Greek helmets galore

[MeinPanzer]

I was an archaeologist before I was an art dealer. My point is that one can not fault the object for the circumstances of its discovery and to argue, as some archaeologists often do, that an object has lost all historical value once it has been divorced from its archaeological context is just lazy scholarship. It is more challenging than that. Archaeological context is very important, yes, but the object still has a lot to tell us on its own, and burying our heads in the sand because the object was not excavated by one of the annointed few, serves no one. Greek vases, for instance, can tell us who painted and potted them and where and when they were made regardless of which Etruscan tomb they were found in.

Randall

The primary problem with artefacts from the art market which are unprovenanced is that they can only be "parasitic." A helmet from an art collection which has a provenance no more specific than "probably from south Italy" cannot tell us anything about helmets from south Italy, since the only solid way to identify it, and thus to use it as a source of information, is by comparison with other artefacts. It thus "leeches" off of our knowledge rather than contributing to it.

I largely agree that an absolute rejection of art market artefacts is not totally useful, but I think in the case of helmets, what information we gain from them is largely useful only in its own right - that is, it tells us about that helmet, but it cannot be fit into the bigger picture of archaeological scholarship.