!
I saw most of the Time Team episode Celtic Springjust now. I’m a fan of Time Team. I know it’s fashionable to knock it, but I think it does what it does really well. Celtic Spring is a good example because it was a site where a variety of artefacts had been taken from archaeological sites across Europe and reburied within the past 20 years. They showed how they knew this using basic archaeology and explained why.
There’s a scam on the increase of smuggling or stealing artefacts and reburying them. You then excavate them and they have a new provenance which means they can be traded. You couldn’t sell Roman pottery found it Italy because export is illegal, but an identical pot found in Wales could be sold, even if it’s the only pot of its type found outside of Italy. The sale of unprovenanced material is a major problem and many auction houses are happy to assist these sales so long as the seller doesn’t turn up in a stripy jumper and a bag marked ‘swag’. So kudos to Time Team for showing this and also to the Discovery Channel for showing the repeat.
But kudos repealed to Discovery for the choice of sponsor for the programme. The show ended with uncounted coins and a mass of other material, including a La Tene sword, rendered archaeologically worthless by the fraud committed. The aim was making easy cash from the sale of illicit antiquities. And then came the sponsor’s closing message.
“I bought this rare coin for my husband…” eBay advert
Antiques and Cultural Items – The export of antiques and other cultural items is subject to both UK and EU controls. Under UK laws any item manufactured or produced more than 50 years before the date of exportation requires an export licence. Some exceptions to this rule include stamps, birth, marriage or death certificates, letters written by or to the exporter and the export of personal property by the manufacturer or producer.
You are bidding for a genuine lot of detector finds mainly Roman… Will post to Worldwide.
ocoins omitting to mention the need for an export licence
I note that even though antiquities would by definition require export licences in the UK there’s not mention of this on the UK eBay pages listing them.
Emails will be sent, but tomorrow as it’s late and I have a paper to finish. —–
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