In the course of researching artefact-hunting in Eastern Europe, I found netnographic evidence of transnational trafficking and analyses by ethical collectors of markets in Western Europe for looted antiquities (and forged antiquities) from Eastern Europe. Specifically, I found evidence of looting (and forgery) in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, some of which had been published by artefact-hunters in online forums and social networks, some of which had been published by ethical collectors Lodewijk and Renate, in “an open forum for dealers and collectors of ancient artifacts”. However, I didn’t have space to include it in the study, so I’ve posted it here. (Paul Barford has also commented on the evidence that has been provided by Lodewijk and Renate.)
Concomitantly, much of the transnational trafficking is conducted among the countries of the region, seemingly principally (but not solely) from Ukraine to Russia, as manifest in everyday trading activity (e.g. RUCAE160, who was a Chinese-born, Russian-citizen artefact-hunter in Russia who also handled cultural goods from Ukraine) and evidenced by conversations that are regularly initiated by tourists in Ukraine who want to post rather than carry illegal purchases back to Russia (e.g. RUCAE111, who was in free territories) or collectors in Russia who simply want to buy illegal goods from Ukraine (e.g. RUCAE124, who was in free territories), as well as tourists from occupied Crimea who want to transfer currency from a local bank account to a Russian bank account (e.g. UACAE037).
Equally naturally, as manifest in everyday trading activity, much of the transnational trafficking forms a net flow of cultural goods from victimised societies in Eastern Europe to consumer markets in Western Europe and North America (e.g. RUCAE130, who wanted to post historic coins to Germany). Antiquities collectors, who have applied artefactual expertise and open-source research methods to monitor the online market (see Lodewijk, 2021a-2021i; Renate, 2021a-2022c), have identified outlets in countries in Western Europe such as Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom for objects that have been sourced from South-Eastern Europe and Eastern Europe, notably Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.
They have incidentally identified the same problems at the high end as at the low end of the market (see Renate, 2021b) and on the palaeontological as on the archaeological market (see Lodewijk, 2021h). Evidently, those similarities are reflected in the sourcing of palaeontological material as well. For instance, in 2009, four mammoth-hunters were detained with four firearms (according to RULEA001, 2009 in INOC001).
While supply chains frequently “lose” – passively allow the loss of, or actively destroy –incriminating evidence of cultural commodities’ archaeological origins and collecting history, it can sometimes be reconstructed, either because experts recognise objects when they are re-advertised or because sellers recycle texts and images from their suppliers. Fake goods and misrepresented goods are so rife that it would not advance this analysis to list alleged culture-historical details.
Nonetheless, for instance, one fibula, which was marketed on Catawiki by a dealer in Austria in November 2021 as having been in a collection in Austria since the 1980s, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in Ukraine at an undetermined date, who had only joined the community in January 2015; another fibula, which was marketed on Catawiki by a dealer in Austria in March 2022 as having been in a collection in Austria since the 1990s, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in Ukraine in November 2020; yet another fibula, which was marketed on Catawiki by a dealer in Austria in November 2021 as having been in a collection in Austria since the 1980s, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in Ukraine in October 2020; still another fibula, which was marketed on Catawiki by a dealer in Austria in November 2021 as having been in a collection in Austria since the 1980s, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in Ukraine in November 2020 (Renate, 2022b); and a further fibula, which was marketed on Catawiki by a dealer in Austria in May 2021 as having been in a collection in Austria since the 1990s, had been auctioned on Violity by a seller in Ukraine in December 2020 (Renate, 2022c).
All of those had been advertised as ‘purchased by the current owner in 2016 in [Vienna,] Austria’, from an ‘Old Austrian Private Collection’, wherein the seller could allegedly ‘prove that the lot was obtained legally’, with a ‘provenance statement [that had been] seen’ by the auction platform (as recorded by Renate, 2022a: 13). In addition, an amulet, which was marketed on Catawiki by a dealer in Germany by September 2021 as having been on the market since 2015 and in a Dutch collection before then with all of ‘the right [legal] licenses’, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in an unidentified location in February 2019 (Lodewijk, 2021c); a pendant, which was marketed on Catawiki by a dealer in Poland in October 2019, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in an unidentified location in October 2017 (Lodewijk, 2021c); and a (mislabelled) brooch, which was marketed on Catawiki by a dealer in the United Kingdom in March 2022 as having been in a collection in the United Kingdom since the 1990s, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in Ukraine in November 2020 (Renate, 2022c).
Furthermore, a pendant, which was marketed on LiveAuctioneers by a dealer in the United Kingdom in November 2020, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in an unidentified location at an undetermined date; an axe, which was marketed on LiveAuctioneers by a dealer in the United Kingdom in September 2019, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in Ukraine at some point since November 2011 (who was complimented as an artefact-hunter by one of his buyers, UACAE039); two (mislabelled) brooches, which were marketed on LiveAuctioneers by a dealer in the United Kingdom in February 2021, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in Ukraine by September 2016; a fire-striker, which was marketed on LiveAuctioneers by a dealer in the United Kingdom in February 2021, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in Ukraine in October 2016; two (mislabelled) brooches, which were marketed on LiveAuctioneers by a dealer in the United Kingdom in February 2021, had originally been auctioned as part of a lot of three on Violity by a seller in an unidentified location in March 2018; another (mislabelled) brooch, which was marketed on LiveAuctioneers by a dealer in the United Kingdom in February 2021, had originally been auctioned as the other part of the lot of three on Violity by a seller in an unidentified location in March 2018; a buckle, which was marketed on LiveAuctioneers by a dealer in the United Kingdom in November 2018, had originally been displayed on vKontakte by an online community of metal-detecting artefact-hunters in Ukraine in April 2017; and a (fake) brooch, which was marketed on LiveAuctioneers by a dealer in the United Kingdom in May 2018, had originally been auctioned on Violity by a seller in an unidentified location in September 2017 (Lodewijk, 2021f; 2021g; see also Renate, 2021c).
These highlight that, although it is true that some truly exceptional objects are stashed for a decade or more before they are advertised on the open market, many more ordinary objects are extracted, marketed, sold, transferred and re-advertised in a year or less, even when they are sourced from a fragile state at a time of armed conflict, without any paperwork or with demonstrably inaccurate paperwork.
More generally, it has been observed that there are sellers in Ukraine (and in Russia, cf. Lodewijk, 2021d; 2021e; 2021i) on platforms like eBay, with ‘really rare artefacts, large [numbers] of lots’ and, in some cases, ‘photos of when they were just dug up’, yet no paperwork whatsoever, who are securing ‘large quantity buys by several sellers’, which indicates that ‘they’re being bought for resale’ in market strongholds (Lodewijk, 2021h). As ever, they include forgeries (Knell, 2021).
They are also securing good prices, compared with the long-established standard that less than one or two per cent of the value on the consuming market flows back to the extractor in the source country (as has been documented for Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nigeria, Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Israel-Palestine, India and China, see Brodie, 1998: 7-8; Brodie and Contreras, 2012: 11-12). Although it is difficult to get a good sample, due to the rarity of cases that have been traced from market to source without any of the relevant data having been withheld or deleted by traders or trading platforms along the way and due to the variability in the potential length of supply chains in online markets, at least one case demonstrates that artefact-hunters may be getting around 29.50% of the market value by selling or auctioning to dealers in market countries (Lodewijk, 2021c; the pendant was bought from a seller in Ukraine for UAH 2,302 or EUR 73.75 and bought from a seller in Poland for EUR 250; the artefact-hunter’s cut is even double the notably good cut of 15% that was secured by artefact-hunters in Jordan, as documented by Brodie and Contreras, 2012: 12).
Moreover, the supply chain is not only fed with potentially looted antiquities, which have frequently been subjected to “restoration” that constitutes modification or indeed destruction, but also (extensively) fed with apparently forged antiquities (such as those from the cottage industry of fake manufacturing in Thailand, which has been documented by Lodewijk, 2021a). Forgers, too, are securing comparatively good prices; tentative evidence suggests that they may be getting around 10.35% of the market value (Lodewijk, 2021b).
Whether unscientifically extracted or recently manufactured, these objects, which have been sourced from Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, are frequently misattributed, for instance, to highly-marketable “Vikings” instead of less-marketable “Finno-Ugrics” and others from other times and places (Renate, 2021e). And, while some sellers and intermediaries may be ignorant, others modify and refine their still-inaccurate and uninformative categorisations and descriptions in response to critiques by consumers and academics (Renate, 2021a).
Bibliography
Brodie, N. 1998: “Pity the poor middlemen”. Culture Without Context, Number 3, 7-9.
Brodie, N and Contreras, D A. 2012: “The economics of the looted archaeological site of Bab edh-Dhra: A view from Google Earth”. In Lazrus, P K and Barker, A W (Eds.). All the king’s horses: Looting, antiquities trafficking and the integrity of the archaeological record, 9-24. Washington, D.C.: Society for American Archaeology.
Knell, D. 2021: “2 eBay shops that made the hair in my neck stand up…” Ancient Artifacts, 11th October. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/95805
Lodewijk. 2021a: “Thai online shops, coming in by the boatload, list of shops on Ebay etc.” Ancient Artifacts, 3rd September. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/95552
Lodewijk. 2021b: “Thai online shops, coming in by the boatload, list of shops on Ebay etc.” Ancient Artifacts, 3rd September. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/95557
Lodewijk. 2021c: “Some questionable gold pendants”. Ancient Artifacts, 10th September. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/95600
Lodewijk. 2021d: “Pax-Romana, did they mislabel a box of viking rings?” Ancient Artifacts, 15th September. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/topic/85629120#95629
Lodewijk. 2021e: “Pax-Romana, did they mislabel a box of viking rings?” Ancient Artifacts, 16th September. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/95651
Lodewijk. 2021f: “Timeline, some lots checked for Russian/Ukranian connections”. Ancient Artifacts, 23rd September. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/95699
Lodewijk. 2021g: “Timeline, some lots checked for Russian/Ukranian connections”. Ancient Artifacts, 24th September. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/95712
Lodewijk. 2021h: “2 eBay shops that made the hair in my neck stand up…” Ancient Artifacts, 8th October. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/95787
Lodewijk. 2021i: “The example of ‘Old Abraham’, russian sites with complete hoard finds on offer”. Ancient Artifacts, 17th October. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/95846
Renate. 2021a: “Questionable ancient brooches at Catawiki in February 2021”. Ancient Artifacts, 1st March. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/94272
Renate. 2021b: “Some questionable finds at a reputable place”. Ancient Artifacts, 18th March. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/94564
Renate. 2021c: “Timeline, some lots checked for Russian/Ukranian connections”. Ancient Artifacts, 24th September. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/95710
Renate. 2021d: “Fanciful Viking amulet stories, or did the Alans worship Odin?” Ancient Artifacts, 17th December. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/96032
Renate. 2022a: “A few brief notes about ancient brooches offered at catawiki.com in March 2022”. Ancient Artifacts, 1st April. Available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZUgBrWzjlQ43nBwptbhxBFbB_9YlEfNF/view
Renate. 2022b: “Questionable ancient brooches at Catawiki in April 2022”. Ancient Artifacts, 1st May. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/96586
Renate. 2022c: “Questionable ancient brooches at Catawiki in May 2022 v2”. Ancient Artifacts, 2nd June. Available at: https://groups.io/g/AncientArtifacts/message/96672
conflict antiquities 