The forensic archaeologist on the hunt for trafficked antiquities

London
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In recent years, museums and cultural institutions have been taking steps to reckon with their legacies while they grapple with the colonial histories of items within their collections.

Headlines have been made of artworks repatriated to their countries of origin, but meanwhile the issue of illicit antiquities continues to largely go under the radar.

One man determined to change this is Christos Tsirogiannis, a Greek forensic archaeologist lecturing at Cambridge University. The 52-year-old has spent almost two decades trawling through inventories of museums, auction houses and other collections for illegally trafficked antiquities.

Most recently, Tsirogiannis alerted CNN to two items listed for sale by a leading auction house that had passed through the hands of a notorious convicted trafficker.

Bonhams had been due to sell the two lots as part of a wider antiquities sale in London on December 4, but they were pulled after CNN alerted them to suspicions about their provenance.

The disputed items — a Greek terracotta female figure dating back to 400-200 BC and an Attic red-figure pelike (an amphora-like container) from 400-300 BC — are now listed as “withdrawn” on Bonhams’ website. The items, both made by Greek artisans in southern Italy, had been valued at between £2,000 ($2,670) and £3,000 ($4,000) each.

In a statement sent to CNN, Bonhams said it had withdrawn the two lots “pending further review.”

The withdrawn items are just the latest in a long line of discoveries Tsirogiannis has made over the past 19 years, in a career dedicated to researching international networks of antiquities trafficking and highlighting the presence of stolen items in institutions around the world.

Tsirogiannis told CNN that his research has identified more than 1,700 items that have passed through the hands of a string of shady dealers, looters and middlemen, while he has been directly involved in the return of hundreds of items to the authorities of 15 countries, including Italy, Greece, Egypt and Turkey.

A global hunt for antiquities looted from the classical world began with a dramatic event 30 years ago. When a former Italian policeman named Pasquale Camera was killed in a car crash in 1995, investigators found a stash of Polaroid pictures of antiquities in the glove compartment.

They subsequently launched a series of raids, which led them to an astonishing discovery: a handwritten diagram outlining a complex web of international traffickers — naming everyone from tomb robbers up to international dealers. Camera, it turned out, had been a middleman in this criminal network.

This organization chart led to a wide-reaching criminal investigation into some of the key figures named, including Italian dealers Giacomo Medici and Gianfranco Becchina, both of whom were subsequently convicted on related charges.

While Tsirogiannis was not involved in this stunning discovery three decades ago, it would become an essential tool in his work, including in his most recent findings within the Bonhams sale.

As well as being a guest lecturer in archaeology at Cambridge, Tsirogiannis heads illicit antiquities trafficking research for the UNESCO Chair on Threats to Cultural Heritage at the Ionian University in Corfu, Greece. He credits his close relationship with the Italian and Greek authorities for extensive access to archives of trafficked goods.

His forensic research involves trawling through antiquities housed by museums, auction houses, galleries and others — and cross-referencing them against photos of the trafficked items in the archives.

Both lots pulled from this month’s Bonhams sale appear in the archive of items trafficked by Becchina, according to Tsirogiannis.

“Becchina was one of the most notorious traffickers,” he said. Police raided premises belonging to the dealer in Switzerland in 2002, where they confiscated many illicit antiquities. “But most importantly his archive was discovered, which depicted tens of thousands of objects that had been sold throughout his career and therefore weren’t found during the raid.”

Besides images of the missing antiquities, the archive featured extensive documentation and details of the many people involved in the illicit trade.

“It became a very valuable source of information to try and trace back and identify the objects and find out where they are now,” he said.

Tsirogiannis’ painstaking work within these archives has led to many discoveries.

Last year, Christie’s in New York withdrew four Greek vases from auction after he identified them in the Becchina archive. Meanwhile in London this year, antiquities dealer the Kallos Gallery pulled an ancient Greek amphora from sale after Tsirogiannis highlighted it in Medici’s archive.

At the time Christie’s told The Guardian, which reported the discovery, that it “takes the subject of provenance research very seriously” and “any suggestion that Christie’s knew these objects originated with Gianfranco Becchina is categorically false.”

Meanwhile, Madeleine Perridge, director of the Kallos Gallery, told The Observer that they “make every effort to do our due diligence,” adding: “We have absolutely no interest in handling tainted artworks and welcome an opportunity to find practical and productive solutions to these complex issues.”

Christie’s did not respond to a request from CNN for an explanation of how it ensures antiquities are properly provenanced.

Art and crime have a long shared history, but while highly identifiable stolen goods, such as a famous painting, can be hard to sell on the underground market, trafficked antiquities can be relatively easy money for crime syndicates.

“Usually when we talk about antiquities trafficking, we mean antiquities illegally excavated from the ground,” said Tsirogiannis.

“Looters often dig inside the fences of known archaeological sites, but mostly they locate tombs, settlements, sanctuaries that still haven’t been discovered by archaeologists. So in these cases, the countries affected don’t even know they’ve been robbed.”

Artworks and historical artifacts that come up for auction are accompanied by details of their provenance, which chronologically details the history of that piece — as far as it is available — from its creation to its current location. In other words, whose hands it has passed through.

Trafficked items go to market with “fake provenances or unacceptable provenances that are completely obscure or incomplete, always excluding the vital previous stages that prove the illicit origin of the object,” Tsirogiannis said. “They sometimes present an anonymous or named collector who had it, but no one says how this collector obtained this object.”

Tsirogiannis was just four years old and living in Thrace, northeastern Greece, when he decided he wanted to become an archaeologist. “I was inspired by my parents, Pericles and Athena Tsirogiannis, who have ancient names,” he said. “They showed me newspaper photographs in 1977 of an amazing discovery in Greece — the royal tombs of ancient Macedonia, which included the father of Alexander the Great, Philip II.”

What grabbed the young Tsirogiannis was the prospect of excavating long-forgotten artifacts. He could not have imagined, though, that he would end up digging for the ill-gotten gains of traffickers.

It was after finishing his archaeology degree and while doing his mandatory military service that Tsirogiannis helped uncover several antiquities and reported the finds to the Greek authorities. His diligence landed him a job as an archaeologist in the country’s Ministry of Culture. While he was there, he said, the Greek police art squad invited him to take part in a raid on a monastery outside Athens.

There they found hundreds of illicit antiquities amassed by the resident monks. Tsirogiannis’ contribution was so welcome that he went on to regularly assist the squad in its work, including high-profile raids.

As part of this work, he began to cooperate closely with the Italian authorities. This was when he met Paolo Giorgio Ferri, a former Italian state prosecutor who led the case against Medici, convicted in 2004. It was Ferri who granted Tsirogiannis access to Medici and Becchina’s archives, he said, as well as multiple others. The original archives are held by the Italian authorities, and it is incumbent upon cultural institutions around the world to check that the items they acquire do not feature in them.

Tsirogiannis’ determination to highlight cases like those at Bonhams has made him something of a thorn in the art world’s side.

“I’ve found so many illicit antiquities over the last 20 years and this issue has been discussed over and over again,” he said. “I’ve repeatedly said the most basic thing for anyone selling antiquities, particularly prominent international auction houses, is to be sure everything is provenanced.”

That would involve the auction houses contacting the Italian authorities “months before compiling the catalogue of sale” to cross-reference items with those in the traffickers’ archives.

“It’s free and they have a responsibility to do it — that’s their job,” he said.

Bonhams told CNN in its statement: “As part of our pre-sale due diligence, we liaise as appropriate with the Italian authorities in advance of our sales to review antiquities offered in our auctions, including whether any possible lots may have appeared in the Becchina photographic archive.”

David Gill, a British academic and heritage consultant, has been researching cultural property for 35 years.

“Christos’ work on identifying ‘looted’ material from his use of the seized photographic archives has been key,” he told CNN. “These images often show pieces prior to restoration, sometimes in the boot (trunk) of cars still with dirt on them. I estimate that just under 2,000 items have been returned to Italy from North American public and private collections as well as from galleries and auction houses — and many are the result of Christos’ work. This is not the first time that Christos has identified material at Bonhams.

“The key issue is that auction houses need to conduct a more rigorous due diligence test on objects before they are offered for auction.”

Museums and auction houses aren’t the only ones in Tsirogiannis’ area of focus. Universities should also be called out, he believes.

“What we’re missing is a course dedicated to antiquities trafficking, to educate future archaeologists, curators, people in the art market, on how to legally react when inevitably they will be confronted with an unprovenanced illicit object. No one teaches that anywhere in the world and there’s a reason for that,” he said.

“Universities get money from benefactors who often themselves, or in their close circle, have antiquities collections and sooner or later such research will go against them.”

Tsirogiannis would like to see institutions more aggressively audit their collections for any items that appear in the archives of trafficked antiquities.

“They need to photograph the objects in their possessions and just say ‘please check for us — we want to be totally clean and ethical.’”

So far, only one museum has accepted the challenge, according to Tsirogiannis. The Allard Pierson in Amsterdam is collaborating with him after he uncovered illicit antiquities in their collection.

“They said, ‘We want to clean our collection and we want to cooperate with you,’” he said.

The Dutch museum, which is part of the University of Amsterdam, states on its website that “a number of antiquities in its possession can be linked to international art dealers that have been either convicted or suspected of illicit trafficking of cultural heritage.” It has engaged Tsirogiannis as a research fellow to work closely with its provenance team, which is focusing on some 10,000 items acquired since 1970.

Rogier Kalkers, head of provenance research at Allard Pierson, told CNN: “We strive to be as transparent as possible about the provenance history of all objects in our collection, as well as about the past involvement of our museum in a system that has sustained a market for illicitly excavated and/or trafficked antiquities for decades.”

Although not legally obliged to do so, the museum has “in principle agreed” to transfer some of the items in question back to Italy and stressed the importance of opening up not only to scholars, but also to law enforcement agencies, governmental bodies and the general public, according to Kalkers.

Praising the museum for its approach, Tsirogiannis said: “They are taking the initiative to contact the authorities … instead of waiting for their doors to be knocked by the authorities.

“In this way,” he added, “they create positive publicity and they prove in practice that they are truly transparent and ethical.”