Village leaders at San Benito Poité in southern Belize, formerly British Honduras, are claiming that an important collection of artefacts removed from the ancient city of Pusilha is not the lawful property of the British Museum.

This follows research at the Belize Archives and Records Service which failed to uncover any record the British Museum secured the permit, required under colonial law, to embark on the six expeditions it mounted in British Honduras between 1926 and 1931.

In a Resolution submitted to the Museum last month (April), two village leaders from San Benito Poité, the site of the ancient city of Pusilha, requested the return of all human remains, carved monumental stelae and altars, together with a representative sample of the lithic and ceramic objects museum excavators removed from Pusilha after those expeditions. Village leaders also requested the Museum provides a repatriation grant to the village of $1million BZD for the construction and first-year operation of a new Visitor Centre, plus a ten-year reparation scholarship fund ‘not to exceed $50,000 BZD per year’. The Resolution maintains the objects were removed ‘by armed expeditions of the British Museum... without the valid consent of the Maya people.’

The six British Museum expeditions were led by British anthropologist Thomas Athol Joyce (1878-1942). But other Pusilha objects in the Museum’s collection were acquired in an altogether different fashion by Dr Thomas Gann (1867-1938), a former medical officer for the colonial government of British Honduras who became an obsessive and notorious collector of Mayan artefacts.

Securing accurate information about the source of finds made by Gann as well as the Museum’s various expeditions has proved problematic. Poor record-keeping has led many of these artefacts to be catalogued simply as ‘Meso-America’ or ‘Belize’.

It was over a period of more than 40 years, either as part of a legitimate expedition or on his own prospecting trips to uncover the contents of Maya burial mounds, that Gann built his large private collection of Mayan artefacts. Much of this collection was later sold, loaned or gifted to the British Museum. But the collection offers little archaeological value as Gann kept scant details of provenance. “Keeping good records was not part of the plan,” according to Michael Richardson, the author of Richardson Reports, which has exposed the coercive and threatening tactics that Gann used to build his collection - as well as his abysmal record-keeping.

One of 905 objects collected by Gann and now in the British Museum is a carved and incised stone altar of the Maya god of death. Gann wrote about the recovery of this altar, discovered at the Xuanantunich ruins in 1924, in his book Mystery Cities where he describes how it was cut from its base and trimmed down with a stone saw. The altar entered the Museum's collection in 1938 but was only registered in 1991. Neither on public exhibition nor illustrated online, the information published by the Museum refers only to its style ('Classic Maya') and findspot as 'Xunantunich'.

Gann himself had been granted an official license in 1924 ‘to search for and explore ancient monuments and mounds on an area of Crown Land in the Toledo District and to remove relics therefrom,’ along with Lady Lian Brown and Frederick Mitchell-Hedges. But two years later, Gann sought to cancel this license in favour of the British Museum. However, there is no record in the Belize Archives this reassignment was ever completed, only the evidence of Gann’s attempts to reassign it.

With over eight million objects in its collection, this is not the first time that major gaps in the British Museum’s history of record-keeping have been identified. However, Richardson’s campaign to return the ‘looted’ cultural heritage of Pushila to Belize puts these gaps sharply into focus.

Using a Freedom of Information Request (FOIR) earlier this year to access the acquisition records of all the objects identified from Pusilha now held in Bloomsbury, Richardson believes the Museum has “taken a very narrow view of what is an acquisition record.”

The Museum has responded by identifying 566 objects and an additional 52 exhibits of human remains from Pusilha. But Richardson believes there are many more surviving unrecorded in the Museum’s storerooms. This, he says, includes an “immense quantity” of ceramics removed from the site and three zoomorphic stone altars that are absent from the Museum’s catalogue.

The Museum acknowledges the difficult history of some of its collections and in its response to Richardson’s Freedom of Information Request has confirmed that ‘documentation for this case does not contain a comprehensive inventory of every find, and no such inventory was compiled at the site of the expeditions’. In April, an internal review of the Museum’s original response to Richardson’s request was upheld. Apparently, there’s no more information to share.

Which is why Richardson is now exploring the legal case for invoking section 5(1)(c) of the British Museum Act 1963 (‘Disposal of Objects’), which allows objects to be repatriated if the Trustees consider the objects are ‘unfit to be retained’ and can be removed ‘without detriment to the interests of students’.

The British Museum does not like handing objects back. Despite strong evidence of unethical collecting practices by Gann, together with inadequate historic record-keeping by the Museum’s own excavators, it's still hard to envisage the trustees will agree to invoke section 5 and return their Pusilha collection to the village of San Benito Poité - at least for the time being. For one thing, the lack of detailed excavation records providing hard evidence where, when and how each artefact was collected makes it more not less difficult for the trustees to consider the objects are fit to be returned. Remember also, this is the same Museum that still refuses to explain why it won’t return eleven sacred Ethiopian Tabots to the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia - despite four Freedom of Information Requests made by Returning Heritage and despite clear evidence that demonstrates why the Tabots are unfit to be locked away in Bloomsbury, out of sight and study by all, including the public, curators and even the Museum's own trustees. Evidently, agreeing what 'unfit to be retained' means in practice is proving something of a legal rabbit hole.

We are not aware of any formal appeal by the National Institute of Culture and History in Belize for the return of these Pusilha artefacts. Nevertheless, the village leaders of San Benito Poité await a decision from the British Museum expected in July. We shall follow the outcome closely.  However, we suspect that any progress is unlikely until a more far-reaching review of the British Museum Act 1963 is conducted and heritage legislation is amended so that colonial collections in national museums are managed in a manner more fitting to the 21st century. 

After this was written....

In a 'Statement of Unfitness' submitted on 1st June to the British Museum's Legal Counsel, Michael Richardson maintains the Pusilha artefacts, including the human remains still held by the Museum, are unique from other appeals for repatriation on the grounds 'their provenance implicates the Museum itself in unfitness.' This assertion is based on the Museum's acknowledgement that it lacks title to the artefacts, together with the absence of any legal consent to remove the objects to the British Museum (the objects were in fact removed, according to Richardson, in violation of the British Honduras Ancient Monuments Ordinance of 1924). 'The unfitness of the Pusilha holdings is further compromised,' he adds, 'by deprivations of the Museum staff in acquiring the relics which include damage to monuments, lack of proper archaeological protocols, and lack of an inventory.' However, as the Village's authorised representative, Richardson goes on to state the Village is agreeable to allowing the Museum to retain selected samples for research 'to satisfy the needs of students'.

Photo: Splitting part of a stela 'to lighten the weight'. Pusilha

Courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum