Adapting the Cycladic Method for the Cypriot Market
Antiquities collection catalogues compile the scientific and historical information concerning the material in the collections recorded, ideally including comprehensive ownership records for the objects as well as a history of the collection itself. Using these catalogues, it is possible to extract raw data concerning the date, location and method of discovery of the antiquities in the possession of museums and collectors, which is otherwise only accessible through archaeologists’ and collectors’ statements regarding their own activities. This study uses data from two large public collections of Cypriot antiquities recovered before conflict and housed in France (at the Musée du Louvre) and two large private collections of Cypriot antiquities recovered during conflict and housed on the island (the Pierides Foundation and the Severis collections). Due to this article’s concern with the relationship between the illicit antiquities trade and the Cyprus Conflict, the sample collections were chosen for analysis because they were formed during two distinct geopolitical, legal and policy periods: during British colonial rule; and during the civil war. A more refined study of historical changes in antiquities collections’ sources (tied to legislative changes as well as geopolitical conditions, and properly acknowledging the violence between 1955 and 1959) would require a systematic survey of the Cypriot antiquities market. The study adapts foundational work on the sources and consequences of the trade in Greek antiquities, which studied collection (and auction) catalogues (Chippindale and Gill 2000; Gill and Chippindale 1993; Nørskov 2002: 256–270), and cross-references the catalogue data with demographic data and historical information. Thereby, it enables an exploration of the community-level functioning of the illicit antiquities trade in Cyprus, and of the relationship between the trade and the conflict.
Archaeologists Christopher Chippindale and David Gill analysed the published records of Classical and Cycladic antiquities in order to determine the material and intellectual consequences of their being appreciated and collected. They drew attention to the unreliability of information provided in catalogues about artefact find-spots (2000: 469–470), categorising the security of an artefact’s provenances as: “known” or “almost certainly” known to be from a specific location; “said to be” or “allegedly” from that place; “probably” from there; or “possibly” or “perhaps” from there; otherwise, “unknown” or unstated; or stated based upon (i.e. inferred from) material and/or stylistic affinity with known objects (see also Gill and Chippindale 1993: 611n107).Footnote 1 In the Cypriot context, however, their categorisation requires some modification.
At the very least since the 1960s, it has been standard in Cypriot collection catalogues to list deliberate finds of excavations and surveys, and accidental finds made on the surface and during development. For example, Cyprus Museum curator and antiquities department archaeologist Kyriakos Nikolaou (1966: 28) distinguished between material ‘excavat[ed]’ or ‘collected’ (i.e. during survey) by archaeologists, and material ‘accidentally discovered’ (e.g. during development) by others. Nikolaou (1966: 41) even identified ‘pottery acquired… coming from a looted tomb’; however, as looting ethnographer Greg Deftereos (2007: 9) observed, “unknown origins” and the ‘grandfather clause’ (falsely-claimed inheritance) are used as ‘face-saving (and sentence-saving)’ ways of avoiding saying that something was looted. So, it is safe to assume that artefacts without information (or innocuous explanations of the lack of information) are probably illicit antiquities.
It is even safer to assume that in the collections under study such antiquities are also illicit, because the antiquities director at the time of their formation, and a common author of all four catalogues, was Vassos Karageorghis. He is the person who described the secret state ‘policy by which Greek Cypriots were allowed to buy antiquities looted by Turkish Cypriots.... in consultation with the Department of Antiquities’ in the Pierides collection catalogue (Karageorghis et al. 1985: 14), coined the term ‘silent accord’ in the Severis collection catalogue (Karageorghis 1999: 17), and reiterated that it consisted of ‘quietly allow[ing] the purchase of antiquities from the Turkish [Cypriot] enclaves by Greek Cypriots’ then ‘giv[ing] a period of grace to all private collectors’ in his memoirs (Karageorghis 2007: 102). Subsequent antiquities director Sophocles Hadjisavvas (2001: 135) defined the collected antiquities as ‘illegal’ antiquities ‘from illicit excavations’.
Thus, as regards Gill and Chippindale’s ranking of location categories, when examining the catalogues of the two museum and two private collections selected for this study, I included ‘said to be’ and ‘probabl[e]’ find-spots in my analysis as ‘known’ because archaeologists who published Cypriot antiquities repeatedly made uncertain statements, but nevertheless demonstrated certain knowledge, about the geographical/community sources of those antiquities. For example, then junior archaeologist (later antiquities director) Pavlos Flourentzos published Four Archaic Terracottas from Cypriote Private Collections, all of which were probably looted, three of which were from an “unknown” location, and one of which was ‘[p]robably from Athienou’ (1977: 153). In fact, the artefact was definitely from Athienou. Flourentzos (1977: 153) explained that subsequent ‘excavations dated the tomb in which this terracotta was found to the 5th century B.C., but the piece… dates to the 7th century’. He explicitly stated that the Department of Antiquities excavated the artefact’s find-spot and, by definition, they could not have known the tomb in which the artefact had been found if they did not even know the village in which the artefact had been found. If the reliability of the claim of the excavation is questioned (rather than the unreliability of the assertion of ignorance), neither the Department nor Flourentzos would have claimed the object’s deposition in a never-before-used region, two centuries after its production, if they were not certain of (or indeed if they knew that they did not know) both place and time, because its only effect would be to distort the historical record. The exceptional claim would be subject to exceptional scrutiny, and any hypothesised professional advantage would be lost if they could not present any evidence, such as the most rudimentary excavation records.
Indeed, in one of the publications under study here, the catalogue of the Severis Collection, by then retired antiquities director Vassos Karageorghis (1999: 33) cautiously noted that it was ‘quite possible’ that particular ‘groups of vases’ had come from Marki Davari, which had been ‘thoroughly looted during the years when the Collection was formed’; then he noted that it was ‘quite possible’ that a particular dagger blade had ‘come from the same tomb’ (Karageorghis 1999: 43). He, too, would not have identified specific tombs, or reconstructed original assemblages, if he did not know where the objects had been found, or with which others they had been found. Karageorghis was already considered the ‘godfather of Cypriot archaeology’ (e.g. Carter and Morris 1998: 3), so there could have been no conceivable professional benefit from making such claims, while there could have been a great professional cost.
Elsewhere, there is even more direct evidence of Cypriot looters’, dealers’ and collectors’ systematic documentation of looted artefacts’ origins, and of cultural heritage professionals’ trust in those documents, since at least the 1950s: the Zintilis Collection ‘carefully recorded’ original locations ‘wherever possible’; and archaeologists confirmed that the records comprised ‘accurate information’ (Lubsen-Admiraal 2003: 9). ‘[N]one’ of Zintilis’ antiquities was ‘recovered during regular excavations’ (ibid.: 9), which itself implies that at least some of them were recovered through irregular (illicit) excavations. ‘[M]ost’ were collected ‘in the 1950s and 1960s when this was still possible’ (ibid.: 1), while the collection, sale and purchase of accidental or otherwise licit finds is still possible now (ROC 1996: Art. 4; Art. 26). And 277 of the 280 antiquities with collecting histories only had ‘relatively reliable’ find-spots (Lubsen-Admiraal 2003: vi), whereas accidental finds (such as artefacts that were found in ploughed soil by farmers) would have had publicly-identifiable finders and absolutely certain find-spots. Indeed, the collection catalogue did identify licit finders and explain their discoveries; so, for example, it specified that artefact number 537 had come from ‘the courtyard of Mr. Zintilis’ home’, and that artefacts 59 and 201 had come from the farmers of Zintilis’ village (Lubsen-Admiraal 2003: 1). Thus, the finds with technically uncertain find-spots must have been finds with illicit origins, where the digger or dealer had told the buyer the origins of their acquisition. This information was judged sufficiently reliable to be approvingly written up by an archaeologist (Stella Lubsen-Admiraal) and published by an archaeological press (Paul Åströms Förlag) who, like Flourentzos (and his publisher, the Department of Antiquities) and Karageorghis, had nothing to gain and everything to lose by affirming and publishing unreliable or false find-spot data. By way of contrast, the publication of the Morris Collection of Cypriot antiquities by its owner, who was not an archaeologist, only provided any information at all for 24 of the 584 objects presented (Morris 1985), so the decision made by professional archaeologists to publish find-spots seems to be a free and positive attempt on their part to enter reliable evidence into scholarly record.
This evidence demonstrates that archaeologists received and published reliable and detailed data on looting and illicit trading. If the information was certain, it could still be asked why the archaeologists presented it as uncertain. The first reason may be simply that it was second-hand information, so it could not be presented as if it had been scientifically recorded, but that would not adequately explain the simultaneous reporting of probable find-spots and excavations of those (theoretically-unknown) find-spots. The second (and third), more robust, reason(s) may be that the collectors’ and archaeologists’ sources (of antiquities and information) were illicit diggers and illicit dealers: the archaeologists may have wanted to obfuscate their close connections with participants in the illicit antiquities trade, and those illicit actors’ impunity.
For the purposes of this study, finds from outside Cyprus would have skewed study of the Cypriot trade, and finds from vague locations within Cyprus would have skewed study of community participation (as, at the time, Greek Cypriots constituted a majority on the island and in all of its regions, so they would have been presumed responsible for all looted antiquities of indeterminate origin). Thus, artefacts definitely or likely found or first recorded outside Cyprus were excluded from the analysis. Artefacts with find-spots of “Cyprus” or its geographical or administrative regions, or with find-spots that were seemingly materially and/or stylistically-inferred, were included in the analysis of the probable legality/illegality of the collections’ sources, but were excluded from the analysis of the probable looting communities.
The Limitations of the Data
Many published collections were assembled across significantly different periods in geopolitical and policy terms but are not sufficiently well-documented to enable reliable interpretations. Many have such piecemeal data that assuming their partially-documented objects were representative of the entire collection (let alone broader historical trends), for example by either assuming undated antiquities were from one period or the other or excluding undated antiquities from analysis altogether, could significantly misdirect understanding. Other collections are so well-documented that the generalisation of their very particular histories, bound up with archaeological regions and social networks, could similarly misdirect analysis.
It is worth noting that a complete lack of information regarding find-spot and find-date does not imply that the antiquity was looted in a Turkish Cypriot enclave (during the civil war). When dealers and collectors knew from which enclave an object was looted, archaeologists recognised that fact; they recorded find-spots such as ‘Marki or Kotchati’ (e.g. Karageorghis 1999: 58), which implied that the objects were found “somewhere in this enclave” rather than “in this precise place”. There is no reason to assume that they did not record other such known find-spots.
Of the four collections under analysis, two were wholly collected within one period and two were largely collected within a second period, so there is no (significant) risk of confusion. The two collections of pre-conflict antiquities should comprise a random sample of community sources, as they were published for their scientific value (Caubet et al. 1981: back cover). The two collections of mid-conflict antiquities should comprise a non-random sample of solely Turkish Cypriot sources, as they were governmentally approved (and subsequently legalised and published) as collections of material from those sources (Karageorghis et al. 1985: 14; Karageorghis 1999: 17).
Though the data set is small—theoretically small enough for one person or a small group to have uncovered all of the objects—it is highly unlikely that they did so. The artefacts are from across the island, from Turkish Cypriot enclaves as well as Greek Cypriot villages, so it is incredibly unlikely that one person or a small group would have had the knowledge and access to conduct all of the work themselves. It is technically possible that one person or a small group could have acquired all of the antiquities for each collection, but that would have no bearing on the evidence of bicommunal participation in the extraction of the antiquities. Moreover, they are only the traceable few from collections of thousands of antiquities on the island. While in no way the responsibility of any community or a reflection upon any community, the extraction of tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of antiquities, within the decade of civil war and under the conditions of civil war, must have involved large-scale participation.
Accordingly, any evidence of looting by members of the Greek Cypriot community during the civil war would be significant, not only because it would contradict the established state—and professional—narrative that illicit antiquities diggers during that period consisted of Turkish Cypriots in the enclaves, but also because it would contradict the very bodies of evidence that were used to produce that narrative in the first place and remain standard sources that perpetuate it.