Punitive tendencies, commercialization and the archaeological law: revealed contradictions through interpersonal interviews with experts

ABSTRACT

The Greek archaeological law has introduced a reinforcement of the penal protection of cultural heritage. Accordingly, research was conducted by interviewing experts, which has revealed their punitive tendencies and consistency of their opinions with the law, as related to the policies of international organizations. Moreover, it appears that these experts are aligned with the neoliberal spirit of the law which reflects a widespread commercialization process on a global scale. This alignment and their punitive tendencies were strengthened after estimating their influence over policies for cultural elements, by a second level data analysis. Furthermore, it was found that the more, as opposed to the lesser influential experts, have serious reservations about the citizens’ contribution to the protection of monuments. Many have doubts about the law’s functioning in practice and some are even critical of the law itself as well as of international rules and arrangements. Finally, the interplay of theory and research indicated that the protection concept, as it relates to citizens’ familiarization with their cultural heritage as well as the containment of illicit trade and collecting at the market end of the supply chain of cultural objects should be further explored.

KEYWORDS:

• Archaeological law
• cultural heritage
• neoliberalism
• penal protection
• oikeiôsis

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to my first teacher in English, Dr. Jeffrey Levett, Honorary President, World of Philosophical Forum in Athens, who checked over my manuscript, as well as my schoolmate and long-lasting friend Marianna Halkia and my teacher in English at school, Hero Baduna, who had access to archaeological literature. I also would like to show my appreciation for Georgios Papanicolaou, Associate Professor at Northumbria Law School, UK, for his counseling and support while writing this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data associated with this paper was selected by its author, Maria P. Kranidioti, in Athens (from 24/7 until 10/11/2014). She was assisted by the postgraduate students attending the taught by her course “Research Methods in Criminology”. During the lessons, all students have participated in sampling procedure and construction the questionnaire of the research project and, latter, some of them in data collection. The students interviewed the experts before the principal investigator (author) and, according to the guidelines, transcribed and recorded the interview and gave a copy of it to the interviewee. The students’ participation in this research project was voluntary and unpaid.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. This is a word for word translation, as stated in the Introductory Report. However, in the Greek literature, its meaning is usually covered by the term ‘origin’ (for instance, by Mylonopoulos 2021, 255, 256 and 266–267), which is non-identical to ‘provenance’, it is though sometimes used as equivalent (for the difference, see e.g. Kranidioti 2021, 55-56nt87–93).

2. The present research project required experts’ opinions or assessments, namely, those of persons with a high degree of knowledge about the study area and the particular subject. This sampling is regarded as a sub-type of purposive sampling, which falls into the more general category of non-probability sampling. The interviewees were mainly selected by snowball and respondent driven techniques (see e.g. Ritchie, Lewis, and Gillian 2003, 78–96; Heckathorn 2011, 355 ff. and Smith 1975, 115 ff. and 129). However, after defining the study population and the sample frame, the first interviewees were randomly selected (see Kranidioti 2021, 102 in the text and footnote 136).

3. It contains 107 questions, main and sub-questions, open or closed, of cognitive or of assessment type (Kranidioti 2021, 87 ff. and 93 ff.). The last distinction is mine: The first term ‘cognitive’ is meant according to its second definition in online Merriam Webster Dictionary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cognitive, namely, the interviewees’ replies are ‘based on empirical factual knowledge.’ The second term ‘assessment’ is meant according to its first definition in the same Dictionary, and it denotes ‘the act of assessing something.’

4. It should be noted here that the 20 units have been the down limit of this scale, that is, the minimum units a person should aggregate, for being accepted to be interviewed as an expert and this score matches to the ‘density of a reference substance’, the latter corresponds e.g. to one postgraduate or two graduate diplomas (see in the text, previous paragraph).

5. The interviewees were twenty, however, most of the data collected from the interview with the last of them, to whom the third version of the questionnaire was addressed (see in the text), are not included in the initial study otherwise, the unveiling of the identity of this person would be inevitable.

6. In the text of the study reference is made not only to the damage caused by the owner but also to that caused by the holder of the monument. This was decided after taking into consideration the implications of the experts’ replies and the specificity of this ownership. Relevantly, the law’s rapporteurs had noted that ‘ … concerning the relationship of ownership – occupation with constraints, the fundamental matter to be made clear is that among “ownership with constraints” and “occupation with increased guarantees” (e.g. transfer or heritage), there is no essential difference: therefore, general denominations are not important, but individual regulations are … ’ (Introductory Report I D΄ VI, par. 1, passage 2).

7. It should be made clear that, in past decades, the excavations were not considered illegal. The qualitative data of Panella’s research revealed that most of the diggers defined the previous periods of excavations as the ‘golden era’ of their life and they were attempting to constitute the self-representation of a ‘heroic’ ethic, which stood in stark contrast to the official portrayal of ‘looter’ (492).

8. This is a multidimensional concept, which means producing, marketing, and selling something for profit in a marketplace. Harvey, though, refers e.g. to ‘unbridled commercialism’ and ‘structures of commercial exploitation’ (50, 56), uses the term ‘commodification’ (80, 159–160, 165 ff., 177–178 –in Index: 70, 153, 157, 160–1, 164–720) instead of ‘commercialization’. Commodification denotes the fact that something is treated or considered as a commodity, that is, the transformation of anything into an object of economic value for exchange, irrespective of its intrinsic (cultural, aesthetic, intellectual, etc.) value (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/commodification and T. Collins Logan. n.d. Quora https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-privatization-commercialization-and-commodification). In the present text, I mainly use the term ‘commercialization’ since I refer more often to the global neoliberal processes in general, albeit the second term is more precise as far as cultural objects are concerned.

9. He also notes that ‘ … it is considered … certain that the corrupt governments in the European south were expecting the collapse of customs walls for exporting antiquities freely and obtaining foreign currency’ (381).

10. The table does not contain sub-questions of neutral assessments about the law, which would be equal to absence of mean values, in case that it would be converted to a uniform table, with sub-questions corresponding to the categories. Given though the fact that in three out of the four assessments and, especially, in the positive ones, the absences of replies and the statements of ignorance are very few, up to none, these results were considered indicative of the commercialization tendency (see in the text).

11. According to the research project, this question, with its sub-questions, was used in order to check the consistency of the interviewees’ replies (Kranidioti 2021, in the Appendix, 210nt16). Hence, very few data collected by it was processed and fully utilized for the initial study.

12. This obligation is systematized and generalized in the law, with the aim of confronting illegal trafficking of cultural objects (Introductory Report 2002, I D΄VII, par. 4, passages 2 and 3).

13. Kondyli refers to the ancient monuments and reminds us that, according to the consistently held and fundamental principle of the archaeological legislation (article 61 of L. 10/22.5.1834, L. BXMST’’/1899, article 1 of codified law 5351/1932 and articles 7 and 21 of L. 3028/2002), these monuments belong to the State in terms of ownership and possession, are extra commercium, imprescriptible and inalienable (2017, 639–640). However, according to the law in force, this is the case for all monuments dating up to 1453, located within the boundaries of Greek territory. There are different regulations for other monuments, as for the movable, dating after 1453, for which there is a right of ownership, exercised though in accordance with the terms and conditions of the archaeological law (L. 3028/2002 and C. L. 4858/2021, article 21, par. 4).

14. Anywise, it is stated that the policies, which were imbued with the African-oriented postcolonial archaeology were also based on the equation ‘poverty = looting’ (Panella 2014, 491).

15. See Mason, who, in connection with planning for heritage conservation, notes that values change over time and are strongly shaped by contextual factors, such as social forces, economic opportunities, and cultural trends (2002, 5).

16. This interview extract is published here by name, with the consent of the interviewee, given by a message to the address [email protected], where he states that ‘ … the note about the selective choice of “nice looking” objects is an observation of an obsolete perception of the aim and the role of the archaeological studies and research’.

17. For the meanings of ‘oikeiôsis’, see also Kranidioti 2021, in the Introduction, 15 and 17 and, in the main text, 114, 119, 120 ff. and 203nt153.

18. Under the law, the scope of the concept is very broad, including actions as recording and documentation, prevention of illegal excavation, theft and illegal export, etc. (L. 3028/2002 and C. L. 4858/2021, article 3, par. 1). For the present research project, certain actions were selected to be presented as dimensions of cultural heritage protection in general, while others, related to criminal acts and the illegal trafficking phenomenon were presented and analyzed more specifically, within the realm of penal protection.

19. On the other hand, one expert noted that the monuments’ restoration and the effort for their enhancement may invalidate their attractiveness and, subsequently, their accessibility, and ‘oikeiôsis’ by the citizens (Kranidioti, 122 and note 128).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria P. Kranidioti

Maria P. Kranidioti is retired Associate Professor of the Department of Penal Sciences, Law School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece, member of the Emeritus Professors Body of NKUA and of the Board of the Hellenic Society of Criminology. She is the author of the books Integration. Method of Theory Development in Criminology (2007) and Spirit and implementation of the archeological law (2021) as well as co-editor of the Dictionary of Criminology, Topos Books, Athens 2018.