Egypt, Antiquities and Copyright

Alun Politics, The Past 2 Comments , , , , ,

Mickey Mouse Copyright Laws
Mickey Mouse Copy­right Laws. Based on a photo (cc) Liber.

One of the advant­ages of being slow in writ­ing is that you can look at what every­one else is say­ing about some­thing. Often people will have thought about the same prob­lem and already anti­cip­ated prob­lems in your own line of thought, so you can avoid mak­ing a fool of your­self. Other times it’s a sur­prise, and this is one of those times. News from the BBC is that Egypt is ‘to copy­right antiquit­ies’.

Egypt’s MPs are expec­ted to pass a law requir­ing roy­al­ties be paid whenever cop­ies are made of museum pieces or ancient monu­ments such as the pyr­am­ids and this law will apply around the world.

To a greater or lesser extent other blog­gers think they can’t do this and they can’t enforce it. In con­trast I think they can and they can. This isn’t just my very basic under­stand­ing of law. It’s also the fact that museums in the West have been doing this, more or less, for years. Below is where I make a fool of myself.
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Bones of ancestors returned in Africa

Alun Politics, The Past 1 Comment , , , ,

Reu­ters is now allow­ing embed­ding of video clips. In this one bod­ies exhumed from a Mapun­gubwe archae­olo­gical site in north­ern South Africa are being returned for reburial. It’s a stag­ger­ingly good idea.

I didn’t think it would be. As far as I under­stand it Mapun­gubwe was one of the most com­plex Iron Age soci­et­ies in Africa. It had extens­ive trad­ing links with other soci­et­ies. At the same time you have to look at the con­text of the excav­a­tion. The bones were taken in 1933. It might have been archae­ology, but it was also about gain­ing con­trol of the land for the Whites. At the same time re-burying the bones would, I thought, mean los­ing inform­a­tion about a major fea­ture of African his­tory and the local com­munit­ies would be vic­tims again. Actu­ally this is not the case because the reburial is rather clever.

The remains are being bur­ied in sealed con­tain­ers in sealed vaults. This sat­is­fies the local people that the bones are being rebur­ied. At the same time it will hope­fully leave them safe should they wish to invest­ig­ate their past — but the next time it should be with their consent.

Mo’ loot, mo’ troubles

Alun Life, The Past 2 Comments , , , , ,

Archae­o­porn has an entry illus­trat­ing one of the prob­lems with buy­ing illi­cit antiquit­ies. It turns out that not all crim­in­als are trust­worthy people. Take for instance the Seal of Yzbl, it’s a seal of Queen Jezebel as men­tioned in the Bible™. At least it is if you don’t look at it too closely. If you do, then all sorts of oddit­ies appear — that’s not a prob­lem it was found at… umm… oh dear.

Archae­o­porn also men­tions the Guen­nol Lion, which I haven’t because I know noth­ing about it. David Gill in con­trast knows as much about its find spot as any­one else.

David Gill has also talked about the Bolton Prin­cess recently. If you don’t know this story, Bolton Coun­cil had the oppor­tun­ity to buy a statue of the Amarna Prin­cess, a 3000+ year old statue from Egypt. There was no check on the proven­ance and the sellers wish to remain anonym­ous. This is par for the course in antiquit­ies sales so far. Noth­ing more would have been heard were it not for the fact that the same sellers tried to sell some wall reliefs to the Brit­ish Museum and some spelling mis­takes were spot­ted. An invest­ig­a­tion fol­lowed and a search revealed three more Amarna Prin­cesses which had been knocked up over a few weeks by a bloke in a shed.

It’s pos­sible the Bolton Armana Prin­cess is a fake.

David Gill has a sens­ible and grown-up reac­tion to the news. Me, I’m reminded of the K Found­a­tion and want to applaud. The case sug­gests that the sting was about art rather than money. The per­pet­rat­ors were described as liv­ing in “abject poverty.” If there were a scheme to ensure the proven­ance of arte­facts for sale then maybe this wouldn’t hap­pen. I’m sur­prised that reput­able col­lect­ors and auc­tion houses aren’t clam­our­ing for such a scheme.

— and an update before this post goes live —

I write quite a few posts in advance, and this is one of them, so I can include another Green­halgh for­gery thanks to the Cranky Pro­fessor. The Art Insti­tute of Chicago has a Green­halgh Gaugin. These things could become col­lect­ible. If you can fake proven­ances, then how many unproven­anced antiquit­ies on dis­play are fake?

An ethical Homeopathic puzzle

Alun Politics, Science 7 Comments , ,

Oscil­lo­coc­cinum is a remark­able sub­stance. It’s a homeo­pathic rem­edy which fights the Oscil­lo­coc­cus bac­terium. Now some scep­tics will balk at that and ask how a homeo­pathic medi­cine can fight any­thing. That’s not a prob­lem in this case as Oscil­lo­coc­cus prob­ably doesn’t exist. That’s a dis­trac­tion. What’s inter­est­ing is Oscil­lo­coc­cinum itself.

Oscil­lo­coc­cinum is made from the extract of heart and liver of a Mus­covy duck. This is diluted to 200CK. The K refers to the method of dilu­tion. You fill a glass with a solu­tion and then empty it. Then you refill the still damp glass with 100ml of fresh pure water. This method assumes you’ve just diluted your solu­tion by one part in a hun­dred. The C is the bit that tells you it’s one part in a hun­dred. So in this case 1ml of heart and liver extract is diluted in 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 litres of water. If you took a drop of heart and liver extract and mixed it with all the water in all the oceans on the Earth, it still wouldn’t be any­where near as diluted as Oscillococcinum.

Once I saw that one ques­tion lodged in my mind: “Is it suit­able for veget­ari­ans?“
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Good Homeopaths found!

Alun Politics, Science 1 Comment , ,

Hur­rah! I can close the week­end on an upbeat note. Shpal­man has had a look at his area and did not find homeo­paths who claim to cure can­cer, mal­aria, AIDS or scrofula. It would seem that at in at least some areas homeo­paths do all stick to their Code of Eth­ics. It’s nicer to think of them as people who may be a bit incom­pet­ent rather than evil. How incom­pet­ent? Well Shpal­man did find this quote from Oakleigh Homeo­pathy.

Homeo­pathic Rem­ed­ies are pos­sibly the safest form of medi­cine I have come across, an aspect very import­ant to me then, in the care of my small chil­dren, and now in the care of my patients. If the rem­ed­ies are not care­fully matched they simply won’t work, a point born out acci­dent­ally by my chil­dren who dur­ing a lapse of atten­tion man­aged to eat whole bottles full of the rem­ed­ies and had no ill effects whatsoever!

Yes, someone who believes the pills could have a major effect on a person’s health dis­covered they were safe after she let her chil­dren eat bottles of the stuff.

It’s back to archae­ology and ancient his­tory tomorrow.

Is there any disease which a member of the Society of Homeopaths won’t claim to be able to treat?

Alun Politics, Science No Comments , , ,

I’m guess­ing scrofula. So far I haven’t found a homeo­path who will claim to cure scrofula. The Queen has noth­ing to fear. In fact she’s quids in if she catches AIDS because, you’ve guessed it, homeo­pathy can treat AIDS accord­ing to one mem­ber of the Soci­ety of Homeopaths.

I had five minutes so I thought I’d check my home county. It would at least be a com­fort­ing to know that uneth­ical homepaths weren’t on the prowl loc­ally. So I checked the SoH web­site for Derby­shire [Google Cache] [PDF Print]. The second web­site on the list was Helen Coles [Google Cache] [PDF Print]. I think she’s con­vinced me I was far too leni­ent in my pre­vi­ous post as she says:

People suf­fer­ing from all kinds of ill­nesses, from depres­sion to arth­ritis, migraine to ulcers and the more ‘mod­ern’ ill­nesses includ­ing AIDS and ME, can be helped by homeo­pathy to regain their health.

Now as last time I could argue ‘regain health’ means alle­vi­ate symp­toms rather than cure, so she’s not actu­ally say­ing she can cure AIDS. I may feel a revul­sion to the claim but, by itself, it doesn’t break the Society’s Code of Eth­ics. The next sen­tence reads:

Good homeo­pathy will not just drive away the symp­toms but help the patient deal with the cause of the ill­ness and regain good health.

Good homeo­pathy would deal with the cause of AIDS? Now again I could argue that she’s not claim­ing her­self to be a good homeo­path. She’s not said “I can cure AIDS and ME” in so many words. She just put the cure concept snugly up against AIDS and ME. On the other hand if you see someone in black clothes, with sin­is­ter organ music on their iPod and sharp pointy teeth from a joke shop, you have to accept they want to be seen as a bloodsucker.

I think the Soci­ety of Homeo­paths is at a cross­roads. It’s clear that some mem­bers are flout­ing the Code of Eth­ics. In each of the four counties sampled there has been at least one prob­lem with the mem­bers who have web­sites. How much faith should we have the Soci­ety of Homeo­paths stands for high qual­ity health­care? Accord­ing to their dis­claimer:

The Soci­ety of Homeo­paths makes no war­ranties, rep­res­ent­a­tions or under­tak­ings about:

(a) any of the con­tent of this web site (includ­ing, without lim­it­a­tion, the qual­ity, accur­acy, com­plete­ness or fit­ness for any par­tic­u­lar pur­pose of such con­tent), or

(b) any con­tent of any other web site referred to or accessed by hyper­text link through this web site (‘third party site’).

You should con­sult a suit­ably qual­i­fied per­son on any spe­cific prob­lem or mat­ter, which is covered by any inform­a­tion on this site before tak­ing any fur­ther action.

Does that mean none at all?

The Ethics of Homeopathy

Alun Politics, Science 6 Comments , , ,

homeopaths
A homeopathic photo of Homeopaths. (Note to the Society of Homeopaths legal friends: The pixels containing photos of homeopaths have been been diluted and re-diluted into another photo, so that no detectable pixels from the original photo remains. Thus this is a much more potent photo of homeopaths than orthodox photography. You believe that right?) Undiluted photo Ducking Hell (cc) Gaetan Lee.

I read an interesting article on Respectful Insolence yesterday. It was actually from the Quackometer, but you can't see it on there at the moment. It’s a really good demon­stra­tion of one of the reas­ons why I don’t often blog on medicine.

If you don’t know about this story, here’s the con­densed ver­sion. Put your­self in the place of an hon­est homeo­pathic con­sult­ant. You know that your patients are likely to be very vul­ner­able. They’re ill and they’re prob­ably don’t feel that con­ven­tional treat­ment will help them. Maybe they’re bey­ond the help of sci­entific medi­cine. This makes your patients per­fect tar­gets for all sorts of con-artists and snake-oil mer­chants. This you feel, as a hon­est homeo­pathic con­sult­ant, is a danger. There­fore you’re likely to wel­come a code of eth­ics which states what you can­not do or claim, to ensure the patient is treated with respect.

The Soci­ety of Homeo­paths has such a Code of Eth­ics which you can down­load. Le Canard Noir (which I think is a pseud­onym) at the Quacko­meter did this and found two inter­est­ing clauses:

48: Advert­ise­ments, sta­tion­ery and name plates main­tain a high stand­ard of pro­pri­ety and integ­rity to enhance the repu­ta­tion of homeo­pathy.
• Advert­ising shall not con­tain claims of superi­or­ity.
• No advert­ising may be used which expressly or impli­citly claims to cure named dis­eases.
• Advert­ising shall not be false, fraud­u­lent, mis­lead­ing, decept­ive, extra­vag­ant or sensational.

72: [Homeo­paths are required] To avoid mak­ing claims (whether expli­cit or implied; orally or in writ­ing) imply­ing cure of any named disease.

His art­icle he said that he just checked a ran­dom homeo­path and found someone break­ing both clauses, includ­ing claims of treat­ing mal­aria, which explains why the art­icle title was The Gentle Art of Homeo­pathic Killing. LCN sug­ges­ted that the Soci­ety was not tak­ing its own Code of Eth­ics seriously.

Up went the art­icle. Pre­sum­ably someone at the Soci­ety read it, because the host­ing com­pany for the Quacko­meter received a com­plaint from the Society’s legal rep­res­ent­at­ives. The art­icle had to be pulled because the UK’s libel laws are strict and the host­ing com­pany wanted no part of a legal battle.

Oth­ers are talk­ing about the eth­ics of bul­ly­ing crit­ics through legal intim­id­a­tion rather than ques­tion­ing the facts. In con­trast I thought I’d check the story. Is it really that easy to go from the Soci­ety of Homeo­paths web­site to a site of someone break­ing their code of eth­ics?
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The Archaeology of Spanish Fascism

Alun Politics, The Past 1 Comment , , , ,

A chan­nel I’m watch­ing more and more of is Al Jaz­eera. Not so much for news from Iraq, but news else­where. When the fires were raging in Greece the UK chan­nels were report­ing on the threat to sites. Al Jaz­eera had a Greek journ­al­ist speak­ing about the danger to people and pos­sible reas­ons why people would want to start the fires. It’s inter­est­ing to see another point of view.

The video above is fas­cin­at­ing. It’s about the recent archae­olo­gical work on the vic­tims of the Span­ish Civil War. The war was, among other things, train­ing for the Ger­man sol­diers. Spain was the coun­try the allies didn’t get round to lib­er­at­ing at the end of the war. This has left a long tra­di­tion of people col­lab­or­at­ing to sur­vive. Unlike East­ern Europe, the return to demo­cracy wasn’t accom­pan­ied by open­ness but an agree­ment to move on from the past in silence. How­ever some ques­tions will not go away and people are look­ing to see if they can find what happened to their rel­at­ives. Unfor­tu­nately the lack of dis­cus­sion hasn’t healed the wounds and old divi­sions are reopen­ing. This Al Jaz­eera doc­u­ment­ary puts the work of the archae­olo­gists in con­text with rum­blings from the cur­rent gen­er­als that the unity of Spain will be defended.

You can see the second half on Al Jazeera’s You­Tube Chan­nel.

The answer depends on the question

Alun Politics, The Past No Comments , , , , ,

Pothunters looting
Pothunters des­troy­ing a site, or a prob­lem­atic excav­a­tion? Photo (cc) gbaku

David Gill has put up an inter­est­ing blog post show­ing how the kind of ques­tions you ask lead you to cer­tain kinds of answer. It’s really inter­est­ing to see how the assump­tions are skill­fully built into ques­tions. The ses­sion he picks apart is Tain­ted Objects, which tackles arte­facts of prob­lem­atic proven­ance. (If you’re won­der­ing what prob­lem­atic means: The evid­ence against OJ Simpson was prob­lem­atic.) The prob­lem starts with the title, he argues. How does being smuggled, or expor­ted with a nod and a wink, taint the arte­fact? The taint as he rightly says isn’t any­where in the arte­fact, it’s with the people who are happy to handle them. And that’s just the start.

He’s also linked to an inter­view with Jack Davis in Athens News. Davis is the new head of the Amer­ican School in Athens and the inter­view is start­ling from the open­ing:

At the Uni­ver­sity of Cin­cin­nati we passed a res­ol­u­tion in our depart­ment, which is strongly focused on archae­ology, that we would not accept the dona­tion of any antiquit­ies from private sources into our depart­ment, and that we would not accept fund­ing for archae­olo­gical pro­jects from collectors.

As I recall, and North Amer­ican read­ers are wel­come to cor­rect me if I’m wrong, Cin­ncin­nati is a major uni­ver­sity which could well expect to receive this kind of dona­tion. I know it’s easy to say that you shouldn’t fuel the mar­ket by accept­ing dona­tions from dodgy ‘phil­an­throp­ists’ and val­id­ate their pur­chases. How­ever when one col­lector, who is said to have bought arte­facts with dirt still on them, offered another uni­ver­sity up to $200 mil­lion for a new insti­tute, they took it. Say­ing no to dona­tions when oth­ers are accept­ing them does require huge amounts of integ­rity. (Note to the rel­ev­ant law­yers. I accept that being offered an arte­fact caked in dirt does not mean there’s any reason to assume it had been recently looted. In much the same way I’d like to reas­sure OJ’s law­yers that I have no doubt that their cli­ent was found inno­cent. I get email.)

The photo is titled “Pothunters” des­troy­ing an archae­olo­gical site on the Columbia River (Ore­gon, USA) and it’s one of the many put up on Flickr by gbaku. He’s been put­ting up some great images of archae­olo­gical excav­a­tion in action recently and, even bet­ter, they’re avail­able under a Cre­at­ive Com­mons licence.

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