illicit antiquities

illicit antiquities, archaeological objects that have been illegally excavated or exported from their country of origin for monetary gain. Most countries place sovereign claims on their archaeological heritage. In countries with strong patrimony laws, it is illegal for an unauthorized individual to excavate or own antiquities (which are in effect taken into state ownership); in those with less stringent legislation, it is legal to own antiquities but not to export them.

There is a thriving trade in such material, whether it be Paracas textiles from Peru, stone Khmer sculpture from Cambodia, ceramic vases from Italy, coins from England, terra-cotta statuettes from West Africa, or bronze Nataraja statues from India. Trade in illicit antiquities is a multibillion-dollar industry, comparable in size to the illegal traffic in drugs and arms. Every antiquity, it seems, can command a price, and every country has a supply.

Most of the demand for illicit antiquities is created by museums and private collectors in Europe, North America, and Japan. Historically, antiquities have been collected as “works of art.” However, when compared with mainstream art, they are thought to be undervalued, so they are increasingly being collected for their investment potential.

Concerned parties

Archaeologists are concerned about the trade in illicit antiquities, because the method of their acquisition entails destruction of archaeological context and a loss of archaeological provenance. In other words, if it is not known with what other objects an antiquity was found, or even where it was found, its potential as an object of historical study is sharply diminished. For example, the monetary value of a small Roman pot can be readily established, but the historical interest of such a pot found in India far outweighs that of an identical specimen found in Italy. Furthermore, archaeologists rely on meticulous recovery and examination of all available evidence—the microscopic and everyday as much as the beautiful and valuable—yet fragile material or material thought to be of no value is routinely destroyed during illicit excavation. Again, archaeologists view this as a loss of historical knowledge.

Many collectors and dealers disagree. They argue that their actions are not harmful, because they are “rescuing” material that would otherwise be destroyed during agricultural, urban, or industrial development projects. They also suggest that the aesthetic merit of a piece—its beauty—may outweigh its historical interest and that its destructive or clandestine excavation can therefore be justified. Better to be seen than left in the ground, they claim.

Governments are concerned about the trade in illicit antiquities because it is a challenge to the sovereignty of the state and an attack on the national heritage. This heritage increasingly is seen to have an economic potential, because intact archaeological sites and monuments can provide a base for the development of cultural tourism. Law-enforcement agencies are concerned not only because the trade in illicit antiquities is itself criminal but also because it has links with other criminal enterprises, including drug trafficking, money laundering, and even terrorism.

The trade in illicit antiquities

From a criminological perspective, the trade in illicit antiquities is unique for two reasons. First, it has a widely dispersed—indeed, global—pattern of supply but relatively focused areas of demand. Thus, most countries of the world have an archaeological heritage that can be plundered, but the ultimate demand lies mainly in the West, with a small (albeit growing) group of private and institutional collectors. Second, the trade is neither totally licit nor totally illicit. In Europe and North America, antiquities are sold openly at public auctions and reputable galleries and bought by law-abiding citizens. Thus, an antiquity that was originally obtained through illegal means must, at some point in its trading history, enter the legitimate market so that its purchase will not contravene the law and its ownership will not attract public censure. In effect, it must be laundered. During this laundering process, a respectable ownership history is substituted for an originally illicit one. Often it is claimed that the antiquity is from an old family collection that dates back several generations—so that original, documentary proof of legal acquisition has long been lost—and that the vendor or previous owner wishes to remain anonymous—so that inquiries into its history are blocked. Thus, it is not possible for a discerning buyer to carry out a rigorous check on the pedigree of a potential purchase, and the licit cannot be distinguished from the illicit.

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There are two circumstances that conspire to facilitate antiquities laundering. First, most illicit antiquities were not registered on any inventory of museum acquisitions or stolen property before they entered circulation. Thus, they cannot be securely identified as stolen property. Even when it can be recognized that an antiquity is from a country that claims state ownership (a vase from southern Italy, for instance), it will not be treated as stolen property unless the country in question can prove that the piece was exported after the date of the relevant patrimony statute. Obviously, if the antiquity has been secretly excavated and smuggled, the date of export is unlikely to be revealed.

Second, many antiquities are sold in the civil-law countries of continental Europe, whose property law differs from that of the United Kingdom and United States in that title to a stolen object can be obtained by means of a good-faith purchase and may subsequently become a legitimate object of commerce. So, even if it can be demonstrated unequivocally that an antiquity was taken illegally from its country of origin, it will no longer be regarded in law as stolen if it was subsequently bought in good faith in a country such as Switzerland, which is a major center of the antiquities trade. This loophole has led to the development of the concept of due diligence—the level of diligence that a prospective purchaser must exercise when investigating the history of a piece in order to establish a claim to have acted in good faith.

Thus, although quantitative studies of market trends, together with evidence of on-the-ground destruction, can demonstrate which categories of antiquities are likely to be largely illicit, it is generally not possible to determine definitively in any particular instance that an antiquity was originally obtained illicitly.

International responses

The trade in illicit antiquities, and indeed in other types of cultural material, was recognized as a threat to the world’s archaeological heritage in the late 1960s. Two international conventions were drafted as a result.

The first was the 1970 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. By the early 21st century it had been ratified by nearly 80 countries. The second convention was the 1995 UNIDROIT (International Institute for the Unification of Private Law) Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects. Intended to remedy some of the deficiencies of the UNESCO convention, it had been ratified by more than 30 countries by the early 21st century.

The relevant U.S. legislation is the 1983 Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CCPIA, or CPIA), which allows the U.S. government to respond to requests from other states party to the UNESCO convention to impose import restrictions on certain classes of archaeological or ethnographic material. Import restrictions apply even if material is exported to the United States from a country other than that of its origin. The CCPIA is not retrospective; therefore, its emphasis is on the protection of material with a still undisturbed context rather than on the return of material whose context is already lost.

Other solutions

Several solutions to the trade in illicit antiquities have been suggested, but none have gained the assent or even the acquiescence of all interested parties. A supply-side strategy is favored by many collectors and dealers. First, they ask that the so-called source countries make greater efforts to protect their own heritage. Second, they suggest that if those countries made a greater number of licit objects available on the open market, then the incentive to buy or trade in illicit material would diminish. Opponents argue that collectors would not want to buy the poorer-quality material that would probably be released onto the market—both collectors and governments would want to own unique pieces, not the mundane ones.

Demand-side strategies tend to be favored by archaeologists and international organizations such as UNESCO and ICOM (International Council of Museums). In their view, campaigns of public education should be carried out to convince potential collectors that the trade and collection of illicit antiquities are economically as well as culturally destructive enterprises. In addition, they argue, there should be greater regulation of the international market to render it more transparent and to make it more difficult to launder antiquities. Advocates of deregulation oppose this solution, arguing that increased regulation might serve only to drive the trade further underground and lead to greater criminalization.