This is the second of two posts. The
first post, on the meaning and significance of provenance, can be found here.
The Society of Biblical
Literature’s new provenance policy is simply an adoption of the American
Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) provenance policy. In this post I will look
at some of the main features of that policy and its implications for how we
deal with unprovenanced artifacts.
The SBL
announcement directly cites the ASOR policy,
specifically sections III.D (on dissemination of knowledge) and III.E (on
programs and publications). The short D section deals with things such as
proper credits and permissions for publications and encourages use of Open
Access repositories. The extended E section focuses on how unprovenanced
artifacts should be treated. A few comments on this policy are in order:
1. The ASOR policy applies
specifically to ASOR venues: conference papers at ASOR meetings; and ASOR
publications. The same is true for the SBL policy. These are guidelines for the
committees that oversee these venues to use in evaluating paper and publication
submissions, as much as for those who make the submissions themselves.
2. The ASOR policy links
provenance explicitly and at length to archaeological context, but also
mentions both authenticity and illegal acts (looting and smuggling). Compare
this to the aspects of provenance I discussed in the previous post on
provenance.
3. It is important to
recognize that the ASOR/SBL policy does not constitute a complete ban on
discussion of unprovenanced artifacts; there are a few important exceptions:
a. Chronological. The policy only applies to discussion of artifacts
that first appeared on the market or in a collection after April 24, 1972
(III.E.4). That specific date is a reference to the 1970
UNESCO Convention on
the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer
of Ownership of Cultural Property, the
main international agreement regulating the antiquities trade and transfer of
“cultural property”: it is the date on which the convention went into effect (“entered into force”). There is no restriction on
discussing artifacts that appeared before that date. (Note: the Archaeological Institute
of America [AIA] has a similar provision in its provenance policy.)
b. Initial place of publication or announcement. The discussion of
unprovenanced artifacts appearing after April 24, 1972 is not fully prohibited
either. The ASOR/SBL policy merely states that the organizations’ venues will
not serve as an “initial place of publication or announcement” for them
(III.E.4). If an unprovenanced artifact is published in some other venue, there
is no longer any restriction to presenting it at an ASOR or SBL Annual Meeting
or in an ASOR or SBL publication. Of course, this raises the not trivial
question of what constitutes an “initial place of publication or announcement”:
Does it need to be a peer-reviewed publication? Can it be any sort of book or
article? An exhibition catalogue? A blog post? (Again, AIA has a similar provision
in its provenance policy).
c. Cuneiform exception. The ASOR (and now SBL) policy has what it
calls a “limited exception” for cuneiform tablets (III.E.5-6). Tablets acquired
after 1972 may be presented in ASOR venues, if their lack of provenance is
noted and they are returned to their country of origin after conservation or
publication. But Patty Gerstenblith reported (in 2014) that this provision had
apparently never been used (presumably because mere publication of tablets in
an ASOR venue is little incentive for a private owner to relinquish them to
their country of origin).1
Now let’s look briefly at
a specific example of a set of unprovenanced artifacts: the Museum of the
Bible’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments. Over the summer many scholars were concerned
after discovering
that this year’s SBL Annual
Meeting had a session devoted to these texts. The scholars’ discussion
suggested that SBL’s provenance policy allowed this session merely under a
“loophole” for a “review of a forthcoming publication.” (There was also talk of
organizing to remove this loophole and institute a blanket ban on discussion of
unprovenanced artifacts.) With the announcement of the SBL policy, we are now
in position to evaluate this concern.
First, it is to be noted
that at the time these concerns were aired, SBL had no provenance policy, and
the adopted policy does not go into effect until 2017 – meaning it has no
bearing on this year’s Museum of the Bible session. Second, while we lack
information about the chain of custody of the Museum of the Bible texts, they
appear to have surfaced on the antiquities market after 1972, meaning that they
would be governed by the provenance policy. Third, the discussion of a book
review appears to be a misunderstanding of the provision that SBL/ASOR will not
serve as “an initial place of publication or announcement” for such artifacts.
As we have seen, this provision concerning initial place of publication is not
a loophole, but rather a purposely-designed element that is central to the
provenance policies of multiple organizations. In other words, since the Museum
of the Bible Dead Sea Scroll fragments were published
by Brill in August, there is
no restriction on presenting them in any SBL venue – or in any venue of ASOR or
AIA for that matter.
It is sometimes
suggested by text scholars
that the AIA and ASOR policies (as well as those of the Deutsches
Archäologisches Institut and the American
School of Classical Studies at Athens, which are similar) are very restrictive. In fact,
compared to the policies of many other organizations – including a
number of prominent European and Middle Eastern academic journals – this is
true.2
At the same time, we have seen that the
ASOR/SBL and AIA policies constitute far from a blanket ban on discussing
unprovenanced artifacts, each with several exceptions that are very broad in
scope.
On a personal note, I would be in favor of tighter restrictions from professional societies on the use of unprovenanced artifacts. One area to address might be ASOR’s (and now SBL’s) cuneiform exception. The exception is claimed to be a “limited exception,” but this is a strange choice of words for artifacts appearing, in the ASOR policy’s own terms, on a “truly massive scale.” In general, I would argue that we should not have exceptions for individual groups or classes of artifacts but rather work from general principles. No principles apply to cuneiform tablets that would not apply to many other inscriptions and manuscripts. It is worth noting here that while ASOR kept the cuneiform exception in its latest provenance policy (it had already been in existence for several years), the organization voted down a proposed exception for a specific set of Aramaic ostraca at the same time.
While some of us may wish
for a more restrictive provenance policy, we must be clear on what this
involves. Scholars work with unprovenanced artifacts all of the time. Even if
we are only talking about objects appearing after 1972, this would include well-known
sets of artifacts such as the Al-Yahudu
tablets, the manuscripts of the so-called “Afghan Genizah,” and
most of the Aramaic magic bowls.3 If we
look at this year’s SBL Annual Meeting program, we will find, in addition to
the Museum of the Bible session, at least two papers on the Al-Yahudu tablets
and an entire session on Aramaic magic bowls.
A more restrictive
provenance policy may be a laudable goal, but I want to conclude with a couple
of cautions: 1. It is unlikely that most of the field (at least, the many scholars
who work with these artifacts) is currently prepared to move in this direction;
2. It is imperative that scholars become more familiar with the significance of
provenance and the operation of provenance policies. I hope that these posts
have helped to increase awareness of the issues involved.
1 Patty Gerstenblith, Do Restrictions on Publication of
Undocumented Texts Promote Legitimacy?, in Archaeologies
of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics, ed. Matthew T. Rutz and Morag
M. Kersel (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), p. 224.
2 John Cherry focuses on this issue in Publishing
Undocumented Texts: Editorial Perspectives, in Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics, ed.
Matthew T. Rutz and Morag M. Kersel (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), pp. 227-244.
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