Greek helmets galore

[Cincinnatus]

In addition (here's my cynicism again) I can't see why a helmet that was looted from Greece by an "official" expedition in a time when field notes were fairly haphazard and local workers were used for the "dirty parts" (say, 1850-1939) is actually, morally or physically different from a helmet that was purchased from an antiquities dealer in the same period. What about helmets in museums that came from private purchase? Are we dismissing the entire Walters Collection, for example? The Royal Ontario Museum collection?

Good point, and lets not forget that museums are in fact a type of collector as well, they both buy and sell antiquities (both of which are done very discreetly nowadays) and display only a small fraction of their collections. And private collectors often take very good care of their pieces (since they paid for them) and are very eager to have them studied and published, and at the end of the day often donate them to musuems anyway.
Furthermore state museums in source countries like Greece, Italy, Turkey, and Egypt are stuffed with unprovenanced antiquities as well - objects whose findspots were never recorded or lost. But I digress again.

Randall