Remember the Baghdad Museum Looting?

by Cliopatria

Do you remember the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad?

Via David Nishimura at Cronaca I came across an article reviewing the situation and asking some hard questions about archeologists and their complicity with the governments who approve their digs. The author makes explicit comparisons to the decisions made my CNN to maintain coverage inside Hussein's Iraq.

Nishimura also has an entry about the question about whether or not Jewish archeologists might work in Iraq.

While blogging these items I was looking for coverage I thought I had bookmarked -- perhaps a commenter can help? -- on a resolution brought for consideration (and I forget how it turned out) for one of the American associations that covers archaeology on whether or not archeologists should cooperate with intelligence agencies. The author of the article linked by Nishimura points out that there are other kinds of cooperation the professional bodies in the field haven't denounced.

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Richard Henry Morgan - 7/1/2004

Facinating piece. John Malsolm Russell exemplifies the problem of anthropologists, archeologists, and others who "go native" -- in effect become propagandists for tyrannical regimes that give them access in exchange for their pronouncements.

There's another less well-known story of researchers playing up to local politics for advantage. The archeologist Jon Kolb was kicked out of his concession in Ethiopia, and he maintains that he was told by Ethiopian officials that it was based on info from Don Johanson that Kolb was a CIA operative (Johanson was operating in Kolb's concession). A few months later, Johanson announced the discovery of Lucy.

Kolb retained another concession, which was denied funding by the NSF. On the NSF committee that denied him funding was J. Desmond Clark, who floated the rumour in committee that Kolb was CIA. Kolb then lost that concession. Take a guess who got Kolb's concession? Yep, J. Desmond Clark.

Kolb was assured by the NSF that they had heard no such rumour that he was CIA, and that it could have played no role in his denial of funding. He sued under FOIA, and NSF in fact broke the law by constantly refiling the incriminating minutes under different headings to escape having to disclose it under the FOIA requests. Eventually he tracked it down, and NSF was revealed for the liars and scoundrels that they are -- they eventually settled out of court for mucho dinero, but not before destroying a man's career.