Suzie Thomas speaking at international conference in Romania

25 Oct 2013

Suzie Thomas is speaking at the “Current Trends in Archaeological Heritage Preservation: The National and the International Perspectives” conference in Iaşi, Romania.

The international conference takes place from 6th to 10th November, and is organised by the Institute of Archaeology, Romanian Academy – Iaşi Branch, in partnership with “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași and the European Association of Archaeologists.

Suzie’s paper, titled ‘Multiple-role Actors in the movement of cultural property: Metal-detector users’, takes place on 8th November. On the same day, she also acts as Chair for the session on cultural tourism and archaeological heritage preservation.

Her abstract is as follows:

Recent literature has discussed the various stages in the criminal market for cultural objects, and the different actors that are present at each of these stages. For many of the best-documented types of looted cultural object, often at the higher end of the price spectrum, these stages are represented by quite diverse actors such as subsistence diggers, auction houses and wealthy collectors. In the case of lower-end objects, which are perhaps more common, of lower artistic quality, in a worse state of preservation or intrinsically made of less expensive material, it is possible to see the same individuals acting at all stages of the process. In other words, the person who finds and digs up an object also transports or arranges to transport it (sometimes smuggling it over national borders), sells it, and is a collector of similar objects in their own right. This ‘multiple-role actor’ scenario is particularly prevalent in the phenomenon of hobbyist metal detecting. In this paper, metal detecting and its impact on both the licit and illicit market in cultural objects is explored theoretically in relation to the existing matrices, and illustrated within the context of the United Kingdom, Finland and Estonia.

The venue is the Muzeul Unirii, and the conference programme can be accessed here.