these issues and more will be further investigated. Stay tuned...
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