It became apparent, he says, that people on the Net could be fooled into buying knickknacks dressed up to look plausibly ancient. Why should local diggers break their backs and risk arrest when they could stay home and make a cottage industry out of copying, with less or more verisimilitude, what their ancestors had wrought?
Stanish published his ideas in an essay in the May/June issue of Archaeology magazine, entitled "Forging Ahead, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love eBay."
At first, he says, archaeologists' fears were borne out. As late as 2000, Internet sites offered "a 50-50 split" between "obvious junk and the kinds of things you have to hold in your hand and have an expert look at it, and weigh it, and smell it, and feel it, and all the things you do to authenticate these pieces. Now, 95% of the stuff you're looking at on EBay is not real."
What gives Stanish relief has caused headaches for Bob Dodge, founder of Artemis Gallery Ancient World Art in Lafayette, Colo. The professor's article hits the nail on the head, Dodge says. "Anybody who knows anything avoids EBay. Fakes have been a problem in this industry since 2,000 years ago, but it's certainly a massive problem right now, and it's getting larger. The handful of legitimate [online] dealers, we're just pulling our hair out, trying to discourage people from throwing money away on cheap tourist crap."
Dodge says his business targets the "mid-range" of the antiquities market, from about $1,000 to $10,000. Now, he says, many potential buyers think he's overpriced: "Why are we selling this piece for $1,000 when they can buy it for $50? How dare we? And once they do find they've been fooled, they're going to leave the market completely. Both situations hurt my pocket."
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EBay responds
Usher Lieberman, an EBay spokesman, says that if fake antiquities were as rampant as Stanish claims, buyers would complain and EBay would police the problem as it does when corporations alert it that knockoffs of their brands are being sold as authentic. "We take very seriously any claims that items sold on the site aren't genuine. . . . This isn't something we're hearing a lot about."
But Stanish, Dodge and other antiquities cognoscenti say collectors rarely are willing to concede that they've been had. Dodge has posted a how-to buyers guide that counsels novices to study art in books and auction catalogs, and to "avoid eBay like the plague!" Written guarantees are a must, he says, preferably an unconditional, lifetime promise to refund an item if it is ever proven a fake.
