The Pennsylvania Declaration was a statement of ethics issued by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology on April 1, 1970. It affirmed that the Penn Museum would no longer acquire objects that lacked provenance or collection histories. The declaration aimed to distinguish the Penn Museum's collection practices from illegal antiquity trading while maintaining trust with countries where the university engaged in field research. This declaration marked the first time that a museum had taken formal steps to guarantee the ethical acquisition of materials and to deter looting and illicit antiquities trading. Froelich Rainey, director of the Penn Museum, presented the declaration at the meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in conjunction with the issue of its treaty known as the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.
Background
The Penn Museum was established in 1887 to house artifacts from archaeological and anthropological expeditions which the University of Pennsylvania sponsored around the world. Before World War II, when many countries still allowed the exportation of newly excavated archaeological materials, Penn acquired large collections in the course of these excavations. Penn Museum excavations are well-documented, and the Penn Museum Archives now preserve extensive records associated with them.
Aside from acquiring materials through excavations, the Penn Museum also received objects from donors and through purchase from private collectors. In 1966, the Penn Museum bought a collection of gold believed to be from the site of Troy, now in Turkey; the seller was George Allen, a private antiquities dealer. Museum directors tasked underwater archaeologist George Bass, assistant curator of the Mediterranean Section, with writing a report on the collection. However, the objects lacked archaeological records and Bass was only able to make tentative suppositions based on their physical properties. Bass and the rest of the curation team at the museum concluded that collecting objects of this nature would undermine the credibility and development of archaeological scholarship and threaten future field research. The curators agreed to stop collecting objects without collection histories and archaeological records – without clear provenance – while the university was still sponsoring expeditions in the field. Against this context, and determined to set policy, Penn Museum director Froelich Rainey worked with colleagues to develop the Pennsylvania Declaration.
UNESCO and the Pennsylvania Declaration
In 1969, UNESCO had invited Froelich Rainey, in his capacity as director of the Penn Museum, to aid in drafting the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. Rainey had hoped to “establish a ‘uniform antiquities law’ throughout the world”. He accepted the offer to participate. During preliminary deliberations with other members of the UNESCO team, however, Rainey realized that the UNESCO convention would lack legal accountability and would not suffice in ending looting, regulating the importation of cultural material, and providing guidelines for legal trade. This realization influenced his decision to draft the separate Pennsylvania Declaration.
Although the United States government committed to follow UNESCO's 1970 Convention, its terms were not incorporated into U.S. law until 1983, with the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act. After 1970, t account for gaps in legal implementation, private and public organizations revised, developed, and clarified policies regarding illegal antiquities.