Fiona Greenland - Ruling culture : art police, tomb robbers, and the rise of cultural power in Italy

Fiona Greenland

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2021 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-75698-1 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-75703-2 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-75717-9 (e-book)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226757179.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Greenland, Fiona, author.

Title: Ruling culture : art police, tomb robbers, and the rise of cultural power in Italy / Fiona Greenland.

Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020043888 | ISBN 9780226756981 (cloth) | ISBN 9780226757032 (paperback) | ISBN 9780226757179 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : Classical antiquities theftsItaly. | Art theftsLaw and legislationItaly. | Cultural propertyItaly. | ItalyAntiquitiesLaw and legislation.

Classification: LCC KKH 3183. G 737 2021 | DDC 364.16/2870945dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043888

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI / NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

We tend to assume that Italian culture is eternal. As a body of art, architecture, and literatureto say nothing of cuisine, fashion, and filmit shows remarkable quality over many centuries. Its consistent influence should surprise us. Empires fall, territories contract, economic and political poles shift, and artistic styles fade in popularity. Italys cultural heritage, broadly speaking, seems to have transcended all this. It consistently ranks high in international tourism surveys, and today Italy dominates the prestigious UNESCO World Heritage List. Instead of being surprised, we treat its value as inevitable. Studies of heritage despoliation and antiquities theft are numerous, but they tend to confirm that Italys cultural heritage possesses a robust superiority that is natural and effortlesseven providentially ordained as the fortunate outcome of the vicissitudes of civilization and nature.

A vocal critic of this view is also its most significant proponent. The Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturaleknown colloquially as the Art Squadis an elite military-police unit charged with protecting Italys cultural treasures. Since 1969 the unit has deployed extensive surveillance and law enforcement tactics to eradicate looting and smuggling, and developed a worldwide reputation for its vigorous program of reclaiming purloined artworks and antiquities. The Art Squad and the state actors who preside over it do not take cultural heritage for granted. Affecting a performance of wary appreciation, the Art Squad does not rest on its laurels. While civilians and tourists admire the Colosseum, Renaissance churches, and the thousands of archaeological sites, the Art Squad is doing its part to maintain the countrys cultural power. Its officers insist that this power is grievously imperiled by unscrupulous art collectors and rapacious thieves, chief among them the homegrown tomb robber, or tombarolo. Ironically, the very presence and notoriety of the tombaroli contribute to the units mystique.

Huaqueros and Raubgrber, dao mu zei and nighthawks: many cultures have specific words and phrases to describe people who dig for artifacts illicitly. In Russian-speaking regions, tchorniye arkheologi translates as black archaeologist and includes those digging for ancient relics as well as those using metal detectors to scavenge for jewelry and money from newly buried corpses. The term implies a contrast with white or legal archaeologists. It suggests that there are moral and immoral ways of digging, and that illicit diggers can be thought of as a type of archaeologist even if they lack formal training. The Chinese term dao mu zei makes clear the legal status of those who take tomb pots: zei is a thief, a cheat, and a sneak. Until 2010 the Chinese government executed tomb robbers on grounds that they threatened the intactness of the Chinese people. While the specific resonances of these terms are socially and culturally determined, what links them all is a sense of cunning, deceit, and magic.

Because the tomb robbers treasure is buried in the ground, locating it requires, by definition, an extraordinary capacity for navigationincluding exquisite sense perception of undulations in the landscape and changes in the soil quality, and a penetrating vision into the soil that can be learned only through years of living and digging in a particular field or valley or hilltop. Pietro Casasanta, whom the Wall Street Journal dubbed the Prince of the Tomb Robbers, credited his stunning artifact discoveries to his deep knowledge of the land. Digging in the earth, he says, is an all-encompassing bodily experience. Its like falling in love with a woman, its hopeless (fig. 1). The magic of the tomb robber is never limited to the ability to return from the underworld, however; it is also always aesthetic. Tomb robbers find and transform. They can plunge into the earth and emerge with jewelry, pottery, coins, sculpted jade or ivory, and skulls and bones. For this abilitytaking the possessions of others, alive or deadtomb robbers often stand accused of banditry.

Banditry, however, is in the eye of the beholder. Italian tomb robbers defend their digging and insist that they make little or no money from artifacts. They say they keep what they find or make gifts to family and close friends who will appreciate the objects as reminders of shared history. Money, they will tell you, is not the motivation for digging, and in any case the most substantial profits are said to be going to foreign archaeologists, private collectors, or Ministry of Culture officials. Given the power imbalance, my informants emphasized, why not allow them some leeway in digging on the side and pocketing a few artifacts that they will cherish and preserve? Unauthorized diggers, then, deftly play down financial motives yet insist that someone is making money. The interplay of history, land, and valuewith the suspicion and status it confersstructures the discourse and practice of Italian cultural patrimony. The tombarolo is a persistent feature of the cultural landscape in Italy. There are alternative terms in the Italian language for a person who digs illegally at archaeological sites. A saccheggiatore is a plunderer, and clandestino can refer to a clandestine digger. Both are serviceable phrases and readily comprehensible in context. The cultural trope of the