Tuesday 24 May 2011

Changes Afoot at the "Down Under Blog"

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There may be changes in the pipeline for Damien Huffer's "It Surfaced Down Under" blog, dealing with the antiquities trade in Australasia and adjacent areas. He announced the changes the day before yesterday:
To date, I have focused more on gallery/dealer/high profile case exposes and reporting the gist, and my perspectives on, current news items concerning the Southern Hemisphere antiquities trade. However, I would like to go further, into explorations of what underpins the trade down here. Questions such as:
How does it differ from Northern Hemisphere (read Europe and the US) activities?
How is collecting of "other people's treasure" justified?
What further background on dealer's associations needs down here needs to be aired (i.e. the AAADA)?
Local coverage of cases of overseas, and even local, prehistoric and historic period looting, and where it lacks?
How autonomous is the Southern Hemisphere trade in Classical/European antiquities (e.g. some of the galleries I originally covered in my first posts)?
What role do major Southern Hemisphere demand countries (i.e. Oz and NZ) play in the global trade?
What is the market for fakes in the Southern Hemisphere, and what's being faked the most?
Where are they produced (only China and Hong Kong, for example?).
The misuses/uses of heritage and heritage objects (loosely defined) in mass media/popular culture in regional countries...on coins, stamps, phonecards etc? [...]
I look forward to seeing what he comes up with. Damien invites his readers (and I'll pass on the message):
With that said, you are more than free to help me on this quest. If you come across local news items, auctions, on-line sales, new galleries that make you suspicious etc., feel free to get in touch with me. As I'm only one person, I'd also be amenable to the possibility of guest bloggers once we discuss what you'd talk about. Thanks for your attention to date. Let's see what the future holds!
Indeed, it is interesting to note that there is an eBay in as many as 11 countries in Damien's broad region (Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam) so that's 11 out of 37 eBay branches in the world. Odd there is none in Japan. So how does the sale of antiquities and ethnographic material look across this region? For example where are Egyptian antiquities sold by local dealers, where not?

How many collectors of Ancient coins (etc) are there down there and how can we tell? What do they like buying? How many dealers - where are they and how do they operate? What other archaeological artefacts are sold on the market in this region of the world and how does this differ from what goes on in North America and Europe?

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