THE ILLICIT TRADE IN ANTIQUITIES

By Dr Neil Brodie
The Illicit Antiquities Research Centre
Macdonald Institute for Archaeological Research
University of Cambridge

Today there is a large and growing international market for antiquities. They are bought and sold in most countries of the world, although most end up in the museums and collections of North America, Europe and Japan. Unfortunately, demand for antiquities far outstrips supply, and there are not enough in circulation to satisfy the market. As a result, looters target archaeological sites and monuments. Graves are opened in the search for jewellery or valuable pottery, monuments are disfigured by the removal of saleable pieces of sculpture, and museums are burgled.

The scale of the destruction is alarming. Official Italian police records show that between 1969 and 1999 they recovered 326,000 objects from illegal excavations, but many more must have left the country. One study has shown that so many 4th-century BC Apulian vases left Italy over the same period that they must have been taken from over 1,000 tombs. And that is not an outlandish or unusual figure. At the cemetery of Khirbat Qazone in Jordan, for example, it is estimated that something like 3,000 graves have been destroyed by looters. Even in the USA cemeteries are not safe. At Slack Farm in Kentucky bulldozers were used to plough through 700 Native American burial mounds. In South America, Africa and Asia, the story is the same, and it is not only cemeteries that are under attack. For nearly 30 years the temples of Cambodia and other south Asian countries have been vandalized to supply sculpture for the 'Asian art' market, and the terracotta figures of West Africa, unknown 50 years ago, have likewise been dug up to feed the ever-growing demand for 'tribal art'. In 1991 a survey in Mali discovered 830 archaeological sites, but also discovered that looters had got to nearly half of them first. The list goes on and on. Even Christian churches aren't safe. In north Cyprus, for example, historic churches have been stripped of their wall-paintings and mosaics. In 1997, 50–60 crates full of Cypriot material were recovered by German police in Munich during a successful 'sting' operation.

L-R: Page from the ICOM book One Hundred Missing Objects: Looting in Angkor; Looted cemetery
at Khirbat Qazone, Jordan (photo: Konstantinos Politis)

The problem with this large illicit trade is that when archaeological sites and monuments are destroyed, information about the past is destroyed along with them. This is because, in reality, antiquities themselves can tell us very little about the past, it is the quality of archaeological excavation that counts, not the monetary value or aesthetic appeal of recovered antiquities. During a properly-conducted excavation, layers and features are measured and planned, and find spots are plotted. Great care is taken to recover environmental evidence such as preserved plant remains, and fragile materials such as corroded metal or decaying cloth are carefully conserved. All this information and evidence is lost when a site is illegally dug. From the evidence of their excavations archaeologists try to answer questions about the past: How did people live? What did they eat? What did they wear? Why did things change? No antiquities collection by itself can answer these questions.

There are several international conventions and agreements that have been drafted to stop the illicit trade. The most important is the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which has been ratified by 100 countries, including the UK which acceded in 2002. Museum organizations such as the International Council of Museums and, in the UK, the Museums Association, have also drafted codes of practice that call upon museums not to acquire antiquities unless a clear and legal pedigree can be demonstrated. However, the illicit trade persists, largely because it is hard to spot a looted antiquity. This is because antiquities are sold without provenance – in other words, they are sold without details of find spot or ownership history. Thus it is easy for an innocent or an unprincipled buyer to claim that there was nothing to suggest that a purchased piece had been looted. There hardly ever is of course, because it is virtually impossible to research the market history of a piece. Museums and salerooms are under no obligation to release information on the subject, and most usually don't. While provenance is routinely suppressed in this way looted antiquities can easily be bought and sold.

Italian antiquities illegally exported and seized by Swiss police in Geneva in 1995

Most antiquities which are looted from archaeological sites cannot be identified as no record exists of their illegal excavation. In consequence, very few are ever recovered. However, sometimes, antiquities are stolen from inventoried collections in museums and archaeological storehouses. Inventoried antiquities are more often recovered, and when they are, it is often from the possession of a law-abiding individual or institution. They have frequently been sold through a reputable trade outlet. In 1993, for example, the International Council of Museums released details of 100 pieces of sculpture that had been stolen from the storeroom of the great temple of Angkor Wat, in Cambodia. As a result of this publication, 7 pieces have been recovered. One was in New York's Metropolitan Museum and 2 were in the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Other pieces were recovered from France, the United States, the UK and Switzerland. It is to the credit of these museums and individual collectors that they came forward and returned the stolen pieces, presumably those in possession of the remaining 93 pieces are not so honest. But it is also a good example of how stolen antiquities can end up in major museums. Three of the pieces had been sold through Sotheby's auction house. Again, the good reputation of Sotheby's was no guarantee of a piece's legitimacy.

The geographical range of the illicit trade has expanded greatly over the past 20 years. This is because during that time the cost of travel has dropped enormously and political barriers have fallen. Thus the archaeology of the Sahara, the Himalayas and the Amazonian rainforest is no longer safe because it is no longer inaccessible. The political reforms that have swept through the former communist bloc have also opened those countries to the illicit trade. Czech police estimate that thefts from cultural institutions increased twelve-fold when the Czech Republic's borders opened in 1990. Chinese material is flooding through the market, most of it being sold first in Hong Kong's infamous Hollywood Road, which is lined with antiques shops selling everything from fossilized dinosaur eggs through stone Buddha heads to colonial furniture. Much has been moved out of China illegally, but a great deal is probably fake. It is a chance one takes when buying objects with no documented provenance. If there is no proof of origin, then there is no proof of authenticity.

In many countries, the fundamental cause of looting is poverty. Poor farmers can earn more from digging up archaeological sites than from the sale of crops. In times of war, too, archaeological sites and museums are a ready source of income. The sack of the Baghdad Museum in April 2003 grabbed the attention of the world's media, but although the archaeological sites and museums of countries such as Afghanistan and Somalia are less newsworthy, they have suffered too. Again, during wartime, archaeological sites are often looted by people whose livelihoods have been destroyed, but sometimes there are more sinister motives – the money earned from the sale of antiquities can be used to keep armed militia in the field.

So the battle to stop looting is really a battle for hearts and minds. If collectors in the West can be persuaded that it is not fashionable or clever to buy unprovenanced antiquities, then demand will shrivel. If people living in the vicinity of sites are offered realistic subsistence options, and particularly if archaeological sites are developed as cultural resources with a tourist and hence economic potential, then looting will stop. This is why the work at sites like Butrint is so important, where archaeologists work together with the local community to ensure that their interests are not overlooked, and in so doing secure the future survival of the site.