Nothing is being held back, honest – look in my eyes.
Three years ago we suggested that anyone who googled Crosby Garrett helmet would think “the reported circumstances of its alleged discovery, form, removal, provenance, secrecy, find spot, restoration, marketing and reporting are mighty rum“. Things haven’t changed it seems. If you want a flavour of it all you could look at Paul Barford’s site. He has devoted several dozen postings to it and you can read them, most recent first, here. You might well conclude that he has a bit of a point. In fact many.
Recently though things have moved on. The helmet has finally turned up at the local museum (on loan) and there has been a conference about it and a booklet and a report. Yet still an awful lot of things that would normally have been put into the public domain remain unexplained. It is not just Paul that has been raising concerns. Professor David Gill for instance has also made many postings about the affair on his Looting Matters blogspot, the latest being here and here. Here’s an extract from his latest, a few days ago, making reference to the study that has just been published. What’s going on?
“Professor David Ekserdjian in his introduction to the newly published study of the Crosby Garrett helmet draws attention to the newly surfaced Resurrection of Christ by Titian [see BBC]. Imagine if the Titian was sent for a quick clean and touch-up in a workshop under the railway arches in London. I would hope that Ekserdjian would be in the vanguard of those raising their voices in protest.Yet when “a hauntingly unforgettable work of art”, to use Ekserdjian’s description of the Crosby Garrett helmet, was sent for a hurried restoration before its sale at auction, the silence appears to have been almost overwhelming.”
Incidentally, it’s worth recalling that this whole mess began because something different was (metaphorically) put on top of the helmet. What we are seeing is the “else”.
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15 comments
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20/11/2013 at 18:39
astral
There is a difference in as much that i understand it the helmet was found flat and squashed and has been restored to something of value and cosmetic appeal.
20/11/2013 at 18:53
heritageaction
“has been restored to something of value and cosmetic appeal.”
Exactly. That’s the problem!
20/11/2013 at 21:25
astral
Is it a problem? A lot more people know of it and appreciate it than if it was a crumpled piece of tin and it therefore raises awareness of our past. If someone restores a vintage car to its former glory it still remains a vintage car but is now appreciated.
21/11/2013 at 12:00
Paul Barford
If the whole operation was done at every stage where the scientific values of the object were retained, then no problem. But were they? We still know next to nothing about the context of deposition, we have no full report of the state of the object when found, virtually no analyses, and no conservation report showing how someone got from a box of bits to the shape we have now. What alternative reconstructions were rejected (and why) to get this one? What was “reshaped”, and why? How much of what we see is the product of the creativity of a Roman craftsmaan and how much the result of the creativity of a modern ‘restorer’ working beneath the railway arches?
21/11/2013 at 14:50
Wilt
It looks nice though.
22/11/2013 at 08:21
Paul Barford
A tiger skin rug on the floor in front of a blazing fire does too, don’t you think? But those people who see beyond the superficial will be of the opinion that there is a difference between “looking nice” and being nice.
22/11/2013 at 15:29
Judith P
The difference between a conversation piece and a conservation piece. It does have a lovely haunting look to it though. Very evocative as it is.
23/11/2013 at 19:38
Balenim46
It has a lot more value as it is rather than as scrap. I was surprised it fetched so much at auction. As for a tiger skin rug, I would rather have a perfect tiger skin rug than one that is torn and tatty and falling to bits.
23/11/2013 at 20:08
heritageaction
“It has a lot more value as it is rather than as scrap”
Monetary value has nothing to do with the issue being discussed.
23/11/2013 at 20:14
Balenim46
Its value is what raises its profile and hence the large amount of discussion. No getting away from that fact.
24/11/2013 at 06:14
Paul Barford
But then, Balenim46, is not the main topic of discussion not how nice it (or a dead tiger) looks to some, but what its treatment tells us about British policies on how we treat a fragile, finite and threatened resource? In the case of the shallow stratigraphy of an earthwork (archaeological) site like Crosby Garrett, one of those threats is unregulated artefact hutting and the no-questions-asked and unaccountable-to-anybody antiquities market. Perhaps we could move away from an artefact-centred discussion to one of the wider picture and conservation issues.
24/11/2013 at 15:49
Balenim46
Artefact ‘Hutting’ aside, this helmet has raised the profile of the history of this great isle and in doing so has become a subject of discussion in many arenas. As for its treatment, it has gone from what I understand to be a flattened patchwork of metal to one of its original former glory that catches both our eyes, attention and imagination. The mass general public are primarily interested in historical things that they see,over and above the minute detail that only a few want to be able to indulge themselves in.
24/11/2013 at 17:11
Paul Barford
We cannot simply push “aside” the issues around artefact hunting.
This archaeological artefact could not be “seen” because it was dug up from right in the middle of an earthwork site on permanent pasture and immediately flogged off – before it had been seen by the PAS even – by some artefact hunters and was bought by some anonymous bloke who then shut it away, and could well be taking it back (who knows what the agreement is?). It may equally have been sold abroad and if it had been there was nothing anyone could have done about it being shut away in some private collection abroad unless the PUBLIC raised the money to buy back its heritage matching the price of the foreign buyer (unlikely since they’d failed before the sale).
No Mr Balenim, you cannot simply push these issues aside excusing it by alleging a dumb-down approach of “the mass general public”. Britain is not yet totally inhabited by the intellectually unambitious Gor-blimeys.
And, to come back to the point of this post, before discussion got deflected onto artefact-centred minutiae (by more duplicate detectorist sock-puppets if I am not mistaken), anyone who is not a Gor-blimey “who googled Crosby Garrett helmet would think “the reported circumstances of its alleged discovery, form, removal, provenance, secrecy, find spot, restoration, marketing and reporting are mighty rum“…“.
24/11/2013 at 18:03
Balenim46
As I understand it, one of the annoying and frustrating (rightful frustrating in my opinion) vagaries of the helmet is where it was actually found. however you state “because it was dug up from right in the middle of an earthwork site on permanent pasture “. Was it?, where did this information come from?
And what about the farmer in all this He is as complicit in the act of heritage depredation as the finder is. I’m interested to hear your views on the farmer in all this as he seems to have got off Scott free and with a million quid in the bank to boot.
24/11/2013 at 19:24
Paul Barford
There is a 55cm deep hole which was re-excavated in May/June 2012 and which archaeologists were told was the findspot. The information is from a recent publication.
http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2013/11/crosby-garrett-helmet-findspot.html .
Farmers are not archaeologists. The staff of a fifteen million quid outreach programme that should be informing them about portable antiquities issues quite clearly are not doing anything of the sort, leaving sensitive earthwork sites under pasture like this vulnerable to the depredations of Treasure hunters. .