The Illicit Antiquities Trade
Posted under: Nyssa Itzaithi Kypuros – University of Texas at Tyler
The Illicit Antiquities Trade: Predatory Practices, Commodification, Cultural Depletion, and Responses
The illicit antiquities trade is rooted in colonial practices and violates fundamental human rights to cultural heritage, while benefiting museums, private collectors, sellers, and auctioneers. Looting has long been used as a political and economic tool, and it is also sometimes employed for subsistence and/or can function to heighten tensions in conflict zones or economically disadvantaged areas. The demand for cultural property is fueled by the desire for monetary/social/political gain via cultural commodification, while the illicit antiquities trade leads to cultural depletion and erasure in communities who are targeted for their economic or political vulnerability. This paper explores the origins of the illicit antiquities trade, its predatory nature, and its ensuing commodification and depletion of certain cultures. It addresses current responses such as repatriation, as well as offers data from three expert interviews.
It is difficult to pinpoint the origins of the illicit antiquities trade[1] because taking cultural artifacts has happened since cultures began interacting, but looting occurred on a mass scale during the age of colonization (Palmer, 2024). Trading antiquities was used as a political tool for colonizers to claim superiority over the communities they stole cultural objects from. The age of colonization is often called the “Age of Exploration” or the “Age of Discovery.” From the perspective of the colonizers, they were “discovering” new territories, resources, and treasures. However, colonized peoples experienced this period as having their territories taken, their resources exploited, and their valuables stolen. Colonial looting of antiquities typically served to gain political and social status; it was a way to humiliate an empire’s enemies (Attiah, 2018) while gaining status by gifting stolen antiquities to the heads of colonial powers or selling them for profit (Wiener, 1994). Often, this involved stealing the possessions of Indigenous royal families before executing them; in essence, stripping them of their dignity by keeping their valuables beyond death. This happened so frequently that many looted artifacts remain in museums or in the private collection of royal families of former colonial empires (Palmer, 2024). Furthermore, former colonies have not seen their artifacts returned despite their constant advocacy for repatriation (Van Beurden, 2022). The British empire played a major role in looting in the early twentieth century, during the start of what became modern archaeology.
Fundamental human rights to cultural heritage are outlined in a variety of human rights instruments. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights contends in Article 17 that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property,” while Article 27 protects involvement in the “cultural life of the community” (United Nations, 1948). The right to cultural life is reaffirmed with Article 15 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (United Nations, 1966). Cultural rights are more expressly outlined in the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which emphasizes the right to self-determination (including the right to freely pursue cultural development) in Article 3 and guarantees the right to maintain distinct cultural institutions in Article 5, the right to “the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures” (including artifacts) in Article 11, and the right to possess and repatriate cultural objects in Article 12 (United Nations, 2007).
Growing recognition of cultural rights comes at a time when the negative impacts of the illicit antiquities trade are becoming more widely understood. This paper highlights how the modern origins of this trade can be traced to colonialism and the beginnings of modern archaeology. An analysis of its consequences shows that the illicit antiquities trade uses predatory practices and engages in commodification and cultural depletion. Progress toward repatriating stolen artifacts represents an important shift in this trade, and interviews with three issue experts illustrate the real-world impacts of these developments.
Modern Archaeology: Rooted in Looting and Illicit Trade
Archaeology has been around since at least the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BC), but modern archaeology started in the nineteenth century. Archaeology started with cultures wanting to know more about their past, and some of the oldest archaeologists were the New Kingdom Egyptians who restored the Old Kingdom’s Sphinx (Hirst, 2020). Modern archaeology became popularized by works such as that of businessman Heinrich Schliemann, Egyptologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie, and Pompeii archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli (Lehtinen, 2013). With popular culture’s newfound interest in archaeology, artifacts began traveling around the world – usually at the hands of wealthy Europeans (Hirst, 2020). There were two major players in the modern illicit antiquities trade: the British Empire and the Nazis.
Archaeology soared in popularity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, just as the British Empire was at the height of its imperial power (Brocklehurst et al., 2004). However, archaeology’s fame was not simply due to a sudden rise in global awareness, but rather because investments were made to validate the superiority of imperial powers by labeling colonized communities as “backwards” compared to the civilized “white man” (Brocklehurst et al., 2004, p. 227; see also Lawrence, 2003). Further, the British would appropriate the cultures of those communities by claiming them as their own through association with the British Empire. In this way, archaeology served as a political tool for the British Empire by both degrading and commodifying the cultures of their colonized states – a process that was often rooted in racism. The British had a strong hold over Egyptology and Egyptian archaeological sites, which provided many artifacts to the British Museum (Brocklehurst et al., 2004), and the antiquities trade in Egypt continued despite being declared illegal in 1891 (Fricke, 2006). Unfortunately, many nations faced similar exploitation and became victims of the illicit antiquities trade by the British Empire in its building of the British Museum; many of these artifacts are still held by the British Museum and/or the British royal family.
Another major perpetrator of looting was the German National Socialist Regime, or the Nazis. Like the British, the Nazis used archaeology as a political tool to promote white nationalism and justify genocide (Arnold, 2006). Rooted in beliefs about eugenics, this form of archaeology was promoted after Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933; it glorified classical Nordic, Greek, and Roman cultures and connected them to Germany’s future, all linked by the domination of Aryan people over other groups (Arnold, 2006). This stance led to the mass looting of art and artifacts to use for propaganda and to assert political dominance, including the appropriation of Greek and Roman artifacts for propaganda campaigns (Gravenstein, 2022). By the end of their reign, the Nazis had stolen over five million cultural artifacts (Gravenstein, 2022). After World War II, the Allied powers took possession of Nazi-looted art and artifacts with promises to make restitutions, but many pieces remain in museums and have not been returned to their previous owners (Adler, 2007).
Laws aimed at the illicit antiquities trade have existed since the late nineteenth century but were largely unenforceable, although that began to shift after World War II. One of the oldest laws concerning the antiquities trade came from an Egyptian decree in 1891, in which Egypt claimed all objects found during excavation belonged to the state and should be given to the Gaza Museum (Fricke, 2006). El Salvador made a similar claim to cultural property in 1903 (Archeology, 2002), and Sudan followed in 1905 with its own Antiquities Ordinance (Adam, 2017). Iraq passed their first “Law of Antiquities” in 1924, thereby creating the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities (State Board of Antiquities & Heritage, n.d.), and Greece declared cultural and marine finds as property of the state in 1932. Other nations that have made similar laws include Italy, Turkey, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait, and Algeria (Archeology, 2002; Antiquities Coalition, 2021).
In 1970, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) globally recognized the right to recover stolen and illegally traded antiquitieswith its Convention on the Means of Prohibiting the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The Convention came into force in 1972 and currently has 147 state parties. It established protections for antiquities, which UNESCO (1970) defines as “cultural property” – including “property which, on religious or secular grounds, is specifically designated by each State as being of importance for archaeology, prehistory, history, literature, art or science” and which belongs to a list of categories (UNESCO, 1970, Article 1). The Convention acknowledges that the illicit antiquities trade is a main cause of “the impoverishment of the cultural heritage” and notes how nations should oppose the practices of illicit trade of cultural property, remove the trade’s causes, stop current practices, and make reparations to the affected communities (UNESCO, 1970, Article 2). The Convention further offers guidance on preventing and stopping illicit trade, from enacting various penalties and sanctions to facilitating the return of cultural property and the issuance of periodic reports (see UNESCO, 1970).
The Convention’s principles were reinforced by state and other global initiatives in the following decades. The United States passed the Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA) in 1983 and created a Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC), for instance, which set further standards for the legal trade of antiquities imported into the country (Archeology, 2002). CPIA allows the U.S. president to impose import restrictions on any antiquities at the request of another state that is party to the UNESCO Convention (Archaeological Institute of America, 2010). Requests made to CPAC are reviewed in public sessions, allowing public commentary before CPAC recommendations are delivered (Archaeological Institute of America, 2010). In 1995, the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects defined a stolen cultural object as having been unlawfully retained whether it was lawfully excavated (UNIDROIT, 1995). Although not as widely accepted as the UNESCO Convention, the UNIDROIT Convention requires the return of stolen artifacts, compensation for those who return stolen cultural objects, the possibility of court or committee intervention when necessary, and various other restrictions and protocols (see UNIDROIT, 1995). Critics of the UNIDROIT Convention point out that because it requires nations to compensate buyers of stolen antiquities who return them in “good faith,” poorer countries are in a weaker position to reclaim their cultural goods (Archeology, 2002).
The Illicit Antiquities Market and its Impacts
Although there is not one all-encompassing database to track stolen antiquities, several organizations have created databases to monitor the trade of antiquities (which are often classified as “art pieces” rather than cultural objects in these databases). According to Art Basel and USB databases, the art and antiquities trade reached new heights after the COVID-19 pandemic, with a record total of antiquities imports ($30.7 billion) and a second-highest record of exports ($33.4 billion) in 2022 (McAndrew, 2023). While these numbers are not based explicitly on illicit imports and exports, it is important to recognize that many antiquities are sourced under dubious circumstances. In the 2010s, the international market for cultural heritage objects was $60 billion, of which the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimated $8 billion was illegal (Amineddoleh, 2013).
Sales channels for antiquities include auction houses, open-sourced auction websites, and antiquities dealers with physical locations (Sargent et al., 2020). According to researchers with the RAND Corporation, the most successful sales channel is auction houses, which are often organized by third parties that have received antiquities from brokers (Sargent et al., 2020). Instead of a centralized black-market antiquities trade, local small-scale smugglers and looters sell their artifacts to brokers (often for a small fee) and smaller organized groups (or “gangs”) sell antiquities to brokers in specific locations, which are then sold to auction houses that can attract high-end buyers (Sargent et al., 2020). However, the more common sales channels are online sites. eBay is currently the most dominant player in the online antiquities market, followed by Facebook and more curated sites like CNG and LiveAuctions.com (Sargent et al., 2020). Facebook groups created to sell trafficked antiquities expand their customer base by adding Facebook friends into the group, where the admin will then take a portion of each sale made through the group (Antiquities Trafficking and Heritage Anthropology Research [ATHAR] Project, n.d.). Many antiquities advertised are still in situ, so that the seller can assess the demand before removing the artifact. This business model has proven popular in the sale of Arabic antiquities, many of which are in war zones (Antiquities Trafficking and Heritage Anthropology Research [ATHAR] Project, n.d.). To a lesser extent, physical storefronts owned by antiquities dealers also take part in the illicit antiquities trade; there are less than 100 storefronts between Europe and North America (Sargent et al., 2020).
This information begs the questions: Where do these antiquities come from and who is buying them? There is currently not a clear database to track the demand for and supply of antiquities, but the International Council of Museums created its “Red List” to track cultural objects that have been traded or stolen, and to create a comprehensive list of objects vulnerable to illicit trade. Problem areas include Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, Central America, Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Peru, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and West Africa (International Council of Museums, 2023). Communities whose cultural sites are looted tend to be economically or politically vulnerable, while buyers of illicit antiquities tend to come from privileged states in North America, Europe, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East (Sargent et al., 2020).
So, where do these antiquities end up? While some missing antiquities end up in the hands of private collectors, many buyers of the illicit antiquities market are museums and universities (Amineddoleh, 2013). Since the 1960s, various museums have been charged with obtaining antiquities in illicit or illegal ways, usually through purchases from a third party. These museums are in wealthy, politically powerful states such as the United States and the United Kingdom – and cultural property often remains in these institutions even when home nations ask for their property back. Universities have also been caught obtaining antiquities through dubious means and not being transparent about legal procedures to obtain cultural objects for study. While these museums and universities are not looting antiquities themselves, they are obtaining them in illicit manners and fueling the demand for the illicit antiquities market (Amineddoleh, 2013). As the following sub-sections highlight, this market utilizes predatory practices that facilitate commodification and cultural depletion.
Predatory Practices
The illicit antiquities trade often targets economically vulnerable communities, including those that cannot afford the compensation guidelines outlined by the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention. Targeting such communities can lead to “subsistence looting” – that is, when members of the economically vulnerable community contribute to looting to support themselves financially (Matsuda, 1998). This practice can be explained by using “world systems theory,” which contends that industrialized core economic powers (cores) obtain their wealth by exploiting less industrialized peripheral economic powers (peripheries) by buying primary products or services from the peripheries at cheaper prices (Chirot & Hall, 1982). In the case of the illicit antiquities trade, the cores are the wealthy auction buyers, museums, universities, and other third parties. The peripheries are economically vulnerable communities, such as those found in Latin America (Matsuda, 1998) and Southeast Asia (Byrne, 2016). The primary products are looted artifacts, and the services come from members of local communities who are doing the looting. Subsistence looters are paid meager wages, but those earnings go back into local economies and provide a fast and cheap alternative for buyers seeking to avoid the expensive, time-consuming, and perhaps impossible process of obtaining legal permission to study (or remove objects from) an archaeological site. Indeed, many communities lack the resources to adequately study and preserve their own cultural artifacts, making them often reliant on outside organizations and funders (Matsuda, 1998). Because the demand for the illicit antiquities trade encourages looting, many communities are depleted of their cultural resources before they can study them adequately – and they may also not be able to afford the costs associated with recovering and restoring stolen antiquities. These factors mean this cycle will likely repeat itself until more sustainable practices are used to prevent the illicit antiquities trade.
A good case study to understand the impacts of subsistence looting comes from Latin America. Subsistence looting of Indigenous sites, including those in Guatemala, started on a local scale in the twentieth century using local merchants. International markets for goods such as ceramics, metalwork, textiles, stonework, and figurines emerged as demand grew in cities such as New York, Hollywood, and Paris (Yates, 2015). Buyers were often foreign diplomats, businesspeople, museums, private collectors (Yates, 2015), and academics (Matsuda, 1998) – who all had the power and wealth to purchase in-demand “exotic” items. Smuggling chains were quickly established to meet this demand, often organized by intermediaries who would steal property from local communities, places of religion, and graves without respect for laws (Yates, 2015). The illicit antiquities trade quickly became decentralized and no longer primarily benefited local communities. After the well-intentioned UNESCO Convention came into force in 1972, looting actually increased – particularly in war-torn regions. Subsistence looters may become involved in smuggling operations to support their families, since those illegal activities pay more than serving as local guides or laborers for research teams (Matsuda, 1998; Yates, 2015).
The issue of wartime looting is especially important in relation to the illicit antiquities trade. Wartime looting practices involve sacking museums or cultural sites, which can be used as a political tool during conflict (as noted above), in addition to being a lucrative source of profit. In some cases, cultural property can become collateral damage during war, as was the case when the National Museum in Kabul, Afghanistan, fell victim to air strikes in 1992 and was subsequently looted (Brodie, 2003). Afghanistan’s cultural sites have also been targeted by illegal excavations, with many antiquities ending up in illicit markets and eventually international museums (Brodie, 2003). Archaeologists working in collaboration with invaders or occupiers of a territory often contribute to wartime looting in their efforts to “rescue” antiquities (Hamilakis, 2009). This was the case in Iraq, which was occupied by the U.S. military in 2003. Like Afghanistan, Iraq experienced the ransacking and destruction of antiquities, partly due to archaeological efforts conducted in collaboration with U.S. archaeologists (Hamilakis, 2009). Researchers must seek the approval of occupiers in times of conflict (often at the expense of academic autonomy), displaced communities lose touch with their cultural artifacts, and cultural property can be sent to foreign institutions without formal plans for its return after the war.
Commodification and Cultural Depletion
The popularity of certain cultures supports a lucrative market for artifacts and other cultural goods (Lehtinen, 2013), but harmful impacts occur when a culture is treated as a commodified product (Pollock, 2016). Ever since the popularization of Egyptology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by British archaeologists, for example, the Middle East has been a popular area of interest for scholars and the illicit antiquities trade. This area is sometimes called the “Holy Land” in pop culture due its association with Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (Pollock, 2016). However, this branding has also made the Middle East a target for the antiquities market, worsened by the practice of subsistence looting in economically disenfranchised areas affected by war.[2] The demand for cultural property from this area is often driven by private Western funders; the American corporation Hobby Lobby was charged with buying illegally obtained antiquities in Jerusalem for its Christian history exhibit in the Hobby Lobby Museum of the Bible (Newton, 2017). The demand for cultural antiquities as “exotic” luxuries highlights how cultural goods are commodified and sold to the highest bidder, frequently at the expense of local communities and their ability to protect their cultural rights.
Cultural depletion happens because of the commodification of culture; communities experience the erasure or appropriation of their culture when they lose their cultural artifacts to foreign institutions and collectors. A famous historical example comes from U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, who is sometimes called the “Father of American Archaeology” (Hatzenbuehler, 2011) for perpetuating the “myth of the mound builders” near his home in Virginia (Sayre, 1998). He documented “borrows” near his home that were Indigenous burial mounds that had been used for ceremonial practices, but Jefferson wrongly concluded that Indigenous peoples were incapable of building such monuments (Sayre, 1998). His work helped inspire the myth that a race separate from local Indigenous peoples had built the mounds (Tribble, 2013). Jefferson’s “research” has been widely disputed (Hatzenbuehler, 2011); these mounds were built by Indigenous civilizations, whose populations were much larger than those of post-colonial America (Sayre, 1998). The “myth of the mound builders” case is a good example of cultural appropriation and erasure. Not only did this myth appropriate Indigenous structures, claiming their work to be someone else’s, but it also contributed to the erasure of Indigenous culture by omitting the cultural context these structures were part of. This same process of cultural depletion continues today, often fueled by the commodified demand for illicit antiquities.
Cultural depletion also happens with the destruction of culture property, including the intentional removal of permanent structures to transfer to foreign museums. Many statues in museums are missing limbs or other body parts because the removal process required damaging the structure (Cascone, 2022). Today, the Pantheon Marbles – a collection of Ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and other structures from the Acropolis of Athens – are held by the British Museum despite frequent requests by Greek and global authorities for the repatriation (Gazi, 1990). The Marbles were removed between 1801 and 1803 during the occupation of the Ottoman Empire by British ambassador and art collector Lord Elgin, despite the objection of the Turkish authorities. Elgin then sold the Marbles to the British Museum, where they have remained since 1816 despite repeated repatriation efforts. The British Museum claims they can better preserve the artifacts, despite issues such as an improperly sealed roof in the British Museum’s Greek Art Galleries that led to the water damage of several statues (Ruiz, 2021). Museum authorities have also claimed that the Marbles should be considered works of art instead of cultural objects (Poggioli, 2009). Greek Authorities have been unsuccessful in repatriating the Pantheon Marbles and other artifacts taken from the site, despite building a state-of-the-art museum to house the objects in Greece. The Marbles are a symbol of Greek history and culture, and the British Museum withholds Greek agency over their own culture by withholding these artifacts.
A Shift Toward Repatriation
The argument is often made that museums and universities obtain cultural objects to entertain and educate the public, and that they have an academic responsibility to study and share cultural information. However, there is growing acknowledgement that these objects are considered stolen by their home communities – and that artifacts deemed “missing” often show up months or years later in prestigious museums (Amineddoleh, 2013). Objects that once served important functions can sit on display in a museum case or be held in storage, out of touch and sight from their communities of origin and disconnected from cultural practices. The dancer Sophiline Cheam-Shapiro was removed from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for performing a customary cultural dance in front of a significant Cambodian statue (Cheam-Shapiro, 2023). In this case and others, the artifact is prevented from performing its cultural function.
In the United States, a major paradigm shift came with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990 (National Park Service, n.d.). This law enabled U.S. institutions receiving federal funding to return Indigenous remains and other cultural objects. For a cultural object to be eligible for repatriation under NAGPRA, it must meet qualifications such as being of established tribal origin (limited to federally recognized tribes), there must be established wrongful removal and tribal consent for the object’s return, and tribes must have the legal and financial resources to make claims (although federal resources are available) (see National Park Service, n.d.). More than 30 years after NAGPRA’s passage, many Indigenous tribes still await their cultural belongs (ProPublica, 2023). Currently, 623 U.S. institutions still hold Indigenous remains, and 46% of those remains were not made available to their tribal associations (ProPublica, 2023). Half of those unavailable remains are held by only 10 institutions: Ohio History Connection, Illinois State Museum, Harvard University, University of California Berkeley, Indiana University, University of Tennessee Knoxville, University of Kentucky, the U.S. Department of the Interior, University of Alabama, and University of Arizona (ProPublica, 2023). These well-funded institutions have the resources to undertake the lengthy and difficult repatriation process.
More recently, the U.S. passed the African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act in 2022 (National Trust for Historic Preservation, 2022). This law allows the National Park Service to identify, document, and preserve unmarked, abandoned, and underserved African American burial grounds. The law was proposed to protect the cultural property and remains of formally enslaved African Americans, many of whom received unmarked or improperly documented burials; it allowed descendants to identify their ancestors’ burial places while preserving African American history (National Trust for Historic Preservation, 2022). While the African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act does not enable the repatriation of African American remains and cultural property, the African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (AAGPRA) has been proposed (but not yet approved) to repatriate cultural objects and burial remains from institutions (Dunnavant et al., 2021).
In Canada, various legal actions aim to protect cultural rights among Indigenous peoples. Unlike in the U.S. with its emphasis on federal policies, Canadian repatriation policies are administered at both provincial and municipal levels (Bourgeois, 2021). Alberta is the only province with a repatriation act; its First Nations Sacred and Ceremonial Repatriation Act requires the minister to repatriate sacred ceremonial objects (unless the minister deems the repatriation inappropriate). Outside of Alberta, repatriation is administered through some cultural heritage acts, modern agreements between provincial governments and specific First Nations,[3] and individual universities and museums that hold repatriation policies. The cultural heritage acts of Saskatchewan and Yukon both include provisions for repatriation, each with their own qualifications and stipulations. Some provinces – such as British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, Quebec, and the Yukon – have formal agreements with First Nations communities addressing Indigenous rights to ownership of their cultural properties and repatriation policies (Bourgeois, 2021). The only Canadian universities that currently have publicly accessible repatriation policies are the University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, and University of Toronto (Bourgeois, 2021). There are nine federal and provincial museums that have implemented repatriation policies; the two federal museums are the Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian War Museum, while more than half of the provincial museums administer repatriation policies (Bourgeois, 2021). Despite such progress, it is estimated that millions of Indigenous cultural artifacts and thousands of Indigenous human remains are still held by Canadian museums (Maracle, 2024).
The adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNIDRIP) in 2007 helped advance progress toward the repatriation of some cultural artifacts. Among the rights outlined in the introduction, Article 12 of the UNIDRIP declares that Indigenous peoples hold the right to be repatriated their remains and ceremonial objects (United Nations, 2007). Notably, the definition for Indigenous peoples within the UNDRIP is more inclusive than that of Canadian policies, which opens the door for cultural groups that previously had no legal precedent for repatriation. However, the UNIDRIP leaves it up to individual states to incorporate repatriation policies on their own. Since the adoption of the UNIDRIP, countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have implemented repatriation legislation, while most other countries have taken no action (Hook, 2023).
Perspectives on the Illicit Antiquities Trade
There is a famous catchphrase from the Indiana Jones movies, when archaeology professor/adventurer Jones points at a cultural artifact in peril and declares “That belongs in a museum!” In the more recent 2022 film Uncharted, which was largely inspired by the Indiana Jones franchise, a treasure hunter watches a ship filled with looted artifacts sink to the ocean floor and says, “It’s the property of the Philippines now.”[4] While both films are meant for entertainment rather than education, this shift is indicative of how public opinion has changed towards the ownership of cultural property. The world has become more aware of heritage rights and the consequences of colonialism, racism, and looting. This, in turn, has caused social and cultural institutions to rethink the ownership and use of antiquities. To better understand evolving perspectives on the antiquities trade, this section offers perspectives from three issue specialists: an Indigenous artist who works with universities and museums, a professor who researches the illicit antiquities trade, and an archaeologist/museum curator at a NAGPRA-compliant institution. This data is drawn from interviews conducted by the author.
Caddo Pottery Artist Jeri Redcorn
Jereldine (Jeri) Redcorn is a self-taught artist known for reviving the previously lost art of Caddo pottery. She credits her extensive research and practice, her upbringing in Indigenous Caddo communities, her career as an educator, and her involvement with the Oklahoma Native arts world for her successes (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, n.d.). In 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama selected one of Redcorn’s pieces to decorate the Oval Office (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, n.d.).
As a member of the Caddo Nation (whose tribal headquarters is in Caddo County, Oklahoma), Redcorn has seen firsthand how Caddo culture was lost and reclaimed by the Caddo people. Like many Indigenous peoples, the Caddo have endured resettlement, bans on speaking their native language, and the loss of family members to residential schools where they were forced to give up their Indigenous heritage and assimilate to white American norms – all processes of ethnocide. However, Redcorn says the Caddo culture is still alive and well. The Caddo still practice their cultural songs and dances, and Redcorn and other Caddo artists collaborate with anthropologists to record Caddo culture for future generations. For Redcorn, this involves reviving Caddo pottery art to reconnect her community with an art that was lost during resettlement.
Redcorn has worked with various museums and anthropologists during more than three decades of practicing pottery art. Through these experiences, she has seen changing perspectives towards Indigenous art. While initially cautious with archaeologists, over the years Redcorn has noticed archaeologists empathize more with the Caddo people and better understand how Indigenous people feel towards grave robbing and antiquities looting. While Redcorn has experienced bad actors and museums that do not bind themselves by a code of ethics (thereby ignoring advice from Indigenous communities), she says these experiences are rare. Redcorn’s experiences with cultural institutions have mostly been positive as they seek to preserve and study the art she lends them. More museums have consulted the Caddo since the passing of NAGPRA; while many Caddo artifacts remain in museums, the Caddo are more empowered to have a “say” over these artifacts. For Redcorn, it is better that museums make decisions with the Caddo Nation than without, because working with museums and universities is crucial for spreading awareness about Caddo culture. As more people are exposed to Caddo art in museums, conferences, or in class, people come to appreciate and respect Caddo culture.
For the Caddo Nation, dealing with NAGPRA is a full-time job because there are so many artifacts and so many legal cases – and each one of them important. For the Caddo and many Indigenous nations in the United States, working towards repatriation and collaborating with cultural institutions is only possible if tribes have the time to invest in these cases and initiatives.
Archaeologist Donna Yates
Donna Yates is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at Maastricht University in The Netherlands. She was recently awarded a €1.5 million European Research Council starting grant to study how objects such as antiquities influence criminal networks, and other grants have facilitated her research on antiquities trafficking in countries such as Bolivia, Belize, and Mexico (Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, n.d.). She is also affiliated with the interdisciplinary research consortium “Trafficking Culture” (n.d.).
Yates has seen a change in attitudes towards the possession of cultural objects over the course of her career studying the illicit antiquities trade. Both market countries and source countries have invested time and money to regulate this trade, and Yates notes an overall movement for source countries to gain larger sovereignty over their cultural property while encouraging decolonization. Sovereignty is especially important for source countries facing challenges such as economic collapse – which in turn often involves economic vulnerability and warfare, as previously discussed, as well as loss of governmental control and ensuing protections for citizens and their cultural property. Yates cites both Ukraine and Palestine as contemporary areas of interest in the illicit antiquities trade that face the ongoing destruction of cultural property.
Cultural sites are commonly looted during times of economic collapse, and for archaeologists like Yates this means much of her time is spent cleaning up the damage left behind. Yet she contends that the real loss is cultural knowledge; because sites have had their cultural context removed from them, much of what is known about past cultures is built on “shaky ground” (to use the phrase of art historian Elizabeth Marlowe [2015]). The information derived from cultural sites is not fully reliable because much of the context has been damaged or lost, including writings on items that would serve as primary sources of historical knowledge.
While this paper discusses some of the legal precedents for repatriating cultural objects, Yates argues that these laws alone are not enough. Rather, the most successful methods against antiquities trafficking are cooperation with international police and increased social pressure to repatriate stolen items. This was the case with the Willingham Auctions in Cambridge, United Kingdom, which repatriated a pre-Columbian pot that originated from the Tiwanaku region in Bolivia after the Bolivian government asked for it (Drake, 2018). In Yates’ opinion, this is a model for successful repatriation; the auction house did not give the pot back because they were forced to, but rather the pot was repatriated in good faith without expectation of compensation from the Bolivian government. Still, Yates believes that combating the illicit antiquities trade requires regulations. She has researched the use of licenses in the trade of wildlife, for instance, which can be a useful concept in the trade of antiquities. Licenses would limit the number of people who can trade antiquities and there would be criminal penalties for people who obtained cultural objects without a license. Antiquities trafficking often goes hand-in-hand with other illegal activities, including fraud and money laundering, sometimes making evidence of illicit trade hard to trace. While the authorities may not be able to arrest someone for illicit antiquities trafficking, it could be easier to go after related crimes. However, Yates acknowledges that those who buy and traffic antiquities tend to be financially well-off and can afford good lawyers.
While museums and universities are important institutions to spread awareness of different cultures, Yates does not agree that these institutions need to hold ownership over cultural property to do so. This philosophy is part of an increasing scholarly movement that supports source countries’ rights to their cultural objects. Yates suggests that it would be more effective to have countries lend their cultural objects through traveling collections or partnerships. In this way, source countries maintain sovereignty while various parts of the world can learn and appreciate their culture. Yates also addresses the “conservation lie,” which is often used to justify the ownership of foreign antiquities by museums and their use of illicit methods to gain those antiquities. As noted above, museums in market countries are not necessarily better equipped to conserve antiquities and mismanagement can lead to damaged cultural objects. Using conservation as an excuse for illicit trade also implies that source countries are unfit or undeserving of taking care of their own cultural property. The “conservation lie” also quickly falls apart when antiquities stolen during wartime for conservation are then refused return after the war has ended.
As someone who has studied the illicit antiquities trade throughout her career, Yates does not see any benefit in “educating” or punishing subsistence looters. Subsistence looters often do not want to loot because they do not want to destroy or give away their own heritage. Looting is risky because it can lead to imprisonment and a complete loss of livelihood – and looting usually doesn’t make much money in the first place. Most subsistence looters only loot to sustain themselves in communities that have experienced economic collapse. Instead of targeting subsistence looters, Yates suggests bringing in other economic incentives so that subsistence looting is not the only option. Real change often occurs when consumers from market countries become increasingly aware of the consequences of trafficking and their impacts on cultural rights; antiquities become less desirable, and the market for antiquities decreases.
Museum Curator Michelle Rich
Michelle Rich is a trained archaeologist who transitioned to museum curating. She is the Ellen and Harry S. Parker III Assistant Curator of the Indigenous American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). She also completed two prestigious Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowships at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the San Antonio Museum of Art, as well as helps direct the U.S.-Guatemalan El Perú-Waka’ Regional Archaeological Project (ArtNexus, 2018).
Rich explains that museums rarely take donations of new antiquities. While museums occasionally work with living artists, most museums will not accept new donations unless there is proof that the object left the country of origin before 1970, in order to be compliant with the 1970 UNESCO Convention. This means many museums are no longer growing their collections. However, sometimes museums are obligated to accept a donation to prevent it from falling prey to a private institution or collector who may not adequately preserve the object or respect the heritage rights of its culture. However, it is notable that a museum’s ability to properly store and preserve cultural objects is also limited by the time, resources, and storage space of the museum’s team.
When it comes to repatriation, the process is difficult to undertake regardless of the country or legal policy. Each repatriation effort is unique and requires a lot of time and resources from both the museum and the source culture. Sometimes repatriation efforts are also subject to political negotiation, which can lengthen the process of repatriating antiquities. While all museums are different, in Rich’s time working at the DMA only five cultural items have been successfully repatriated. Notably, the DMA is NAGPRA-compliant and is working on updated summaries and care practices to comply with the updated regulations published in NAGPRA in 2023. However, in Rich’s experience most repatriations at the DMA are international and not with Indigenous nations.
Conclusions
Many people in market countries such as the United States have experienced walking through a museum feeling fascinated by cultural objects that are foreign to them, or perhaps even looking on with disinterest. However, few think of how those objects, artworks, or antiquities arrived there. As this paper argues, those museum experiences are often facilitated by the vulnerability and cultural rights abuse of people from an object’s source country. The illicit antiquities trade was born from colonial and imperial looting aimed at degrading Indigenous populations while gaining political power and wealth from trade. While looting has been around for as long as civilizations can remember, the popularity of academic disciplines such as archaeology facilitated the commodification of certain cultures and fueled illicit trade. In the past century, the illicit antiquities trade has become a global market worth billions of dollars – one that preys on communities made vulnerable by economic and/or political factors. Cultural property is destroyed, ransacked, vandalized, and sold for profit in communities during war, often to lower morale and even encourage further violence. Wartime looting can also lead to subsistence looting, where people experiencing economic hardships will loot artifacts to sustain themselves and their families. Subsistence looting, which also happens outside of war, has increased in peripheral countries where the poor lack alternative options to sustain themselves.
The demand for antiquities is fueled by cultural institutions such as museums and universities. While there are national and international legal precedents protecting the right to cultural property, this legislation is often unenforced or limited by the lengthy, expensive legal processes that many victims cannot afford to undertake. The U.S. has one of the only nationally recognized repatriation policies aimed at repatriating Indigenous artifacts and remains, yet an estimated 46% of Native American remains and artifacts documented in cultural institutions have not been made available for repatriation (ProPublica, 2023).
However, things are changing. Many cultural institutions are choosing not to grow their collections of antiquities in order to comply with laws. Institutions are increasingly working with Indigenous artists and scholars to spread cultural awareness, giving Indigenous peoples more agency over their cultural property, even if they choose not to repatriate their artifacts and remains. While the system is not perfect and certainly not everyone will benefit from new protections on heritage rights, these changes have decreased the demand for illicit antiquities. To maintain progress, it is important for scholars, students, and museumgoers to educate themselves on the antiquities trade – including its shameful history of ethnocentrism, exploitation, and theft. Looting and illicit trade threaten archaeological efforts to document history and culture, stripping objects of cultural context and breaking the cardinal archaeological rule of “do no harm.” In our pursuit of cultural knowledge, we must not forget the rights of those whose cultures we study. Archaeologist Susan Lawrence (2003) put it best: “To be globally aware, however, is not the same as to be globalizing” (p. 20).
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[1] The term “illegal” is sometimes used to describe stolen antiquities – and there are often both local and international laws criminalizing looting, trafficking, or obtaining unauthorized antiquities – but governments have different criteria for defining trafficked or stolen objects. Some researchers prefer the term “illicit” to describe antiquities that are trafficked or otherwise taken from their place of origin, whether they technically constitute being “illegal” (Mackenzie, 2014). This paper therefore uses the terms “illicit antiquities” and “illicit antiquities trade” unless explicitly referencing a legal case.
[2] In Israel/Palestine, archaeological studies are mostly reserved for Western scholars and have been criticized for serving nationalistic purposes. These sites are often disturbed and looted by Palestinian subsistence looters (Pollock, 2016).
[3] In Canada, “First Nations” refers to the Indigenous peoples who are neither Inuit nor Métis, traditionally living south of the Arctic Circle.
[4] The entire film Uncharted deals with antiquities looting; the “bad guys” work for private collector Santiago Moncada, who believes he has rightful ownership of cultural antiquities because his ancestors funded the expedition that looted the artifacts.
The author thanks Professor Colleen Hanratty and Professor Thomas Guderjan for their guidance during this research project, and is grateful to Jeri Redcorn, Donna Yates, and Michelle Rich for their interview participation.