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| The stadion of Nemea, Greece. Copyright: Wikipedia. |
Last week while surfing the internet I stumbled upon an
interesting interview with Dr Stephen Miller, professor emeritus at the
University of California at Berkeley and director of the Nemea excavations in
Greece. The interview concerned an open letter written by Dr Miller to the
general public. Although I wasn’t able to locate the letter itself, it was
pretty easy to discern its contents by reading the interview and other related
online articles.
In his letter Dr Miller discussed the potential layoff of
seven of the ten guards working at Nemea's site due to Greece’s government
plans regarding the streamlining of the Greek civil service. (The streamlining
of the Greek civil service is of course necessary because of Greece’s financial
situation.) Not only would this leave the archaeological site more vulnerable
to looting, but it would mean that as a result of the lack of security the site
and the nearby museum would have to be closed to the public during weekends.
However, Dr Miller had two reasons for writing his letter.
The first, and more obvious one, is to attract the attention of the media and
ensure that the museum and site stay open. The other, this one not so obvious, was
to lay the foundation for his proposal for the privatization of Greek
archaeological sites. Dr Miller’s idea is that private companies could purchase
an archaeological site from the Greek government, construct a museum near the
site (and maybe a hotel, restaurant, gift shop, etc.), and take over the
responsibility for storing and conserving the site’s artefacts. Those companies
would earn money from the site by selling tickets, etc.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this proposal. I can
imagine how his idea would work for popular sites like Knossos in Crete (and I
just had a disturbing vision of the site with a large billboard in front of it
saying “Knossos is maintained by Burger King” and a drive-in next to it with
the employees wearing cheap mock-ups of Minoan outfits). But what about the sites that are not so
well-known to the public? What’s the attraction for companies to invest in
small archaeological sites and local museums? Maintaining archaeological sites
and museums, hiring guards and curators and conservators would cost those
companies a lot of money. Would it even be profitable for them? And if not,
then why would private companies take the risk?
This leads me to my final and foremost concern. If we allow
private companies to financially exploit archaeological sites and artefacts,
what kind of impact would this have on the preservation of these sites and artefacts?
What are your thoughts?
Links:
Interestingly enough, Dr. Miller is no longer the director of excavations at Nemea, and I don't believe has been for a while. It is currently run by a professor that I used to work for, Dr. Kim Shelton. If you have concerns, I'm sure she would be very willing to answer them, as she also runs excavations at another very large Greek site, Mycenae, in addition to the Nemean excavations. She is also very involved in local participation in the restoration of the Temple of Zeus at Nemea. The following is the website for the Nemea Center, if anyone is interested: http://nemeacenter.berkeley.edu/nemea-center/about-nemea-center-uc-berkeley
ReplyDeleteThank you for the link and the update! I wasn't aware that Dr. Miller had resigned as the director of the excavation. I just assumed that he still held the position because of the recent dates of the articles I had read. Anyway, my concerns relate to Miller's suggestion that Greek archaeological sites should be privatised. So nothing that Kim Shelton would be able to answer.
DeleteVery interesting post and comment!
ReplyDeleteI do sympathise with Iris' concerns - even if not applied to this context in particular. But first of all, I would be concerned about the values that would govern these private archaeological sites and museums. How would they decide what to be preserved, for example? And who would regulate their actions? Somehow these thoughts seem scarier than the 'burger king billboard'!