--Matt
Scuba diving shipwreck looters to be prosecuted in Malta
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by KARL SCHEMBRI
MALTA (11 Sep 2005) -- Lying deep underwater off St Thomas Bay, the wreck SS Polynésien is considered "Malta's best kept secret" according to international wreck diving experts. But what has been happening upon the slick French ship also known as "the little Titanic" for the last decade amounts to omertà – criminal reticence.
Since it was sunk by a UC22 U-boat on 10 August 1918 while sailing in convoy towards Malta, the Polynésien has hidden priceless treasures for almost one hundred years, buried up to 70 metres under the sea, where only experienced scuba divers can reach.
The wreck is no site for amateurs. According to sources in the diving circles, it takes around an hour and a half of decompression, staggered on the way back up to the surface, for around 20 minutes of so-called technical deep diving at those depths.
It takes much more than 20 minutes to explore the entire 157-metre ship, and for the expert divers to reach the thousands of serving platters, ceiling fans and other artefacts inside.
And among these diving experts, groups of ruthless robbers have been looting these artefacts and others even older found in diverse diving sites around Malta, on paper protected by the Cultural Heritage Act as national treasures but effectively vulnerable to human predators armed with goggles and cylinders.
http://www.cdnn.info/news/industry/i050911.html
**Snip ** (click the link above to read the rest)
From: <barney00@tampabay.rr.com>
For those that think only archaeologists or "museums" should have the
right to recover artifacts, ponder over some of the following reading
material...
The Curation Crisis
S. Terry Childs
"Imagine you hear about an archeology project...that could lead to a
breakthrough in your research. Except that now, less than a decade
after [the material] was excavated, the federal agency that sponsored
the project has no idea where any of it went, nor the time or resources
to look."
http://www.cr.nps.gov/archeology/cg/fd_vol7_num4/crisis.htm
A Curation Crisis
Excerpts from American Archaeology
http://www.coloradoarchaeology.org/curation_crisis_in_archaeology.htm
The Crisis in Archeological Collection Management
Raymond H. Thompson
http://crm.cr.nps.gov/archive/23-05/23-05-2.pdf
The curation crisis: can we afford the future?
Cindy Stankowski
http://www.sfsu.edu/~museumst/minerva/stankow.html
Archeological Curation in the 21st Century
Or, Making Sure the Roof Doesn’t Blow Off
Wendy Bustard
http://crm.cr.nps.gov/archive/23-05/23-05-4.pdf
These are the federal regulations for how federal agencies are supposed
to manage cultural resources -- for the "public benefit."
Curation of Federally-Owned and Administered Archeological Collections
http://www.cr.nps.gov/archeology/tools/36cfr79.htm
Unfortunately, even after many years, many agencies do not comply with
these regulations. Note the 2005 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) memo
below, that cites: "A subsequent audit by the IG of the BLM’s
collections in 1999 (99-I-808) revealed that BLM still could not
account for the majority of its museum collections and made
recommendations."
http://www.blm.gov/nhp/efoia/wo/fy05/im2005-190.htm
Perhaps wreck divers that recover artifacts and put them in boxes
to "rot in their garage" (as critics are so apt to say) are no better
or worse than many archaeologists, universities, and museums.
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